The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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20VC: Cohere's Chief AI Officer on Why Scaling Laws Will Continue | Whether You Can Buy Success in AI with Talent Acquisitions | The Future of Synthetic Data & What It Means for Models | Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015 with Joelle Pineau
3 november 2025 · 58 min
Joelle Pineau is the Chief AI Officer at Cohere, where she leads research on advancing large language models and practical AI systems. Before joining Cohere, she was VP of AI Research at Meta, where she founded and led Meta AI's Montreal lab. A professor at McGill University, Joelle is renowned for her pioneering work in reinforcement learning, robotics, and responsible AI development. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction to AI Scaling Laws
03:00 How Meta Shaped How I Think About AI Research
04:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning
10:00 Is It Possible to be Capital Efficient in AI
15:52 AI in Enterprise: Efficiency and Adoption
22:15 Security Concerns with AI Agents
28:34 Can Zuck Win By Buying the Galacticos of AI
32:15 The Rising Cost of Data
35:28 Synthetic Data and Model Degradation
37:22 Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015
48:46 If Joelle Was a VC Where Would She Invest?
52:17 Quickfire: Lessons from Zuck, Biggest Mindset Shift
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20VC: Tim Ferriss: Why I Walked Away From Angel Investing After Uber | How I Accidentally Lost $150 Million | Money Fixed My Problems—Then Made Me Miserable
31 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 32 min
🎧 20VC x Tim Ferriss — Full Episode Timeline Lees meer
00:00 – "How Do You Stay True to Yourself When You Have to Perform for the World?"
06:00 – "Why Tim Ferriss Refused to Go All-In on YouTube"
09:00 – "You Don't Need 10 Million Fans—You Need 1,000 True Believers."
12:00 – "The Internet Is Not a Relevance Machine—It's a Sensationalism Machine."
15:00 – "Money Fixes Money Problems—And Nothing Else."
22:30 – "When Did Tim Ferriss Feel Completely Lost?"
27:00 – "The Million-Dollar Mistake That Still Haunts Tim Ferriss."
36:00 – "Why Tim Ferriss Never Raised a Fund—Even Though He Could Have."
45:00 – "The Truth About Uber, Duolingo, and the Power of Relationship Investing."
54:00 – "Why Tim Ferriss Stopped Angel Investing at His Peak."
1:04:00 – "The Podcast That Changed Everything."
1:15:00 – "The Real Cost of Love: Is Efficiency Killing Connection?"
1:31:00 – "What Tim Ferriss Has Changed His Mind About Most."
1:36:00 – "Erections Matter."
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20VC: a16z Raises $10BN in New Funds | Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation | OpenAI Restructuring: Who Wins and Who Loses | Why IRR is a BS Metric and Three Ways to Win in VC Today
30 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 24 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
05:17 OpenAI's Restructuring: Winners and Losers
17:17 Andreessen Horowitz's Raise $10BN in New Funds
26:38 Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation
43:08 Spray and Pray: Does it Work: Data Breakdown
47:04 The Role of Option Checks Venture Capital
48:36 The Three Ways to Win in VC Today
54:26 Why IRR is a BS Metric and What Matters More
01:08:47 Amazon's Struggles: How Do They Return to Greatness in AI
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20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on The Winners and Losers in AI | The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead? | The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses | How to Analyse Margins and Growth Rates in a World of AI
27 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 14 min
David Cahn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and one of the world's leading AI investors. At Sequoia David has led investments in Clay, Juicebox, Sesame, Kela, Stark, etc.. Before Sequoia, David was a General Partner @ Coatue where he led investments in Notion and Hugging Face. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 We Are in an AI Bubble
05:04 Why Building Physical Data Centres is a Moat
13:58 Winners and Losers in a World of AI
19:13 The Role of Big Tech and Monopolies
23:37 Breaking Down Circular Deals in AI: The Truth No One Sees?
38:19 Why Kingmaking is BS and VCs Do Not Make or Break Companies
41:30 The Importance of Margins in AI Investments
43:41 The Required Growth Rates in AI to Get Funded by Sequoia
45:30 The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
51:53 Why the Most Important Hire for Startups Today is 23 Year Olds
01:01:19 The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses
01:10:15 Quickfire: Biggest Miss, Parenting Advice, Doug Leone Advice
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20Growth: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine: ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) 101 | The Rise of User Generated Content and How to Use It | TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality | Hiring for Growth: When and Who with Sandy Diao
24 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 16 min
Sandy Diao is one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy has scaled products to over 200M+ users and led growth teams at Descript, Meta and Pinterest. She is also a prolific writer all on things growth here. Lees meer
AGENDA:
03:59 Biggest Growth Lessons from Pinterest
08:01 What is a Good vs a Bad Growth Hypothesis
11:11 Common Mistakes in Growth Strategies
14:57 Channel Fit: When You Have It & What To Do
25:43 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 101: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine
30:08 How to Do SEO and Long-Term Growth Investments
33:22 Doubling Down on Successful Channels
36:31 The Unchanging Foundations of SEO
37:52 Generative AI Engines vs. Traditional Search Engines
41:12 Paid Marketing Channels: What's Overrated?
43:42 The Rise of User-Generated Content (UGC)
46:34 TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality
49:55 Brand Marketing: What is Real vs What is BS?
53:33 The Importance of Feature Launches
01:01:50 Hiring for Growth: When and Who?
01:08:55 Quick Fire Round: Onboarding, Notifications, and Growth Channels
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20VC: Why VC Today is Worse Than 2021 | Why Vertical SaaS is a Bad Investment Today | Why We Are Deluding Ourselves on Growth Expectations | Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation | Benchmark Adds Their Newest General Partner
23 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 29 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
04:50 Benchmark's New Partner: Everett Randall
10:19 Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation: Another Loss for Public Markets?
28:39 Why Today is as Bad as the Hype of COVID in 2021
32:10 Why Vertical SaaS is a Bad VC Investment Today
36:14 Why Everyone Investing in Legal SaaS Will Lose Money
44:16 Why King Making is More Real Than Ever
55:23 Why Your Smallest Customers Need to Pay $10K Minimum
01:01:37 Why VC is a S*** Asset Class
01:09:29 Why Today is Harder Than It Has Ever Been in VC
01:25:18 Closing Thoughts and Reflections
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20VC: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation | Deel vs Rippling: WTF is Going On | Management Lessons from Ben Horowitz and Nik Storonsky | Deel's M&A Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions: What Works & What Doesn't
23 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 15 min
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Deel, the $17BN global payroll juggernaut that just last week announced their latest $300M fundraise led by Ribbit, a16z and Coatue. Deel has been on the most insane journey, they do $1BN+ in ARR, they just had their first $100M revenue month and they have been profitable for over 3 years. Lees meer
AGENDA:
03:38 Announcing $300M Fundraise at a $17BN Valuation
06:24 Rippling vs Deel: WTF is Going On? Where is the Lawsuit?
14:01 Why 1-1s Are BS and Leaders Should Stop Doing Them
17:31 Do Rich Leaders Make Better Leaders
28:33 Biggest Lesson from Ben Horowitz? Why Most CMOs Are Bad?
34:48 Lessons from Nik @ Revolut and Why Companies Need to Make Their Own Software
42:23 Deel's Acquisition Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions
45:17 How to Price Acquisitions? How to Align Incentives with Founders?
55:45 Deel is Profitable and Growing Fast: When is the IPO?
01:01:35 Best Acquisition Ever + Worst Ever: What Did We Learn?
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20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp
17 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 14 min
Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Field, and Elad Gil. Before founding Warp, Zach was Principal Engineer at Google, where he led development of Google Docs, and later served as CTO at Time. He's one of the most respected engineering minds redefining the future of developer tools. Lees meer
AGENDA:
04:14 Biggest Product Lessons from Rewriting Google Sheets
07:10 Why I Would Short Google: Leadership and AI Strategy
09:55 Comparing AI Models: GPT, Claude, and Gemini: Who Wins and Loses
17:04 Do Margins Matter in AI?
24:57 Adding $1M in ARR Every Week: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
33:58 How to Build Defensibility in a World of AI?
43:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins and Why?
44:25 Biggest Fundraising Lessons Raising from Sequoia, Elad Gil and GV
50:56 Why Sequoia are the Best VC
53:51 What Every Founder Gets Wrong in Fundraising
01:01:30 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts
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20VC: $3.5BN - The Price Zuck Paid for Thinking Machines Co-Founder | Goldman Sachs Acquires Industry Ventures for $665M | Softbank Borrows $5BN Against ARM Holding to Invest More Into OpenAI
16 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 20 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
03:44 Rory Is So Old He Worked with Arthur Rock!!!
07:28 Goldman Sachs Acquires Industry Ventures for $665M
16:37 Thinking Machines Co-Founder Raises $2BN and Then Leaves for Meta
29:36 SoftBank Goes for $5BN Leverage Against ARM Stock To Buy More OpenAI
39:35 More Data Centres Than Offices: Are We In a Bubble
43:28 Where is the Alpha in Venture in 2025
51:48 What 90% of Managers Get Wrong About Portfolio Management
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20VC: Atlassian CEO on Why Everything is Overvalued & Are We in an AI Bubble | Do Margins Matter & Does Defensibility Exist in an AI World | Is Per Seat Pricing Dead & The Future of Vibe Coding with Mike Cannon-Brookes
13 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 3 min
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers globally, generating more than $5BN in annual revenue. Atlassian now employs over 10,000 people across 13 countries and is one of the most successful bootstrapped-to-IPO stories in tech history. Mike is also a leading climate investor and co-owner of several major sports teams. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Unreasonable Men Win in Startups
07:22 How to Make Co-CEOs Work
13:22 Are We in an AI Bubble? Is Everything Overvalued?
26:46 The Future of Software Development: More or Less Devs
32:53 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI
34:02 The Future of Vibe Coding…
36:35 Does Defensibility Exist in a World of AI
42:09 Is Per Seat Pricing Dead in a World of AI
49:01 The Founder Journey and Leadership
54:28 Quick Fire Round: Parenting Advice, Relationship to Money
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20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
10 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 2 min
Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake's go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team from to more than 6,000 globally. Under his leadership, Snowflake became one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in history, achieving a record-breaking IPO in 2020. Lees meer
AGENDA:
04:34 How to Build a Sales Team from Scratch
07:49 How to Hire and Evaluate Sales Leaders
15:23 Four Big Lessons Scaling Snowflake to $3BN ARR
31:30 Comparing Snowflake and Databricks: What Databricks Did Better?
35:26 How to Manage Sales Team Morale in Competitive Markets
43:53 Why Customer Success is BS and What To Do With It
48:31 How Every Sales Leader Needs to Change in An AI World
49:37 Biggest Reflections on Sales Leadership
54:38 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts
20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
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20VC: OpenAI's Multi $BN Deal with AMD | Polymarket, Vercel and Supabase Raise Mega Rounds | Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Harvey vs Legora | Chamath is Back: The SPAC is Back
9 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 25 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
03:29 OpenAI and AMD's Major Partnership
07:35 Microsoft Have F***** Up the OpenAI Partnership
17:08 OpenAI's Developer Day Announcements
20:45 Why VC is the Most Forgiving Asset Class on Price and Valuation
29:10 What Does it Take to IPO in 2025: Why Snyk Will Not IPO
42:30 Four Strategies Companies Need to Take to Own Their Own Destiny
49:31 Vercel Raises $300M at $9BN: Suicide Round or Strategic
55:39 Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Legora vs Harvey
01:08:11 Chamath Raises Latest SPAC: SPACs are Back
01:10:56 Polymarket Raises $2BN at a $9BN Valuation
01:14:53 Quick Fire Questions and Wrap-Up
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20VC: Cerebras CEO on Why Raise $1BN and Delay the IPO | NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Worried About Growth | Concentration of Value in Mag7: Will the AI Train Come to a Halt | Can the US Supply the Energy for AI with Andrew Feldman
6 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 5 min
Andrew Feldman is Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebras, building the world's fastest AI inference and training. Cerebras recently closed a $1.1BN Series G round at an $8.1 billion valuation, backed by top names including Fidelity, Atreides, Tiger Global, Valor Equity and 1789 Capital. Under his leadership, they've leapfrogged GPU limits in inference, operate at trillions of tokens per month, and are filing to go public soon. Lees meer
AGENDA:
02:43 Why We Did Not IPO and Raised $1BN From Fidelity
05:03 Analysis of Chip and Compute Landscape Today
07:14 NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Running Out of Ideas
13:57 The Real Questions to Ask on Chip Depreciation
24:54 Energy Requirements for AI: Is it Feasible?
29:25 Mag7 Value Concentration: Feature or a Bug
31:57 Talent is the Bottleneck and Trump Makes it Worse
32:55 The War for Talent: Secrets No One Sees
34:22 Evaluating the Data Centre Economy: Many Will Lose Money
38:01 Three Changes the US Could Make to Beat China in AI
42:30 Why 80% of our Revenues are in the UAE
47:26 Quick Fire Questions
58:59 Why Work Life Balance is Total BS
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20Growth: How to Use Influencers to Scale Growth Insanely Fast | How to Optimise User Onboaring for Growth | How the Best Growth Teams Create Organic Growth and Community | Why LTV/CAC Models are BS with Ketty Slonimsky
3 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 1 min
Ketty Slonimsky is Chief Growth Officer at Palta, the platform behind apps like Flo (the #1 female health app with 77M+ MAU), Simple, and Zing AI, where she leads a centralized growth function across the portfolio. She was previously first VP Product & Growth at HeliosX (£900M+ ARR, bootstrapped D2C healthtech), has advised companies like SonderMind, Runna, Guardio, Cheddar, P&G Digital Ventures, and is a board advisor at HeliosX. Lees meer
AGENDA:
02:33 What is Growth and When to Hire For It
06:04 Three Profiles of Successful Growth Leaders
10:07 Challenges and Learnings from Failed Ventures
21:17 How to Optimise User Onboarding for Growth
26:14 Biggest Lessons on Retention
30:25 How to Artificially Create Organic Growth and Community Building
32:10 Why LTV Models are BS
37:35 How to Use Influencers to Grow Insanely Fast
47:07 The Metrics that Matter in Growth
49:48 Push Notifications and Engagement: What To Do vs What Not to Do?
51:57 Quick Fire Round
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20VC: Are Burn Multiples BS in an AI World | Sam Altman Needs $1TRN of Energy | Klarna, Figma, Stubhub, all Down: Are Public Markets Turning? | FiveTran and DBT: Is the Wave of Consolidation About to Begin?
2 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 17 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
03:58 Understanding Burn Multiples and Capital Efficiency in an AI World
11:54 What Metrics Founders Need to Focus on in a World of AI
19:31 The Role of Kingmakers in Venture Capital: Harvey, Abridge, Profound
33:42 Klarna, Figma, Stubhub, all Down: Are Public Markets Turning?
36:35 OpenAI Needs the Same Energy as Japan… WTF!
41:09 How Can We Fund the $1TRN Sam Altman Needs for Energy
52:39 FiveTran and DBT: Is the Wave of Consolidation About to Begin?
59:44 Does Private Equity Need to Change in a World of AI
01:06:23 Political Expression and Corporate Responsibility
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20VC: OpenAI and Anthropic Will Build Their Own Chips | NVIDIA Will Be Worth $10TRN | How to Solve the Energy Required for AI... Nuclear | Why China is Behind the US in the Race for AGI with Jonathan Ross, Groq Founder
29 september 2025 · 1 uur 21 min
Jonathan Ross is the Founder & CEO of Groq, the AI chip company redefining inference at scale. Under his leadership, Groq has raised over $3B from top investors. The company has reached a valuation of nearly $7B, positioning itself as one of NVIDIA's most formidable challengers. Previously at Google, Jonathan led the team that built the first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), making him one of the leading architects of modern AI hardware. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 The Future of AI and Compute
05:07 Why the Hyperscalers Have to Keep Spending Recklessly on AI
12:49 Why OpenAI and Anthropic Will Have to Build Their Own Chips
19:47 OpenAI and Anthropic Will be $5BN Companies: The Bull Case
29:50 Why China is Behind the US in AI and Deepseek is More Expensive to Run
33:55 How Europe Could Compete in AI and Why the US is More Risk Averse Than Europe
42:51 Why AI Will Lead to Too Many Not Too Few Jobs
43:19 Deflationary Pressures and New Job Markets
45:51 The Future of Vibe Coding
47:14 Why AI Companies Should Strive to Have Low Margins
49:31 Why We Have to Have Nuclear Energy and How to Bring it Back
56:55 How Permits are Ruining the Potential of AI
01:03:58 Why OpenAI and Anthropic are so Undervalued
01:16:53 Quickfire: Biggest Fear, Nvidia: $10TRN, Zuck Buying AI: Work or Not
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20Product: Revolut Business $1BN Revenue: Five of the Biggest Product Lessons | How Revolut Structures Product and Design Teams | How Revolut Experiments and Invests in New Product Bets | How Revolut Ships Product So Fast with James Gibson
26 september 2025 · 54 min
James Gibson is Head of Revolut Business. Under his leadership, Revolut Business now processes over $33 billion in monthly transaction volume and generates more than $1BN in annualised revenue. Lees meer
AGENDA:
04:10 Is Consulting the Worst Background for Aspiring PMs
07:09 How Revolut Hires for it's Product Team
17:21 How Revolut Sets Goals: What Works, What Does Not
19:37 How Revolut Structures Their Product Teams
22:13 How Revolut Structures Product Review Sessions
27:23 New Bets Process at Revolut
29:11 How Revolut Balances Super Users and General Customers
36:55 How Revolut Drives Product Velocity and Efficiency
39:26 Future of Product with AI
44:56 Quick Fire Questions and Reflections
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20VC: NVIDIA Invests $100BN Into OpenAI | Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead | Navan Files to go Public & Notion Hits $500M ARR | The Impact of H1B Visas on Startups in the US
25 september 2025 · 1 uur 20 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
00:00 Why I am 100% Equities and 0% Cash
04:35 Nvidia's Massive $100BN Investment in OpenAI
08:39 Is Anthropic Negatively Positioned by OpenAI Gaining NVIDIA Investment
27:30 Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead
44:00 Navan Files to Go Public at $8BN
49:31 Lockup Periods and Liquidity
50:35 Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Startups
01:02:42: Notion Hits $500M ARR Re-Accelerating
01:09:42 Why Founder Friendly is Total BS Today
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20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation
22 september 2025 · 1 uur 27 min
Hemant Taneja is the CEO and leader of General Catalyst, the firm he has scaled over the last decade into one of the largest with over $40BN in AUM. He has been one of the most influential investors of the past two decades, leading early bets in Stripe, Snap, Gusto, Samsara, Grammarly, and Canva. He also played a pivotal role in Livongo's $18.5B merger with Teladoc, one of the largest digital health deals in history. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction
03:37 Is Hemant a CEO or an Investor?
05:42 With $40BN AUM Is General Catalyst Still a VC Firm?
12:11 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?
13:25 No One is Talking About the True Impact of AI on Jobs
21:30 Is Hemant Concerned by the Concentration of Value in MAG 7?
27:30 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?
30:27 GC's Anthropic Investment: Upside from a $60BN Price
37:06 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI
45:23 Does Revenue Growth Matter in a World of AI
49:39 Why it is BS to Turn Down a Company Based on Price
56:06 We Have Invested $5BN Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds
01:00:02 VC is About To Be Flooded with Retail Investment: What Does It Mean for VC
01:08:51 "What I Learned Losing the Series A of Snap, Stripe, Samsara"
01:11:25 Future of Venture Capital: Walmart vs Chanel
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20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
19 september 2025 · 59 min
Jesse Zhang is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Decagon, the conversational AI platform for customer experience. As one of the fastest growing companies in the valley, they have raised over $230M at a last round price of $1.5BN. Prior to Decagon, Jesse founded Lowkey (acquired by Niantic), studied CS at Harvard, and worked at places like Google, HRT, Citadel, and Intel. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Messages
03:43 Olympiad Mathematician to Startup Founder
05:34 Selling to Niantic and What I Did Differently the Second Time
07:16 Why 90% of Founders Build Companies the Wrong Way
12:19 Scaling to $50M ARR in 15 Months
31:31 Is the AI Talent War Out of Hand: How To Compete with Meta Pay Packets
32:38 Why Remote Work is Total BS
34:06 Competitors in AI Customer Experience: Sierra, Intercom and more
37:34 AI Market Predictions
44:56 Embracing Stress and Winning Culture
50:13 Quick Fire Questions: Most Underrated AI Founder, Biggest Changed Opinion
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20VC: Opendoor's CEO on The Greatest Turnaround in Tech | OpenAI and Oracle: How Can Either Afford to Do This | How Anthropic Could Lose 50% of Their Revenue Overnight | Replit Raises at $3BN | Figure, Gemini & VIA IPOs Broken Down
18 september 2025 · 1 uur 24 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
00:00 Opendoor's Potential and Market Valuation
03:32 Why Did Kaz Leave $300M on the Table to Join Opendoor
04:44 Why Does Kaz Believe OPEN Can Be a Good Business When the Market Doesn't
06:34 How does Kaz Feel About OPEN Becoming a Meme Stock?
17:25 Kaz's $0 Salary but $1BN Stock Based Compensation
23:41 Oracle and OpenAI Partnership: WTF is Going On?
42:21 Microsoft's Investment in OpenAI: A Financial Perspective & Who Has the Power
44:46 Why Sam Altman is the Greatest Politician of our Time
48:33 How Anthropic's Revenue Could Go to Zero Overnight?
50:12 Replit Raises $250M at $3BN Valuation and Higgsfield Raises $50M at $50M ARR
01:06:33 IPO Insights: Figure, Gemini, and Via All Go Public
01:11:26 Why Adobe Have Failed in an Age of AI and What Incumbents Have To Do?
01:13:20 Quick Fire Round: Adobe Up or Down by EOY? What Price Will OPEN Be EOY?
Try NEXOS.AI for yourself with a 14-day free trial: https://nexos.ai/20vc
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20VC: Mercor: From $1M to $500M in 17 Months: The Fastest Growing Company in the World | How to Think About Margins and Revenue Sustainability in AI | Why Evaluation Benchmarks in AI are BS Today with Brendan Foody
15 september 2025 · 1 uur 1 min
Brendan Foody is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Mercor, the fastest growing company in history. The company solves talent allocation in the AI economy and they have scaled from $1M to $500M in revenue in just 17 months. With a rumoured new funding round pricing the company at a whopping $10BN, the company has the likes of Benchmark, Felicis, Emergence, and of course, 20VC, all on their cap table. Lees meer
AGENDA:
04:34 Why My Mother Thought I Was Selling Drugs as a Kid
07:48 In The Time My Peers Graduated, I Created a $10BN Business; Is College Worth it?
10:27 Scale, Surge, Mercor, Turing: How Do Data Providers Differentiate
20:57 Scaling from $1M to $500M: We Quadrupled Since Scale was Acquired
33:43 Is There Too Much Cash in Private Markets?
34:55 Why Evaluation Benchmarks in AI are Total BS
35:44 Revenue Sustainability in AI Companies
36:48 Should Investors Give a S*** About Margins When Analysing AI Companies
40:46 The Future of AI Model Providers: Who Wins
45:58 You Cannot Create a $10BN Company without 9-9-6 Work Culture
48:56 We Literally Have Too Much Money, We Cannot Spend It…
52:36 Quick Fire Round: OpenAI vs Anthropic, Lessons from Peter Fenton and Jack Dorsey
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20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
12 september 2025 · 1 uur 6 min
Amit Bendov is Co-Founder & CEO of Gong, the leading AI-sales platform. The company has raised over $600 million from some of the best in the world including Sequoia, Thrive, Salesforce and more. Gong has surpassed $300M in ARR, serves thousands of customers (including multiple Fortune 10s), and is valued at over $7BN. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why CRM Was Always a Lie and Gong's Secret Insight
04:30 – Will AI Kill Salesforce? Mark Benioff's Nightmare
08:15 – Why 99% of VCs Said No to Gong's Seed Round
12:00 – The Shocking Trial Close That Changed Everything
18:00 – Can AI Make Every Seller Perform Like LeBron?
20:30 – Will Sales Software Shift from Software Budget to Human Labor Budget?
25:00 – Why AI SDRs Are "Stupid" and Bound to Fail
35:00 – Gong's Darkest Hour: Shrinking, Churn, and Losing Muscle
41:30 – The Re-Acceleration Playbook: How Gong Got Back to Hypergrowth
54:00 – Would Amit Ever Sell Gong—or Take It Public?
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20VC: Musk's $TRN Pay Package Broken Down | Ramp Hits $1BN ARR and Brex Hits $700M: Who Wins | OpenAI's $10BN Secondary Sale | Atlassian Buys The Browser Company for $610M | ASML Lead Roun into Mistral at $14BN Valuation
11 september 2025 · 1 uur 28 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
[00:05] Musk's $1 Trillion Pay Package: The Breakdown?
[00:15] Scale, Windsurf: Are Founders Just Mercenaries Chasing Cash Today?
[00:21] Ramp at $1B ARR, Brex at $700M — Is AI Causing All Boats To Rise?
[00:26] Sierra at $100M ARR Worth $10B — Bubble or Brilliant Bet?
[00:30] Kleiner Perkins Invests $100M into Anthropic at $183BN… WTF?
[00:36] $10B in OpenAI Secondaries — What Happens When 1,000 New Millionaires Hit SF?
[00:40] Anthropic Pays $1.5B to Authors — Fair Deal or Pure Piracy?
[00:44] Why Did ASML Just Invest into Mistral at $14BN?
[00:52] Atlassian Buys the Browser Company for $610M — Genius Move or Panic Buy?
[01:18] IRL CEO Arrested for Fraud: Is More To Come?
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20VC: ElevenLabs Hits $200M ARR: The Untold Story of Europe's Fastest Growing AI Startup | The Real Cost of AI from Talent to Data Centres | How US VCs are in a Different League to Europeans | The Future of Foundation Models with Mati Staniszewski
8 september 2025 · 1 uur 14 min
Mati Staniszewski is the Co-Founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the world's leading AI voice platform. Since launching in 2022, ElevenLabs has raised over $350M, most recently at a $3.3BN valuation, making it one of Europe's fastest AI unicorns. The company counts Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Sequoia Capital among its backers. Today, Mati announces that the company has hit a staggering $200M ARR. ElevenLabs took 20 months to hit $100M ARR. 10 months to hit $200M ARR. Can they do $300M in 5 months… Lees meer
AGENDA:
[00:00] $100M in 20 Months?! ElevenLabs Untold Growth Story
[12:20] Are AI Models Already Plateauing—or Just Getting Started?
[14:00] Why OpenAI Can't Beat ElevenLabs
[17:30] The Talent Wars: How Do You Retain World-Class AI Researchers?
[23:10] PR vs Product: Why Most Startups Botch Their Launch
[36:00] Are U.S. VCs Playing a Different Game Than Europe?
[44:00] The Real Cost of AI: Why ElevenLabs Built Its Own Data Centers
[59:00] Voice Agents = Multi-Billion Dollar Business of the Future?
[01:05:00] Buy OpenAI or Anthropic? Which Foundation Model Wins?
[01:09:30] Europe: Strengths, Weaknesses and What Needs to be Done
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20Growth: Meta CMO Alex Schultz on How All Founders Have to Change Their Marketing Playbook in a World of AI | Is AI Plateauing, What it Means if China Wins the AI Race and Why Zuck is a Generational Leader
6 september 2025 · 1 uur 10 min
Alex Schultz is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Analytics at Meta, where he has spent nearly two decades shaping the company's growth and marketing strategy. He has been instrumental in scaling Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to billions of users worldwide. Alex is is also the author of Click Here: The New Rules of Marketing, the definitive guide to modern growth — available now on Amazon. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 – Is All Marketing Actually Performance Marketing?
04:00 – When Did Facebook Have the Wrong North Star? What Did They Learn?
16:00 – Will AI Create Companies Run by Just ONE Person?
27:00 – Is AI About to Hit the Biggest Plateau Since Self-Driving Cars?
30:00 – Is China Secretly Winning the Global AI Arms Race?
38:00 – Does AI Kill Content or Supercharge It?
44:00 – Why Brand Marketing Is Harder (and More Important) Than You Think
47:00 – Will Glasses Replace Phones Forever?
51:00 – What Would Alex Do If He Were Sundar at Google Today?
59:00 – What is the Greatest Strength and the Greatest Weakness of Zuck?
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20VC: Anthropic Raises $13BN | Why Canva Will Not Direct List | OpenAI Buys Statsig for $1.1BN All Stock | Lovable Raising at $4BN + Vercel at $9BN: Justified or Not | Quarterly Results from SNOW, Mongo, ZOOM and more
4 september 2025 · 1 uur 14 min
Agenda: Lees meer
04:00 – Anthropic Raises $13BN: The Analysis?
19:00 – Is Zuck's $14BN Scale bet the biggest blunder in AI?
27:00 – Lovable Raising at $4BN and Vercel at $9BN: Justified or Madness?
36:00 – Quarterly Results for Snowflake, Mongo, Okta, Zoom Skyrocket: Is B2B SaaS back from the dead?
48:00 – Is Jensen Huang right there will be $4TRN in AI gains?
57:00 – Will AI wipe out SaaS margins with 10% GPU taxes? Or is Notion the exception?
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
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20VC: Cohere Founder on How Cohere Compete with OpenAI and Anthropic $BNs | Why Counties Should Fund Their Own Models & the Need for Model Sovereignty | How Sam Altman Has Done a Disservice to AI with Nick Frosst
1 september 2025 · 1 uur 8 min
Nick Frosst is a Canadian AI researcher and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder of Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM. Cohere has raised over $900 million, most recently a $500 million round, bringing its valuation to $6.8 billion. Under his leadership, Cohere hit $100M in ARR. Prior to founding Cohere, Nick was a researcher at Google Brain and a protégé of Geoffrey Hinton. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 – Biggest lessons from Geoff Hinton at Google Brain?
02:10 – Did Google completely sleep at the wheel and miss ChatGPT?
05:45 – Is data or compute the real bottleneck in AI's future?
07:20 – Does GPT5 Prove That Scaling Laws are BS?
13:30 – Are AI benchmarks just total BS?
17:00 – Would Cohere spend $5M on a single AI researcher?
19:40 – What is nonsense in AI that everyone is talking about?
25:30 – What is no one talking about in AI that everyone should be talking about?
33:00 – How do Cohere compete with OpenAI and Anthropic's billions?
44:30 – Why does being American actually hurt tech companies today?
45:10 – Should countries fund their own models? Is model sovereignty the future?
52:00 – Why has Sam Altman actually done a disservice to AI?
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20Product: Why Most CPOs are Bad | Why You Do Not Need PMs in a World of AI | Why the Design Stage is Dead and How to Use Vibe Coding to Replace It | The Three Roles All Founders End Up Firing on Repeat with Jason James @ Tezi
29 augustus 2025 · 54 min
Jason James is the Co-Founder of Tezi and one of the leading product minds in the valley. Prior to Tezi, Jason was the VP Product at Instacart and before that was Head of Product and Design at Thumbtack. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 Product lessons scaling Instacart to $40B – what really moves the needle
02:15 Why "quick optimizations" won't build billion-dollar products
04:30 MVPs are dead? How AI is reshaping product development
07:00 Do startups even need PMs anymore in the age of AI?
11:30 The biggest product mistake Jason made building Tezi
16:30 Why most hiring managers fail at recruiting
20:00 The resume trap: how to spot if someone was just "on the elevator up"
26:00 The three roles founders always end up firing
28:00 Are most CPOs actually terrible?
36:30 The myth of startup "culture" – why growth is the only thing that matters
43:00 Did DoorDash actually beat Instacart? The inside take
48:00 Fundraising secrets founders never realize until it's too late
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20VC: Anthropic's $10BN Round | Klarna's IPO Broken Down | Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine | Martin Casado: Is Consensus Investing the Only Game | Why Satya is Chatting S*** on SaaS Apps Disappearing featuring Marc Benioff
28 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 12 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
00:00 – Marc Benioff vs Snowflake, Databricks & Palantir: Who Wins the Data Cloud War?
05:10 – Does Benioff Feel The Need to Buy AI Talent Like Zuck Is?
09:00 – What Salesforce has Learned From Palantir on Forward Deployed Engineers?
18:00 – Will SaaS apps disappear in an AI world? Why Satya is Chatting S***
23:40 – Are SDRs really screwed by AI… or just evolving?
26:10 – Benioff on Who Wins: OpenAI or Anthropic?
30:00 – Nat Friedman reports to Alex Wang: Genius move or career downgrade?
34:00 – Anthropic's $10B round: Have we hit peak AI hype?
47:00 – Klarna's wild ride: From $45B to $6B to IPO at $15B
55:00 – Inside a16z's seed machine: 72 bets vs Sequoia's 27
57:45 – Martìn Casado: Is consensus investing dangerous—or the only game?
01:05:00 – The big lesson: consensus, contrarian, and why investing is harder than ever
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20VC: Do Margins Matter in AI? | Is Defensibility Gone For Good? | Is Vertical SaaS Dead in a World of AI | What SaaS Rules Are BS and No Longer Apply in a World of AI | The Future of Venture: Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS with Byron Deeter
25 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 21 min
Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and one of the most renowned SaaS investors. Byron has led 19 unicorn investments, including IPO successes like ServiceTitan, Procore, Twilio, Box, Gainsight, Intercom, DocuSign, SendGrid. His portfolio includes eight companies that have gone public. Insane. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:00 – Why are the stakes in AI higher than ever before?
05:20 – Is defensibility in AI gone for good?
07:40 – Do margins even matter when backing the next Anthropic or Perplexity?
09:50 – How does Byron think about future dilution when investing in AI today?
12:10 – With 40% of venture money going to 10 deals, is there any point investing elsewhere?
13:40 – Is vertical SaaS dead? Is there any point when the large players can own it?
18:00 – Will AI shift from the tech budget to the human labor budget and unlock trillions?
21:10 – Are we entering the era of billion-dollar businesses built by 10 people?
25:20 – Is treble-treble-double-double now too slow for AI companies?
33:10 – In today's AI gold rush, is it better to scream the loudest or just build the best product?
41:10 – What specific growth rates are best in class, good and not good enough today?
55:00 – Is venture now just a game of scale — Chanel vs. Walmart?
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20VC: Databricks at $100BN | Chamath's SPAC Revival: Peak Mania? | OpenAI Staff Cash Out Billions & Sam Altman Will Spend Trillions | CoreWeave's $11B Debt Bet & Nubank's $2.5B Profit Shocker
21 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 28 min
Agenda: Lees meer
00:00 – Databricks hits $100B: Bubble or just the beginning?
03:15 – Is Databricks actually undervalued at 25x revenue?
07:40 – Are we on the verge of the biggest IPO wave ever?
11:30 – Can Andreessen's Databricks bet return $30B+?
18:10 – Who really gets rich when mega-unicorns IPO?
19:30 – Is the return of Chamath's SPACs the ultimate bubble signal?
28:00 – Should OpenAI staff be cashing out billions in secondaries?
33:30 – Founder raises $130M… then walks away. Is this the new normal?
36:30 – Nubank's $2.5B profit: The best FinTech in the world?
48:00 – On Running at $15B: Can consumer brands still be VC-backed rockets?
52:00 – CoreWeave takes on $11B in debt: smart bet or ticking time bomb?
1:11:00 – Will AI spend really hit trillions—or is it all hype?
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20VC: Lovable CEO Anton Osika on $120M in ARR in 7 Months | The Honest Truth About Defensibility and Unit Economics for AI Startups | The State of Foundation Models: Long Grok, Short OpenAI, Why | Replit vs Lovable vs Bolt: What Happens
18 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 9 min
Anton Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable, the fastest growing company on the planet. In just 7 months, they have scaled from $0 to $120M in ARR. They have raised over $200M in funding from some of the best including Accel, Creandum and 20VC. Their latest round priced the company at a whopping $2BN. Lees meer
Agenda for Today:
00:00 – Is AI an Arms Race… Or Just a Talent War?
03:45 – How Does Anton Compete with Zuck's $100M Packages for Talent
07:30 – Founder Mode vs. Structure: Can Chaos Scale?
10:15 – The Brutal Truth About Defensibility in AI Startups
13:20 – Unit Economics: Are AI Companies Doomed to Bleed Cash?
17:00 – GPT-5: Game-Changer or Overhyped Disappointment?
20:10 – How Lovable Hit $100M ARR in Just 7 Months?
25:15 – Replit, Figma, Bolt: Which Competitor is the Best?
30:00 – The Security Bombshells No One Talks About
36:40 – Should Anyone Still Study Computer Science?
40:30 – Work-Life Balance Is Dead: Inside Anton's 10x Culture
56:00 – OpenAI, Anthropic, or Grok: Who Wins the AI Wars?
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20VC: 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days and Choosing Benchmark | Harvey vs Legora: Who Wins Legal and How to Play When You Have $600M Less Funding | Are AI Models Plateauing Today | Building a 9-9-6 Culture From Stockholm with Max Junestrand
15 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 21 min
Max Junestrand is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Legora, the collaborative AI powering the next generation of lawyers. Now this is an insane story for many reasons; first, Max turned down a multi-million dollar career in gaming to build Legora. Second, he has raised from the best of the best including Benchmark and IVP. Third, he has scaled the firm with 1/6th of the capital of his closest competitor, Harvey have raised a reported $800M while Legora have raised just $120M. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:03 – From Pro Gamer to AI Founder: How World of Warcraft Shaped Max's Mindset
04:58 – The $5–10M Gaming Career He Walked Away From
07:55 – Are AI Models Plateauing… or Just Getting Started?
10:02 – Swarms of LLMs: The 100x Cost Bet That Could Change Legal Forever
12:00 – Partnering With the Lawyers You're "Killing"
15:00 – How He Cracked Sweden's Hardest-to-Enter Law Firm
21:45 – The $500K Coffee That Saved the Company at YC
30:00 – Closing 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days – Why Benchmark Won
36:00 – Beating a $5BN Rival With a Fraction of the Funding
53:50 – Building a Cult Culture: The 9-9-6 Mentality in Europe
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20VC: GPT5: Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift To Anthropic | Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings | Monday & Datadog Perform But Hit Hard by Wall St | Should Perplexity Buy Chrome for $34.5BN |
14 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 22 min
AGENDA: Lees meer
00:04 – Was GPT-5 the Biggest AI Letdown Yet?
00:17 – Is OpenAI's Real Target Anthropic's $6B Revenue?
00:22 – Why Anthropic Might Secretly Be Worried
00:28 – The Hidden Business Strategy Behind OpenAI's "Underwhelming" Launch
00:32 – Should Perplexity Really Try to Buy Chrome for $34.5B?
00:35 – The $3B N8N Deal: Genius Bet or Bubble FOMO?
00:38 – Why Datadog's Best Quarter Ever Still Tanked the Stock
00:44 – Palantir's 50% Growth at Scale – Can It Last? Is Palantir Overpriced?
00:53 – Shopify's Ruthless Path to 91% Revenue Growth With 30% Fewer Staff
01:01 – Are Seed and Series A Valuations Now at Dangerous Highs?
01:06 – What Does The Highest Levels of Capital Concentration Mean For Early Stage Founders?
01:15 – Could Palantir Hit a $2 Trillion Market Cap by 2030?
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20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mignot, Partner @ Index Ventures
11 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 20 min
Martin Mignot is a Partner at Index Ventures, the best-performing fund in the world right now. In the last three months, they have sold Wiz for $ 32 billion, sold Scale for $14.9 billion, and IPO'd Figma as the largest investor. In addition to this, they are the largest or second-largest shareholders in Roblox, Revolut, Adyen and Datadog. Lees meer
Agenda for Today:
00:00 – Why Gross Margin is the Biggest Sin in the Early Days
04:50 – Why Most People Shouldn't Become VCs
07:40 – Why it is BS to Suggest the Future of VC is Boutique vs Mega Fund
09:10 – Do Multi-Stage Funds Really Give a S*** About Seed
13:50 – The Founder Trait That Trumps Market Size Every Time
18:45 – How Spotify Still Haunts Index Ventures & What They Learn From It?
28:50 – The Brutal Truth About European vs. U.S. Founders
34:20 – The Case for a European AI Giant (and Who Might Build It)
40:50 – The Return of the 7-Day Founder Work Week
52:10 – Biggest Lessons from Leading Revolut's Series A
56:40 – Betting Against Nick Storonsky? Don't.
1:03:10 – The One Competitor Index Ventures Admires
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20VC: The $BN Greenoaks Backed Protein Bar | Hitting $100M Revenues in David's First Year: Lessons & Mistakes | $0 to $600M: The Untold RXBAR Story | Product-Market-Fit, Pricing, Branding: What Every Founder Gets Wrong Today with Peter Rahal
8 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 6 min
Peter Rahal is the Co‑Founder & CEO of David Protein, the highest protein‑to‑calorie ratio for any protein bar on the market. Peter has raised over $85M from Greenoaks, Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman with the latest round valuing the company at $725 million. The company is poised for over $100 million in first‑year revenue. Formerly, Peter co‑founded RXBAR in his mom's basement with a $10k start, growing it into a household brand and selling it to Kellogg for $600 million. poised for over $100 million first‑year revenue Lees meer
Agenda for Today:
00:04 – The One Piece of Advice from My Father That Made $600M
00:07 – Selling Protein Bars from a CrossFit Gym to $2M in Year One
00:12 – Why Raising Money Early Would Have Killed RXBAR's Success
00:15 – Product vs Brand: What Every Brand Gets Wrong Today
00:17 – Why Red Bull is the Best Brand in the World? What Can We Learn From It?
00:20 – Are Brands the New Religion? How Status and Community Really Work
00:27 – The Boiled Cod Stunt: Brilliant Marketing or Massive Waste of Time?
00:35 – Selling RXBAR for $600M: Inside the Decision and the TAM Ceiling
00:40 – $100M Overnight: What Really Changes When You Get Rich
00:44 – The Hidden Costs of Success: Health, Relationships and Obsession
00:47 – Why Peter Doesn't Care What People Think… and Actually Likes Upsetting Them
00:53 – The $10B Plan for David: From Protein Bars to a Portfolio of Brands
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20VC: Figma's 250% Pop - The Greatest IPO Mispricing Ever | Meta and Microsoft Blowout Quarters: Broken Down | Cognition Raises at $15BN and Ramp at $22BN | CRV Downsizing and What It Means for LPs and GPs
7 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 20 min
Agenda: Lees meer
00:00 – The Worst IPO Mis-Pricing Ever: What Really Happened at Figma
02:30 – Fidelity vs Founders: How Important is Fidelity When Going Public
07:00 – Why Founders Secretly Want a Pop, Even If It Makes Them Look Stupid
10:15 – The Truth Behind the $3B Figma "Left on the Table"
14:00 – Direct Listings vs IPOs: Should Figma Have Gone Direct
23:00 – CEO Compensation is Broken, Brian Halligan Doesn't Hold Back
29:00 – The New Normal: Growth Rounds with Elon-Style Moonshot Packages
33:00 – Is Canva Next? Why Founders Should "Run, Forrest, Run" to the NASDAQ
36:00 – The Case for Going Public: VCs Are a Bigger Pain Than Public Markets
44:00 – Can AI Even Work for SMBs? Why No One's Cracked the Code (Yet)
51:00 – Meta's Monster Quarter: Growth, Cash Burn, and the Real AI Strategy
56:00 – CEO of the Year? Why Jensen Huang Leaves Zuck & Satya in the Dust
1:00:00 – Cognition's $15B Deal & Mass Layoffs: The Most Savage M&A Move of 2025
1:07:00 – Ramp's $22B Raise: Genius Move or Suicide Round?
1:09:00 – CRV Shrinks, Benchmark's Bet, and the Future of Venture Strategy
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20Sales: $0-$3.7BN: The Databricks CRO's Playbook to Build the Fastest GTM Engine in SaaS History | How Databricks Beat Snowflake | How To Build a Sales Org of 5,000 and Close $190M Deals with Ron Gabrisko
4 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 16 min
Ron Gabrisko is the Chief Revenue Officer at Databricks, where he joined in 2016. Under his leadership, Databricks has scaled from $0 to $3.7BN annualized revenue. He has grown the sales team from 0 to over 1,000 globally, leading expansion into enterprise, government, and international markets. Ron previously held senior sales roles at Cloudera and IBM, bringing deep experience in data and AI infrastructure. His tenure at Databricks has been defined by hypergrowth, multi-product adoption, and world-class GTM execution. Lees meer
Agenda for Today:
00:04 – The Databricks Origin Story: Ali, Ben Horowitz & 7 PhDs
00:08 – Ali vs JPMorgan: Turning Down $10M to Stay Cloud-First
00:13 – Prospecting Day: How Ron Scaled the GTM Culture
00:16 – Why Databricks' Pricing Model Was Its Secret Weapon
00:19 – Enterprise vs SMB: The Risky Bet That Paid Off
00:23 – From $2M to $13M ARR: How Ron Built the First Sales Engine
00:29 – Can AI Replace Salespeople? Ron's Brutally Honest Take
00:36 – How to Get Your First Million-Dollar Rep (and Keep Them)
00:42 – The Culture Secret Behind Scaling to 5,000 Sales Reps
00:45 – Why Databricks Waited Until $500M ARR to Go International
00:52 – What Makes a Great Sales Meeting? Ron's Gold Standard
00:58 – The Snowflake Wars: Why Ron Says Databricks Is 5 Years Ahead
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20VC: Inside Carnegie Mellon's $4BN Endowment | Why 90% of LPs Shouldn't Invest in VC | The $140BN Problem with Multi-Stage Funds | The Hidden Math Behind DPI, TVPI, and Illiquidity with Miles Dieffenbach
4 augustus 2025 · 1 uur 27 min
Miles Dieffenbach is Managing Director of Investments at Carnegie Mellon University, where he helps oversee a $4 billion endowment with a focus on venture capital, private equity, and alternative investments. Under his leadership, CMU's private book has remained self-funding during some of the toughest years for liquidity. Lees meer
Agenda for Today:
00:04 – "I Had Cancer at 26 – It Changed Everything"
07:00 – Inside the $4BN Carnegie Mellon Endowment: The Investment Blueprint
10:45 – Are LPs Getting Screwed in Venture?
13:30 – 90% of LPs Shouldn't Be in Venture – Here's Why
16:00 – Seed Funds Are a Trap (And No One Wants to Admit It)
20:00 – The $140BN Problem with Multi-Stage Funds
24:00 – "Index Is the Best in the Game – Here's Why They Win"
29:30 – "The Dirty Secret of LPs: Brand Over Performance"
34:30 – "When Founder-Friendly Goes Too Far"
38:00 – "The OpenAI Bubble – Will It All Go to Zero?"
44:00 – "Ping Pong Diligence & Wildest Fundraising Stories"
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20VC: Benchmark Loses Another Partner | Elad Gil Raises a Monster $1.5BN Solo GP Fund | Why Apple Need a Management Overhaul | Why Google is the Best Performing Hyperscaler | Will Cursor Hit $4BN ARR & Lovable $400M ARR by EOY 2026?
31 juli 2025 · 1 uur 21 min
Agenda: Lees meer
00:00 - Why Benchmark Is Bleeding Partners (and Why That's the New Normal)
04:57 - "I Wouldn't Leave Benchmark… Unless I Had THIS" — Jason on Brand vs Autonomy
09:01 - The Rise of the Solo GP & The Death of LP Conventional Wisdom
13:50 - The Unstoppable Force of Elad Gil & The Myth of LP Discipline
18:45 - Is Vibe Coding the New SaaS? Jason's $10K/Month Spend Reveal
26:57 - Cursor's Growth Is Insane—But Is It Sustainable?
31:44 - Will Microsoft, Google, or Amazon Win the AI Infra War?
37:42 - Is GitHub Copilot the Biggest Miss in Microsoft's History?
44:15 - Are Big Tech Incumbents Now Too Powerful to Fail?
48:00 - Apple's AI Problem: Is It Time for a Management Overhaul?
52:30 - Figma's IPO: $30B Return, Zero Hype. What Happened?
1:06:00 - Final Bets: Cursor to $4B ARR, Lovable to $400M ARR, OpenAI to $800BN?
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20VC: a16z's Martin Casado on Anthropic vs OpenAI: Where Value Accrues | Cursor vs Replit vs Lovable: Who Wins and Who Loses | The One Sin in AI Investing | Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China
28 juli 2025 · 1 uur 11 min
Martin Casado is a General Partner @ a16z where he leads the firms $1.25BN infrastructure fund. At a16z, Martin has led investments in companies like Cursor, dbt Labs, and Fivetran to name a few. Before joining a16z, he co-founded Nicira, acquired by VMware for $1.26B. At VMware, he served as CTO of Networking. Widely regarded as a visionary in enterprise infrastructure, Martin has helped shape the modern cloud computing stack. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:00 – Analysis of Current AI Investment Landscape
04:45 – Will Anthropic Kill the AI App Layer?
09:20 – "The Oligopoly Is Coming—Just Like Cloud"
12:50 – Are AI Models Actually Terrible Venture Investments?
15:40 – Why it is BS to Put Down AI Apps for Having Temporary Revenue
21:30 – "Open Source Is a National Security Weapon—And We're Losing"
26:40 – "Have the Foundation Models of the Future All Been Founded Already"
34:30 – Why it is BS to Denigrate AI Apps for Having Low Margins
38:40 – Does AI Make 1x Engineers 10x or 10x Becomes 100x
44:10 – "We're All Dead Wrong About AI and Job Loss"
50:30 – "The Only Sin in Venture: Backing the Wrong Winner"
55:10 – What People Think They Know About Wealth But Do Not
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20Product: Should We Kill the PM Role Entirely | How Does Product Design Change Most in a World of AI | How Do Monzo Build Product Today: What Works, What Does Not | Why Most Product Sucks and What Makes Truly Great Product
27 juli 2025 · 1 uur 7 min
Fernando Fanton is one of the most respected product leaders in Europe, having held Chief Product Officer roles at Monzo and Just Eat. He previously led product and tech at Rappi, one of Latin America's most valuable startups. Today, Fernando is the CPO @ Property Finder; one of the biggest breakout unicorns from MENA. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:00 – Is "having a vision" actually killing great product teams?
03:15 – Why do most products suck—and what separates the great ones?
07:20 – Should we kill the PM role entirely? Fernando says maybe.
11:45 – Is Monzo's obsession with trust more powerful than speed?
16:10 – What's the #1 reason internal tools will never replace SaaS?
21:00 – Will AI wipe out the need for designers and PMs?
26:30 – Is it arrogant for product teams to protect users from "bad" choices?
32:15 – What's the future of product when OpenAI controls the whole stack?
37:40 – What Monzo product blew up—and why no one saw it coming?
42:55 – Can a bank built on principles really become a $100B company?
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20VC: Lovable Raises at $2BN & Hits $100M ARR | Is Cursor Worth $28BN at $1BN in ARR | How Do All Providers Deal with Anthropic Dependency Risk | Are Seed Funds F******: Have Mega Funds Won | Figma IPO Breakdown: Where Does it Price?
24 juli 2025 · 1 uur 22 min
Agenda: Lees meer
00:00 – Did Jason Just Kill Replit?
03:45 – Why Claude Lies To You and Cannot Be Trusted
06:50 – You Cannot Trust Agents. Period.
10:20 – Why Windsurf Was Dead Without Claude
12:30 – Cursor vs. Lovable: What's the Better Bet?
14:40 – Should You Still Invest in Cursor at $28B?
18:05 – Would You Bet on Anthropic at $100B or OpenAI at $300B?
24:15 – Inside OpenAI's Secret Weapon: The Calvin French-Owen Memo
27:50 – Perplexity Just Crushed ChatGPT and Claude
32:15 – Will Cursor Build Their Own Models Before Anthropic Cuts Them Off?
33:20 – Figma's IPO at $16B: Outrageous or Fair Game?
41:55 – 90% of Seed Funds Are Cooked—Is Rob Go Right?
52:15 – How Often Do You Meet a Founder Who Can Return the Fund?
1:08:00 – Which Seed Fund Would You Back Today?
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20VC: Scaling to $1BN+ in Revenue with No Funding: Surge AI | The Most Insane Scaling Story in Tech |
21 juli 2025 · 1 uur 6 min
Edwin Chen is the Founder and CEO of Surge. Founded in 2020, Surge has scaled to $1BN+ in revenue with zero external funding. At the same time, their competitor, Scale.ai raised over $1.3BN to reach $850M ARR. Today, Surge have the world's largest model providers as customers and have just 120 employees. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:00 — "Everyone Else Is Just a Body Shop" — Edwin Calls Out the Whole Industry
01:05 — Why 90% of Big Tech Is Wasting Time on Useless Problems
03:45 — "I Don't Do 1-on-1s" — How Surge Kills Meetings and Still Moves 10x Faster
05:55 — Will a Single Person Build a $1B Company?
08:10 — 100x Engineers Are Real — Here's How to Spot Them
12:10 — Why Most PhDs Are Useless in AI Training
14:20 — Built to a Billion With Zero VC — Edwin Explains How and Why
17:00 — "No Sales Team, No PR, No BS" — Why Surge Stays in the Shadows
21:15 — The Real Reason AGI Might Take Until 2040
24:45 — Will Synthetic Data Kill Human Labelling?
29:00 — "Academic Benchmarks Are a Scam"
31:05 — Why the Real Bottleneck in AI Isn't Compute or Models — It's THIS
33:00 — What Every AI Company Should Be Asking (But Isn't)
35:15 — "No, I Wouldn't Sell Surge for $100B"
39:00 — Is the Application Layer Doomed? Edwin Predicts the Future of AI Startups
46:30 — Have the Leading Foundation Models Already Been Founded?
48:10 — AGI Could Be Dangerous — And Most People Are Ignoring Why
20VC: Scaling to $1BN+ in Revenue with No Funding: Surge AI | The Most Insane Scaling Story in Tech |
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20VC: Cognition CEO Scott Wu on Acquiring Windsurf: The Process, The Deal, The Rationale | Did Google Overlook a Goldmine in the Core Asset and Did Founders Leave a Sinking Ship | How Cursor and Cognition Deal with Ever Increasing Reliance on Anthropic
18 juli 2025 · 48 min
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the world's first AI software engineer. On Friday last week they pulled off the acquisition of the year, acquiring Windsurf, following their licensing agreement with Google. Previously a world-class competitive programmer, he was a gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics and a member of the U.S. Math and Physics Olympiad teams. Before Cognition, he was a founding engineer at Scale AI, helping shape the early AI infrastructure stack. Lees meer
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why are founders walking away instead of going down with the ship?
01:05 – How did Cognition pull off the $220M Windsurf deal in just 72 hours?
04:45 – What really happened behind closed doors the weekend Windsurf was acquired?
07:15 – Did Google overlook a goldmine in the Windsurf team and IP?
09:00 – Who are the 100 people that secretly shape the future of AI?
12:30 – Can application startups ever gain leverage over foundation model giants like Anthropic?
14:15 – Is coding about to be replaced by simply describing what you want?
17:30 – 50% of new code is AI-written. Where does that go next?
20:45 – "We've gone from 0 to $80M ARR in 6 months. Quietly."
25:00 – Are IDEs and agents just the training wheels for the real future of software engineering?
28:20 – If you could only back one—OpenAI or Anthropic—who's the better bet?
30:00 – Why has Cognition kept its insane growth a secret… until now?
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20VC: Windsurf x Google x Cognition: Full Breakdown: Who Made Money, Who Did Not | Lovable vs Replit: Will These Be $100BN Businesses | Why Elon Could Beat Sam Altman with the New Grok | Why Every S&P 500 Company Will Buy Bitcoin?
17 juli 2025 · 1 uur 22 min
Agenda: Lees meer
00:00 Windsurf was dead—then this deal changed everything
05:00 The Windsurf x Google x Cognition saga explained
09:00 The OpenAI deal collapsed—what really happened
15:00 FTC rules forced a brutal deal structure—who lost?
17:00 The investors' returns: who actually made money?
21:30 Will Google's corp dev team get fired over this?
23:00 Cognition's genius $220M acquisition of Windsurf: Most brilliant Deal of the Year
26:00 The biggest recruiting flex in Silicon Valley this year
35:00 "Roll your own SaaS" is complete nonsense
38:00 Lovable vs Cursor vs Replit: who wins the coding war?
41:00 Why Lovable could be the ChatGPT of builders
44:00 Will these vibe-coded apps become durable businesses?
48:00 The shocking churn rates hidden inside AI SaaS
55:00 Are these $2B valuations actually... cheap?
56:30 Grok just destroyed GPT-4 in benchmarks—WTF?!
01:01:00 Why Grok might overtake OpenAI in the next 12 months
01:11:00 Meta just invested $3.5B in Ray-Bans—WTF?
01:12:30 Should every S&P 500 company buy Bitcoin now?
01:15:00 Will Meta kill open source? What happens to Llama 5?
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20VC: Vlad Tenev on Robinhood's $85BN Resurgence | Tokenizing SpaceX & OpenAI | Building Nine Revenue Lines Over $100M | Why Crypto Will Be Robinhood's Biggest Revenue Line | Why Stablecoins Will Replace Banking Rails
14 juli 2025 · 58 min
Vlad Tenev is the Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the greatest story on Wall St of the last decade. In the previous 18 months, Robinhood has increased its net revenue by 58% to nearly $3B; a $500M loss in 2023 turned into a $1.1B profit in 2024. Robinhood's stock is up roughly 4x, lifting their market cap to north of $80B. Today, Robinhood has nine lines of business that do over $100M in revenue. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:00 – "Tokenization Is The Biggest Innovation in Finance"
03:28 – How Robinhood 4x'd Its Market Cap in 8 Months
06:40 – AI Writes 50% of All Net New Code at Robinhood
10:02 – Why Robinhood Built a Secret ChatGPT for Support
12:11 – The One Customer Type That Transformed the Business
15:29 – "CoreWeave Is Retail's Way Into AI" — The Meme Stock Defense
18:05 – Inside Robinhood's Tokenized Private Shares Product
21:23 – "Capital as a Service" — Vlad's Wild Vision for Startup Fundraising
24:10 – The $100M Revenue Line Vlad Wishes He Could Kill
26:45 – Robinhood Is Building... Cash Delivery Trucks?!
29:55 – "We Were Shipping Nothing": Vlad on the 2020–2022 Culture Crisis
33:20 – What Line of Business Will Be the Biggest For Vlad in 5 Years Time
35:11 – The One Competitor Vlad Actually Respects
36:55 – From Men's Health to Japanese Toilets: Vlad's Weirdest Quickfire Yet
38:40 – "I Was in the Dumps": What 2022 Taught Vlad About Resilience
40:00 – Where Robinhood Is Headed: The Next Decade of Financial Infrastructure
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20Growth: The Death of Growth Teams? | How Hubspot Use AI to Triple Email Conversion | The Future of AI SEO | Why Prompt Engineering is the New Coding | What Every CMO Needs to Know About AI in 2025
11 juli 2025 · 1 uur 16 min
Kieran Flanagan is the CMO at HubSpot, where he's led the transformation of their growth strategy from SEO-led to multi-channel and AI-powered. Formerly SVP of Marketing, he helped scale HubSpot's user base to millions and revenue past $2B. Before HubSpot, he drove breakout growth at Marketo and Salesforce. Kieran is one of the most respected voices in SaaS marketing and a pioneer in growth-driven content strategy. Lees meer
Agenda:
00:03 – The Death of Growth Teams? Kieran's Wild Prediction
06:44 – AI Innovation Pods: The New Org Structure for Startups
10:18 – Email Personalization That Tripled Conversions
13:21 – From Software Budget to Labor Budget: The Shift is Happening
16:35 – The Big Lie: Why Autonomous Agents Still Suck
19:24 – The Secret Sauce Behind HubSpot's Email AI Stack
21:44 – Segment-Based Marketing Is Dead. Enter Micro Audiences.
24:15 – Content Collapse: Why Google Organic Is Getting Torched
30:52 – The Future of AI SEO: 1 Product, 100 Pages, Infinite Prompts
33:16 – Memory = Moat: Why ChatGPT Is Becoming Unbeatable
35:46 – Prompt Engineering is the New Coding: Here's How to Win
41:03 – The Death of the Middle Manager Marketer
46:17 – OpenAI vs. Anthropic: Kieran's $400M Bet
48:00 – Europe Is Falling Behind: The Harsh Truth on Regulation
52:39 – CMO Playbook 2025: Micro-Audiences, Creator-Led, AI at Scale
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20VC: Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Acquired by Meta | OpenAI's SBC Bombshell: More Stock Comp Than Revenue | Privat Equity is Back: Olo Bought for $2BN | Microsoft Lays Off 9,000 People: Is This Just the Start | Will Sequoia Part with Shaun Maguire
10 juli 2025 · 1 uur 7 min
Agenda: Lees meer
[00:00] The AI Talent Crisis No One's Ready For
[03:00] Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Why Two Legendary VCs Walked Away From $1B to Join Meta
[12:00] Meta's AI Talent Magnet: Will It Actually Work?
[15:00] Cursor Is Breaking the Market: Can Anyone Compete?
[18:30] OpenAI's SBC Bombshell: More Stock Comp Than Revenue
[22:00] CoreWeave's Power Play: Buying Their Landlords
[26:00] Is Circle Next to Go Shopping with Meme Equity?
[28:00] PE Is Back: The Olo Take-Private Explained
[35:00] Why Triple, Triple, Double, Double Is No Longer Sexy
[41:00] QSBS Hack: The Billionaire's Tax Loophole You're Missing
[48:00] Microsoft's AI Layoffs: Salespeople Are Dead, Long Live Engineers
[50:00] "If You Need a Week to Learn AI, You Should Be Fired"
[53:00] Will Sequoia's Sean Maguire Be Pushed Out? Place Your Bets
[57:00] Will There Be a Recession in 2025? Jason Bets $75K It's a No
[1:00:00] Is Linda Yaccarino Still CEO of X by Year-End?
[1:03:00] Circle and CoreWeave's Meme Rally: Real or Mirage?