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

Latest Episodes:

20VC: Microsoft CTO on Where Value Accrues in an AI World | Why Scaling Laws are BS | An Evaluation of Deepseek and How We Underestimate the Chinese | The Future of Software Development and The Future of Agents with Kevin Scott Mar 31, 2025

Show notes

Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft, where he leads the company's AI and technology strategy at global scale and played a pivotal role in Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI. Prior to Microsoft, Kevin spent six years at Linkedin as SVP of Engineering. Kevin has also enjoyed advisory positions with Pinterest, Box, Code.org and more.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:10 Where is Enduring Value in a World of AI

10:53 Why Scaling Laws are BS

12:26 What is the Bottleneck Today: Data, Compute or Algorithms

15:38: In 10 Years Time: What % of Data Usage will be Synthetic

20:04 How Will AI Agents Evolve Over the Next Five Years

23:34: Deepseek Evalution: Do We Underestimate China

28:34 The Future of Software Development

31:53 The Thing That Most Excites Me in AI is Tech Debt

35:01 Leadership Lessons from Satya Nadella

41:13 Quickfire Round

20VC: Will Revolut and Monzo List in the UK | How Does London Compete Against the US To Win The Best UK IPOs | Are UK Public Companies Punished on Price for Listing in London | The Myths and the Reality of The London Stock Exchange with CEO, Julia Hoggett Mar 28, 2025

Show notes

Dame Julia Hoggett is the CEO of the London Stock Exchange. Julia previously worked at the UK's Financial Conduct Authority as Director of Market Oversight and Head of Wholesale Banking Supervision.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:25 How to Become CEO of a National Stock Exchange

05:36 Why The Domestic Economy is F***** Despite the Boom in Financial Services

06:45 How Pension Fund Reform Dmaaged the UK Economy

09:31 Should the UK Copy the Canadian Pension Fund Structure

16:30 Will the Best Companies Like Revolut and Monzo List in London

24:17 Why Are Revolut Wrong to Want to List in the US

27:32 Are Companies Priced Lower in the UK vs US

32:05 Why is Stamp Duty a Perversity We Have to Change

35:46 Why is the Way the UK Thinks About Financial Services So Wrong

40:31 Quick Fire Round: Insights and Reflections

20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital Mar 28, 2025

Show notes

Mitchell Green is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lead Edge Capital. Mitchell has led or co-led investments in companies including Alibaba, Asana, Benchling, ByteDance, Duo Security, Grafana, Mindbody, and Xamarin, among several others.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:31 How Bessemer Taught Me The One Golden Rule of Investing

06:48 Why AI Infrastrcture is the Worst Investment to Make

08:51 Why it is Comical to think there will be $BN one person companies?

09:26 WTF Happens To The Cohort of SaaS Companies With Slow Growth, Not Yet Profitable and $50M-$200M in Revenue

16:12 What is the Biggest Problem with the IPO Market

23:24 When is the Right Time to Sell in VC and How a Generation F******* it Up

27:37 Biggest Advice to Smaller Emerging Managers

40:13 The One Question That Tells You if a Business is Good

43:01 Why LPs are More Important than Founders

45:03 One Question Every LP Should Ask Their VCs

46:03 Why TikTok Does Not Matter to ByteDance and It Is a Screaming Buy

51:30 Why We Drastically Underestimate the Power of Chinese AI?

55:18 Why Social Media is the Most Dangerous Thing in Society

01:00:07 Quick Fire Questions

20VC: The Insane Story of DeliveryHero: Losing $200M on a Gorillas Investment | Winning the Emerging Markets Delivery War with 35 Acquisitions | Competing with Uber and Doordash in a Capital Arms Race with Niklas Östberg Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

Niklas Östberg is the Founder and CEO of Delivery Hero, a global juggernaut now present in over 70 countries across four continents. In Q4 2024, the company announced GMV of $49BN with $12.8BN in revenue and $750M in EBITDA. They have made an astonishing 35+ acquisitions including $2BN for Glovo. Before launching Delivery Hero, Niklas co-founded Pizza.nu, leading its expansion across Sweden, Poland, Finland, and Austria.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:09 How Skiing Prepared Me For Life As An Entrepreneur

10:12 Losing $200M on Gorillas Investment

17:58 Quick Commerce: Does the Business Model Work?

25:09 How to Master M&A: Lessons from 35 Acquisitions

31:45 Evaluating Acquisitions: The Glovo Example

32:39 Cohort Analysis: Lessons from $49BN in GMV

34:35 Growth Strategies: What Worked? What Did Not Work?

38:27 Competing Against Uber and Doordash

41:40 Is Cash a Weapon in the War for Food Delivery

44:29 Why Are Emerging Markets a Good Investment?

48:21 Why Are European Markets Broken? Are Regulators Killing Europe?

51:57 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

20VC: AI Chip Wars: How Cerebras Plans to Topple NVIDIA's Dominance | Why We Have Not Reached Scaling Laws in AI | What Happens to the Cost of Inference | How We Underestimate China and Shouldn't Sell To Them with Andrew Feldman Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

Andrew Feldman is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Cerebras, the fastest AI inference + training platform in the world. In Sept 2024 the company filed to go public off the back of a rumoured $1BN deal with G42 in the UAE. Andrew is the leading expert for all things inference.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:23 Where Was AI Landscape in 2015 When Cerebras Founded

05:57 NVIDIA's Biggest Strength Has Become Their Biggest Weakness

07:09 What Happens to the Cost of Inference?

08:55 Why Are AI Algorithms So Inefficient?

20:30 Why is it Total BS That We Have Hit Scaling Laws?

23:07 What Will Be the Ratio of Synthetic to Human Data Used in 5 Years?

31:37 What Specifically Was So Impressive About Deepseek?

31:51 Why is Distillation Not Wrong and OpenAI Need to Look in the Mirror?

32:34 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI?

34:08 How Will NVIDIA's Market Position Change Over the Next Five Years?

39:59 Why is the CUDA Lockin for NVIDIA BS? What is Their Weakness?

40:46 Why is Trump Better for Business than Biden?

49:41 Do We Underestimate China in a World of AI?

52:33 What is the Most Underappreciated Segment of AI?

54:00 Quickfire Round

20VC: Selling Drift for $1.2BN is the Biggest Failure: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company | Why Incumbents Are Slower & Worse Than Ever | Why the Most Valuable Companies in a World of AI Will Not Have More Than 100 People with Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

Elias Torres is the Co-Founder and CEO of Agency, the AI agent for customer success teams. Prior to Agency, Elias was the Co-Founder of Drift, a company he sold to Vista for $1.2BN Before that he started Performable, which he sold to Hubspot.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

03:50 Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders: How Backgrounds Shape You

06:23 Speed: Why are Incumbents Slower than Ever

10:00 Quality: Why are Incumbents Worse than Ever

25:34 Why Was Selling Drift For $1.2BN a Massive Failure

33:30 How Did a Cushy Culture Kill Drift

37:01 What They Never Tell You About Selling for $1.2BN

41:08 How to Hire F******* Rockstars

46:52 The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Hiring

54:52 Everything You Think You Know About Working Parents is Wrong

01:02:00 Quickfire

20VC: The 10 Question Framework a $217BN Manager Uses to Make Investment Decisions | Lessons from Turning Down Stripe, Coinbase and Losing Money on Northvault | The Bull Case for Bytedance | How Anduril Could Be a $200BN Company with Peter Singlehurst Mar 19, 2025

Show notes

Peter Singlehurst is the Head of Private Companies at Baillie Gifford. He has led research on a wide range of private investments including Epic Games, Bending Spoons, Anduril, Solugen, Scopely, and Grammarly, as well as a number of private holdings that have since transitioned to the public markets such as Airbnb, Affirm, Warby Parker, Wise and Tempus AI.

In Today's Episode with Peter We Discuss:

04:24 How I Accidentally Came to Manage One of the Largest Private Investment Firms in the World

07:29 What I Learned Losing 100s of $Ms

10:22 The 10 Questions Baillie Gifford Needs to Answer to Make an Investment

15:53 Why We Did Not Double Down in Stripe and Turned Down Coinbase

33:10 The ByteDance Investment Case

36:33 Why Would Any Good Company Go Public Today

39:19 Growth Stage Investing Trends

40:46 How Anduril Becomes a $200BN Company

45:39 Is 2024 Different to the Madness of 2021 and 2022

47:18 The Decision-Making Process Inside a $217BN Firm

49:00 How Does Re-Investment Decision-Making Differ from Original Investments

55:56 Future of Growth Equity Investing

58:12 Quick Fire Questions

20VC: HubSpot CEO on Where Value Accrues in SaaS AI | How HubSpot Competes Against Salesforce | Why B2B Is Not a Winner Take All Market | How to Go From SMB to Enterprise an Win | How SEO Dying Changes HubSpot's Business with Yamini Rangan Mar 18, 2025

Show notes

Yamini Rangan is the CEO at HubSpot. The $32BN juggernaut that has revenues of $2.6BN, over 247,000 customers and 8,200 employees. Prior to Hubspot, Yamini served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, and before Dropbox, she was VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:16 Taking Over the CEO Role from the Founders

07:58 Wartime vs Peacetime CEOship

11:18 How to Scale Into Enterprise: What Everyone Gets Wrong

22:20 Why is B2B Not Winner Take All

29:33 How Does HubSpot Compete Against Salesforce

33:26 Where Does Value Accrue in a World of AI

37:40 How Does Yamini Use AI Everyday

41:17 What Does HubSpot Do When It's Core SEO Channel Dies

44:10 Quickfire Round: Satya Nadella, Parenting Advice, Biggest Concern

51:35 Closing Thoughts and Reflections

20Product: How to Design and Build Products in a World of Agents | Why AI Will Kill Many SaaS Products | What Products Will Thrive and Die in a World of 100M Developers with Matt Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify Mar 14, 2025

Show notes

Matt Biilmann is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify. Under his leadership, Netlify has become one of the fastest-growing platforms for modern web development. Matt recently introduced agent experience (AX), a new way of thinking about how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Matt is also known for coining Jamstack, a concept that redefined how developers build for the web.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

03:43 How Does the Design Process Change When Designing For Agents

06:27 How Does the Product Building Process Change When Building for Agents

12:52 Will AI Kill SaaS Tools

16:12 If Prototyping Becomes Phase 1: Does Figma Survive?

17:35 Is Chat the Best Interface for a World of AI

21:52 Why AI Services Will Be One of the Biggest Economies

27:24 Open vs. Closed Platforms in an Agent-First World

31:09 Specialization of Large Language Models

35:13 Shifting Labor Costs to Agent Spend

36:28 The Future of Stripe and What Happens with 100M Developers in the World

38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Predictions

20VC: Lessons from Investing $2BN and Returning $8BN in Cash | Why Most Venture Partnerships are Broken | We Sold Salesforce Early and Lost Out on Billions | Are The Best Deals Always Expensive and Competitive with Jake Saper @ Emergence Capital Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

Jake Saper is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last 20 years. Their many wins include being early investors in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and more. In total, the firm has invested $2BN and returned an astonishing $8BN in cash with much more to come.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:45 The Zoom Investment Story

10:21 Founder, Market, Traction: Rank Them

26:37 Why Market Pull is the Most Important Thing and How to Know

27:23 Are the Best Deals Always Expensive?

28:25 What is the One Framework Emergence Use for Every Investment

29:08 Lessons from the 16x DPI Zoom Fund

30:44 Why Does Every Partner Do Reference Calls on Every Deal?

35:16 We Have Lied to SaaS Founders: The Revenue Rules Changed

37:53 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI?

41:37 Three Reasons Why AI Will Not Replace Vertical SaaS

46:38 Who Wins in AI: Startups or Incumbents?

50:09 Why Should Every Company Aim to Be a "Board Discussion"

55:12 Why is Jake Worried About AI's FTX Moment?

56:00 What Losing Billions on Salesforce Taught Us About Selling

01:00:07 Why Most VC Partnerships are Broken

01:03:07 Grok vs Anthropic vs OpenAI: Buy and Sell?

01:14:25 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile's Regulation A+ Offering. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities. DealMaker Securities LLC, a registered broker-dealer, and member of FINRA | SIPC, located at 105 Maxess Road, Suite 124, Melville, NY 11747, is the Intermediary for this offering and is not an affiliate of or connected with the Issuer. Please check our background on FINRA's BrokerCheck.

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