20VC: Scaling Zapier To $140M ARR and a $5Bn Valuation on $1.4M of Funding, What Founders Misunderstand About Fundraising & How Founders Should Think About Secondaries Today with Wade Foster, Founder & CEO @ Zapier
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 04/15/2021
20VC: Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic & Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1: What it Means for IPOs | Why Mass Layoffs Are More Worrying Than Anyone Sees
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 – Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation & Andre Karpathy's Shock Move 04:46 – Unpacking Anthropic’s $30 Billion War Chest 10:52 – The True Cost of AI Tokens: Is Salesforce Spending Too Much? 15:59 – The Bear Case for Token Growth & Why Software Leaders Must Adapt 22:56 – Public Tech Rebound: Figma & Datadog Crush Expectations 26:59 – The Death of Traditional Web Builders? The Decline of Wix & Squarespace 36:59 – Compute Starvation: Is the Semiconductor & Hardware Boom Sustainable? 45:59 – Cerebras IPO Smashes Day One: The Biggest Tech Public...
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20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Josh Browder is my favourite emerging manager. As the Founder of Browder Capital he has been the first check into unicorns like Micro1, and Yuzu Health to name a few. He turned his Thiel Fellowship Grant of $100K into a whopping $10M angel portfolio. All new investments move into Josh’s Four Seasons Residence where he then trains them on company building. They are only allowed to leave when they raise their seed round. In addition to this, Josh is the Founder & CEO @ DoNotPay, the now profitable company that has raised $22M from Marc Andreessen and others. AGENDA: 00:00 Why I...
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20VC: Lessons from Jensen Huang on "Founder Mode" | How to Know if OpenAI or Anthropic Will Kill your Company | How USV Liking Music Made Them $1BN on an Investment | The Five Year Desert to Product Market Fit & a $5.3BN Valuation with Shiv Rao @ Abridge
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Shiv Rao is the CEO and Co-Founder of Abridge, a leader in generative AI for healthcare. The company reached a $5.3 billion valuation following a $300 million funding round with investors including Jensen Huang, Henry Kravis, USV, Bessemer Venture Partners and Elad Gill. A practicing cardiologist, Shiv has scaled the company to 450 employees and partnered with major health systems like Emory and Yale. AGENDA: 04:00 — You just have to survive long enough to not die 06:00 — Did USV liking music make them billions of dollars? 13:58 — The three variants of an AI native company 15:00...
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20VC: Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO: The Breakdown | Ramp's $40BN Latest Valuation | Hubspot Tanks, Monday Rockets: WTF is Happening in Public Markets
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:05:11 — Anthropic freezes secondary sales, requiring board approval for all transfers. 00:10:45 — Why Anthropic is buying capacity from Elon Musk. 00:15:35 — Anthropic’s massive $200B revenue commit to Google. 00:18:55 — Goldman Sachs predicts a 24x surge in token consumption driven by agents. 00:31:05 — Will AI labs eat the app layer? The threat to Legal and CX verticals. 00:37:55 — SaaS public markets: HubSpot tanks 18% while Monday.com finds its footing. 00:42:40 — Growth theft: How Clay is commoditizing ZoomInfo’s data business. 00:46:25 — Cerebras...
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20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Patrick Forquer is the Chief Revenue Officer at , the fastest growing enterprise business to ever hit $100M in ARR and now on track to hit over $250M in ARR by the end of the year. They recently raised a $550 million Series D at a $5.55 billion valuation, led by Accel, note 20VC did participate and is an investor in the company. AGENDA: 0:00 – How Jude Law Generated $50 Million in Qualified Pipeline 4:00 – Why Implementation is Your Secret Weapon to Win in AI 5:50 – Why AI Enterprise Sales Require "Legal Engineers" 7:45 – The 6-Figure Rule: When Should Humans Control Sales 12:55...
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20VC: What I Learned from 100 of the Best CEOs in the World | What I Learned from Staying with Mr Beast for 3 Weeks | How We Will Spend More on Tokens than Salaries with Cliff Weitzman, Speechify
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Cliff Weitzman is the Founder & CEO of Speechify AI. He solved his dyslexia and ADHD in college by building a Voice AI agent that's now used by over 60 million people and has over 1 million five-star ratings. Over 200 software and AI engineers work on Speechify which won the Apple Design award last year. AGENDA: 00:00 — Until You Hit $100K Do Not Spend on any Channel Other than Meta 04:53 — How I hacked the college system by applying to 26 universities 06:33 — The "Great Guy" yearbook prank that accidentally outed me 08:35 — What I learned from hunting down the top 100...
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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
info_outlineWade Foster is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Zapier, the company that moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. Post YC in 2012, Wade raised $1.4M for the company from Bessemer and Threshold but since that round, he scaled the company to $140M in ARR and a $5Bn valuation with Sequoia and Steadfast buying out some early investors earlier this year.
In Today’s Episode with Wade Foster You Will Learn:
1.) How Wade made his way from email marketing manager to founding one of YC's most successful alum in the form of Zapier? Does Wade agree with the "fake it till you make it theory"? How does Wade advise grads on starting a company vs joining a startup vs joining an incumbent?
2.) Remote Work: Zapier has been remote since 2012, what do Zapier do very specifically that Waade believes has enabled them to be so successful remote? What did not work? What were some of the biggest challenges of scaling the team remotely? In terms of tooling, what specific tools do Wade and Zapier use to make the org as transparent as possible?
3.) In the scaling journey, what have been the most significant breakpoints in the org scaling? How has Eade scaled his style of leadership? What has been the most challenging element to scale? How does Wade structure internal meetings? Who is invited to what? What materials are shared? How are the meetings structured?
4.) Why did Wade decide not to take the venture path and scale the company from revenues? What does Wade believe so many founders misunderstand when it comes to fundraising? What does Wade believe they gained from the bootstrapped approach? Why did Wade still maintain relationships with VCs? How did he choose those he wanted to stay in touch with?
5.) How does Wade feel about his relationship to money? What does Wade think about the rise of secondaries? In what framework does Wade advise founders who have the chance to take secondaries? What is the right amount to take off the table? How does one communicate this?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Wade Foster
Wade’s Favourite Book: Harry Potter
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!