20VC: Twilio's Jeff Lawson on What It Takes To Create a Tribe, How To Create Anti-Fragile Organisations Through Decentralised Decision-Making and Why Values Are Nice But Principles Are Better
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 06/28/2021
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?...
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20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Kevin Ryan is one of the leading serial entrepreneurs and investors in New York. Previously he co-founded MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, Nomad Health, Pearl Health, and was the CEO of DoubleClick (Acquired by Google for $3.1B). Today, Kevin is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, a venture capital firm that incubates and invests in transformative companies in healthcare, diversified tech, robotics, and impact. Just yesterday, Alleycorp announced their $250M fund, their first ever external capital. In Today’s Episode with Kevin Ryan We Discuss: Early Signs of...
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20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Basti Lehmann is the co-founder and former CEO of Postmates, the on-demand delivery service that raised over $900M from the likes of Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Spark Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. Following Uber’s $2.65BN acquisition in 2020, Basti founded TipTop, a platform for fast tech sales which Marc Andreesen led the $20M seed round for. In Today’s Episode with Basti Lehmann We Discuss: From US Immigrant to Billion Dollar Founder How did Basti start his career hacking AT&T? How did early hardships shape Basti’s work ethic? What were Basti’s biggest challenges...
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20VC: Oscar Health: How to Deal with a 94% Decline in Market Cap, "Why I Stood Aside as CEO" and The Rebound Journey to $5.8BN in Revenue with Mario Schlosser, Co-Founder @ Oscar Health
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mario Schlosser is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at . The public company that went public with a market cap of $7.1BN. Following a tumultuous time in the markets, their stock price dropped 94%. Today, the company has rebounded and has a market cap of $3.2BN with an astonishing $5.8BN of revenues. Before co-founding Oscar, Mario also co-founded the largest social gaming company in Latin America. In Today's Episode with Mario Schlosser We Discuss: 1. From German Middle-Class to Public Company Founder: How did Mario make his way into the world of tech and come to co-found...
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20VC: Founders Fund's Trae Stephens on Why The Most Competitive Deals are the Worst, Why No Company is Successful Because of their VC, Why We are Making ZIRP Mistakes Again Today, Why Loss Ratio is BS and Upside Maximisation is Everything
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Trae Stephens is a Partner at , one of the world's leading funds where he has worked with some of the best and backed the likes of Palmer Luckey with Oculus and @ Flexport since the very early days. Trae is also Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous systems, and Co-founder of Sol, a next-generation wearable e-reader. Previously, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he was also an integral part of the product team, leading the design and strategy for new product offerings. In Today's Episode with...
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20VC: The Memo: The $23BN Company You Might Not Have Heard Of: Tradeweb, The Story of 27 Years of Compounding Growth Leading to the Market Leader with $1.4BN in Revenue and 50% EBITDA Margins
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Billy Hult is Chief Executive Officer of (Nasdaq: TW), as Billy puts it, they are the "electronic interface that connects Citadel and Goldman". They are also one of the most under the radar but incredible businesses of the last 20 years. Through no glitz acquisitions or specific moments, TradeWeb has compounded organic growth for the last 27 years to today, with a market cap of $22BN. In Today's Episode with Billy Hult: 1. From Betting Shop Worker to Public Company CEO: How would Billy's teachers and parents have described the young Billy? Why does Billy think it is so important to...
info_outlineJeff Lawson is the Founder & CEO @ Twilio, the company that allows you to unite communications and strengthen customer relationships across your business. Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in 2016 Jeff raised funding from some of the best including Bessemer, Union Square Ventures, Redpoint, Salesforce and Founders Fund to name a few. Before founding Twilio, Jeff was co-founder & CTO of NineStar, founding CTO of Stubhub.com, co-founder, CEO & CTO of Versity, and one of the first product managers for Amazon Web Services.
In Today’s Episode with Jeff Lawson You Will Learn:
1.) How Jeff made his way into the world of tech and startups and what that founding a-ha moment was for Jeff with Twilio? When explaining new ideas to people, what signals to Jeff that the idea is resonating? Are there clear indicators an idea is not resonating?
2.) Leadership: What does great leadership mean to Jeff today? How has Jeff's leadership style changed and evolved over the years? What does Jeff believe is the key to great storytelling? How has the leadership style required, changed in a COVID world? What have been the biggest inflection points in his leadership?
3.) Culture: What does Jeff believe are the 3 key ingredients to company culture? How can leaders create a tribe that people associate with? What are the biggest lessons we can take from sport and religion when it comes to culture building? At what points has Jeff been concerned about the Twilio culture? What did he do to rectify it? Why are "values nice but principles better"?
4.) Decision-Making: How has Jeff created a culture of decentralised decision-making? What has Jeff done to ensure the best ideas rise to the top? In what ways can leaders ensure people feel safe to be bold and go big, without the fear of failure? How does Jeff determine when to give or remove resources from new ideas? How does Jeff think about the importance of "focus"?
5.) Diversity: Frank Slootman previously said, "diversity should not override merit". What are the core problems that Jeff has with this statement? How do Twilio construct their recruitment pipelines to ensure diversity? Why does Jeff believe the secret to human assessment is one of "miles travelled"? What are the signals of this?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Jeff Lawson
Jeff’s Favourite Book: Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck
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