20VC: Rahul Vohra @ Superhuman, The Most Downloaded Founder Episode of 2019
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 01/03/2020
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Omer Shai serves as the CMO at Wix. Shai leads a team of over 400 people and is responsible for the company’s global online and offline marketing activity, which boasts an incredible growth of approximately 3 million new users every month. Under Shai, the marketing department has executed hundreds of worldwide campaigns for television and social including 5 Super Bowl commercials, creative videos, podcasts and more. AGENDA: 00:00 — The AI Agent Revolution: 93% Automation? 03:55 — Why I’m Buying TWO Super Bowl Ads This Year 08:58 — The $100M Marketing Secret: Brand vs. Performance...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:36 Brex Acquisition by Capital One for $5.15BN 10:54 Does Brex’s Acquisition Help or Hurt Ramp? 16:28 TikTok Deal Completed: Who Won & Who Lost: Analysis 19:30 Anthropic Inference Costs Higher Than Expected 37:50 Open Evidence Raises at $12BN from Thrive and DST 53:56 Wealthront IPO Disaster: Is $1.5BN IPO Too Small? 01:07:27 Salesforce Wins $5BN Army Contract: The Last Laugh for SaaS
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Max Junestrand is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Legora, the legal AI company that has scaled to 750 of the world’s leading law firms as customers and over 300 employees in just 2 years. They have raised over $200M from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, General Catalyst, Redpoint and ICONIQ. AGENDA: 04:16 Why Does Everyone Think Harvey When They Hear Legal AI? 07:35 Why OpenAI is Toast? Switching to Anthropic! 11:47 24 Months: Which Foundation Models Will Win? 23:53 Lessons Scaling from Europe into the US 28:53 Do Americans Work As Hard As They Say? 32:20 Why Seat...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:03:00 – Harry's Wild Start: Making £1.75M at 19 in 36 Hours 00:06:00 – How Harry Got Marc Benioff on 20VC with Cold Emailing Alone 00:07:30 – Raising $70M on WhatsApp – Relationship Building Secrets 00:12:00 – Decision Framework: What Would Pat Grady (Sequoia) Do? 00:15:00 – Chase Your First Million – It Unlocks Everything 00:16:30 – Advice for 19-Year-Olds Today: Niche Down, Interview Leaders, Publish 00:18:00 – University Is a Waste for Most | Leverage Youth & Risk 00:22:30 – How Getting Kicked Out of School Changed Everything 00:30:00 – Why Should...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:30 Can VC Survive With Public Market Prices Today 15:20 The Implosion of Thinking Machines 21:13 Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: The Legal Battle 40:50 Can OpenAI Win Ads? 55:50 ClickHouse’s $15BN Deal: Analysed 58:55 Replit’s $9BN Deal: Analysed 01:08:35 There Are Only Two Types of Deals VCs Want To Do Today
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Winston Weinberg is the CEO and Co-Founder of Harvey, the leading professional services platform engineered with AI for law, tax, and finance. Winston has raised over $980M for Harvey from Sequoia, a16z, GV, Elad Gil and more with a last round price of $9.2BN post-money. Before founding Harvey in August 2022, Winston was an attorney at O'Melveny & Myers LLP, specializing in antitrust and securities litigation. AGENDA: 04:10 #1 Thing Every Founder Needs to Do Everyday 05:33 Must Do Daily Routines and Productivity Tips for CEOs 12:45 How to Get Sequoia and a16z Term Sheets 15:06 Why...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Noam Lovinsky is the CPO @ Superhuman (formerly Grammarly). Prior to Superhuman he was a Senior Director of Product Management at Facebook. In his earlier years, he was CPO @ Thumbtack and spent 5 years as a Director of Product Management at Google where he was responsible for all of Youtube’s applications. AGENDA: 03:43 What is Great Product Leadership in a World of AI 07:45 Does the Design Phase Die in a World of Vibe Coding 12:21 How AI Changes Product Development Most 22:23 Accelerating Product Development 29:32 AI's Impact on Product Building 34:19 Predictions for 2026 34:45 Quick...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 05:02 Anthropic's $10 Billion Fundraise 07:54 Has Claude Code Beaten Cursor Already 15:54 OpenAI Could Still Go to Zero 26:33 Andreessen Horowitz's $15 Billion Fundraise 45:16 The Middle is Dead: Boutique vs. Large Platforms in Venture 50:01 The Future of Venture Capital 01:08:06 The Impact of Wealth Taxes on the Industry
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andressen Horowitz, where he leads their $1.7BN apps fund. Just last week, a16z announced they had raised $15BN for their latest funds, over 20% of all capital raised by venture firms. At a16z, Alex has led deals into Plaid, Mercury and OpenDoor to name a few. AGENDA: 04:55 How to Do 5x on a $15BN Fund Pool? 09:21 What Two Groups of Funds Will Win the Next Decade in VC? 14:39 What Three Things Are the Best Founders Able to Do? 19:22 The Best Companies Have Hostages, Not Customers 31:37 The Two Types of Deals You Want To Do In VC 38:52 The...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Luke Harries is Head of Growth at ElevenLabs, where he leads marketing, product, engineering, and developer experience. ElevenLabs has raised $281M with the latest round pricing the company at a $6.6B valuation. Previously, Luke held roles at PostHog and Microsoft, and is also an angel investor supporting startups like Lovable and Runna. AGENDA: The $6.6B Growth Engine Behind ElevenLabs Why Luke Said “No” to Investing in ElevenLabs (and Why He Was Wrong) How ElevenLabs Makes a Horizontal Product Strategy Work How to Build Sharded Growth Teams That Actually Scale The 7-Part...
info_outlineRahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO @ Superhuman, the fastest email experience in the world. Fun fact, users get through their inbox twice as fast — and many see Inbox Zero for the first time in years! To date, they have raised funds from our friends at Boldstart, First Round, John Collison, Sam Altman, Wayne Chang, Mike Ghaffery and Yes VC just to name a few. Previously, Rahul founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users. Rapportive was ultimately acquired by LinkedIn.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Rahul make his way into the world of startups with the founding of Rapportive and how did that transition to changing the world of email with Superhuman?
2.) What does Rahul mean when he says, “you can reverse engineer a process to get to product-market fit”? What does Rahul believe is the defining metric which determines your “product-market fit score”? What is Julie Supan’s framework? How did Dropbox and Airbnb use it to increase their product-market fit? How can founders implement it into their process?
3.) What can founders do to expand the customer base to include users that currently are “somewhat disappointed”? What are the right questions to ask? What do we do with this feedback? How do we further segment the user base? Why should we “disregard the users whereby the primary benefit of the product does not resonate”?
4.) How does Rahul approach product roadmap and prioritisation? How can founders ensure that continuous tracking and user feedback is engrained within the organisation? What tools does Rahul do to monitor and capture this? What are some of Rahul’s biggest lessons from going through this painstaking process stage by stage?
5.) Finally on fundraising, what does Rahul mean when he says, “always be raising but never be actively raising”? What are the benefits of this? How can founders transition catch up coffee into fundraising subtly? How does Rahul feel about party rounds? What are the pros? What are the downsides? How does Rahul advise founders here?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Rahul’s Fave Book: The Art of Game Design
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rahul on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.