20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 08/16/2024
20VC: Index's Shardul Shah on Why Market Size is a Trap | Biggest Lessons on Pricing from Leading Rounds in Wiz & Datadog | Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | How Index Makes Decisions and Why Growth & Early are the Same Investing Style
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and one of the greatest cyber security investors of the last two decades. Among his many wins, Shardul has led rounds in Datadog, Wiz, Duo Security, Coalition and more. Shardul is also the only Partner investing at Index to have worked in every single Index office from London, to SF, to NYC to Geneva. Prior to Index, Shardul worked with Summit Partners, focusing on healthcare and internet technologies. In Today's Episode with Shardul Shah We Discuss: 1. Investing Lessons from Wiz and Datadog: Why does Shardul believe that TAM (total...
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20Product: What Facebook, Monzo and Deliveroo Do and Do Not Do To Build Great Products | How to Structure Product Teams For Success | Is Simple Always Better in Product and The Art vs Science of Product Design with Mike Hudack
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mike Hudack is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sling, a peer-to-peer payments app whose vision is to simplify the way the world connects financially. Previously, he held roles at Monzo Bank as Chief Product Officer, Deliveroo as Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Facebook where he led ads product and sharing product. In Today's Episode with Mike Hudack We Discuss: 1. Product: Art vs Science: What is the true art of product? What makes the great product leaders and PMs? Is simple always better in product? How do you retain product simplicity with time? When should data be used over...
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20VC: Scaling ServiceNow to $5BN in ARR | Leadership Lessons from Doug Leone, Frank Slootman and Bill McDermott | VC Value Add: Is it Real and Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs"
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
David Schneider is a General Partner @ Coatue and one of the great operators of the last 20 years. Prior to Coatue, David was instrumental in ServiceNow’s growth to over $100B+ public market value. David led the growth of the company from $100M to $5BN in revenue. Before joining ServiceNow, David held senior positions at Data Domain, the company he joined at $0 in revenue and scaled to $1BN in revenue and an IPO and acquisition. In Today's Episode with David Schneider We Discuss: ServiceNow: Secrets to Scaling to $5BN in ARR: What are David's biggest lessons from scaling...
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20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Sean Rad is the Founder and former CEO of Tinder. Sean has made more romantic connections between humans than anyone in history with Tinder having matched 50BN different people. Sean is also the Founder of Rad Fund which has made over 100 investments in companies and funds. In Today's Episode with Sean Rad We Discuss: 1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App: Starting: How did the idea for Tinder come to Sean in a restaurant in LA? Scaling: What are Sean's biggest lessons for consumer apps scaling to their first 10,000 users? User Acquisition: How did a party...
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20VC: Why VC is a Ponzi Scheme Today | Why Most VCs are Bankers | Why Big VCs Ruin Startups | Why Incentives in VC are Broken | Why American Dynamism is a Tool for VCs to Raise Money with Nick Chirls, Asylum Ventures
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Nick Chirls is the Founder of , a new venture firm dedicated to the creative act of building companies; treating founders like artists, not assets. Asylum raised $55 million to invest $1-2 million in early-stage founders practising the art of making startups. Prior to Asylum, Nick co-founded Notation Capital, one of NYC's most successful pre-seed firms. In Today's Episode with Nick Chirls We Discuss: 1. Why Venture Capital is Broken Today: Why is VC a ponzi scheme today? Why are most VCs sheep and have lost all creativity? Why are most investors today incentivised to get dollars out...
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20VC: OpenAI's Newest Board Member, Zico Colter on The Biggest Bottlenecks to the Performance of Foundation Models | The Biggest Questions and Concerns in AI Safety | How to Regulate an AI-Centric World
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Zico Colter is a Professor and the Director of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research spans several topics in AI and machine learning, including work in AI safety and robustness, LLM security, the impact of data on models, implicit models, and more. He also serves on the Board of OpenAI, as a Chief Expert for Bosch, and as Chief Technical Advisor to Gray Swan, a startup in the AI safety space. In Today's Episode with Zico Colter We Discuss: 1. Model Performance: What are the Bottlenecks: Data: To what extent have we leveraged all...
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20Growth: Uber's Expansion Playbook for Scaling from 10 Cities to $10BN in Revenue | How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers | How Uber Solved the Chicken and The Egg Problem in New Markets and What Uber Would Be Like with Travis Still There with Scott Gorlick
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Scott Gorlick was employee #99 at Uber. Over 6 years, Scott built Uber in Atlanta and helped the company scale from 10 cities to $10B in revenue. Scott is also a prolific angel investor having written early checks into Lime and Standard Cognition to name a few. In Today's Episode with Scott Gorlick We Discuss: 1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers How did Uber acquire 1M drivers? What was the playbook? What worked? What did not work? How much of a role did driver-to-driver referral payments have in driver acquisition? What did Lyft do on the driver acquisition...
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20VC: AI Scaling Myths: More Compute is not the Answer | The Core Bottlenecks in AI Today: Data, Algorithms and Compute | The Future of Models: Open vs Closed, Small vs Large with Arvind Narayanan, Professor of Computer Science @ Princeton
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Arvind Narayanan is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil and a big proponent of the AI scaling myths around the importance of just adding more compute. He is also the lead author of a textbook on the computer science of cryptocurrencies which has been used in over 150 courses around the world, and an accompanying Coursera course that has had over 700,000 learners. In Today's Episode with Arvind Narayanan We Discuss: 1. Compute, Data, Algorithms: What is the Bottleneck: ...
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20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Imran Khan is the OG of IPOs having taken some of the biggest companies public including Alibaba, Snap, Box, Weibo and more. Today, Imran is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Proem Asset Management. Prior to co-founding , Imran served as Inc.’s Chief Strategy Officer. Under his leadership, Snap’s annual revenue run rate increased to $1.6 billion from zero in less than four years. Previously, Imran was a Managing Director and Head of Global Internet Investment Banking at Credit Suisse where he advised on more than $45 billion-worth of Internet M&A and financing transactions....
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20Sales: How Snowflake Built a Sales Machine | Why You Have to Hire a CRO Pre-Product | Why Most Sales Reps Do Not Perform | Why Hiring Panels are BS in Interviews | Why Remote Sales Reps Do Not Care About Their Development with Chad Peets
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio. In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We...
info_outlineLaela Sturdy is Managing Partner of CapitalG, Alphabet’s $7 billion independent growth fund, where she has invested in Stripe, Duolingo (DUOL), Gusto, UiPath (PATH), Webflow and Whatnot. Laela joined CapitalG shortly after its inception in 2013 and was promoted to Managing Partner in 2023, making her one of few women to be promoted into the sole leadership role within an established multibillion-dollar venture firm. Before joining CapitalG, Laela served as Managing Director of emerging businesses at Google and held leadership roles on the YouTube and Google Search teams.
In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy We Discuss:
1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing:
- What does Laela know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC?
- What is the biggest miss for Laela? How did it change her mindset and approach?
- What are Laela's biggest takeaways from Stripe and UiPath? How did they change what she looks for in companies today?
- What is Laela's biggest advice to all new entrants to venture today?
2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging:
- What does Laela mean when she says she will never take a risk on a company being able to complete a "second act"?
- How does Laela approach market sizing? How does Laela think about the notion that the best companies will always expand their markets?
- Is Laela willing to take market timing risk? What have been her biggest lessons on timing?
- Does Laela prefer founders who are new to a market and have optimistic naivety? Or prefer an expert in a market who knows every element of it?
3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside:
- How does Laela think about price today? When is she willing to pay up vs not?
- What price did Laela pay that at the time seemed super high but turned out to be super cheap?
- What price did Laela pay that seemed super cheap but turned out to be super high?
- What upside is Laela underwriting towards? What does she need to see in base and best case?
4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS:
- Does Laela believe that the best founders really need help from their VC?
- Who is the best board member Laela works with? Why are they so good?
- What are the core areas where the VC and the founder are misaligned?
- What would Laela most like to change about the relationship that founders and VCs have?