The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman. If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.

20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation 12/04/2024

20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation Nik Storonsky is the Co-Founder and CEO of Revolut, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world with a $45BN valuation and 50M customers around the world. In July 2024, Revolut posted a whopping $2.2BN in revenue with $545M in pre-tax profit in 2023. To date, Nik has raised $1.8BN for the company from the likes of Index, Balderton, Ribbit, DST and TCV. In Today’s Show with Nik Storonsky We Discuss: 1. When & Where Will Revolut IPO: What does Revolut need to do or change before they are ready to go public? When would Nik like for Revolut to go public? When they do go public, where would Nik list? Would it be in London? How does Nik respond to claims that he has moved to Dubai for tax reasons? 2. What Revolut Needs to Achieve to Hit $100BN: Why has no challenger bank won the US market yet? What will Revolut do differently to allow them to win the US market? What market share will Revolut have in Europe in 3 years time? What line of the business that does not exist today, will be the biggest in 5 years time? 3. How to Build an Execution Machine: Why does Nik believe the biggest mistake he made was hiring senior managers? What have been Nik’s biggest lessons on how to hire for roles you have never hired for before? What works? What does not? How does Nik retain insane velocity of execution at scale? How does Nik bucket people into three different buckets? What does each bucket mean for the type of work they do and the expectations placed on them? 4. How Revolut Tests New Products: How does Revolut use a portfolio approach to test new product ideas? How are teams for new ideas structured? What roles do they have? How much time and resources are they given? What is the tracking process to determine the success of new products? What % of new products do succeed and progress to the core app? Which product did Nik think would be massive but turned out to be a flop? What did Nik not expect to be massive and turned out to be mega hit? 5. The UK and Europe: Are We F******: The Chancellor has said we will have no growth in the UK for the next 3 years. How does it feel for Nik to grow Revolut in this environment? If Nik could advise Keir Starmer on how to turn the UK around, what would he say? Why does Nik believe the US has created so many more $100BN companies? Why does Nik believe that work/life imbalance is the secret to success and happiness? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/34232645

20VC: Grindr: The Most Insane Story in Startups | How the Chinese Bought and Lost Grindr | The Successful IPO with $300M Revenues and 40% EBITDA Margins | How Grindr Built a Free Cash Flow Machine 12/04/2024

20Product: Is an AI Winter Approaching | The Future of AI Software Development: What is Real & What is BS | OpenAI: WTF is Going on & How Far Into Application Layer Do They Go | The Future Role of Software Engineers with Guy Podjarny 11/29/2024

20VC: Why Price Sensitivity is BS | Why "Portfolios" are Merely a Construct to Make LPs Happy | Why the Best Investment Never Happen in "Fundraising Rounds" | What Europe Needs to do to Become a Superpower Again | Klaus Hommels, Lakestar 11/27/2024

20VC: Discord's Jason Citron on Why Everything We are Taught About Hiring & Management is BS | Do Richer Founders & Gamer Founders Make Better Founders? | Never Before Told Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users 11/25/2024

20Sales: What I Learned Scaling Datadog from $60M to $1BN in ARR | How to do Outbound in 2024 | Why Discounting is Dangerous and Contract Sizes are Misleading with Dan Fougere 11/22/2024

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 Cem 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? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33762847

20VC Alain De Botton on Why Companies Are Not Families | Why Status is Making You Miserable | Why Parents Want Their Kids to Fail | Why We Are Richer Yet More Anxious Than Ever & Why You Should Not Always "Be Yourself" Alain De Botton is one of the greatest philosophers of our time. His work has had a profound impact on me more than any other. I have wanted to do this episode for the last 8 years. In Today’s Episode with Alain De Botton We Discuss: 1. Why Status is Making You Miserable: Why are we richer yet more anxious than ever? What is the right way to define status? Why do we want it so much? Is it bad to want status? What are some non-obvious signs that you are seeking status when you do not realise it? Does social media enhance the desire for status? How so? Do the happiest people want status the least? What are Alain’s biggest observations in how truly happy people think about status? 2. Why Parents Want You To Fail: Why is the sign of good parenting when your child does not want to be famous? Why do your parents sometimes want you to fail? What should parents do if their child wants to chase an unachievable goal? Why should parents encourage their children to start very early? 3. Why Meritocracy is a Fallacy & Meaningful Work: Why does Alain believe a true meritocracy is an impossible dream? Why is meritocracy a bad thing when taken to the extreme? Why does Alain believe that companies are not families? Why does Alain tell people that they should not bring their full selves to work? 4. WTF is “Meaningful Work”: What does it mean to do “meaningful work”? Why do humans need to do “meaningful work” today in a way that we did not many years ago? What are Alain’s biggest pieces of advice to young people today, unsure of what they should do with their lives and careers? Why does Alain believe the idea of a “calling” is BS? 5. Ambition, Achievement and Sacrifice: What does Alain mean when he says “you have to tolerate your own averageness”? What does Alain say to the young generation who want work/life balance? What does Alain mean when he said you “cannot be at war with yourself”? Does Alain agree that to achieve you must sacrifice? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33964157

20Growth: Inside Perplexity's Growth Machine: What Worked, What Did Not Work | Why Paid Acquisition is a Drug and Brand Marketing is BS | The Good, Bad and Ugly of A/B Tests and Why Micro-Optimisations are Under-Rated with Raman Malik 11/15/2024

20VC: Bolt; The Most Insane Story in Startups | Turning a $5K Loan into an $8BN Company | Why Every VC Turned Down One of Europe's Biggest Winners | Competing with Uber & The Future of Micromobility and Self-Driving Markus Villig is the Founder and CEO of Bolt, a global mobility platform with more than 200 million lifetime customers in more than 50 countries and 600 cities. Bolt has raised over €1 billion in funding from investors like Sequoia, D1 and G Squared, making Markus the youngest founder of a billion-dollar company in Europe. In Today’s Episode with Markus Villig: 1. Starting an $8BN Company: How did Markus come up with the idea for Bolt before Uber existed? How did Markus find his co-founder? Why did 30 people turn down the chance to co-found Bolt? What are Markus’ biggest tips on finding a co-founder? How did Markus use a $5K loan from his parents as the pre-seed round? How did Markus get the first riders for Bolt? What worked? What did not work? How did Markus get the first driver for Bolt? What worked? What did not work? 2. Expanding to be a Global Champion: How did Markus expand Bolt to $10M in ARR on just $1M of funding? What did the international expansion playbook look like? What worked? What did not work? How has it changed over time? What one simple change led to their becoming the leader in Africa? What was the best country to launch? What was the worst? What is the most profitable country today? What is the least? 3. The $8BN Company that no VC Wanted to Fund: Why did every large VC in Europe turn down Bolt early on? How did a real estate company in the Baltics save Bolt with lifeline funding? When did Sequoia come into the mix? Does Sequoia move the needle for your company when they invest? How do New York financially driven investors differ to the traditional VC ecosystem? What would Markus most like to change about the world of VC? 4. The Future: Micromobility, Self-Driving Cars, Uber: Will the rise of self-driving cars harm or help companies like Bolt and Uber? What is the future for micromobility? Does it cannibalise the core business for Bolt and Uber? What is Uber better at Bolt doing? What are Uber worse at than Bolt? How will that change moving forward? Waymo, buy or short? Why? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33906232

20VC: Anduril Co-Founder on How a Trump Administration Changes the Defence Industry | What Happens Between China vs Taiwan, Israel vs Palestine, Russia vs Ukraine | How Software Changes War & Why TikTok Should Be Banned with Matt Grimm Matt Grimm is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Anduril Industries, an American defense technology company that specializes in advanced autonomous systems. To date, Anduril has raised over $3.7BN with the latest round pricing the company at a whopping $14BN. Before Anduril, Matt was a Principal at Mithril Capital Management alongside Peter Thiel. Before Mithril, Matt was an early hire at Palantir, where he was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan to ensure U.S. forces had the best technology for the mission. In Today’s Episode with Matt Grimm We Discuss: 1. China/Taiwan, Ukraine/Russia & Israel/Gaza: How will a Trump administration change US foreign policy and approach to conflict? Will China invade Taiwan? What does Matt expect to see happen there? Will Trump put an end to the war in Ukraine? What will be the outcome? Is Israel wrong to defend itself in the way it has? How will the situation in Gaza be resolved? 2. The Future of War: What will war look like in the future? How is software and autonomy changing the world of war? Why does the incentive structure of governments buying military equipment need to change around the world? Will we see a world of robodogs fighting on battlefields? What does weaponry of the future look like? 3. Are We In a Defence Bubble: With the massive increase in funding to defence companies, does Matt think we are in a defence bubble? What does Matt believe all investors should know about the defence industry before they make investments in the space? What should defence founders at the early stage know about building a defence company at scale? What changes? Who will be the buyer for the many defence companies that have raised early rounds of funding and go out of business? 4. Matt Grimm: AMA: Does money make you happy? What is the biggest luxury purchase you have made? Should TikTok be banned in the US? What would Matt do today if he knew he would not fail? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33871342

20VC: Sam Altman on The Trajectory of Model Capability Improvements: Will Scaling Laws Continue | Semi-Conductor Supply Chains | What Startups Will be Steamrolled by OpenAI and Where is Opportunity Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the most important companies in history. OpenAI is on a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President of Y Combinator and an angel investor in Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit and Instacart. 15 Questions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: 1. Will the trajectory of model capability improvement keep going at the same rate as it has been? 2. When did Sam doubt the continuance of scaling laws most? What has been the hardest technical research challenge OpenAI have overcome? 3. How worried is Sam about semiconductor supply chains and international tensions around them? 4. What is Sam’s biggest worry today? How has it changed over the last 12 months and 5 years? 5. In what ways does Sam feel he was and is unprepared for the role of CEO of OpenAI? 6. Was Masa Son right to suggest that $9TRN of value will be created every year by AI? 7. Why does Sam disagree with Larry Ellison’s statement that it will cost $100BN to enter the foundation model race? 8. Was Keith Rabois right that the best way to build companies is to hire under 30s? 9. What unmade decision weighs on Sam’s mind most often? 10. What is Sam most grateful to Y Combinator for? 11. What would Sam build if he were a 23 year old starting today with the foundational AI technology that is already in place? 12. What should startups not try and build as OpenAI will steamroll them? What should they try and build where OpenAI will not go? 13. What does Sam believe is the most exciting use of agents that he has not seen created yet? 14. How does Sam believe that human potential is most wasted today? 15. Who does Sam most respect in the world of AI today? Why them? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33765827

20VC: Robinhood's Vlad Tenev on Founder Mode | Building 8x $100M Revenue Lines | Lessons from Raising $5BN and the Gamestop Saga | The Future of Artificial Intelligence, Wealth Management and Home Ownership 11/01/2024

20VC: Linear's Karri Saarinen How to be Grow Capital Efficiently in a World of BS Growth | How to Fundraise with Leverage | How to Select Investors and How to Give Them Homework in the Raise Process & Growth Lessons from Airbnb and Coinbase 10/30/2024

20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco Daniel Khachab is the co-founder and CEO of Choco. Today, Choco’s AI platform facilitates half of all food traded in major cities like New York, Paris, London, and Berlin, cutting food waste and streamlining distribution. Since its founding in 2018, Choco has raised $330 million from Bessemer, Coatue (its first European investment), and Insight, reaching unicorn status within 2.5 years. Previously, Daniel was the youngest Managing Director at Rocket Internet, where he oversaw growth across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. From Seed to $1BN in 30 Months: 1. We Killed a $BN SaaS Business to be AI First: Why does Daniel believe that SaaS is dead? What does an AI-first company mean? Why does Daniel believe AI-first companies will win the next 10 years? What foundation models does Daniel and Choco use today? How has the cost of using different models changed? What categories are vulnerable to being attacked with vertical products from the foundation model providers? 2. Europe is F*******: Why and What To Do: Why does Daniel believe Europe is at a massive disadvantage in the next 10 years of AI? Chips: What can Europe do to encourage chip production and manufacturing to take place on European soil? Energy: What can European governments do to encourage energy providers and new forms of renewable energy to innovate to provide the energy AI needs? Talent: Why does Daniel believe AI talent is the hardest problem that Europe faces? What can governments in EU do to resolve this problem? 3. Lessons Scaling to $1BN in 30 Months: Does Daniel regret raising at a $1.1BN valuation? Why did he throw a unicorn party with the round? Why does he regret it so much? What did Daniel spend money on that he wish he had not spent money on? What did Daniel not spend money on that with the benefit of hindsight, they should have spent money on? When your competition raises a lot of funding, does that mean you should also? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33634517

20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry 10/25/2024

20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Slack from $6M to $1BN in ARR | How to Build a Customer Success Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | The Framework to Hire All Sales Reps: Take-Home Assignments, Hiring Panels and more with AJ Tennant @ Glean AJ Tennant is the Vice President of Sales & Success at Glean, Glean has more than 20x'd its revenue and 100x'd its user base in the just two and a half years he's been there. Before Glean, AJ had incredible runs at Slack and Facebook. At Slack, AJ helped grow revenue from $6 million to more than $1 billion. In Today’s Episode with AJ Tennant We Discuss: 1. How to Sell AI Tools in 2024: Are we still in the experimental budget phase for AI? How does selling AI tools differ to selling traditional SaaS? What are enterprises biggest concerns when it comes to adopting AI tools? What buzzwords get enterprises most excited in the sales process? Will we see a massive churn problem when the first renewal cycle for many of these AI products comes? 2. Outbound, Discounting, Closing: Is outbound dead in 2024? What does no one do that everyone should do? How does AJ approach discounting? Biggest lessons and advice? What can sales teams do to create a sense of urgency in a sales cycle? How does AJ do deal reviews and post-mortems? What is the difference between good and bad post-mortems? 3. How to Master Customer Success: What are the biggest mistakes founders make today in managing their CS teams? Should CS be compensated for upsell? How should the comp structure of CS teams change? What can be done to create a good handoff experience for the customer when handing from AE to CS? What are the most common ways CS teams break over time? 4. Hiring the Best Sales Teams: How does AJ structure the hiring process for all new sales hires? What questions does AJ always need to ask when hiring sales reps? What are clear signs of outperformers when hiring new reps? Does AJ give candidates a take-home assignment? What does he want to see from them? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33576727

20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Figma, Slack and Rippling | Lessons Building a Generational Defining Firm with Kleiner Perkins | AI: Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws Mamoon Hamid is a General Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and one of the greatest venture investors of our time. In the past, Mamoon has led rounds in Figma, Slack, Rippling, Intercom, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). In Today’s Episode with Mamoon Hamid We Discuss: 1. The Greatest Venture Deal of All Time: Figma or Slack: What is Mamoon’s highest returning deal? What did Mamoon see in Dylan and Figma when they had no revenue and very little user data? What compelled Mamoon to write Stewart the check with Slack? What did he not see with Slack that he should have seen? 2. Taking Control of the Great Brand in Venture: Kleiner Perkins: Is it true that Kleiner approached Mamoon and gave him the keys to the Kleiner kingdom? How did it go down? Will Kleiner go back to having multiple products, large growth funds, international funds? What does Mamoon want Kleiner to be in 5 years? What was the hardest element of the transition into Kleiner? What did Mamoon not know that he wishes he had known? 3. Becoming a Generational Defining Investor: Market, founder, product, how does Mamoon rank them 1-3? How has Mamoon changed most significantly as an investor? What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he became a VC 19 years ago? What is his biggest loss? How did it shape his mindset and go forward investing approach? 4. AI Supercycle: The Greatest Time to Invest Where does Mamoon believe the value will accrue in this wave of AI? Where are many investors spending a lot of time but Mamoon believes is not worthy of that time? Will scaling laws continue? Have we ever seen an incumbent set spend like this incumbent class? How does that change the game for VCs? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33538927

20Growth: Revolut's Chief Growth Officer on The Growth Playbook Revolut Used to Scale to $2.2BN in Revenue | How Revolut Launch and Grow Products | Why the Best PMs Don't Need A/B Tests & Why CAC is a BS Metric with Antoine Le Nel 10/18/2024

20VC: Why Founder Mode is Dangerous & Could Encourage Bad Behaviour | Why Fundraising is a Waste of Time & OKRs are BS | Why Angel Investing is Bad for Founders to Do and the VC Model is on it's Last Legs with Zach Perret @ Plaid 10/16/2024

20VC: Investing Lessons from FC Seeding Uber, Airtable and Coupang | Why Pro Rata is the Original Sin in VC | Why Liquidity Has Died in 2024 | Why LPs are Pissed with VCs | The Hard Truth About Seed Fund Economics with David Frankel @ Founder Collective David Frankel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, one of the best seed firms of the last decade. David has led rounds in companies such as Suno, Coupang, SeatGeek and PillPack (sold to Amazon for ~$1B). Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT Japan. David has been named to the six times. In 2023, he was #11 and in 2024, he appeared at #15 on the Midas List of the world's best venture capital investors and at #2 on the Midas list of seed investors. 10 Questions With One of the World’s Best Seed Investors: 1. Reserves: Why are reserves the hardest part of venture? What have been David’s biggest lessons in how to do them well? 2. Why does David believe that pro-rata is the original sin of VC? 3. Has DPI died in 2024? Is PE the salvation for the VC exit market and liquidity? 4. Why does David believe LPs are so pissed of with VCs right now? What will change that? 5. When will IPO markets open? Are M&A markets shut? What would cause them to open? 6. How does David reflect on price today? When will he pay up and break his rules? 7. Biggest lessons for David on knowing when is the right time to sell? Why does David believe you should never sell your winners? What has David sold that he regrets most? 8. What companies returned the most to Founder Collective Funds? Uber? Coupang? Airtable? The Trade Desk? What did he learn from those mega hits? 9. What have been David’s biggest losses? How did losing the company change his mindset and approach to investing? 10. What does David believe is the future of venture capital? How can seed funds play in a world of mega multi-stage funds? Who wins? Who loses? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33440362

20VC: Why Most AI Investments Will Do Worse than the S&P 500 | Why Early Stage VC is F******* | The Danger of Kamala Harris and Why Trump and Vance are Best | Freedom of Speech, Censorship and Government Control with Eoghan McCabe @ Intercom 10/11/2024

20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE 10/09/2024

20VC: Raising $500M To Compete in the Race for AGI | Will Scaling Laws Continue: Is Access to Compute Everything | Will Nvidia Continue To Dominate | The Biggest Bottlenecks in the Race for AGI with Eiso Kant, CTO @ Poolside Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside.ai, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world’s first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software. 1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race: What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs? How much of Poolside’s latest raise will be spent on compute? How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider’s funding rounds? Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia? Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs? 2. The Big Questions in AI: Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs? What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute? To what extent will Nvidia’s Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance? What will OpenAI’s GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again? 3. Compute, Chips and Cash: Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; “you need $100BN to play the foundation model game”? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price? Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve? Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing? Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, “you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice”? Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development? 4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic… Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised? What would Eiso do if he were Sam Altman today? Is $6.6BN really enough for OpenAI to compete against Google, Meta etc…? OpenAI at $150BN, Anthropic at $40BN and X.ai at $24BN. Which would Eiso choose to buy and why? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33346547

20Product: How the Best Teams Do Product Reviews | What Everyone Gets Wrong in Hiring Product Teams | Product Lessons Leading Facebook App Monetisation Team to Billions in Revenue with Maria Angelidou, CPO @ Personio 10/04/2024

20VC: Bret Taylor: The AI Bubble and What Happens Now | How the Cost of Chips and Models Will Change in AI | Will Companies Build Their Own Software | Why Pre-Training is for Morons | Leaderships Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI. In Today's Discussion with Bret Taylor: 1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today: Does Bret believe we are in an AI bubble or not? Why does Bret believe it is BS that companies will all use AI to build their own software? What does no one realise about the cost of compute today in a world of AI? 2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History? As a board member of OpenAI, does Bret agree that foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history? Will every application be subsumed by foundation models? What will be standalone? How does Bret think about the price dumping we are seeing in the foundation model landscape? Does Bret believe we will continue to see small foundation model companies (Character, Adept, Inflection) be acquired by larger incumbents? 3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website: What does Bret believe are the biggest opportunities in the application layer of AI today? Why does Bret put forward the case that we will continue to see the role of the phone reduce in consumer lives? How does AI make that happen? What does Bret mean when he says we are moving from a world of software rules to guardrails? What does AI mean for the future of websites? How does Bret expect consumers to interact with their favourite brands in 10 years? 4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising: Bret has worked with Zuck, Tobi @ Shopify, Marc Benioff and more, what are his biggest lessons from each of them on great leadership? How did Bret come to choose Peter @ Benchmark to lead his first round? What advice does Bret have to other VCs on how to be a great VC? Bret is on the board of OpenAI, what have been his biggest lessons from OpenAI on what it takes to be a great board member? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33284342

20VC: How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast: Behind the Scenes at One of the Fastest Growing Companies in History with Donald Tang, Executive Chairman @ SHEIN 09/30/2024

20VC: How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast: Behind the Scenes at One of the Fastest Growing Companies in History with Donald Tang, Executive Chairman @ SHEIN Donald Tang is the Executive Chairman of SHEIN, with oversight of public affairs, business strategy, corporate development, and finance. Donald began his career at Merrill Lynch & Co. He later joined Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. in Los Angeles as Senior Managing Director of Investment Banking. At Bear Sterns, Donald quickly rose to become the Vice Chairman of the firm, as well as Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings, Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asia, Ltd, and a member of the board of directors at Bear Stearns & Co. In Today's Episode with Donald Tang We Discuss: 1. How SHEIN Became a Global Giant: As specifically as possible, what did you and the SHEIN team do that enabled you to be one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet? Real-Time Retail: What is this? How is it the core of SHEIN's growth and efficiency? Supply Chain Innovation: How did SHEIN innovate on the supply chain to give them such an advantage over the competition? Price King: How does Donald respond to the statement that SHEIN wins due to price, not quality? Social Media: What social media tactics allowed SHEIN to grow so fast? What did not work? Paid Media: How have SHEIN approached paid marketing? What works? What does not? 2. The Big Questions: IPOs, Impact on Climate and Worker Conditions: IPO: Why does SHEIN want to go public? Is London the right place for the company to go public? Climate: How does Donald respond to the common idea that "SHEIN is bad for the climate" and encourages fast fashion like never before? Tariffs: How does Donald respond to the common question around tariffs and SHEIN benefitting from being under a certain tariff threshold? 3. Marriage, Fatherhood and Happiness: Marriage: What have been Donald's biggest lessons on how to have a successful marriage? Fatherhood: What does being a great father mean to Donald? If he could call himself up the night before his first child was born, what would he advise himself? Happiness: How does Donald think about happiness today? What does everyone get wrong about happiness? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33254467

20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani Jeetu Mahtani was an early member of the HubSpot team. Under his leadership and the sales organization, the business grew its non-US revenue from $3M ARR to close to $1B ARR. After running the International business as the global MD and Sales leader, he then moved to lead the customer success org which expanded to managing 1,500 people in customer success. In Today's Episode with Jeetu Mahtani We Discuss: 1. How to Go International for Startups: What are Jeetu's biggest lessons from Hubspot on what startups can do to make their international expansion a success? What were the biggest mistakes Hubspot made in their international expansion? How should every team in each new location be structured? What should the ramp time and onboarding process look like or each new team and expansion? 2. Scaling Sales from $3M to $1BN in ARR: What did Hubspot do so well to successfully scale to $1BN in international ARR? What were the biggest mistakes Jeetu made in the expansion of Hubspot's sales teams? What are the first things to break in sales teams? How do you handle them? Why does Jeetu hate discounting? Why does Jeetu not like customer references? 3. Scaling Customer Success to 1,500 CS Reps: When should founders make their first customer success hires? What are the biggest mistakes people make in the scaling of CS teams? Why should customer success be incentivised in the same comp plans that sales teams have? How do the best CS teams work with sales and product teams most effectively? 4. Hiring the Best and Ramping Them: What does Jeetu's hiring process look like for all new sales reps? What are the must ask questions for Jeetu in all candidate interviews? How fast do you know when you have made a mistake with a new hire? What is the secret to effective onboarding? What are the biggest mistakes people make in onboarding? 20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33226712

20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013. In Today's Episode with Eric Vishria We Discuss: 1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today: How does Eric think through where value will accrue in the stack between chips, models and applications? Why does Eric believe foundation models are the fastest commoditising asset in history? Why does Eric believe that Nvidia will not be the only game in town in the next 3-5 years? 2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully: How does Eric analyse between a standalone and deep product vs a product that foundation model will commodities and incorporate into their feature set? How does Eric differentiate between the 10 different players all going after customer service, or sales tools or data analyst products etc? How does Eric analyse the quality of revenue of these AI application layer companies? What does he mean when he describes their revenue as "sugar high"? 3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions: What is the decision-making process for all new deals in Benchmark? As specifically as possible, how does the voting process inside Benchmark work? What deal was the most contentious deal that went through? What did the partnership learn? How has the Benchmark decision-making process changed over 10 years? 4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models: Does the price of AI deals and size of their rounds break the Benchmark model? Will foundation model companies all be acquired by the larger cloud providers? Unless multiples reflate in the public markets, does venture as an asset class have hope? Why does AI make paying ludicrously high prices potentially rational? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33194987

20VC: From Potato Farm to $200M in Revenue: The Never-Before-Told Story of Flo Health: Scaling to $1BN Valuation, 75M Users & Getting 100s of No's From Investors Along the Way with Dmitry Gurski Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch). In Today's Episode with Dmitry Gurski We Discuss: 1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS: Why does Dmitry believe that speed is not the most important thing? Why does Dmitry believe that competition is actually a good thing? Why does Dmitry believe that craziness not intelligence is the most important trait in founders? Why does Dmitry believe that fundraising is simply a numbers game? What does no one understand about retention that everyone should know? 2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps: What a childhood in potato farming taught Dmitry about leadership and technology? How mushroom farming taught Dmitry about diversification and focus? How does Dmitry advise people analyse the hardest moments in their life? Why Dmitry does not believe in talent? What else is there? 3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users: What were Dmitry's biggest lessons from two failed prior versions of Flo? What is the secret to success in consumer subscription? How did Flo acquire their first customers? What worked? What did not work? Why does Dmitry not believe in brand and PR? 4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader: What have been Dmitry's biggest lessons on monetisation? How does Dmitry think about retaining product simplicity with time? What are the first things to break in the scaling of a company? What did they do with Flo that he wishes they had not done? /episode/index/show/thetwentyminutevc/id/33161392

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