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

Latest Episodes:

20VC: Everyone is Wrong; We Will Have More Developers in Five Years | Why Frontier Labs Will Be Way More Valuable Than They Are Today | Are SaaS Companies Cooked: Which Thrive & Which Die with Aaron Levie, Founder at Box Apr 20, 2026

Show notes

Aaron Levie is one of the most forward-thinking public company CEOs when it comes to enterprise adoption of AI. Aaron is the CEO of Box, the enterprise storage company that does over $1BN in revenue but only has a market cap of $3.2BN. Something we discuss today…

AGENDA:

00:00 — Why the Experts are DEAD WRONG About the US-China AI Race

10:55 — Everyone is Wrong About Labour Markets: You Will Not Lose Your Job

13:10 — What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in 5 Years

16:45 — Is Your SaaS Tool Actually a Valueless Database in an Agentic World?

20:50 — The Cybersecurity Tsunami: Why Agents are Your Biggest Threat

25:50 — Token Maxing: What Every Company Needs to Know About Budgeting Tokens

34:55 — Is Silicon Valley Secretly Being Powered by Open-Source CCP Models?

39:15 — The Brutal Truth: Is This Generation of CEOs Too Low-IQ for AI?

46:55 — Frontier Labs: Why Aaron is Still Betting Everything on the Labs

20VC: Jake Paul on Why Traditional VC is Toast and Attention is More Valuable Than Cash | Politics: Will Jake Paul Actually Run for President? | Inside the Payday of Fighting Anthony Joshua and Mike Tyson | with Geoffrey Wu, Co-Founder at Anti-Fund Apr 18, 2026

Show notes

Jake Paul is one of the most influential creators of the digital era, with over 70M+ followers across platforms. He transitioned from YouTube stardom to become one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in boxing history with fights against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua. Jake is also Co-Founder of Anti Fund, where he has made investments in Ramp, Anduril, Cognition and Olipop to name a few.

Geoffrey Wu is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Anti Fund. He previously built his career at Goldman Sachs and Point72. He is at the forefront of a new model of investing—where distribution is as powerful as capital.

AGENDA:

00:00 — Why Attention is Now More Valuable Than Cash

04:36 — Inside the Secret $BN Jake Paul Business Empire

06:50 — Jake Paul's MasterClass on How to Tell Great Stories

10:50 — Why Jake Paul Is Literally Uncancelable

16:15 — The Brutal Reality of VC: Why Seed Investing is for Amateurs

25:10 — Is AI About to Make the Entire Human Race Unemployed?

33:15 — Trump Endorsed Me: Is Jake Paul Actually Running for President?

41:10 — The 60/40 Rule: How to Build an Unbreakable Relationship

44:15 — Dark Side of Greatness: Is Jake Paul a "Psychopathic" Work Addict?

50:20 — The Ultimate Choice: Boxing, Content, or Investing?

20VC: Anthropic Unveils Mythos | SpaceX's Financials Leaked: Is it Worth $2TRN | Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Are They Back in the AI Race | Jason's Critique of Dario Amodei & How OpenAI Could Win the Enterprise Game Apr 16, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

00:00 — Anthropic Unveils Mythos: The Model "Too Good at Hacking" to Release

05:56 — Why Mythos is a Quantum Leap in Cyber Risk

10:11 — The "Boy Who Cried Wolf": Jason's Critique of Dario Amodei

14:00 — The Oppenheimer Moment: Are Founders Using Doom as a Marketing Tool?

19:22 — Amazon's $20B Secret: Is NVIDIA's Chip Stranglehold Finally Loosening?

22:28 — Claude vs. Lovable & Replit: Anthropic Moves into App Building

25:24 — The 60% Death Spiral: Why Public SaaS Stocks are Entering a Doom Loop

39:51 — Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Alex Wang's First Model from Super Intelligence Labs

44:18 — OpenAI's $50B Ad Vision: The Plan to Monetize Intelligence

53:50 — Token Maxing: How CIOs are Reclaiming Control Over AI Budgets

57:57 — SpaceX's Leaked Financials: The Math Behind the $2 Trillion IPO

1:08:00 — Thoma Bravo Shuts Growth Equity

1:16:18 — Who IPOs First; OpenAI or Anthropic?

20VC: Anj Midha on Investing $300M into Anthropic | The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Turned it Down | The Four Bottlenecks to Compute | What the China Has Smashed and Why We Should Be Worried Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

Anj Midha is the founder of AMP, and a founding investor in Anthropic. Most recently, Anj was General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, leading frontier AI investments. He serves on the boards of Mistral, Black Forest Labs, Sesame, LMArena, OpenRouter, Luma AI and Periodic Labs and is an early angel in ElevenLabs among others. Prior to that, Anj was the cofounder/CEO of Ubiquity6 (acquired by Discord) and a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

AGENDA:

04:00 Why the "Scaling Laws are Dead" rumor is dangerously wrong

05:30 The 4 bottlenecks stopping us from reaching Super Intelligence

11:30 Where will the actual value accrue in an AI-dominated world?

12:00 Why Europe is building a "Sovereign Stack" to escape US dominance

15:00 Inside the brutal early days of Anthropic and the 21 VCs who said "No"

19:30 Why the most successful AI startups are ditching the "Profit-First" motive

34:30 The 1885 Industrial Revolution: Why we have a "GPU Wastage" bubble

38:00 Is the CCP actually winning the full-stack AI systems race?

43:30 Monopoly Mafias: Will model providers eventually kill the App Layer?

20Sales: ElevenLabs: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota | How to Structure Sales Compensation Plans | Customer Success: 'Total BS' or Growth Engine? | Building an AI Sales Machine: What Tools & Tactics Must CROs Adopt Today with Carles Reina Apr 11, 2026

Show notes

Carles Reina is VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, where he was the first investor and fourth employee. Carles has scaled the revenue org from Day 1 to over $350M in just 3 years. Carles is also an active investor with investments in ElevenLabs, Revolut, Happy Robot and more.

AGENDA:

00:00 - Is the Traditional CRO Dead in the Age of AI?

01:01 - Building the AI Sales Machine: Agents that Actually Generate Revenue

08:35 - Will AI Shrink the Sales Teams of the Future?

09:51 - The ElevenLabs Masterclass: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota

11:00 - How to Structure Explosive Sales Accelerators

12:15 - Why You Should Stop Paying Commission on Pilots

14:00 - Customer Success: Is it 'Total Bullshit' or a Growth Engine?

16:15 - The 'Global-First' Fallacy: Why You Need to Open Every Market Now

17:23 - Why Startups Are Wrong to Ignore 20-Year Sales Veterans

19:15 - The Pipeline Construction Secret: Liquidity vs. Whales

24:30 - Forecasting the Unpredictable: How to Hit a $1B Revenue Target

31:55 - The Substitution Threat: Is AI Voice Just a Commodity?

34:10 - Verticalization Mistakes: Lessons from Scaling India

38:40 - The 'IBM Effect': Does Brand Actually Shorten Sales Cycles?

40:15 - Extreme Expectations: Why ElevenLabs is a Hard Company to Work For

42:15 - Internal Leaderboards: How to Use Public Competition to Drive Results

44:20 - Hunting the Obsessed: Identifying the 'Inner Psychopath' in Hires

46:40 - The SaaS Apocalypse: Will Companies Build Their Own CRM?

48:30 - Formula 1 Branding: The Mindset Behind the Audi-Revolut Deal

50:15 - Dinner vs. Conferences: Which Marketing Channels Actually Scale?

52:45 - Designing Un-Salesy Content: How to Run a Legendary Summit

54:20 - CVC Strategy: Turning Corporate Investors into Distribution Channels

01:01:45 - The Globalization Nightmare: Why You Can't Sell in English Everywhere

01:06:45 - Operator-Investors: Can You Be a High-Performer and a VC Simultaneously?

01:11:30 - Unit Economics in AI: Why Good Early Numbers Might Mean Failure

01:18:25 - The Next Wave: Why Foundational Model Consolidation is Inevitable

Show notes

AGENDA:

03:59 — Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI in Revenue

12:43 — OpenAI Management Reboot

18:24 — OpenAI Buys TBPN

29:00 — SpaceX Files for IPO Targeting $2 Trillion Valuation

37:21 — Doug Leone Returns to Sequoia Capital

41:14 — YC Kicks Out Delve

45:21 — The Rise of Open Router

57:59 — Supabase Targeting $10B Valuation

01:08:18 — The Mercor Hack and AI Cyber Threats Moving Forward

01:17:25 — The $1.8B Two-Person Company

20VC: DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on Why AGI is Bigger than the Industrial Revolution | Why LLMs Will Not Commoditise & We Have Not Hit Scaling Laws | Bottlenecks in AI & The Energy Crisis Caused By AI | Whether AI Will Do More to Harm or Help Inequality Apr 07, 2026

Show notes

Demis Hassabis is the Co-Founder & CEO of Google DeepMind - working on AGI, responsible for AI breakthroughs such as AlphaGo, the first program to beat the world champion at the game of Go; and AlphaFold, which cracked the 50-year grand challenge of protein structure prediction and was recognised with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Demis is revolutionising drug discovery at Isomorphic Labs. Ultimately, trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality.

AGENDA:

00:04:00 — What Actually Counts as AGI; and Where Are We Today?

00:05:00 — What Are the Biggest Bottlenecks Holding AI Back Today?

00:06:00 — Have We Hit the Limits of Scaling Laws?

00:07:00 — Where Is AI Ahead of Expectations; and What's Still Missing?

00:07:30 — Why Can't AI Systems Learn Continuously Like Humans?

00:08:30 — How Did DeepMind Go from Behind to Leading the Pack?

00:11:00 — Are We Heading Toward Model Commoditization; or Winner-Takes-All?

00:12:00 — What Does the Future of Open Source Really Look Like?

00:13:00 — What Does a Post LLM World Look Like?

00:14:45 — Can AI Really Fix Drug Discovery—and Cut the 10-Year Timeline?

00:17:00 — What Does "Good" AI Regulation Actually Look Like?

00:18:00 — Who Should Be the Ultimate Arbiter of Truth in an AI World?

00:19:30 — If Demis Had One Shot to Fix AI Safety, What Would He Do?

00:21:00 — Is This Time Different for Jobs; or Will History Repeat Itself?

00:22:00 — Is AGI Bigger Than the Industrial Revolution; and Faster?

00:23:00 — Are We Underestimating AI Despite All the Hype?

00:23:30 — Does AI Lead to Massive Inequality; or Universal Prosperity?

00:24:30 — How Do We Solve the Energy Crisis Created by AI?

00:26:00 — Why Stay in the UK Instead of Moving to Silicon Valley?

00:28:00 — Will Europe Ever Build a Trillion-Dollar Tech Giant?

00:29:30 — Meeting Elon Musk for the First Time?

00:31:00 — What Big Questions About AI Is No One Talking About?

00:31:30 — What Does Demis Want His Legacy to Be?

20VC: Hims & Hers: $4.3BN Market Cap on $2.3BN of Revenue: The Comeback | Why Being Public is 10x Better | The Death of the "Strategy" Hire | Why Performance Marketing is Worse than Brand Marketing with Andrew Dudum Apr 04, 2026

Show notes

Andrew Dudum is the Founder and CEO of Hims, the company reshaping consumers relationship to healthcare. It has been a rocky ride over the last 6 months, the company is down 66%, their market cap today is $4.3BN on $2.3BN of revenue. They just bought their largest international competitor, Eucalyptus for $1.5BN.

AGENDA:

00:00 — Why Being Public Is Better Than Private

02:50 — My Advice to The Collisons on Taking Stripe Public

07:15 — How to Hire for the Most Gritty People: The Test

10:55 — How AI Will Reshape All of Customer Acquisition

15:30 — What Did Hims Do That Andrew Wishes They Had Not Done

20:15 — What is the Least Profitable but Most Important Hims Product

27:10 — The $1.5BN Acquisition: Why Hims Bought Their Biggest Global Competitor

33:45 — Why Brand Marketing Beats Performance Marketing

39:40 — The Future of Prevention: Why Your Next Blood Test Should Be Free

46:50 — Disrupting the PBMs: How We Are Breaking the Corrupt US Healthcare System

20VC: Anthropic's $6BN Revenue Month | OpenAI Kills Sora & Hits $100M ARR on Ads | Oura Going Public & Whoop Raises at $10BN | Manus Founders Trapped in China & The Billionaire Tax: Anyone Left in California? Apr 02, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

00:00 — Anthropic's Monster Month: 6 Billion in February Revenue

04:30 — The "Claude Mythos" Leak: 10 Trillion Parameters

11:50 — OpenAI Kills "Sora": A Massive Strategic Own Goal?

14:30 — OpenAI Hits $100M in Ads: Why OpenAI Must Make Ads Work

20:50 — Masa Son's $40BN Bridge Loan: Investing More Into OpenAI

21:50 — Cybersecurity Stocks Tank: Is the Anthropic Panic Justified?

27:10 — The Golden Age of Cyber: Why AI Agents are a "Golden Goose" for Security

31:30 — Gross vs. Net: The Truth Behind AI Revenue Accounting

34:50 — The "Vibe Coding" Era: Reselling Tokens and Triple-Counting ARR

41:00 — Oura Going Public & Whoop Raises $500M at $10BN Valuation

49:50 — Epic Games Layoffs: The Reality of the Attention Economy

52:40 — The Manus Scandal: Founders Trapped in China After Meta Deal

59:00 — The Billionaire Tax: Why the Golden Geese are Leaving California

01:03:20 — Do VCs Actually Add Value? The Ron Conway vs. Matthew Prince Spat

20VC: Marc Andreessen on The Future of Venture Capital: Will a16z Go Public | Why Labour Displacement with AI is Wrong | Why Introspection is Dangerous | Why "Diamonds in the Rough" is BS in VC | Why a16z Invested $300M into Adam Neumann Mar 30, 2026

Show notes

Marc Andreessen is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. The firm now manages over $90BN and has invested in the likes of OpenAI, Airbnb, Coinbase, Anduril and many more. Marc is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape (sold to AOL for $4.2 billion). He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion.

AGENDA:

05:00 — Why Introspection is Overrated: The Dangers of Learning from the Past

08:00 — The One Trait Marc Andreessen Looks For in Every Founder

14:30 — Are the Best Founders Broken? What Makes the Best Founders?

16:00 — "Extreme Ownership": Why Everything Being Your Fault Changes Everything

19:00 — "Do You Read the Comments?" Fame, Criticism & How to Deal with Haters

26:00 — Is Venture Now Go Big or Go Home? The Real Future of VC

30:00 — Does Price Matter Anymore? The Dangerous Truth About Valuations

33:00 — "Stop Chasing Diamonds in the Rough": Why Most VCs Get This Completely Wrong

36:00 — Do You Actually Need to Like Founders? The Uncomfortable Answer

40:00 — Are Companies 75% Overstaffed? The Most Controversial Take on Hiring

45:00 — When Will a16z Go Public?