20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 02/12/2024
20Sales: The Best Sales People Are F***** in the Head | The Unspoken Truths All Sales Leaders Need to Know in 2026 | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting | How to Improve Sales Team Performance in 24 Hours with Chad Peets
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Chad Peets is one of the great sales leaders of our time. Currently, Chad is leading all things sales at X. Previously he was the sales saviour at Snowflake and was an advisor to the CEO there. He was also a MD at Sutter Hill where he sat on the board of companies like Sigma Computing and Augment Code. AGENDA: 04:53 How to Recruit the Best Sales Talent Today 06:27 Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruitment in Sales 11:29 How to Evaluate Sales Talent: Green and Red Flags 21:58 Why Remote Work is BS and You Have to be in Office 23:43 How to Improve Sales Team Performance in Just 24...
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20VC: Groq's $20BN NVIDIA Acquisition | Manus Acquired by Meta for $2BN | Why Sam Altman Does Not Care About Dilution | Navan Trading at 4x ARR & Why Going Public Does Not Make Sense Anymore | The Rise of Invisible Unemployment and Labour Markets in 2026
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:30 Groq Acquired by NVIDIA for $20BN: The Breakdown 17:13 Meta's $2BN Acquisition of Manus: Did They Sell Too Early 36:04 OpenAI's Stock-Based Compensation Strategy 47:42 Will AI Replace Venture Capitalists 56:13 Navan Trading at 4x ARR: Who is Good Enough to Go Public? 01:09:46 The Rise of Invisible Unemployment 01:14:21 The Future of Work and Education in an AI-Driven World
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20VC: $0-$260M in Revenue in Three Years: How We Did It | You Need to Work Weekends to Win — Most Founders Aren’t Ambitious Enough | The Revolut Playbook: Speed, Urgency, Extreme Ownership, and Zero Excuses with Alan Chang @ Fuse Energy
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
I have interviewed 1,000 entrepreneurs over 10 years. Nik Storonsky and our guest today are the two best that I have interviewed. Joining the show today; Alan Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Fuse Energy. Alan has scaled Fuse Energy from $2M in revenue in the first year, to $20M the second year to now $400M in the third year. Like Netflix beat incumbents to own media, Revolut beat incumbents to own banking, Fuse will beat incumbents to own energy. Prior to founding Fuse, Alan was one of the first three hires at Revolut where he played a crucial role alongside Nik (Founder) in scaling the...
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20VC: Enterprises Will Not Adopt AI without Forward-Deployed Engineers | Who Wins the Data Labelling Race: How Does it Shake Out? | How Synthetic Data Threatens the Future of Human-Generated Data with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Matt Fitzpatrick is the CEO of Invisible Technologies, leading the company’s mission to make AI work. Since joining as CEO in January 2025, he has raised $100M and accelerated AI adoption across industries from sports to consumer and government. Previously, Matt was a Senior Partner at McKinsey, where he led QuantumBlack Labs, the firm’s AI R&D and software development arm. AGENDA: 04:40 Interview with Matt Fitzpatrick: Career Journey and Leadership 09:35 The Single Biggest Barriers to Enterprises Adopting AI 15:26 It is BS That Enterprises Can Adopt AI Without Forward-Deployed...
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20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:48 Founder of the Year 2025 06:58 Product of the Year 10:05 Fund of the Year 20:52 Breakout Companies of 2025: Who Made the Biggest Impact? 26:57 Biggest Surprises of 2025 32:57 Predictions for 2026: Top Performing Tech Stocks of the Year 35:25 B2B Stocks to Watch 38:31 Why Salesforce Could Be the Buy of 2026 47:11 Google, Meta, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft: Buy One, Short One 55:38 IPO Speculations: Who Will Go Public in 2026 01:00:57 The Impact of AI on Employment
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20Product: On Running's CPO on How to Create Emotion Through Product | Why 99% of Products Fail and How to Create Cults Around Products | The Biggest Product Mistakes On Have Made & Lessons Learned with Gérald Marolf
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Gérald Marolf is the Chief Product Officer at On Running. Gérald oversees the full range of On’s shoes, apparel and accessories to make sure each delivers performance, comfort and style. Before On, Gérald spent over a decade building consumer brands with collaborators such as Microsoft and Ferrari. AGENDA: 00:00 – Why Most “Great Products” Fail to Create Emotion 03:00 – How Perfume Taught Me Everything About Desire & Product 06:10 – The Brutal Reality of Building Physical vs Digital Products 16:00 – Why “Simple Design” Is Overrated and Dangerous 23:00 – Why Vuori is...
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20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:32 Lightspeed's $9 Billion Fundraise 05:20 The Impact of Mega Funds on Seed VCs 10:09 The Supercycle of Growth and Late-Stage Investments 13:06 Disney Invests $1BN into OpenAI and What It Means 23:19 Oracle Hit Hard: Is Now the Time to Buy 28:34 Broadcom's Market Cap Drop and Anthropic’s AI Chip Orders 35:04 Cursor Competes with Figma: The Convergence of Design and Coding Tools 46:20 The Biggest Danger for Incumbents: Being Maimed by AI 55:28 Boom Supersonic Raising $300M to… Power Data Centres… WTF 01:00:24 Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN and The Elon Option Value
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20VC: a16z’s David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
David George is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s Growth investing team. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril, and OpenAI, and is now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like Cursor, Harvey, and Abridge. AGENDA: 03:05 – Why Everyone is Wrong: Mega Funds Does Not Reduce Returns 10:40 – Is Public Market Capital Actually Cheaper Than Private Capital? 18:55 – The Biggest Advantage of Staying Private for Longer 23:30 – The #1 Investing Rule for a16z: Always Invest...
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20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Raaz Herberg is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP Product Strategy at Wiz, the fastest-growing cloud security company in history. As one of the first 10 employees, Raaz has helped scale the business from nothing to a multi-billion-dollar ARR business. Before Wiz, Raaz was a Senior PM working on Azure at Microsoft. AGENDA: 03:51 What No One Knows About The Early Wiz Days 09:08 Most Effective Marketing Wiz Ever Did? Lessons from it? 24:11 How Wiz Mastered Enterprise Sales and Product Development 39:12 The Value of Proof of Concept an Why Everyone Gets Them Wrong 44:23 Why The Best Leaders...
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20VC OGs: SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price | Airwallex Raises $330M and The Battle with Keith Rabois | Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers | IPO Market Predictions for 2026: Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks and SpaceX
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:46 SpaceX's $800 Billion Valuation: A Deep Dive 09:18 IPO Market Predictions for 2026 18:18 Netflix's Bold Move: Acquiring Warner Brothers 27:43 Tiger's New Fund Strategy 33:02 Databricks' Head of AI $500 Million Seed Round 36:38 Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Valuation 48:22 Will LLMs Kill the App Layer 01:02:02 Google's AI Capabilities 01:06:58 Chinese Open Source Models in US Startups 01:08:57 Airwallex Raises $330M at an $8BN Valuation 01:23:50 Prediction Markets and Insider Trading
info_outlineThomas Plantenga is the CEO @ Vinted, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world with a valuation of $4.5BN. Prior to becoming CEO, Thomas worked with a range of organisations including Bookaboat, OLX, Sellit/Wallapop and FJLabs.
Alex Taussig is a General Partner @ Lightspeed and co-leads the fund's Consumer investment team. Alex's portfolio includes the likes of All Day Kitchens, Archive Resale, Daily Harvest, Faire, Found, Frubana, Keychain, Kikoff, Vinted, YaySay, and Zola.
In Today's Episode with Thomas Plantenga and Alex Taussig We Discuss:
1. The CEO Who Did Not Want to be CEO:
- How did Thomas come to be CEO @ Vinted? Why did he not want the job at first?
- What does Thomas know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
2. The Mechanics of the Fastest Growing Marketplace:
- What is the single most important metric for Vinted?
- How does Vinted determine what market to open next? What do they look for?
- How does Vinted think about depth vs breadth in each country?
- What is the AOV today? How does it vary by country?
- How long does it take for each country to be cash flow positive?
3. The Biggest BS in Startups: Rule of 40 and EBITDA:
- Why does Thomas think VC's obsession with "Rule of 40" is BS?
- Why does Thomas believe EBITDA optimization is BS and useless?
- What are the hardest elements of scaling a marketplace that no one knows?
4. The Bull, Bear and Investor Approach to Vinted:
- Alex, what was Lightspeed's pre and post-mortem when investing in Vinted?
- How does Lightspeed analyze TAM and market sizing when investing?
- What was Lightspeed's single biggest concern when investing in Vinted?
5. Europe: A Hub of Innovation or a Retirement Home:
- Does Thomas believe that European young people have a worse work ethic than those in the US?
- Is Thomas concerned by the state of regulation hampering innovation in Europe?
- What can be done to improve work ethic and the state of regulation today?
- Why is Alex and Lightspeed more bullish than ever on Europe today?