20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 08/21/2020
20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Max Altman is Co‑Founder & Managing Partner at Saga Ventures, a US$125 M early‑stage fund. Before Saga Max was an investor with Apollo Projects, Hydrazine Capital and Altman Capital (where he helped deploy over US$500 M) into breakout names such as Rippling and Reddit. AGENDA: 03:55 – Venture Capital Is FULL of Tourists With Single-Digit IQs 06:20 – Inside the Madness of Parker Conrad: Genius, Chaos, and WTF Emails 10:35 – The Rippling Deal That Changed Everything 12:40 – Living in Sam Altman’s Shadow: The Confession 17:30 – $200M Fund Mistakes: Max’s...
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20VC: Cursor Raises $2.3BN: Who Wins the Coding War | Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: Analysed | Why Venture Capital Will Hit $1TRN and the Opening of Retail | Why Stripe and the Best Companies Will Never Go Public
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:47 Cursor Raises $2.3BN at $29BN Valuation 11:36 What Gemini 3 Means for Lovable, Cursor and Replit 30:54 Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: The Bubble Bursting? 48:54 Oracle Credit Default Swaps: The Risk is Increasing 01:07:22 Stripe Does Tender at All-Time High: Why the Best Companies Will Never IPO 01:19:18 Why Retail WIll Cause a Surge of Capital into VC Funds
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20VC: Andrew NG on The Biggest Bottlenecks in AI | How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI? | Is Defensibility Dead in a World of AI? | Will AI Deliver Masa Son’s Predictions of 5% GDP Growth?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Dr. Andrew Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI. He is Founder of , Executive Chairman of , General Partner at , Chairman and Co-Founder of . As a pioneer in machine learning Andrew has authored or co-authored over 200 research papers in machine learning, robotics and related fields. In 2023, he was named to the Time100 AI list of the most influential AI persons in the world. Agenda: 03:19 What are the Biggest Bottlenecks in AI Today? 08:51 How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon 15:48 Should AI Talent Really Be Paid Billions? 29:07 Why is the Application Layer the Most...
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20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Carl Rivera is the Chief Design Officer at Shopify, where he previously led both Merchant Services and the Shop App as VP of Product. Before joining Shopify through its acquisition of Tictail, Carl was the co-founder and CEO of Tictail, the “Tumblr for e-commerce,” where he built one of the most beloved design-forward commerce platforms of its era. AGENDA: 05:05 Biggest Lessons from Selling My Company to Shopify 09:55 Where Does Shopify Suck at Product: Lessons from that? 17:37 What makes Truly Great product Design: The Five Pillars 31:02 The Future of Design in an AI-Driven World 36:00 Do...
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20VC: Sequoia's Leadership Transition | Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir | Gamma Raises $100M at $2BN | Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI | Datadog Surges as Duolingo Plummets: What is Happening
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:22 Sequoia's Leadership Transition 09:46 Michael Burry's Big Short on Nvidia and Palantir 17:41 Gamma Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation 32:34 Does Defensibility Exist Today When Copying is Easy 40:31 Should All Funds Be Way More Diversified 47:12 How to Run a Fundraising Process & What Not To Do 57:57 Datadog Surges 20% and Duolingo Crashes: What Happened
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20VC: Benchmark's Newest General Partner Ev Randle on Why Margins Matter Less in AI | Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns | OpenAI vs Anthropic: What Happens and Who Wins Coding | Investing Lessons from Peter Thiel and Mamoon Hamid
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Ev Randle is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the best funds in venture capital. In their latest fund, they have Mercor ($10BN valuation), Sierra ($10BN valuation), Firework ($4BN valuation), Legora ($2Bn valuation) and Langchain ($1.4Bn valuation). To put this in multiples on invested capital, that is a 60x, two 30x and two 20x. Before Benchmark, Ev was a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and before Kleiner, Ev was an investor at Founders Fund and Bond. AGENDA: 05:25 Biggest Investing Lessons from Peter Thiel, Mary Meeker and Mamoon Hamid 14:36 OpenAI Will Be a $TRN Company & OpenAI or...
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20Sales: Why You Need a CRO Pre-Product | Why Remote Sales Teams Do Not Work | How Snowflake Built a Sales Machine with Chad Peets
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio. In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We...
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20VC: Navan IPO: Winners, Losers and is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC Today | Harvey Raises $150M at $8BN Price | Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell | Meta Down 10%, Is Zuck Struggling?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:27 Navan's IPO: Winners, Losers and 20% Crater 12:55 Harvey Raises $150M at an $8BN Valuation 35:36 Was Sam Altman Wrong to Snap at Brad Gerstner 41:25 Why GOOG is a Buy and Amazon is a Short 47:43 Meta Down 10%, Buy or Sell? 51:12 If You Have Not Accelerated with AI, You Are Dead 01:05:20 Why Now is the Best Time for Series A and Worst for Seed
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20VC: Cohere's Chief AI Officer on Why Scaling Laws Will Continue | Whether You Can Buy Success in AI with Talent Acquisitions | The Future of Synthetic Data & What It Means for Models | Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015 with Joelle Pineau
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Joelle Pineau is the Chief AI Officer at Cohere, where she leads research on advancing large language models and practical AI systems. Before joining Cohere, she was VP of AI Research at Meta, where she founded and led Meta AI’s Montreal lab. A professor at McGill University, Joelle is renowned for her pioneering work in reinforcement learning, robotics, and responsible AI development. AGENDA: 00:00 Introduction to AI Scaling Laws 03:00 How Meta Shaped How I Think About AI Research 04:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning 10:00 Is It Possible to be Capital Efficient in AI 15:52 AI in...
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20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
🎧 20VC x Tim Ferriss — Full Episode Timeline 00:00 – “How Do You Stay True to Yourself When You Have to Perform for the World?” 06:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Refused to Go All-In on YouTube” 09:00 – “You Don’t Need 10 Million Fans—You Need 1,000 True Believers.” 12:00 – “The Internet Is Not a Relevance Machine—It’s a Sensationalism Machine.” 15:00 – “Money Fixes Money Problems—And Nothing Else.” 22:30 – “When Did Tim Ferriss Feel Completely Lost?” 27:00 – “The Million-Dollar Mistake That Still Haunts Tim Ferriss.” 36:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss...
info_outlineBen Rubin is the Founder & CEO @ /talk, the anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralised conversations. Prior to co-founding /talk, Ben was the Co-Founder & CEO @ Houseparty, where he scaled the product to millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from the likes of Sequoia, Greylock and Entree Capital to name a few. In addition over the last few years Ben has enjoyed roles at Sequoia as a Scout and then also at Benchmark as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ben made his way into the world of startups and came to found Life on Air, later turning into Meerkat and Houseparty?
2.) What were Ben's key learnings from the Houseparty scaling experience? Why are the traditional metrics we use to measure startup success (DAU, MAU etc) insufficient? What is the nuance to metrics? How does Ben think about being first to market vs being the best to market?
3.) How does Ben believe the product principles differ when comparing the 0-1 stage vs 10-100 stage? How does Ben think about where to be rigorous on product? How does Ben advise founders to discover the key guiding product principle? What was it for Ben with Meerkat?
4.) Meerkat pivoted to Houseparty 3 months after having raised $40M, how did Ben communicate that to the board? How did they respond? How does Ben believe the best boards operate? What does Ben most look for in his board members? Where do many go wrong with board management?
5.) From the team side, when in hypergrowth, when do things start to break? What profiles are usually the first to break? Does that mean one should not hire those profiles? What can the leader do to create that intimacy and trust amongst the team?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Ben’s Fave Book: Seneca: The Shortness of Life
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