Equity Monday: Away’s CEO plans comeback while SaaS valuations rise and epiFI raises

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton, which was a lot of fun.)

What was on our minds this morning? Brian Heater’s CES overview of sleeptech from the weekend, which made the argument that not all gadgets are bad for our sleep, even if there is some irony in using tech to help cure our tech-addled brains. Here’s to something a bit more substantial than blackout shades.

Also, Facebook closed out last week after setting some record valuations — so much for the techlash — and Casper’s IPO filing landed to much impact just as everyone was trying to get away from their desks and onto their couches.

Looking at the coming week, earnings season is upon us, but not quite yet for companies that we care about, the recently public tech and venture-backed firms of the world. There are some big names that are reporting this month, but over the next five days expect things to be a bit quiet. Pending news, of course.

And in terms of the Twitter forecast, with the CEO of Away coming back to her company as early as today, expect your timeline to feature one topic in particular. Can you guess what it is?

This morning we also took a look at two funding rounds:

• Former Google Pay execs raise $13.2M to build neo-banking platform for millennials in India (TechCrunch)
• Legalpad Raises $10M To Help Immigrant Entrepreneurs With The Visa Process (Crunchbase News)

And we wrapped with notes on the Casper IPO filing, and why it’s attracting so much commentary, and criticism.

Hit play, and let’s get this week started!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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