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

Latest Episodes:

20VC: Why You Need a $1BN Fund To Do Series A Today | OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins Enterprise | SpaceX at $2TRN and Data Centers in Space | The $20BN Groq Deal Broken Down | Jeff Bezos' $100BN New Fund Mar 26, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

05:00 — Anthropic vs. OpenAI: Who Is Actually Winning the Enterprise War?

07:55 — "Air of Desperation": Is OpenAI Losing Its Invincibility?

18:00 — SpaceX at $2 Trillion: Elon's Insane Plan to Build Data Centers in Space

29:00 — Jeff Bezos' $100 Billion Fund: The End of "Doing It the Hard Way"

34:00 — The $20 Billion "Acqui-hire": The Groq Deal Broken Down

40:40 — Figma's Death Spiral? Why the Markets Are Terrified of AI Disruption

56:00 — The Broken VC Math: Why You Need $1BN To Do Series A

01:04:00 — Win or Die: The Terrifying Reality of the Unicorn "Dead Zone"

20VC: Inside Anduril's $20BN Army Contract & Why Anduril Must Go Public | Why 99% of Drone Companies Will Die | Why There is Never an Ethical Question of How Anduril Products are Used with Matthew Steckman, President @ Anduril Mar 23, 2026

Show notes

Matthew Steckman is the President and Chief Business Officer of Anduril. Matt played a central role in securing the $20BN contract Anduril just won with the US military. Prior to Anduril, Matt served as Chief Revenue Officer for Zipline. Before Zipline, Matt held several leadership positions at Palantir.

AGENDA:

3:45 — Anduril's $20BN Army Contract Broken Down

6:30 — What Do Most Defense Founders Get Completely Wrong?

9:15 — Can You Build a Billion-Dollar Defense Company Without the US?

12:05 — Why Government Contracts Are Brutal (And Why Most Fail)

15:40 — How Does Anduril Predict Wars 5–10 Years Before They Happen?

18:20 — Why Cyber Warfare Is the Most Dangerous Battlefield No One Understands

23:50 — Why There Will Only Be ONE Winning Drone Company

28:10 — How Anduril Decides Where to Deploy $100M+ Product Bets

35:20 — What Would Anduril Buy If They Had an Unlimited Checkbook?

41:10 — Why Anduril Must Go Public

45:00 — Quickfire: The Future of War, VC Mistakes & Career Advice

20Sales: Inside Figma's $1BN ARR Revenue Machine | Why We Do Not Have Customer Success or SDRs | Why I Do Not Believe in Sales Quotas with Shaunt Voskanian, CRO @ Figma Mar 21, 2026

Show notes

Shaunt Voskanian is the CRO @ Figma, where he has scaled the sales machine to over $1BN in ARR and over 400 people. Prior to Figma, Shaunt was Senior VP of Global Sales at Datadog where he scaled the revenue org to $1BN in ARR.

AGENDA:

04:33 - Are Great Sales Leaders Born or Trained?

06:55 - In a world of PLG, is sales less important than ever?

11:51 - Why does Shaunt not believe in traditional customer success teams?

14:31 - Does the role of the SDR survive in two years' time?

19:19 - When is the right time for sales to intercept in a PLG motion?

21:43 - How to Set Sales Quotas in a PLG AI Sales World?

31:19 - How has what you look for in sales hires changed over time?

42:54 - How do you judge sales performance if not on quota?

54:49 - Quick fire: Outdated sales tactic, What Role Dies, Best Sales AI Tool

20VC: The Return of Travis Kalanick: Uber Would Be $1TRN Today With Him | NVIDIA Predicts $1TRN in Revenue: Everything You Need to Know From GTC | Anduril Lands $20BN Army Contract | Adobe CEO Shock Exit: The Dominos Falling Mar 19, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

04:02 NVIDIA's GTC: What You Need to Know

11:39 Meta's 20% Layoffs & Atlassian Lets Go of 1,600

21:42 How to Test AI Fluency in Employees

30:59 Anduril Lands $20BN Army Contract

46:46 Travis Kalanick Returns With Atoms

49:55 If Travis Kalanick Ran Uber Today, Would it be $1TRN Company?

56:03 When is it Right to Replace Founders

01:04:24 Adobe CEO Exit Shock

20VC: The 8 Moats of Enduring Software Companies: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI | Why Dropouts are "AI Maxing" the World & Remote Early-Stage Companies are Dying with Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

Gokul Rajaram is one of the greatest operators turned investors of the last 2 decades. He is trusted as the go to advisor for the greatest founders in the world. Today he serves as a Board Director at three public companies: Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Prior to Marathon (his firm), Gokul served on the executive team at DoorDash and Block. Before Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense. Gokul is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in 700+ companies, including Airtable, Figma, Groq, Runway, Supabase, and Vercel.

AGENDA:

03:53 — Investing Lessons from Google, Doordash and Facebook

05:32 — Why Mark Zuckerberg is the Greatest Distribution Genius Alive

07:23 — Why Every Company Today Needs to be Multi-Product

09:16 — Negative Gross Margins: Are the Best Companies Actually Built on "Shit" Economics?

10:50 — The SaaS Apocalypse: Is the Entire Sector Going to Zero?

12:15 — The 8 Moats of Enduring Software Companies: How to Analyse Companies

14:50 — Why Brand is No Longer a Strong Moat (And What Replaced It)

16:13 — Salesforce vs. Atlassian: Which Systems of Record are Dying?

18:13 — Outcome-Based Pricing: Is This the Total Death of Seat Pricing?

20:16 — The Bolt-On AI Trap: Why Rebuilding Your Entire UX is Non-Negotiable

23:44 — Are the Outcome Sizes of Vertical SaaS Large Enough for VC Today?

28:16 — The Zombie Cohort: What Happens to Private Companies with High Valuations?

32:44 — Is "King Making" Complete Bullshit?

34:21 — Durability Over Margins: What Really Matters in a 100x Growth World

35:36 — The Non-Consumption Miracle: Why Granola and Gamma are Crushing It

38:50 — The PayPal Rule: Can You Raise Prices 5 Times in 3 Years?

42:47 — My Biggest Miss: How I Misread the Shopify Billion-Dollar Mark

45:18 — The Courage to Bet: Why Instacart is the Best VC Deal Ever

46:33 — Seed vs. Growth Pricing: When Does Price Actually Destroy Returns?

50:53 — Does "Proprietary Founder Access" Even Exist?

54:33 — Double Down or Diversify? The Truth About Fund Reserves

59:44 — The Vanta Anti-Portfolio: A Mistake I'll Never Forget

01:01:21 — When to Sell: The "Sell a Third, Hold a Third, Trade a Third" Rule

01:04:12 — Why Remote Early-Stage Companies are Dying

01:07:33 — Why Mid-Level Partners are Fleeing Mega Funds

01:09:47 — The Best CEO Superpowers: Larry, Mark, Jack, and Tony

01:12:33 — The Next 10 Years: Why Dropouts are "AI Maxing" the World

20Growth: Inside Lovable's $400M ARR Growth Machine | How Lovable Does Product Launches | How Lovable Hacks Social To Make Posts Go Viral | How Lovable Makes Every Employee a Brand with Elena Verna Mar 14, 2026

Show notes

Elena Verna is the Head of Growth at Lovable, one of the fastest growing companies in the world having hit $400M in ARR in just 18 months. Prior to Lovable, Elena was Head of Growth at both Dropbox and Miro.

AGENDA:

00:00 – Why "Growth Is Now a Trust Problem" (Not a Marketing Problem)

06:10 – Is SEO Dying Because of AI Search?

07:00 – Did Lovable's Growth Come From the Founder's Personal Brand?

08:30 – Why Every Founder Should Push Employees to Be Marketers?

13:10 – Why Every Employee at Lovable Ships Code (Even Marketing)

21:20 – Why Paid Marketing in Year One Is a "Death Trap"

31:50 – Why Annual Subscriptions Are the Wrong Monetization Model for AI

37:00 – If Elena Had an Unlimited Marketing Budget, What Would She Do?

48:00 – How Lovable Does Product Launches

20VC: Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins | The Ultimate Stock Picks: What to Buy | The Data Centre Arms Race: Is the Capex War Stalling | The Era of Public Company Deceleration is Dead Mar 12, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

00:00 - ANTHROPIC VS. THE PENTAGON: The Billion Dollar Supply Chain War

07:11 - B2B PANIC: Why Leading Companies Are Losing Deals to OpenAI

12:19 - THE ANTHROPIC ENDGAME: Will Claude Eclipse ChatGPT?

17:39 - THE DATA CENTER ARMS RACE: Is the AI Hype Cycle Finally Dead?

24:43 - 24/7 PERSISTENT AI: Why You'll Soon Need Data Centers in Space

30:37 - THE DEATH OF THE JUNIOR: Why Entry-Level Jobs are Vanishing

41:55 - AGENT-LED GROWTH: The Secret Reason Startups are Exploding in 2026

46:58 - THE ERA OF GENTLE DECELERATION IS DEAD: Public Markets Turn Brutal

55:54 - FIGMA MAKE IS TERRIBLE? The Failure of Quarterly Software Releases

01:00:54 - THE ULTIMATE STOCK PICKS: What to Buy and Sell Right Now

20VC: Inside Accel's $4BN Growth Investing Machine | Cursor is Dead is Total BS: Here is Why | What Missing Rippling and ElevenLabs Taught Us | Are $2BN-$10BN IPOs Dead | Why Now is a Great Time to be Thoma Bravo with Miles Clements Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

Miles Clements is a Partner @ Accel where he helps to lead their growth fund. At Accel, Miles has led or invested in Atlassian, Cursor, Linear, and more.

AGENDA:

03:38 Where is True Alpha and Value in a World of AI

05:10 Why it is Total BS that Cursor is Dead

07:55 Why Cursor Were Not Wrong to Build Their Own Models

09:38 What is the Upside When Investing in Cursor at $27BN?

15:12 Do Sub $10BN Outcomes Even Matter to a Fund the Size of Accel?

17:07 Losing ServiceTitan: Investing Lesson Learned…

19:55 Missing Rippling: What We Learned

27:20 What is Accel's Win Rate

30:22 How VCs Approach Ownership Has Changed

35:09 Does Miles Feel Happier or Sadder to be an Anthropic Investor Post Pentagon Debacle

36:45 What Happens to Companies Like Miro and Snyk with High Prices to Live Upto?

38:05 Why it is a Great Time to Be Thoma Bravo and Vista

38:36 Why Founder-Led Companies Are Always Better

41:12 Why Would Any Founder Go Public Today

43:48 When is the Right Time to Take Chips Off The Table?

45:24 Should VC Firms Have Evergreen Funds and Be Responsible for Public Positions

50:28 You Can Pick Any VC to Join Accel, Who Does Miles Choose…

20VC: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is BS | Why China Will Win the AI War | Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist and are Tourists | Why Stock-Based Comp is the Hidden Sin of the Valley with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital Mar 07, 2026

Show notes

Mitchell Green is a legendary growth equity investor and the Founder and Managing Partner of Lead Edge Capital, a firm with over $5 billion in assets under management. Known as a relentless "money maker", Mitchell has led investments in the likes of Bytedance, Toast, Procore, Duo Security and more.

AGENDA:

0:00 The SaaS Apocalypse: Why Incumbents Aren't Going to Zero

05:50 "Dead Money": Why Public Software Estimates Were Too High

08:15 Leverage is the Enemy: Lessons from the 1999 Retail Crash

11:50 The Truth About Growth Equity: Zeroes vs. 10X Returns

15:40 Mainframes to AI: Why Oracle and SAP Will Thrive

20:35 The "Stock-Based Comp" Scandal: Silicon Valley's Hidden Crime

24:35 ByteDance vs. The World: Why China Could Win the AI War

31:50 Selling is the Job: Why Buying is the Most Glamorous Part of VC

35:45 Too Many Tourists: Why 50% of VCs Shouldn't Be in the Business

44:10 The Gross Dollar Retention Rule: The Only Number That Matters in SaaS

20VC: Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins | OpenAI's $110BN Mega Round | Cursor Hits $2BN in ARR | Block's 40% Headcount Reduction: AI or Overhiring Mar 05, 2026

Show notes

AGENDA:

04:13 Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins

13:54 Was Sam Altman Wrong to Take the Deal

24:28 OpenAI's $110BN Mega Round: The Breakdown

28:22 Who Has a Bigger Valuation Premium: Sam Altman or Elon Musk

34:38 Why We Got the SaaS Apocalypse Wrong?

43:24 Why Salesforce Could be the Best Buy in Public Markets

47:46 Block Lays Off 40% of Team: AI or Overhiring

01:00:16 Cursor Hits $2BN in ARR… so not Dead?

01:18:15 How to Pick Winners in AI?