20VC: Behind the Scenes at Y Combinator: The Interview Process | What the Best & Worst Do in the Program | Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | Why the Value is in Application Layer AI with Tom Blomfield
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 05/13/2024
20Growth: The Six Channels Startups Need to Dominate to Grow, Why the Best Growth Talent Never Comes from Marketing or Product, Who and How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI, Growth is More Science than Art with Matt Lerner
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Matt Lerner is one of the OGs of growth having spent 11 years leading growth teams at PayPal. Post PayPal, Matt led the growth marketing program at 500 Startups. He is also the bestselling author of Growth Levers and How to Find Them. Today, Matt is the Co-Founder and CEO of SYSTM, an accelerator program helping startups find their growth drivers. In Today’s Episode with Matt Lerner We Discuss: From Philosophy Student to PayPal Growth Leader: How did Matt make his way into the world of growth? What were Matt’s biggest lessons from 11 years at PayPal? What did Matt know now...
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20VC: Former Meta CTO, Schrep on Why Climate is a $10TRN Problem, Operating Lessons Scaling Products to Billions at Meta and Why the Best Leaders are Like Music Conductors
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mike Schroepfer (Schrep) is the Founder & Partner @ Gigascale Capital, a new kind of climate-focused investment firm. Prior to Gigascale, Mike was the CTO @ Meta where he scaled products to billions of users, shipped millions of units of consumer hardware, constructed tens of millions of sq ft of data centres, built teams of up to 35,000, and made breakthroughs in AI. Before Meta, Mike led engineering at Mozilla and founded a company acquired by Sun Microsystems. In Today's Show with Mike Schroepfer We Discuss: 1. Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Meta: What are Schrep's biggest...
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20VC: Why Seed is Systemically Broken | Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | Benchmarks for Churn, Retention and Growth Rates - Good vs Great | Why Last Vintage for Private Equity Will Suck with Jason Lemkin
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jason Lemkin 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. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com. In Today's Episode with Jason Lemkin We Discuss: 1. Growth Rates and Churn Rates: Average/Good/Great: What is a growth rate that would excite Jason in a SaaS company? What is average? What levels of churn would worry Jason to see? What would excite him to see? What does Jason never...
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20VC: OpenAI's Sam Altman, Mistral's Arthur Mensch and more discuss: Will Foundation Models Be Commoditised | Which Startups Are Threatened vs Enabled by OpenAI | Is the Value in the Infrastructure or Application Layer?
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. 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. Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of . Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst,, and Microsoft with a...
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20VC: Box's Aaron Levie on Predictions for the Next Wave of AI: Will Foundation Models Be Commoditised | How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever | Startups vs Incumbents: Who Wins | App vs Infrastructure Layer: Where is the Value?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Aaron Levie is one of the OG founders of the last two decades as the Co-Founder and CEO of Box. Today, Box does over $1BN in revenue with a market cap of $3.85BN, and has raised over $560 million from the likes of DFJ, Andreesen Horowitz, and Coatue. In Today’s Episode with Aaron Levie We Discuss: What You Need to Know Entering This AI Wave: Why does Aaron think we are currently in a transformative window in AI? What does Aaron think it takes to be successful in this next wave? Which areas does Aaron think founders should be focusing on today? Where should they not? AI...
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20VC: Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora on How to Create and Sustain Competitive Advantage and Defensibility | What Makes Masa Son a Genius Investor of Our Time | How the Best Leaders Communicate and Delegate
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Nikesh Arora is the CEO @ , the leading cybersecurity company in the world with a market cap of $102BN. Before joining Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh was the President and COO of SoftBank Group. Before that, he spent ten years at Google as a senior exec, and President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before that Nikesh was CMO for the T-Mobile International Division of Deutsche Telekom AG. Nikesh serves on the board of Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A. Previously, he served on the boards of SoftBank, Sprint, Colgate-Palmolive Inc., Yahoo! Japan and Tipping Point. In Today's...
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20Product: How Linktree, Webflow and Airbnb Used Rituals and Product Principals to Guide Product Roadmap, Why All Product Teams Should Have a Scorecard and How to Use it & How to Run the Best "Product Jams" with JZ, CPO @ Linktree
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jiaona “JZ” Zhang is the Chief Product Officer at Linktree, the world’s leading link-in-bio platform empowering 45M+ creators, brands and SMBs. JZ joined Linktree from Webflow, where she served as SVP of Product. Before that, she spent four years at Airbnb where she built and led numerous teams on the host side. JZ’s also held leadership roles at the likes of Wework, Dropbox and teaches at Stanford University and Reforge. In Today’s Episode with Jiaona Zhang We Discuss: Entry into the World of Product How did JZ first fall in love with product? Why does JZ believe the...
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20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder and CEO @ , a personalized AI powered by what you’ve seen, said, or heard. For his latest funding round, Dan took an unusual approach resulting in 1,000 preliminary offers with valuations as high as $1BN — and resulted in a $350 million Series A valuation. Prior to founding Limitless, Dan was the Founder of Optimizely, scaling the company to $120M in ARR and raising from some of the best in the business including @ Benchmark who led the Series A. In Today's Episode with Dan Siroker We Discuss: 1. Serial Entrepreneurs are More Investable: Why would...
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20VC: Behind the Scenes at Y Combinator: The Interview Process | What the Best & Worst Do in the Program | Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | Why the Value is in Application Layer AI with Tom Blomfield
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Tom Blomfield is a Group Partner at YC. Before YC, Tom founded two unicorns in the UK. He was co-founder of Monzo (most recently valued at $5BN), one of the first challenger banks in the UK. Monzo raised more than £1bn and counts 15% of the UK population as customers. Before Monzo, Tom founded GoCardless (YC S11), an online payments processor, most recently valued at $2.1BN. In Today's Episode with Tom Blomfield We Discuss: 1. From Founding Two Unicorns to YC Partner: Does Tom believe that all great founders show signs of exceptionalism early? What does Tom know now that he wishes...
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20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Larry Shurtz is the Chief Sales Officer at Genesys where he oversees the company’s global go-to-market strategies, including commercial activities, field sales and partner ecosystem operations. Larry has nearly three decades of experience in the software industry, from leading Confluent to delivering more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count as Chief Revenue Officer, to scaling a 1,300-person team at Salesforce to $2.1 billion in revenue. In Today’s Episode with Larry Shurtz We Discuss: From Robotics Student to $2.1BN Sales Leader at Salesforce How did Larry lead 1300...
info_outlineTom Blomfield is a Group Partner at YC. Before YC, Tom founded two unicorns in the UK. He was co-founder of Monzo (most recently valued at $5BN), one of the first challenger banks in the UK. Monzo raised more than £1bn and counts 15% of the UK population as customers. Before Monzo, Tom founded GoCardless (YC S11), an online payments processor, most recently valued at $2.1BN.
In Today's Episode with Tom Blomfield We Discuss:
1. From Founding Two Unicorns to YC Partner:
- Does Tom believe that all great founders show signs of exceptionalism early?
- What does Tom know now that he wishes he had known when he started his first company?
- Why did Tom decide now was the right time to switch from founder to investor with YC?
2. The YC Application Process: How it Works:
- How do the YC partners select which companies are accepted vs rejected?
- What specifically does Tom look for in the problem the company is looking to solve?
- In the interview, what are the signals of the highest quality founders?
- What questions does Tom always want to ask in YC interviews with founders?
3. The YC Batch: How it Works:
- How do the YC partners work with the 25 companies in their batch? What is the interaction?
- What are the single biggest mistakes companies make while in YC?
- What are the biggest pieces of advice YC gives founders on fundraising approaching demo day?
- How do the best YC founders fundraise and use demo day? How do the most nervous fundraise?
- How are YC partners measured in terms of their success and effectiveness?
4. AI: Consumer vs Enterprise/ Infrastructure vs Application Layer:
- Does Tom believe there is money to be made investing in infrastructure layer models today?
- Why is the commoditization of foundation models the best outcome for society?
- Why is Tom most excited about the application layer for the next wave of AI?
- What are the most exciting opportunities in consumer AI that are wide open today?
20VC: Behind the Scenes at Y Combinator: The Interview Process | What the Best & Worst Do in the Program | Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | Why the Value is in Application Layer AI with Tom Blomfield