20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 05/24/2017
20VC: Cursor Acquired for $60BN by xAI | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets | Did Anthropic Just Kill Figma, Adobe and Canva | Rippling Hits $1BN in ARR | Salesforce Goes Headless: Smart or Stupid | Cerebras IPO 2.0
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 04:00 — 🤯 Cursor Acquired for $60B?! Breaking down the mind-blowing deal with xAI/SpaceX. 07:00 — 🤝 A Marriage Made in Heaven: Why Cursor and Elon Musk actually make perfect sense. 11:00 — 🏆 Who Won the Deal? The $60B question and why SpaceX public shareholders might be the secret losers. 15:00 — 💰 Venture Payday: What this means for the investors and the "lock-up" reality for the founders. 19:30 — 🚀 SpaceX as an AI Lab: Is Elon using $2 trillion in market cap to buy his way into the AI race?. 20:30 — ⚠️ The AI Advantage: Why high-price stocks are...
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20VC: Everyone is Wrong; We Will Have More Developers in Five Years | Why Frontier Labs Will Be Way More Valuable Than They Are Today | Are SaaS Companies Cooked: Which Thrive & Which Die with Aaron Levie, Founder at Box
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Aaron Levie is one of the most forward-thinking public company CEOs when it comes to enterprise adoption of AI. Aaron is the CEO of Box, the enterprise storage company that does over $1BN in revenue but only has a market cap of $3.2BN. Something we discuss today… AGENDA: 00:00 — Why the Experts are DEAD WRONG About the US-China AI Race 10:55 — Everyone is Wrong About Labour Markets: You Will Not Lose Your Job 13:10 — What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in 5 Years 16:45 — Is Your SaaS Tool Actually a Valueless Database in an Agentic World? 20:50 — The...
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20VC: Jake Paul on Why Traditional VC is Toast and Attention is More Valuable Than Cash | Politics: Will Jake Paul Actually Run for President? | Inside the Payday of Fighting Anthony Joshua and Mike Tyson | with Geoffrey Wu, Co-Founder at Anti-Fund
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jake Paul is one of the most influential creators of the digital era, with over 70M+ followers across platforms. He transitioned from YouTube stardom to become one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in boxing history with fights against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua. Jake is also Co-Founder of Anti Fund, where he has made investments in Ramp, Anduril, Cognition and Olipop to name a few. Geoffrey Wu is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Anti Fund. He previously built his career at Goldman Sachs and Point72. He is at the forefront of a new model of investing—where distribution is as...
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20VC: Anthropic Unveils Mythos | SpaceX's Financials Leaked: Is it Worth $2TRN | Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Are They Back in the AI Race | Jason's Critique of Dario Amodei & How OpenAI Could Win the Enterprise Game
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 — Anthropic Unveils Mythos: The Model "Too Good at Hacking" to Release 05:56 — Why Mythos is a Quantum Leap in Cyber Risk 10:11 — The "Boy Who Cried Wolf": Jason’s Critique of Dario Amodei 14:00 — The Oppenheimer Moment: Are Founders Using Doom as a Marketing Tool? 19:22 — Amazon's $20B Secret: Is NVIDIA’s Chip Stranglehold Finally Loosening? 22:28 — Claude vs. Lovable & Replit: Anthropic Moves into App Building 25:24 — The 60% Death Spiral: Why Public SaaS Stocks are Entering a Doom Loop 39:51 — Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Alex Wang’s First Model from Super...
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20VC: Anj Midha on Investing $300M into Anthropic | The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Turned it Down | The Four Bottlenecks to Compute | What the China Has Smashed and Why We Should Be Worried
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Anj Midha is the founder of AMP, and a founding investor in Anthropic. Most recently, Anj was General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, leading frontier AI investments. He serves on the boards of Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Sesame, LMArena, OpenRouter, Luma AI and Periodic Labs and is an early angel in ElevenLabs among others. Prior to that, Anj was the cofounder/CEO of Ubiquity6 (acquired by Discord) and a partner at Kleiner Perkins. AGENDA: 04:00 Why the "Scaling Laws are Dead" rumor is dangerously wrong 05:30 The 4 bottlenecks stopping us from reaching Super Intelligence 11:30 Where...
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20Sales: ElevenLabs: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota | How to Structure Sales Compensation Plans | Customer Success: 'Total BS' or Growth Engine? | Building an AI Sales Machine: What Tools & Tactics Must CROs Adopt Today with Carles Reina
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Carles Reina is VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, where he was the first investor and fourth employee. Carles has scaled the revenue org from Day 1 to over $350M in just 3 years. Carles is also an active investor with investments in ElevenLabs, Revolut, Happy Robot and more. AGENDA: 00:00 - Is the Traditional CRO Dead in the Age of AI? 01:01 - Building the AI Sales Machine: Agents that Actually Generate Revenue 08:35 - Will AI Shrink the Sales Teams of the Future? 09:51 - The ElevenLabs Masterclass: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota 11:00 - How to Structure Explosive Sales Accelerators 12:15 -...
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20VC: Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI Revenue | OpenAI Acquisition of TBPN: Analysed | OpenAI Management Team Reboot | YC Kicks Delve Out | Mercor Hack and Why Now is the Time for Cyber | Supabase Raising at $10BN & Doug Leone Returns to Sequoia
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 03:59 — Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI in Revenue 12:43 — OpenAI Management Reboot 18:24 — OpenAI Buys TBPN 29:00 — SpaceX Files for IPO Targeting $2 Trillion Valuation 37:21 — Doug Leone Returns to Sequoia Capital 41:14 — YC Kicks Out Delve 45:21 — The Rise of Open Router 57:59 — Supabase Targeting $10B Valuation 01:08:18 — The Mercor Hack and AI Cyber Threats Moving Forward 01:17:25 — The $1.8B Two-Person Company
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20VC: DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on Why AGI is Bigger than the Industrial Revolution | Why LLMs Will Not Commoditise & We Have Not Hit Scaling Laws | Bottlenecks in AI & The Energy Crisis Caused By AI | Whether AI Will Do More to Harm or Help Inequality
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Demis Hassabis is the Co-Founder & CEO of Google DeepMind - working on AGI, responsible for AI breakthroughs such as AlphaGo, the first program to beat the world champion at the game of Go; and AlphaFold, which cracked the 50-year grand challenge of protein structure prediction and was recognised with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Demis is revolutionising drug discovery at Isomorphic Labs. Ultimately, trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality. AGENDA: 00:04:00 — What Actually Counts as AGI; and Where Are We Today? 00:05:00 — What Are the Biggest Bottlenecks Holding AI...
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20VC: Hims & Hers: $4.3BN Market Cap on $2.3BN of Revenue: The Comeback | Why Being Public is 10x Better | The Death of the "Strategy" Hire | Why Performance Marketing is Worse than Brand Marketing with Andrew Dudum
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Andrew Dudum is the Founder and CEO of Hims, the company reshaping consumers relationship to healthcare. It has been a rocky ride over the last 6 months, the company is down 66%, their market cap today is $4.3BN on $2.3BN of revenue. They just bought their largest international competitor, Eucalyptus for $1.5BN. AGENDA: 00:00 — Why Being Public Is Better Than Private 02:50 — My Advice to The Collisons on Taking Stripe Public 07:15 — How to Hire for the Most Gritty People: The Test 10:55 — How AI Will Reshape All of Customer Acquisition 15:30 — What Did Hims Do...
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20VC: Anthropic's $6BN Revenue Month | OpenAI Kills Sora & Hits $100M ARR on Ads | Oura Going Public & Whoop Raises at $10BN | Manus Founders Trapped in China & The Billionaire Tax: Anyone Left in California?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 — Anthropic’s Monster Month: 6 Billion in February Revenue 04:30 — The "Claude Mythos" Leak: 10 Trillion Parameters 11:50 — OpenAI Kills "Sora": A Massive Strategic Own Goal? 14:30 — OpenAI Hits $100M in Ads: Why OpenAI Must Make Ads Work 20:50 — Masa Son’s $40BN Bridge Loan: Investing More Into OpenAI 21:50 — Cybersecurity Stocks Tank: Is the Anthropic Panic Justified? 27:10 — The Golden Age of Cyber: Why AI Agents are a "Golden Goose" for Security 31:30 — Gross vs. Net: The Truth Behind AI Revenue Accounting 34:50 — The "Vibe Coding" Era: Reselling Tokens...
info_outlineMar Hershenson is a Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc alongside Pejman Nozad. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1999, Mar had developed a ground-breaking technique for optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Having combined a hardware/software focus during her studies, she spent the next 13 years co-founding three startups in the mobile/e-commerce, enterprise software, and semiconductor industries, work that led eventually to her registering 14 separate patents. Mar has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35 and named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Mar make her way from professor @ Stanford to startup founder to founding Pear.vc?
2.) Question from Matin @ Heap: How does Mar decide which founders have the highest potential? What are the seeds that suggest huge potential growth on initial screening?
3.) Question from Nicky @ Nova Credit: How does one look to balance the inherent challenge of vision and operations? What do the best founders do?
4.) How important is it for there to be role segmentation in a VC partnership? Why does it not matter at certain stages of the funding lifecycle?
5.) Why does Mar believe venture is an intensely service based industry? How does Mar look to maintain her scaling board roles with a scaling portfolio?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Mar’s Fave Book: The Four Steps To The Epiphany
Mar’s Fave Blog: Elad Gil, Dan Primack
Mar’s Most Recent Investment: Nova Credit
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mar on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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