Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced look at this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and co-host of Equity Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

As far as weeks go, this one has been as disruptive as they come.

australiabusinessblog.com Disrupt 2022 has officially come to an end after an iconic three days of interviews, startup pitches and “Oh my god, I know you from Twitter” moments. I think I can speak for my colleagues when I say that we are all somehow exhausted and refreshed at the same time.

So let’s do something different for Startups Weekly. This week, instead of going through our usual news feed, I’d like to honor some of the conference’s best moments, onstage and off, from the conference. Below are some hilarious, witty and nuanced quotes, if available, linked to a related story.

If you want more than just the snippet, don’t worry. Here’s a live transcription of all the panels, and be sure to check out australiabusinessblog.com and australiabusinessblog.com+ for more context on news that broke on stage. As always you can follow me on Twitter and forward this newsletter to a friend. But only if you want.

Have fun, and next week we’ll be back to regular programming.

Eavesdropped on australiabusinessblog.com Disrupt 2022

• “Would I choose this? If I had a magic wand to design a healthcare system that leaves people desperate every day? A health care system that says that someone like me who resembles me just because of my race is three to six times more likely to die during pregnancy because of systemic factors because of completely unchecked racism in our system and our society and our health care system because of stigma ? Because of a lack of equal access to services? Absolutely not,” Cityblock Health co-founder and CEO Toyin Ajayi. Full story here.
• “Social products tend not to invent new behaviors. They tend to do things that we as humans are set up for and that we’ve basically shown we enjoy doing, and they just make it dramatically easier to do with anyone in the world,” Clubhouse co-founder and CEO Paul Davison.
• “australiabusinessblog.com? That sounds like a bar.” “Chic woman in the elevator.”
• “We are beyond COVID, I argue again, and we are now looking at a possible recession. And in a recession, transport is historically stable; it is a necessary thing that people need. And $30 food delivery salads isn’t stable in a recession,” Lyft co-founder John Zimmer why he doesn’t get into the food delivery business. Full story here.
• “I was told that people didn’t talk about hydrogen as much as you expected during happy hour last night. So they brought me back so we can really re-emphasize it here a bit. Advanced Ions founder and director Chad Mason. Full story here.
• “Make sure you say it again; I’m not getting paid for this’, comedian and investor Kevin Hart. Full story here.
• “Trust is consistency over time”, figma Director Dylan Field. Full story here.
• “Just to be clear, you extract lithium from brine and produce battery-grade lithium and drinkable water?” australiabusinessblog.com Chief editor Matthew Panzarino to the co-founders of Minerva lithium (and this year’s Startup Battlefield winner). Full story here.
• “My way of thinking about fundraising is that the theater is for toddlers,” Metaphy Director Jos Fabian.
• “We bought most of the billboards in San Francisco for three months for $300,000. Which, you know, may seem like a lot of money, but we had raised about $60 million at the time, so it wasn’t huge for us. It was hugely successful. We definitely got a lot more revenue in the first month than we spent on billboards,” Henrique Dubugrasfounder and co-CEO of Brexit.
• “I don’t have to be BeReal, because I’m real every day,” australiabusinessblog.com audience development manager Alyssa Stringer.
• “If taking superglue from a founder to fix a broken acrylic nail crisis is the worst choice I make at Disrupt, then I think I will have succeeded,” australiabusinessblog.com senior reporter Amanda Silberling.
• “What’s your podcast?” Golden State Warriors player Draymond Green to australiabusinessblog.com hardware editor Brian Heater. Full story here.
• “I show up and probably get beat up by guards or something. [I’ll tell them] she said I could play,” australiabusinessblog.com deputy editor Jordan Crook about playing tennis with tennis legend and venture capitalist Serena Williams.
• And in response: “I said you could watch”, tennis legend and venture capitalist Serena Williams. Full story here.
• “There is a new problem we have with doing Equity on the podium. I haven’t worn makeup for four years and I touch my face a lot. So now I have makeup all over my hand. So if you see me, don’t make me hug you, ’cause you’ll get a weird-shaped handprint,’ australiabusinessblog.com+ Chief editor Alex Wilhelm. Full podcast here.

chat next week,

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