20VC: Farfetch Founder, José Neves on Zen Buddhism and Its Impact on Leadership Mentality, Why Head vs Heart is Not the Right Way To Think About Decision-Making & How To Work Through Self-Doubt and Identity as a CEO
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 05/20/2021
20VC: The Memo: Keith Rabois and Ramp's Eric Glyman on Behind The Scenes at The Best Run Private Company on the Planet; The Tools, Tips, Secrets and Process That Drive Efficiency
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Eric Glyman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, America's fastest growing corporate card and finance automation platform. Under Eric’s leadership, Ramp has raised more than $1 billion in financing, with a valuation of $8.1 billion. Prior to Ramp, Eric co-founded Paribus, a price-tracking app to help consumers save money (acquired by Capital One). Ramp recently raised another $150 million series D round co-led by Founders Fund and Khosla ventures, with a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion. Keith Rabois is a Managing Director @ Khosla Ventures and one of the most respected venture investors...
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20VC: Mark Suster on The Biggest Fundraising Lessons for VCs, Why the Correction in Venture is Still to Come, Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path & The Woke Left and a Trump Administration; What Happens?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mark Suster is a General Partner @ Upfront Ventures, one of LA's leading early-stage venture firms. Prior to leading Upfront, Mark was a serial entrepreneur having founded two software companies, selling both with the last selling to Salesforce.com. Mark is also a prolific writer and one of his favourite pieces, is one for the ages. In Today's Episode With Mark Suster We Discuss: 1. From Serial Entrepreneur to Leading VC: How Mark made his way into the world of venture having sold two prior companies? What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known when he started in venture? ...
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20VC: Mistral's Arthur Mensch: Are Foundation Models Commoditising | How Do We Solve the Problem of Compute | Is There Value in the Application Layer | Open vs Closed: Who Wins and Mistral's Position
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion. Before founding Mistral, Arthur was a research scientist at DeepMind, one of the leading AI institutions in the world. In Today’s Episode with Arthur Mensch We Discuss: From Models to Team Building: Arthur’s Greatest Lessons at DeepMind What were Arthur’s biggest lessons from his time at DeepMind? How did DeepMind...
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20Growth: Inside Dropbox, Salesforce & Heroku's Product-Led Growth Engine; What Works & What Doesn't | Why Startups Doing Paid Under $100M ARR are not PLG | Why PLG is a Business Model, Not a Go-To-Market Motion with Adam Gross, Former CEO @ Vimeo
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Adam Gross is one of the masters of product-led growth (PLG). Most recently, Adam was Vimeo's interim CEO. Before Vimeo, Adam was CEO of Heroku, which he joined after selling his startup, Cloudconnect in 2013. Additionally, Adam has held executive leadership roles at Salesforce and Dropbox, and has been an active angel investor & advisor to companies, including Buildkite, Cribl, and Tailscale. In Today’s Episode with Adam Gross We Discuss: PLG Tactics from Dropbox, Heroku and Salesforce: What were Adam’s biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce? How did it shape his growth...
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20VC: Is Speed the Most Important Thing from 0-1 | Why Hiring Inexperienced People is Better | The Biggest Lessons Scaling Zip to $1.5BN Valuation with Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO @ Zip
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Rujul Zaparde is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, the world’s leading Intake-to-Pay solution, adopted by leading enterprises and startups including Snowflake, Canva, Airtable, Webflow, and others. In 2023, Zip raised $100 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Before founding Zip, Rujul was a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and a product manager at Airbnb. In Today’s Episode with Rujul Zaparde We Discuss: From Airbnb PM to $1.5BN Founder How did Rujul’s first company fail? What were his lessons? What did Rujul learn from his time at Airbnb? How did...
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20VC: UiPath: The 10 Year Bootstrapping Journey that Turned into a $10BN Public Company | From a Dollar a Day to Romania's Richest Man | Happiness, Wealth, Risk and more with Daniel Dines, Co-Founder @ UiPath
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Daniel Dines is the Co-Founder @ , one of the most incredible journeys in startups. For 10 years, UiPath was a bootstrapped company that scaled to just $500K in revenue. Then it all changed, product market fit became obvious and the rest is history. The company went on to raise funding from , Accel, Kleiner Perkins and more. Today, the company is worth over $10BN, listed on the NASDAQ and does $1BN+ in revenue. In Today's Episode with Daniel Dines We Discuss: 1. From a Dollar a Day to Romania's Richest Man: How would Daniel's parents and teachers have described the young Daniel? How...
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20VC: Three Core Lessons Scaling Freshworks to a $5.2BN Market Cap | Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR | How India Can Compete Globally in Tech and AI with Girish Mathrubootham, Co-Founder @ Freshworks
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, India’s first SaaS company to list on NASDAQ. Today, Freshworks has over $596M in ARR with a $5.27BN market cap, with investors like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, and CapitalG. Girish is also a founding member of SaaSBOOMi, Asia’s largest community of founders and product builders, and has invested in over 60 startups. On top of that, Girish is also the Founder of Together Fund, a $150M fund focusing on Indian B2B companies going global from day 1. In Today’s Episode with Girish Mathrubootham We...
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20Product: Sequoia's Product-Market Fit Framework | Why the Best Product People Actually Build Less Product | Metrics 101, Good vs Great Product Strategy and more with Vickie Peng, Product Partner @ Sequoia Capital
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Vickie Peng is a Product Partner at Sequoia and the co-creator of Arc, their company-building immersion programme for pre-seed and seed stage founders. Prior to Sequoia, Vickie was a product manager at Polyvore (acquired by Yahoo for $200M) and Instagram, where she grew SMB advertising from $200M to $1BN. In Today’s Episode with Vickie Peng We Discuss: Lessons from 15 Years in Product How did Vickie make her way into the world of product? How did Vickie turn a small side business into a massive revenue machine at TrialPay? How did Vickie scale Instagram SMB ads to $1BN? What were...
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20VC: OpenAI's Sam Altman and Brad Lightcap on The Future of Foundation Models: Will They Be Commoditised | How to Solve the Problem of Compute | Open vs Closed: Which Dominates and Why | Which Companies and Verticals Will Be Steamrolled by OpenAI
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President and CEO @ Y Combinator and made angel investments in the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Pinterest, Asana and more. is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue. Before OpenAI, Brad was an investor at Y Combinator, where he...
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20Sales: The Biggest Sales Lessons Scaling Brex to $400M ARR, Why Startups are Doing Outbound Wrong and How to Fix It & Why Demand Gen is the Bottleneck for all Startups and How to Solve it with Sam Blond, Former CRO @ Brex
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Sam Blond is the former CRO at Brex, where he led the company from near $0-$400M in ARR and a $12.5B valuation. Before Brex, Sam was VP of Sales at Zenefits, where he led the company from $0-$70M ARR in 2 years and a $4.5B valuation. Sam joined Founders Fund as a Partner in 2022 and recently left to focus more on operating. In Today's Episode with Sam Blond We Discuss: 1. Lessons From Scaling Brex to $400M ARR & Zenefits to $70M ARR: What are the secrets that very few people know, that led to the success of Brex and Zenefits? What was the single worst sales investment Brex made?...
info_outlineJosé Neves is the Founder, CEO & Chairman @ Farfetch, the #1 destination for high-end fashion offering the world's Greatest Selection of Luxury. Now a public company, José has raised over $1.7Bn with Farfetch from some of the biggest names including Alibaba, Richemont, JD.com, Index Ventures and DST to name a few. Prior to Farfetch, José has been involved in the fashion start-up world since the mid-1990s when he launched footwear business SWEAR. José later founded SIX London, a fashion licensing and wholesale company selling to 600 retailers worldwide. Finally, in 2001 José opened the renowned boutique bstore, which won the British Fashion Award for Retailer of the Year in 2006.
In Today’s Episode with José Neves You Will Learn:
1.) How José made his way from creating footwear brands in the days of the Spice Girls and cyberpunk to changing the fashion industry itself with Farfetch?
2.) Why does Zen Buddhism resonate with José in such a profound way? How does his adoption of it impact his style of leadership today? How does José deal with the loneliness of being a CEO? What does José mean when he says the most successful leaders, "know how to fall and how to get up"? How has José responded to his greatest failures?
3.) How does José think about decision-making today? What are the biggest misconceptions people have with regards to effective decision-making? Why is head vs heart the wrong way to think about decision-making? How does José adopt a sense of emotional detachment when making decisions? What works? What does not work?
4.) How does José evaluate his relationship to money today? In what ways has it changed over time? What does José believe that others do not believe when it comes to risk and risk management? How does José balance the demands of Wall St and investors with the knowledge that everything is inherently uncertain?
5.) Does José ever feel self-doubt? How does he manage it? In what ways does he advise earlier stage founders to grapple with their own self-doubt? How does José think about tying one's own identity to their company? Why is this so dangerous?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with José Neves
José’s Favourite Book: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
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