20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 11/20/2024
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Peter Singlehurst is the Head of Private Companies at Baillie Gifford. He has led research on a wide range of private investments including Epic Games, Bending Spoons, Anduril, Solugen, Scopely, and Grammarly, as well as a number of private holdings that have since transitioned to the public markets such as Airbnb, Affirm, Warby Parker, Wise and Tempus AI. In Today’s Episode with Peter We Discuss: 04:24 How I Accidentally Came to Manage One of the Largest Private Investment Firms in the World 07:29 What I Learned Losing 100s of $Ms 10:22 The 10 Questions Baillie Gifford Needs to...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Yamini Rangan is the CEO at HubSpot. The $32BN juggernaut that has revenues of $2.6BN, over 247,000 customers and 8,200 employees. Prior to Hubspot, Yamini served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, and before Dropbox, she was VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:16 Taking Over the CEO Role from the Founders 07:58 Wartime vs Peacetime CEOship 11:18 How to Scale Into Enterprise: What Everyone Gets Wrong 22:20 Why is B2B Not Winner Take All 29:33 How Does HubSpot Compete Against Salesforce 33:26 Where Does Value Accrue in a World of AI 37:40...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Matt Biilmann is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify. Under his leadership, Netlify has become one of the fastest-growing platforms for modern web development. Matt recently introduced agent experience (AX), a new way of thinking about how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Matt is also known for coining Jamstack, a concept that redefined how developers build for the web. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 03:43 How Does the Design Process Change When Designing For Agents 06:27 How Does the Product Building Process Change When Building for Agents 12:52 Will AI Kill...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Niklas Östberg is the Founder and CEO of Delivery Hero, a global juggernaut now present in over 70 countries across four continents. In Q4 2024, the company announced GMV of $49BN with $12.8BN in revenue and $750M in EBITDA. They have made an astonishing 35+ acquisitions including $2BN for Glovo. Before launching Delivery Hero, Niklas co-founded Pizza.nu, leading its expansion across Sweden, Poland, Finland, and Austria. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:09 How Skiing Prepared Me For Life As An Entrepreneur 10:12 Losing $200M on Gorillas Investment 17:58 Quick Commerce: Does the Business...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jake Saper is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last 20 years. Their many wins include being early investors in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and more. In total, the firm has invested $2BN and returned an astonishing $8BN in cash with much more to come. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:45 The Zoom Investment Story 10:21 Founder, Market, Traction: Rank Them 26:37 Why Market Pull is the Most Important Thing and How to Know 27:23 Are the Best Deals Always Expensive? 28:25 What is the One Framework Emergence Use for Every Investment 29:08 Lessons...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Julian Teixeira is the Chief Revenue Officer at 1Password, where he has grown B2B revenue over 8x and scaled a team of more than 450 in go-to-market. 1Password set the record for the largest raise in Canadian history at the start of 2022 and has raised nearly $1B in capital throughout his time with the company. Prior to 1Password, Julian served as the head of global sales at Lightspeed Commerce, a company he helped scale from startup to IPO and through over 10 acquisitions throughout his decade-long tenure. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:27 Sales Lessons from Scaling to $1BN in ARR...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Anton Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable, the fastest growing startup in Europe. With Lovable, you can turn your idea into an app in seconds with just a prompt. After just 3 months, the company has scaled to $17.5M in ARR. They are adding $2M in net new revenue every single week. Even better, Lovable has 85% Day 30 retention rate, making it more retentive than ChatGPT. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 03:41 How a Side Project Turned into a $200M Company 05:39 Why Talent is 10x More Valuable Than Experience 08:57 How to Use a Waitlist Pre-Launch to 10x Growth 12:29 How to...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mike Krieger is the Co-Founder of Instagram and now CPO @ Anthropic. In Today’s Episode with Mike Krieger We Discuss: 03:07 Where Will Value Be Created and Sustained in a World of AI? 04:59 Are Foundation Models Commoditised Today? 08:36 Should Founders Build for the Models of Today or Build for Models of the Future 12:19: Why Will Models Become More Different Than More Similar 16:38: Will Human or Synthetic Data Be More Prominent in the Future 19:28 Model Quality vs. Product UX 23:36 The Competitive Landscape of AI 32:27 Do We Underestimate China's AI Capabilities 33:59 What Did...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
George Bonaci is the VP of Growth at Ramp, where he’s helping one of the fastest-growing fintech companies scale even further. Prior to Ramp, George was VP of Growth at Gong. Before Gong, George was at Samsara where he helped grow revenue from <$100M to >$650M ARR, and played a pivotal role in the company’s successful IPO. In Today’s Growth Masterclass We Discuss: 03:57 How the Best Growth Teams Experiment 05:10 How to Allocate Bets and Resources for Growth 07:09 Velocity vs. Quality in Growth 15:05 The Role of Postmortems and How to Do Them 19:16 Growth Team Structure and...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Oscar Pierre is the Founder and CEO @ Glovo, the food delivery site that will get you anything you want to your doorstep. This story is insane, the company was started by Oscar 11 years ago, in their pre-seed round they sold ⅓ of the company for €100K. The company was later saved by a deal they made with McDonald's. The company nearly ran out of money on several occasions, one time the funding round came from the CEO of Rakuten who Oscar met an FC Barcelona drinks. Today, they are a part of DeliveryHero who acquired them for $2.2BN, they have delivered 1BN orders and have almost 60M...
info_outlineCem Sertoglu is one of the great venture investors of the last decade. Cem is famed for writing the first check into UiPath and over several rounds turning $16.5M into $2.1BN. Cem recently started Bek Ventures, a $250M fund that was 3x oversubscribed.
In Today’s Show with Cem Sertoglu We Discuss:
1. Has Venture Capital Been Commoditised:
-
Why does Cem believe that VC has not been commoditised?
-
Why does Cem believe many VCs today are not even VCs anymore?
-
How does Cem advise founders who have offers from large multi-stage firms? What questions should they ask them pre-working with them?
-
How do the best founders select the VC they choose to work with?
2. Price, Reserves, Loss Ratios:
-
Why does Cem believe that price does not matter?
-
How does Cem approach reserves and reserves management?
-
What does Cem know now about reserves that he wishes he had known when he started investing?
-
Does Cem care about loss ratio? Does he do scenario planning when making investments?
3. Making $2.1BN on UiPath:
-
How did Cem meet Daniel for the first time? Was it obvious he was incredible?
-
Why did they only write a $1M check and not take the whole round with $1.5M?
-
Why did 40 of the best investors in Europe all turn down UiPath for the Series A?
-
What did doing the bridge round for UiPath teach Cem about reserves?
-
When was it obvious UiPath was going to be a mega hit?
-
How did they continue to concentrate capital with each round?
-
When did they first start to sell shares in UiPath?
-
What was their approach to the selldown of their position?
-
When the company IPO’d, how much of it did they have?
4. AMA with One of Europe’s Best:
-
Does signalling exist? How does Cem advise founders on this?
-
What has been his biggest loss? How did that change his mindset?
-
What has been Cem’s biggest miss? What did he not see?
-
Why does Cem always believe you should manufacture arguments with founders before investing?
-
Why does Cem believe a high GP commit can actually misalign the GP and the LP?