20VC: Why Pre-Product Market Fit Is About Systems Design Not Engineering, The Right Way For Leaders To Approach Wartime Leadership Today & A Guide To Recruitment Forward Planning with Ryan Denehy, Founder & CEO @ Electric
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 11/08/2019
20VC: Mag7 Earnings: Google & Amazon Win - Meta and Microsoft Falter | Anthropic's $50BN Raise & What it Means for a Potential IPO | Atlassian, Twilio and Five9 Beat: The SaaS Apocalypse Over? | Sierra’s $15B Valuation: Peak or Potential
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 – Mag Seven Earnings: The "Super Bowl" of Tech Results 04:45 – Google’s Cloud Explosion & The AI Search "Disruption" That Never Came 15:53 – Microsoft’s $190B Bet: Is AI the Only Thing Keeping Growth Flat? 21:59 – Meta’s $150B Future Bet vs. Wall Street’s Need for Spreadsheets 28:50 – Palantir’s Home Run: Why Big Companies Spend Big Money on AI 38:43 – Apple’s Quiet Consistency & The Stealth Inflation of Memory Chips 41:11 – The SaaS Apocalypse Over? Atlassian and Twilio Lead the Re-acceleration 50:50 – Anthropic’s $50B Raise & The Math...
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20VC: Shopify's Tobi Lütke on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & What Will Labour Markets Be in the Future | Why We Need More Scrutiny on Charitable Giving, Governments are Bad at What They Do and Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Tobi Lütke is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify, the global e-commerce titan with a $160 billion market cap. Under his leadership, the company generates over $7 billion in annual revenue and has seen its valuation grow nearly 100x since its 2015 IPO. Today, Shopify has over 8,000 employees and AI now generates over 50% of the Shopify’s code. AGENDA: 00:10:36 - The $160 billion CEO who did not want to be CEO. 00:11:51 - Why don't companies become public? Because it is much worse to be an untrusted public company. 00:16:53 - Why we are about to enter a golden age of entrepreneurship....
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20VC: Inside Clay's Sales Playbook Scaling to $100M ARR | How to Set Sales Comp Plans | How to Read Sales Talent Linkedin Profiles | What Profiles to Hire & Fire | How to Increase Performance and Speed in Sales Teams with Becca Lindquist
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Becca Lindquist is Head of Sales at Clay, one of the fastest-growing AI companies to reach $100M+ ARR. She previously helped scale dbt Labs into a category-defining data platform, building and leading high-performing sales teams. Before that, she was an early sales leader at Heap, where she played a key role in scaling the GTM motion. AGENDA: 00:00 Why most sales reps plateau—and when you should leave your company 02:45 Should you jump from SaaS to a hot AI startup right now? 05:30 How long is too long at one company—and what great tenure actually looks like 08:00 How to read a LinkedIn...
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20VC: Anthropic Raises $45BN but Falls Short on Compute | OpenAI Crushes with GPT5.5 and Codex: Back in the Game? | China Blocks Manus $2BN Deal to Meta | Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors | Why Google is a Bigger Buy Than Ever Before
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 $45B Floods into Anthropic from Google & Amazon 05:10 OpenAI Misses Growth Targets — Is This a Real Problem? 08:40 The Rise of AI Agents: Why Humans No Longer Pick Models 12:05 “Compute ≠ Revenue”: The First Crack in the AI Business Model 20:30 China Blocks $2B Manus Deal — AI Cold War Escalates 34:10 Why Google May Be the Biggest Winner in AI Infrastructure 41:50 The Death of SaaS? Agents Replace Apps Like Jira & Canva 46:20 Thoma Bravo Hands Medallia to Creditors — $5B Wiped Out 52:10 The Collapse of Private Equity Exit Routes in VC
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20VC: Applovin: $160BN Market Cap, $5.48BN Revenue, $10M EBITDA Per Head | Why the Best Do Not Need Mentorship | Why Founders Should Not Angel Invest | Why Kindness in Business Will Slow You Down with Adam Foroughi
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Adam Foroughi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Applovin, one of the most underdiscussed but incredible businesses. Applovin has a market cap of $160BN, the company does $5.48BN in revenue and has an astonishing $10M EBITDA per head. The margins; 80%+. There is almost no other business in the world like it. AGENDA: 00:00 – Why Winning (Not Fear) Drives the Best Founders 04:30 – When Money Stops Mattering: The Real Founder Motivation 07:15 – $83M CEO Payday: The Truth Behind the Headlines 10:45 – The Hidden Cost of Being a CEO: What No One Tells You 13:00 – Down 92%: How Do You...
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20Product: Replit CEO on Why Coding Models Are Plateauing | Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified: Will Incumbents Be Replaced? | Why IDEs Are Dead and Do PMs Survive the Next 3-5 Years with Amjad Masad
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Amjad Masad is the Co-Founder and CEO of Replit, one of the leading “vibe-coding” platforms. Under his leadership, Replit has raised a total of $922 million in funding, recently raising at a whopping $9 billion valuation. Replit has over 50 million registered users and is used by employees at 85% of Fortune 500 companies. Replit’s revenue jumped from $10 million to $100 million in nine months, and the company is on track to reach $1BN in ARR by the end of 2026. AGENDA: 00:00 — Why Coding Models are Hitting a Performance Plateau 07:21 — Is Most of the Value of Replit Not...
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20VC: Cursor Acquired for $60BN by xAI | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets | Did Anthropic Just Kill Figma, Adobe and Canva | Rippling Hits $1BN in ARR | Salesforce Goes Headless: Smart or Stupid | Cerebras IPO 2.0
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:00 — 🤯 Cursor Acquired for $60B?! Breaking down the mind-blowing deal with xAI/SpaceX. 07:00 — 🤝 A Marriage Made in Heaven: Why Cursor and Elon Musk actually make perfect sense. 11:00 — 🏆 Who Won the Deal? The $60B question and why SpaceX public shareholders might be the secret losers. 15:00 — 💰 Venture Payday: What this means for the investors and the "lock-up" reality for the founders. 19:30 — 🚀 SpaceX as an AI Lab: Is Elon using $2 trillion in market cap to buy his way into the AI race?. 20:30 — ⚠️ The AI Advantage: Why high-price stocks are...
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20VC: Everyone is Wrong; We Will Have More Developers in Five Years | Why Frontier Labs Will Be Way More Valuable Than They Are Today | Are SaaS Companies Cooked: Which Thrive & Which Die with Aaron Levie, Founder at Box
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Aaron Levie is one of the most forward-thinking public company CEOs when it comes to enterprise adoption of AI. Aaron is the CEO of Box, the enterprise storage company that does over $1BN in revenue but only has a market cap of $3.2BN. Something we discuss today… AGENDA: 00:00 — Why the Experts are DEAD WRONG About the US-China AI Race 10:55 — Everyone is Wrong About Labour Markets: You Will Not Lose Your Job 13:10 — What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in 5 Years 16:45 — Is Your SaaS Tool Actually a Valueless Database in an Agentic World? 20:50 — The...
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20VC: Jake Paul on Why Traditional VC is Toast and Attention is More Valuable Than Cash | Politics: Will Jake Paul Actually Run for President? | Inside the Payday of Fighting Anthony Joshua and Mike Tyson | with Geoffrey Wu, Co-Founder at Anti-Fund
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jake Paul is one of the most influential creators of the digital era, with over 70M+ followers across platforms. He transitioned from YouTube stardom to become one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in boxing history with fights against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua. Jake is also Co-Founder of Anti Fund, where he has made investments in Ramp, Anduril, Cognition and Olipop to name a few. Geoffrey Wu is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Anti Fund. He previously built his career at Goldman Sachs and Point72. He is at the forefront of a new model of investing—where distribution is as...
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20VC: Anthropic Unveils Mythos | SpaceX's Financials Leaked: Is it Worth $2TRN | Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Are They Back in the AI Race | Jason's Critique of Dario Amodei & How OpenAI Could Win the Enterprise Game
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 — Anthropic Unveils Mythos: The Model "Too Good at Hacking" to Release 05:56 — Why Mythos is a Quantum Leap in Cyber Risk 10:11 — The "Boy Who Cried Wolf": Jason’s Critique of Dario Amodei 14:00 — The Oppenheimer Moment: Are Founders Using Doom as a Marketing Tool? 19:22 — Amazon's $20B Secret: Is NVIDIA’s Chip Stranglehold Finally Loosening? 22:28 — Claude vs. Lovable & Replit: Anthropic Moves into App Building 25:24 — The 60% Death Spiral: Why Public SaaS Stocks are Entering a Doom Loop 39:51 — Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Alex Wang’s First Model from Super...
info_outlineRyan Denehy is the Founder & CEO @ Electric.ai, the company that provides a world-class IT solution that's centralized, secure, and lightning-fast. To date, Ryan has raised over $37m in funding from some dear friends of the show in Rich @ GGV, Bessemer, Primary, Bowery, just to name a few. As for Ryan, he started his career at the tender age of 17 launching an action sports video production company, which was acquired just 4 years later. Ryan then spent 5 years at USA Today in numerous different roles. Following USA Today, Ryan started his second company, Swarm, acquired by Groupon just 3 years later.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ryan made his way into the world of startups from launching an action sports video production company at the age of 17?
2.) Having founded 2 prior companies, would Ryan agree with Joe Fernande @ JoyMode in saying that "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"? What did he do right in the first 2 companies that he would look to do again? What did not work that he is avoiding? Where does Ryan most often see first-time founders make mistakes scaling?
3.) How does Ryan think about and assess wartime leadership? What is the right leadership style and approach to battle through the really tough times? Ryan's investors talk of his speed of execution, how does Ryan balance the speed with the quality when it comes to execution? How has Ryan seen both his role and the way in which he executes it change with the scale of the company and of himself?
4.) How does Ryan thnk about and assess forward planning when it comes to recruitment? How should this recruitment planning align to fundraising? Why must it start before the fundraise? How does Ryan think about levelling up individuals internally vs hiring external candidates? How does Ryan think about and present internal expectation setting?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Ryan’s Fave Book: Barbarians At The Gate
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