20VC: Why Large Seed Rounds Increase the Chances of Success | When to Sell in Venture | Why Multi-Stage Firms Do Not Do The Work | Is Europe Totally F****** and Why AI Means London Can Compete with the US with Hussein Kanji
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 01/20/2025
The 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_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Steeve Morin is the Founder & CEO @ ZML, a next-generation inference engine enabling peak performance on a wide range of chips. Prior to founding ZML, Steeve was the VP Engineering at Zenly for 7 years leading eng to millions of users and an acquisition by Snap. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:17 How Will Inference Change and Evolve Over the Next 5 Years 09:17 Challenges and Innovations in AI Hardware 15:38 The Economics of AI Compute 18:01 Training vs. Inference: Infrastructure Needs 25:08 The Future of AI Chips and Market Dynamics 34:43 Nvidia's Market Position and Competitors...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Adarsh Hiremath is the Co-Founder and CTO @ Mercor, an AI recruitment platform and one of the fastest-growing companies in technology. They have scaled to $70M in ARR in just 24 months. They are famed for working 6 days per week, 9AM to 9PM. All of their founders are Thiel fellows, they are also the youngest unicorn founders ever with the fundraise announced today raising $100M led by Felicis at a $2BN valuation. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:36 How Debating Makes The Best Founders 06:05 Do People Treat You Differently When a Unicorn Founder 10:58 Scaling to $70M ARR in 24 Months...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jonathan Ross is the Founder & CEO of Groq, the creator of the world’s first Language Processing Unit (LPUTM). Prior to Groq, Jonathan began what became Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) as a 20% project where he designed and implemented the core elements of the first-generation TPU chip. Jonathan next joined Google X’s Rapid Eval Team, the initial stage of the famed “Moonshots Factory”, where he devised and incubated new Bets (Units) for Google’s parent company, Alphabet. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:20 Interview with Jonathan...
info_outlineHussein Kanji is the Founder and Managing Partner of Hoxton Ventures, one of Europe’s leading early-stage firms with mega wins in the form of Darktrace and Deliveroo. Hussein cut his teeth in venture at Accel Partners in his early years.
In Today’s Episode with Hussein Kanji We Discuss:
1. How to Raise a Fund:
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What are Hussein’s biggest lessons from his first fund taking 39 months to raise?
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Why does Hussein believe you should fundraise for a set amount of time and not to achieve a certain amount of capital?
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Does Hussein believe governments should be investing in venture funds?
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What are the biggest mistakes Hussein sees emerging managers make when raising?
2. How to 10x a Fund:
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What is Hussein’s formula for knowing when to sell an investment?
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How did Hussein miss out on making $400M in Darktrace? What did he learn from it?
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How much money did Hoxton make from Deliveroo? How did doing 37x on Deliveroo impact how Hussein invests today?
3. How to Build a Team in Venture:
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Why does Hussein believe the incentive mechanism for young VCs is broken? Why do they just want to get cash out the door and not worry about quality?
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Why is it hard to hire female partners today? What needs to happen for this to change?
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What are the single biggest ways that venture partnerships break down? What went wrong between Hussein and his partner, Rob?
4. Is Europe Totally F*******:
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Why does Hussein believe small seed rounds are a massive problem in the UK?
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Why does Hussein believe the dire state of the London Stock Exchange is not a problem?
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Why does Hussein advise companies that the best way to scale is in the US?
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What advice would Hussein give to Keir Starmer on how to stimulate growth in the UK?
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Why does AI mean that the UK can now compete with the US?