20VC: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO; The 21-Year Epic Journey of Procore to an $8.6BN Company, Advice from Tobi at Shopify on Being a Great CEO & Why The Idea of "Becoming an Entrepreneur" is BS with Tooey Courtemanche
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 12/04/2023
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Adam Foroughi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Applovin, one of the most underdiscussed but incredible businesses. Applovin has a market cap of $160BN, the company does $5.48BN in revenue and has an astonishing $10M EBITDA per head. The margins; 80%+. There is almost no other business in the world like it. AGENDA: 00:00 – Why Winning (Not Fear) Drives the Best Founders 04:30 – When Money Stops Mattering: The Real Founder Motivation 07:15 – $83M CEO Payday: The Truth Behind the Headlines 10:45 – The Hidden Cost of Being a CEO: What No One Tells You 13:00 – Down 92%: How Do You...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Amjad Masad is the Co-Founder and CEO of Replit, one of the leading “vibe-coding” platforms. Under his leadership, Replit has raised a total of $922 million in funding, recently raising at a whopping $9 billion valuation. Replit has over 50 million registered users and is used by employees at 85% of Fortune 500 companies. Replit’s revenue jumped from $10 million to $100 million in nine months, and the company is on track to reach $1BN in ARR by the end of 2026. AGENDA: 00:00 — Why Coding Models are Hitting a Performance Plateau 07:21 — Is Most of the Value of Replit Not...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:00 — 🤯 Cursor Acquired for $60B?! Breaking down the mind-blowing deal with xAI/SpaceX. 07:00 — 🤝 A Marriage Made in Heaven: Why Cursor and Elon Musk actually make perfect sense. 11:00 — 🏆 Who Won the Deal? The $60B question and why SpaceX public shareholders might be the secret losers. 15:00 — 💰 Venture Payday: What this means for the investors and the "lock-up" reality for the founders. 19:30 — 🚀 SpaceX as an AI Lab: Is Elon using $2 trillion in market cap to buy his way into the AI race?. 20:30 — ⚠️ The AI Advantage: Why high-price stocks are...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Aaron Levie is one of the most forward-thinking public company CEOs when it comes to enterprise adoption of AI. Aaron is the CEO of Box, the enterprise storage company that does over $1BN in revenue but only has a market cap of $3.2BN. Something we discuss today… AGENDA: 00:00 — Why the Experts are DEAD WRONG About the US-China AI Race 10:55 — Everyone is Wrong About Labour Markets: You Will Not Lose Your Job 13:10 — What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in 5 Years 16:45 — Is Your SaaS Tool Actually a Valueless Database in an Agentic World? 20:50 — The...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jake Paul is one of the most influential creators of the digital era, with over 70M+ followers across platforms. He transitioned from YouTube stardom to become one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in boxing history with fights against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua. Jake is also Co-Founder of Anti Fund, where he has made investments in Ramp, Anduril, Cognition and Olipop to name a few. Geoffrey Wu is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Anti Fund. He previously built his career at Goldman Sachs and Point72. He is at the forefront of a new model of investing—where distribution is as...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 — Anthropic Unveils Mythos: The Model "Too Good at Hacking" to Release 05:56 — Why Mythos is a Quantum Leap in Cyber Risk 10:11 — The "Boy Who Cried Wolf": Jason’s Critique of Dario Amodei 14:00 — The Oppenheimer Moment: Are Founders Using Doom as a Marketing Tool? 19:22 — Amazon's $20B Secret: Is NVIDIA’s Chip Stranglehold Finally Loosening? 22:28 — Claude vs. Lovable & Replit: Anthropic Moves into App Building 25:24 — The 60% Death Spiral: Why Public SaaS Stocks are Entering a Doom Loop 39:51 — Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Alex Wang’s First Model from Super...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Anj Midha is the founder of AMP, and a founding investor in Anthropic. Most recently, Anj was General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, leading frontier AI investments. He serves on the boards of Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Sesame, LMArena, OpenRouter, Luma AI and Periodic Labs and is an early angel in ElevenLabs among others. Prior to that, Anj was the cofounder/CEO of Ubiquity6 (acquired by Discord) and a partner at Kleiner Perkins. AGENDA: 04:00 Why the "Scaling Laws are Dead" rumor is dangerously wrong 05:30 The 4 bottlenecks stopping us from reaching Super Intelligence 11:30 Where...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Carles Reina is VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, where he was the first investor and fourth employee. Carles has scaled the revenue org from Day 1 to over $350M in just 3 years. Carles is also an active investor with investments in ElevenLabs, Revolut, Happy Robot and more. AGENDA: 00:00 - Is the Traditional CRO Dead in the Age of AI? 01:01 - Building the AI Sales Machine: Agents that Actually Generate Revenue 08:35 - Will AI Shrink the Sales Teams of the Future? 09:51 - The ElevenLabs Masterclass: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota 11:00 - How to Structure Explosive Sales Accelerators 12:15 -...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:59 — Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI in Revenue 12:43 — OpenAI Management Reboot 18:24 — OpenAI Buys TBPN 29:00 — SpaceX Files for IPO Targeting $2 Trillion Valuation 37:21 — Doug Leone Returns to Sequoia Capital 41:14 — YC Kicks Out Delve 45:21 — The Rise of Open Router 57:59 — Supabase Targeting $10B Valuation 01:08:18 — The Mercor Hack and AI Cyber Threats Moving Forward 01:17:25 — The $1.8B Two-Person Company
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Demis Hassabis is the Co-Founder & CEO of Google DeepMind - working on AGI, responsible for AI breakthroughs such as AlphaGo, the first program to beat the world champion at the game of Go; and AlphaFold, which cracked the 50-year grand challenge of protein structure prediction and was recognised with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Demis is revolutionising drug discovery at Isomorphic Labs. Ultimately, trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality. AGENDA: 00:04:00 — What Actually Counts as AGI; and Where Are We Today? 00:05:00 — What Are the Biggest Bottlenecks Holding AI...
info_outlineTooey Courtemanche, Jr. is the Founder, CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of Procore. He founded Procore in 2002 with a mission to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. After 13 years of business, the company had just $9.6M in revenue, 8 years after that they have over $890M in revenue. Under his leadership, Procore has grown to become a leading global provider of construction management software, connecting over 2 million users across 150+ countries. Today Procore trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PCOR. Huge thanks to Brian @ Bessemer and Will @ Iconiq for some amazing question suggestions today.
In Today's Episode with Tooey Courtemanche:
1. The Founding of a $8.5BN Company:
- How did Tooey's wife, Hilary and their house-building lead to the idea for Procore?
- What does Tooey know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
- Did Tooey always know he would be a success? What was the moment of most doubt?
2. The 13-Year Journey to $9.6M in Revenue:
- Why did it take so long to hit the $10M revenue mark? What changed in 2015?
- What is Tooey's biggest advice to founders and investors who face market timing risk?
- Why was Tooey laughed out of VC offices in 2008? What are his biggest pieces of advice to founders raising from VCs today?
- How does Tooey advise founders on the balance between vision and sticking to a mission vs realising when it is not working and giving up?
3. The Art of Great CEOship:
- What advice did Tobi @ Shopify give Tooey on being a great CEO? How did it impact his approach?
- What are the biggest differences between the reality of being a CEO and the Instagram version?
- What have been Tooey's biggest lessons on hiring? Why does hiring smart, ambitious but not humble people never work?
- Why does Tooey believe the idea of "becoming an entrepreneur" to be BS?
4. Parenting, Money and Marriage:
- Why does Tooey believe great parenting is like great CEOship?
- How does one bring up children to be ambitious and humble in a very privileged upbringing?
- What are the secrets to being there as a husband while also being a rockstar CEO?
- How does Tooey reflect on his own relationship to money and wealth today?