20VC: Raising $126M Across 3 Rounds in Just 6 Months, Being the Youngest Founder of a Unicorn Company | But Everything Was Not as it Seemed: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires with Vise's Samir Vasavada
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 06/28/2024
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Samir Vasavada is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vise, a technology-powered asset manager. Samir and his co-founder, Runik founded Vise from the Midwest at 16 years old. They bootstrapped the company before dropping out of high school and raising $128M in just 6 months from some of the best including Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. The company achieved unicorn status when the pair turned 20 years old, making them the youngest founders of a $BN company at the time. In Today's Episode with Samir Vasavada We Discuss: 1. The Biggest Hiring Mistakes That Broke Us: Why is hiring...
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Andrew Bialecki is the Co-Founder and CEO of Klaviyo, the platform that powers smarter digital relationships for businesses and their data. To date, Klaviyo has raised over $778M from the likes of Accel, Summit Partners, Sands Capital, and Shopify, and raised an additional $700M after its IPO in September 2023. In Today’s Episode with Andrew Bialecki We Discuss: Founding a $6.23BN Machine in Klaviyo: The Aha Moment What was the aha moment for Klaviyo? How important does Andrew think it is for founders to stick with their initial vision vs when is the right time to pivot? Does...
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David Luan is the CEO and Co-Founder at , a company building AI agents for knowledge workers. To date, David has raised over $400M for the company from , Andrej Karpathy, Scott Belsky, Nvidia, ServiceNow and WorkDay. Previously, he was VP of Engineering at OpenAI, overseeing research on language, supercomputing, RL, safety, and policy and where his teams shipped GPT, CLIP, and DALL-E. He led Google's giant model efforts as a co-lead of Google Brain. In Today's Episode with David Luan We Discuss: 1. The Biggest Lessons from OpenAI and Google Brain: What did OpenAI realise that no one...
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Val Scholz is the former Head of Growth @ Revolut, where he led the company to their first 10M users. Post Revolut, Val played a crucial role in scaling several high-growth companies including VEED, Simple & Busuu (exited for $400M). Today, Val is the Head of Growth at Kittl, an intuitive design platform empowering graphic designers. In Today’s Episode with Val Scholz We Discuss: Lessons from Scaling Revolut to 10M Users What were Val’s biggest takeaways during his time at Revolut? What does Val consider the secret sauce behind Revolut’s success? What did Val think Revolut...
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Michael Eisenberg is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ , one of Israel's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Wix, Lemonade, Empathy, Honeybook and more. Before leading Aleph, Michael was a General Partner @ Benchmark. In Today's Show with Michael Eisenberg We Discuss: 1. The State of AI Investing: Why does Michael believe that "foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history"? Are we in an AI bubble today? As an investor, what is the right way to approach this market? Who will be the biggest losers in this AI investing phase? Where will...
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Danny Rimer is a Partner @ and one of the most prominent VCs of the last two decades. Danny has led Index to be one of the top global firms on both sides of the Atlantic. Among Danny's incredible portfolio, he has led or been involved with Figma, Discord, Dream Games, , Glossier and Patreon. In Today's Discussion with Danny Rimer We Cover: 1. The Biggest Lessons from Missing Snap, Airbnb, Spotify and Facebook: How did Danny miss investing in Brian Chesky and Airbnb when Brian says "Index is the best investor that Airbnb never had"? What was Danny's biggest takeaway from turning down...
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Janie Lee is the Head of Product and the owner of the Self-Serve business at Loom. Janie previously worked at Rippling, leading the Identity Management and Hardware teams. Prior to that, she worked at Opendoor launching markets and developing pricing algorithms. During this time, Opendoor scaled from 2 to 20+ markets, $5B+ revenue, and 1500+ employees. In Today's Episode with Janie Lee We Discuss: 1. Inside the Product Building Machine of Rippling and Opendoor: What are Janie's single biggest product lessons from Rippling? How do they build so much product so fast? Can you have...
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Alex Wang is the Founder and CEO @ Scale.ai, the company that allows you to make the best models with the best data. To date, Alex has raised $1.6BN for the company with a last reported valuation of $14BN earlier this year. Scale tripled their ARR in 2023 and is expected to hit $1.4BN in ARR by the end of 2024. Their investors include Accel, Index, Thrive, Founders Fund, Meta and Nvidia to name a few. In Today's Show with Alex Wang We Discuss: 1. Foundation Models: Diminishing Returns: What are the three core pillars that can meaningfully improve foundation models performance? Why is...
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Reid Hoffman has been one of the most impactful people in technology over the last two decades. He is the Co-Founder of Linkedin (acq by Microsoft for $26BN) and Co-Founder of Inflection.ai. As an investor, Reid has backed the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, Zynga and more. Reid is also a Board Member @ Microsoft and was on the board of OpenAI. In Today's Show with Reid Hoffman We Discuss: 1. Foundation Models: Commoditisation, Business Models, Incumbents: Does Reid believe we are seeing the commoditization of foundation models? Is it too late for new foundation models to be born today?...
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Ashley Kelly is the VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling, the all-in-one platform for HR, IT, and finance. Before Rippling, Ashley played a crucial role in scaling Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR, and has hired over 800 SDRs during her time in some of the best tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Lever and Zenefits. In Today’s Episode with Ashley Kelly We Discuss: From NASCAR to Silicon Valley SDR How did Ashley make her way into the world of sales? Why does Ashley think the best AEs and leaders start off as SDRs? What is Ashley’s advice...
info_outlineSamir Vasavada is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vise, a technology-powered asset manager. Samir and his co-founder, Runik founded Vise from the Midwest at 16 years old. They bootstrapped the company before dropping out of high school and raising $128M in just 6 months from some of the best including Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. The company achieved unicorn status when the pair turned 20 years old, making them the youngest founders of a $BN company at the time.
In Today's Episode with Samir Vasavada We Discuss:
1. The Biggest Hiring Mistakes That Broke Us:
- Why is hiring people who come with a playbook one of the most damaging things you can do?
- Why is it impossible to build a remote company that performs the same as in person?
- Why is it the worst thing to hire people who have a reputation they are obsessed with maintaining?
- Why do you never want to hire people who join because of who your investors are?
- Why does Samir regret not firing people faster? How much time is enough time to know?
- Why is hiring in a hot market one of the most dangerous things you can do?
2. Fundraising: 3 Rounds and $126M in 6 Months:
- Does Samir regret raising so much money so soon in the company life?
- What did Samir do that he regrets doing, having had so much money so early?
- How did the need for free food at an event lead to a term sheet and $50M from Sequoia?
- Did Samir feel that he could talk to investors when things were going really badly?
- Why does Samir believe that liquidation preference matters more than valuation?
3. The Depression, The Pressure and Wisdom From Jensen Huang:
- What did Jensen Huang teach Samir when it comes to wealth and leadership?
- How did Samir deal with the pressure of raising $126M in 6 months and being the youngest unicorn founder, ever at the time?
- Was Samir hurt when people he thought were his friends, no longer stuck with him when the company was no longer "hot"?
- What was Samir's darkest time? How did he overcome and get out of it?
- Does Samir blame his parents for the pressure they put on him from such a young age?