Equity Monday: Women's employment drops, as Delta's drama continues

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff to catch up on weekend news and prep for the days ahead. We're here on Tuesday this week since us folks in the United States had off for Labor Day. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and while you're at it, throw me a follow too.

• Jobs report: Over the weekend, the U.S. government posted the Jobs Report. It wasn't ideal, with a sharp drop in percentage of women rejoining the workforce. I give you the startup angle, and talk about a somewhat poetic unicorn.

• Instacart, meet Instagram: WSJ reports that new Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is expanding the grocery delivery store's consumer-product advertising business, with a goal of hitting $1 billion in revenue next year. I riff on why this makes sense and what challenges the business may come up against.

• Behemoths, beware: The largest Series A within Africa just closed, and it's not even close. Wave is taking on telecom-led mobile money, now with four-big name backers. It's not the only startup trying to take on a behemoth. I also gave a shout out to Glass, which wants to take on Instagram as a new go-to destination for photographers to share their content.

Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation

And that's a wrap. I have a fun edtech piece coming out on Extra Crunch this week, so keep your eyes out for it.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!