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
Release Date: 04/08/2024
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Nilan Peiris is Chief Product Officer at , where he leads on growth across channels including product and platform. Prior to Wise, Nilan was VP Growth at HouseTrip, in charge of scaling the company’s growth in the European market. He’s also worked as Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Holiday Extras, where he was responsible for all areas of technology, marketing and customer acquisition. Nilan also advises a number of early-stage startups on growth and getting to traction. In Today's Episode With Nilan Peiris We Discuss: Lessons Scaling Transferwise to the First 1M Users: ...
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is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com. In Our Second Episode of This Week in SaaS: 1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer: How does Jason analyse the price of the offer? $23BN for a $500M ARR business growing 120% YoY? What is the reasoning for Google in pursuing the acquisition? If Wiz had of proceeded in the...
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Kevin Hartz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at , an early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to founding A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite, a publicly traded company, and served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company. Before Eventbrite, Kevin co-founded Xoom, a money remittance company that was acquired by PayPal in 2015 for over $1BN. Kevin is also a prolific angel investor having backed companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril at the seed stage, and was an early investor in Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto and many others. In Today's...
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is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of where he is responsible for heading up the design and product teams. Since launching in 2013, Canva’s global community has grown to over 185 million monthly users in over 190 countries. In 2021, Canva was valued at $40 billion, following a $200m funding round. This saw it become one of the most valuable private software companies in the world. Prior to joining Canva, Cameron found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realise the design vision for Google Wave. In Today's Episode with Cameron...
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Pedro Franceschi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Brex, the AI-powered spend platform with tens of thousands of customers, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood and Roblox. Pedro has raised over $1.2BN for the company from the likes of Greenoaks, Ribbit, DST, Bond and YC. The latest reported valuation was $12.3BN. Before Brex, Pedro was the first person to “jailbreak” the iPhone 3G in Brazil and co-founded payments company Pagar.me with Dubugras when he was 15. In three years, Pedro scaled it to over 100 people and US$1.5 billion in transactions processed. In Today's Episode with Pedro...
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Saam Motamedi is a General Partner at Greylock, where he has led investments in Abnormal Security (incubated at Greylock), Apiiro Security and Opal Security, as well as AI companies like Adept, Braintrst, Cresta, Predibase, Snorkel, and more. Before Greylock, Saam founded Guru Labs, a machine learning-driven fintech startup, and worked in product management at RelateIQ, one of the first applied AI software companies. In Today's Conversation We Discuss: 1. Seed Today is Frothier than 2021: How does Saam evaluate the seed market today? With seed pricing being so high, how does he...
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Mark Roberge is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark was the founding CRO at HubSpot, where he scaled ARR from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference. In Today's Episode with Mark Roberge We Discuss: 1. Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot to $100M in ARR: What are Mark's biggest lessons in what worked in their sales...
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Ara Mahdessian is the Co-Founder and CEO @ ServiceTitan, one of the great vertical SaaS business of the last decade. Today the company powers over 11,800 trade customers and has raised over $1.4BN from some of the best including Bessemer, Battery, Index, ICONIQ and more. Their latest valuation pegged the business at a reported $7.3BN. In Today's Episode with Ara Mahdessian We Discuss: 1. We Did Not Want To Raise VC Money: Why did Ara not want to raise VC funding in the early days? What convinced Ara to change his mind? Why did he choose Byron and Bessemer? Does Ara believe that...
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Pat Grady is one of the most successful growth investors of the last decade. As the Head of Sequoia's growth investing practice, Pat has invested in companies with a combined market cap exceeding $250BN. Among Pat's immense portfolio is Hubspot, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Okta, Amplitude, Zoom and Qualtrics. Pat is also one of the best acquirers of talent in venture hiring Andrew Reed, Matt Huang, Julien Bek. In Today's Episode with Pat Grady We Discuss: 1. The Sequoia Investment Process: What is the Sequoia investment process today? How has it changed over time? What could be improved...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Avi Eyal is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Entrée Capital, an early-stage VC fund with a portfolio including the likes of Monday.com, Stripe, Coupang, PillPack, and Snap. From their $15M investment into Monday, Entrée distributed a whopping $1.5BN, one of their $45M funds is a whopping 37x DPI. Avi is one of the greatest venture investors you might not have heard about. In Today's Episode with Avi Eyal We Discuss: 1. The Biggest BS "Rules" in Venture Capital: Why does Avi believe that it is BS for every deal to need to be a homerun and return the fund? Why does Avi believe that...
info_outlineBasti 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:
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From US Immigrant to Billion Dollar Founder
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How did Basti start his career hacking AT&T?
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How did early hardships shape Basti’s work ethic?
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What were Basti’s biggest challenges building Postmates?
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Lessons from Raising $900M
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How did Basti raise $20M from Marc Andreesen?
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How does Basti select which VCs to work with?
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Why does Basti think 99% of VCs are sheep?
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Why does Basti think great VCs add no value?
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Why does Basti think having to educate investors is a massive red flag?
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Selling Postmates for $2.65BN
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Why did Basti sell Postmates to Uber? How did the acquisition happen?
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Was there anything Basti would have done differently?
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What does Basti think makes Dara Khosrowshahi a great CEO?
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What is Basti’s biggest advice to founders on acquisitions?
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Future of AI: Startups or Incumbents?
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What does Basti think is the biggest challenge of LLMs today?
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Why does Basti think inference computing will be the future of AI?
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Why does Basti think incumbents can be replaced?
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Why does Basti think the biggest companies are being born today?