The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Episodes
20Product: Why Product Memes Are More Important Than a Product Roadmap, Why Writing is the Essential Skill for Product People, How AI Changes The Role of Product, Big Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Product Teams with Kevin Niparko, VP Product @ Twilio
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Niparko is the VP of Product @ Twilio. Kevin joined Twilio through the acquisition of Segment where he spent an incredible 8 years in numerous ...
20VC: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me"; We Have Lied to a Generation of Founders | The Hardest Truths About Being a Founder Revealed | Why AI Co-Pilot is BS, Seat Pricing is Over & User Interfaces are Stupid with Christian Lanng
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Christian Lanng is the Founder and Former CEO @ Tradeshift, a company he took from garage to unicorn raising over $900M for with a latest price of $2...
20VC: Marc Benioff on The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge? Marc Benioff's Five Step Process to Priorities and Why Money Does Not Make You Happy & Work From Home vs In-Person; How to Manage in Changing Worlds
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Marc Benioff is Chair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing. Under Benioff's leadership, Salesforce...
20VC: Are Foundation Models Becoming Commoditised? Do OpenAI and Anthropic of the World Have a Sustaining Moat? Why Smaller Models May Work Better? Why Incumbents with Data Power Win the AI War with Christian Kleinerman, SVP Product @ Snowflake
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Christian Kleinerman is the SVP of Product @ Snowflake. Before Snowflake, Christian spent close to 5 years at Google as a Senior Director of Product ...
20VC Roundtable: Is the VC Model Broken? The Biggest Disconnect Ever Between TVPI & DPI, Why Market Size is Dangerous, Why "Go Fast" is Terrible Advice, The Dangers of Raising Large Rounds at High Prices & Why Next Year Will See the Biggest Hiring Spree i
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Paley is the Managing Partner at Founder Collective, one of the world's most successful seed funds with investments in the likes of Uber, The...
20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Miles Grimshaw is a General Partner @ Benchmark, widely considered one of the best venture capital firms in history. Prior to joining the Benchmark P...
20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Douwe Kiela is the CEO o...
20VC: The Dubsmash Memo: Scaling to 43M Users in 10 Days, Why TikTok Was a Competitor Like Never Seen Before, Good vs Great Consumer Products and What Every Consumer Product Needs & The Future of Consumer Social with Suchit Dash
13 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Suchit Dash is the VP of Core Product Experience at Reddit, responsible for the surfaces that millions of users interact with daily. Prior to Reddit,...
20VC: Lessons Building Nubank to the Largest Neobank in the World, How AI Changes The Future of Finance, Leadership Lessons from Sequoia's Doug Leone & What European and US Fintech Can Learn From LATAM with David Velez, Founder @ Nubank
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Velez is the Founder and CEO of Nubank, one of the largest and fastest-growing financial institutions in the world. 1 in 2 people in Brazil alo...
20Sales: Why Everyone is Responsible for Demand Generation, How to do Great Sales Discovery, How to Reduce Sales Cycles and Create Urgency and Deal Reviews; Good and Bad Reasons to Lose a Deal with Doug Adamic, CRO @ Brex
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Doug Adamic is the CRO @ Brex and leads the company's revenue and growth strategy. Prior to Brex, Doug was most recently the Chief Revenue Officer at...
20VC: Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds & AUM is a Vanity Metric | Why 99% of Investments in AI Startups Will Go To Zero | Being a "Traction First" VC & Investing Lessons from Investing in Canva and Missing Figma with Nikhil Basu-Trivedi
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm investing its first fund. In his venture career,...
20VC: The $3.1BN Meeting That Led to an Uber Acquisition, The Battle With Uber; How to Outcompete When You Have 10x Less Cash & The Marketing Campaigns That Led to Pakistan MDs Fleeing and Elon Musk Fanboying with Mudassir Sheikha, CEO @ Careem
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and Co-Founder of Careem. Over the last 11 years, Mudassir has scaled the service to more than 80 cities in 10 countries,...
20VC: Spending $2M to Train a Single AI Model: What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size | Hallucinations: Feature or Bug | Will Everyone Have an AI Friend in the Future & Raising $150M from a16z with Noam Shazeer, Co-Founder & CEO @ Character.ai
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI, a full-stack AI computing platform that gives people access to their own flexible superintell...
20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has ...
20Product: Enterprises are not Adopting AI Yet, When Will AI Break Into Enterprise, What are the Blockers, What Do Enterprises Need from AI & Why Services Companies Will Win in the Next 10 Years of AI Implementation with Howie Liu, Founder & CEO @ Airtabl
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Howie Liu is the Founder and CEO @ Airtable, the fastest way to build apps for your business. To date, Howie has raised over $1BN with Airtable with ...
20VC: NEW FORMAT: Mega Funds Will Come Back, Why Markups Have Corrupted VC, Why RIFs Should Always Be An Embarrassment To SaaS Founders and Why Pitching is BS and Fake with Jason Lemkin and Rick Zullo
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments i...
20VC: The Biggest Lies of Silicon Valley, Why Entrepreneurship is Not For Everyone, Why VCs are Out of Touch, Why Many Would Be Great Entrepreneurs Will Burn Out, Why You Should Let Your Children Suffer and Why You Will Choose The Wrong Partner with Nick
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Huber is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and content creator focused on real estate and small business. In the last 9 months, Nick has co-foun...
20VC: Does Value Accrue to Incumbents or Startups in the AI Race, Why Model Size Matters More Than Data Size, Why Artificial General Intelligence is Far Away, Why Carpenters Will Be Paid More Than Software Engineers & Future of Jobs with Richard Socher
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Before that, Richard was th...
20Growth: Why Product-Market Fit is Not Enough, Revenue Does Not Create Usage, Metrics Must Be Before Strategy, Why it is Always Better to Concentrate than Diversify Marketing Channels and Secrets from Hubspot's Growth Engine with Brian Balfour @ Reforge
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Balfour is the Founder and CEO of Reforge. Previously, he was the VP of Growth @ HubSpot. Prior to HubSpot, he was an EIR @ Trinity Ventures an...
20VC: Scaling Wait But Why to 600,000 Subs; Behind the Scenes on The Research Process, How to Learn Entirely New Topics Fast, The Writing Process and Building Good Habits & The Distribution Process and the Business Behind the Blog with Tim Urban
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Urban is the writer/illustrator and co-founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a...
20VC Roundtable: NEW FORMAT: Why the Seed Investing Model is Broken, How to Make Money at Seed Moving Forward; Who Wins and Who Loses, Why Venture Value Add Platforms are BS and Failed and Why There Will be an IPO per Week in H2 2024
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Lessin is a Co-Founder and Partner @ Slow Ventures with a portfolio including the likes of Airtable, Robinhood, Slack, Solana, PillPack and many ...
20VC: The Memo: The State of the VC Market: Why Seed Funds Can't Invest in "Hot Startups" Anymore, Why Series A & B is Terrible, Why the IPO Market Will Explode in 2024 & Why VC DD is BS & Every VC Has More Fraud in their Portfolio with Jason Lemkin
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in ...
20VC: Vinod Khosla on How AI Impacts The Future of Healthcare, Education, Income Equality, Geo-Politics, Music and Climate Change
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vinod Khosla is the Founder of Khosla Ventures, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with investments in OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Com...
20VC: Why "Hire Great People and Get Out of the Way" is Total BS, Why Your Upbringing Can Make You a Worse Leader & A Bentley, Two Nissan Cubes and Becoming One of Macedonia's Largest Employers; The Story of Slice with Ilir Sela
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ilir Sela is the Founder and CEO of Slice, the all-in-one ordering and marketing tech platform for local pizzerias. Through its partnerships, Slice h...
20Sales: Why The Founder Has To Be The One To Create The Sales Playbook, When To Hire Your First Rep, Why Junior is Better Than Senior, How to Manage Sales Rep Compensation, How To Onboard New Sales Reps and more with Lori Jimenez, CRO @ WorkRamp
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lori Jimenez is the Chief Revenue Officer at WorkRamp where she is responsible for sales, customer success, solutions engineering, sales development,...
20VC: Marcelo Claure & Shu Nyatta on Lessons from Investing $7.5BN at Softbank & Why Dumb Money has Gone, Why "LATAM is Under Construction" and the Next 10 Years Will Be the Best & Investing Lessons from Missing Nubank & OpenAI & Investing in FTX
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Marcelo Claure is the Founder & CEO of Claure Group, a multi-billion-dollar global investment firm. He is the Executive Chairman and Managing Partner...
20VC: Four Criteria to Assess Great Founders, Why and How the Best Leaders Make the Wrong Decisions 40% of the Time, Lessons Scaling King from 100 Employees to 2,400 and Making $1BN of EBITDA with Stephane Kurgan, Venture Partner @ Index Ventures
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stephane Kurgan is widely considered one of the best operators in Europe. During his tenure as COO @ King, King went from $65m to $2.4B in bookings, ...
20Growth: Biggest Growth Lessons from Instacart and Opendoor, Why 70% of Growth Experiments Should Fail and How to Fail Fast, How to Hire a Growth Team; Secrets and Tips & Why Operator Investors WIll be the Best Investors in 10 Years with Sri Batchu @ Ram
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sri Batchu currently leads Growth at Ramp. He previously led Growth Strategy and Operations at Instacart where he also helped grow their Ads business...
20VC: Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri on Threads: The Journey from 0-100M Users; What Worked, What Didn't and the Plans Ahead | Instagram: Biggest Mistakes, Successes, Misconceptions, TikTok Competition & The Future of Social Media; Interest Graph or Friend G
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, where he is responsible for overseeing the engineering, product, and business teams and leading Meta's efforts...
20VC: Why Hiring in Tech is Broken and Founders Need to be as Good at Firing as they are Hiring, Why Product Differentiation is Unsustainable & Why the Current Generation of Tech Employees are Entitled and What Needs to Change with Jean-Denis Greze @ Plai
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jean-Denis Greze is Chief Technology Officer at Plaid where oversees global product business units across North America and Europe. Prior to joining ...
20Product: The Secret to Successful Onboarding from Notion and Airtable, The Biggest Mistakes Startups Make in PLG Today& Why 90% of Onboarding Today is Done Poorly with Lauryn Isford, Head of Product Growth @ Notion
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lauryn Isford is the Head of Product Growth at Notion, managing Notion's product-led growth engine and self-serve business. Before Notion, she led gr...
20VC: Top Three Lessons from Working with Jeff Bezos for 23 Years at Amazon, How the Best Leader Hire, Fire, Prioritise and Make Decisions & How to Be Responsible for 1M Employees and Be a Rockstar Husband and Father with Dave Clark @ Flexport
17 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Clark is the CEO of Flexport, the global freight forwarder and logistics platform that has now raised over $2.5BN to build the category leader. ...
20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sheel Mohnot is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $225M fund that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage fintech ...
20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian
12 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Egan is the Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian and brings more than 25 years of enterprise sales experience and leadership to the com...
20VC: Simon Sinek on Trust; How it is Gained and Lost | Why Millennials Avoid Conflict | How to Listen Effectively | What Makes The Best Feedback and How to Provide It | Why Humans Do Not Change & How To Find Out Who You Really Are
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Sinek is an optimist and author, as we discuss in the show today. Simon is best known for his TED Talk on the concept of WHY (62M views), and ...
20VC: Why Data Size Matters More Than Model Size, Why The Google Employee Was Wrong; OpenAI and Google Have the Advantage & Why Open Source is Not Going to Win with Douwe Kiela, Co-Founder @ Contextual AI
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Last month Contextual closed a $20...
20VC: The Rent the Runway Memo: How Paid Marketing & Growth Hacking Ruined a Generation of Companies, When Will Rent the Runway Be Profitable & How Does it Compare to Other Fashion Co's and Why "I Wish I Ran My Startup Like a Public Company"
28 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Hyman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, the world's first and largest shared designer closet. Under Jennifer's leadership, RTR h...
20VC: Eight Pieces of Startup Advice that are BS: Why You Do Not Have to Love Your Space, It Is Ok To Do It For The Money, Focus Is Not Everything, Speed Is Not The Most Important Thing with Akin Babayigit, Co-Founder @ Tripledot Studios
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Akin Babayigit is a serial entrepreneur and an active angel investor. He is currently the Founder and COO of Tripledot Studios, one of the fastest-gr...
20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Go is a co-founder and Partner at NextView, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Attentive, Devoted Health...
20Growth: How to Master PR and Comms, How to Get Your Startup Written About; Press Releases, Fundraising Announcements, Embargos etc & Lessons Scaling Duolingo from 3-200M Users with Gina Gotthilf, Co-Founder @ Latitud
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gina Gotthilf is a Co-Founder and COO at Latitud, an a16z-backed platform supporting the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America thr...
20VC: Why No Models Today Will Be Used in a Year, Why Open Will Always Beat Closed in AI, Why Proprietary Data is Less Important Than Ever And Why EU AI Regulation is a Disaster with Alex Lebrun, Founder & CEO @ Nabla
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded...
20Product: Slack CPO Noah Weiss on How to Master Product-Led-Growth, The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling Into Enterprise & What Needs to Change with your Product, Team and Processes when Scaling From PLG to Enterprise
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Noah Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack, overseeing the product team's strategy and development. Over his seven years at Slack, Noah has led...
20VC: UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak on Investing More in AI Safety Research Than Any Other Country in the World, How AI Changes the Future of Education, His Top 5 Priorities as Prime Minister Today & How to Make the UK the Centre of AI
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was previously appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer from 13 February 2020 to 5 July 2022...
20VC: Larry Summers on How to Manage Inflation; Should We Increase Rates Even Higher, Why We Need To Change The US Tax System, Why Europe is a Museum, China is a Jail and Bitcoin is an Experiment & How a Trump Win Would Hurt the US Economy
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Larry Summers is the Former Treasury Secretary and one of America's leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury ...
20VC: What are the World's Tech Leaders Running From? Fear? Insecurity? Poverty? What Drives the Best with Orlando Bravo, Bill Ackman, Dara Khosrowshahi, Parker Conrad, Tobi Luttke, Brian Armstrong and more..
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Orlando Bravo is a Founder and Managing Partner of Thoma Bravo. He led Thoma Bravo's early entry into software buyouts and built the firm into one o...
20Sales: PLG and Early Adopter Sales are Gone, How to do Sales Forecasting in 2023, Why You Cannot Do PLG and Enterprise from Day 1 at the Same Time and Which is Easier to Start, How to Onboard, Manage and Scale Reps with Rich Liu, CRO @ Everlaw
07 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rich Liu is the CRO @ Everlaw and a unicorn GTM exec having scaled five multi-billion dollar tech unicorns across two IPOs, a successful acquisition,...
20VC: The Largest Venture Backed D2C Consumer Exit; PillPack: $0-$300M Revenues in 5 Years & The Biggest Lessons Scaling the B2B Business to $300M in 2.5 Years with TJ Parker, Co-Founder @ PillPack
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
TJ Parker is the co-founder and former CEO of PillPack. TJ Raised over $100M in financing, grew the company to more than 1k employees, and successful...
20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
02 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the core questions in AI and investing today; who wins, startups or incumbents? Startups have speed and innovation but incumbents have scale, ...
20VC: The On Running Memo: From Swiss Mountains to NASDAQ IPO: The Story of Three Friends Who Built a Sports Giant
31 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Alleman is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman @ On Running one of the fastest-growing global sports brands with over 17 million products sold in 60...
20VC: Why Financial Models at Seed, $5M Seed Rounds & The Fear of Signalling Risk is all BS | Why Multi-Stage Firms Have Destroyed Seed & Who Wins and Who Loses in the Next 10 Years of Venture with Adam Besvinick, Founding Partner @ Looking Glass Capital
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Besvinick is the Founder of Looking Glass Capital, a pre-seed-focused firm started in 2020. Before starting Looking Glass, Adam spent about 5 ye...
20Product: How Linkedin Does Product Reviews, A Post-Mortem on Stories, Linkedin Messenger and Spam & Why the Data Advantage in AI is Diminishing with Tomer Cohen, CPO @ Linkedin
26 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tomer Cohen is the CPO @ Linkedin. Since joining in 2012, Tomer has served in key leadership roles, helping launch and scale new innovative member an...
20VC: Why Being First To Market Does Not Matter, Why You Do Not Have Defensibility on Day 1, How to Analyse Market Size and Present it to Investors, Vitamins vs Painkillers; Do Vitamins Survive Recessions and Good vs Great Messaging with Guy Podjarny @ Sn
24 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Guy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, the leading Developer Security platform, helping developers secure as they build. Guy was previously CTO at Akam...
20VC: Why Your Fund Model Should Not Rely on $10BN+ Outcomes, Why the Large Funds Got Too Large, The Rise of Solo GP's; The Pros and Cons & Is Consumer Subscription Even a Good Sector to Invest in with Nico Wittenborn @ Adjacent
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nico Wittenborn is the Founder of Adjacent, one of the best early-stage firms created over the last 5 years. Before starting Adjacent, Nico spent ove...
20Growth: Three Growth Lessons Scaling Whatsapp from 0-100M, Why You Should Hire a Head of Growth Sooner Than You Think & The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth with Ryan Wiggins, Head of Growth @ Mercury
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan Wiggins is the VP of Growth and Analytics at Mercury where he oversees a Growth team and founded the Analytics function. Prior to this, Ryan bui...
20VC: Why the AI Bubble Will Be Bigger Than The Dot Com Bubble, Why AI Will Have a Bigger Impact Than COVID, Why No Models Used Today Will Be Used in a Year, Why All Models are Biased and How AI Kills Traditional Media with Emad Mostaque, Founder & CEO @
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate huma...
20VC: Yann LeCun on Why Artificial Intelligence Will Not Dominate Humanity, Why No Economists Believe All Jobs Will Be Replaced by AI, Why the Size of Models Matters Less and Less & Why Open Models Beat Closed Models
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center...
20VC: Why The Future of AI Is Open Not Closed, Why We Are Years Away From AI Being Autonomous, Why AI Founders Do Not Need to Move to the Valley & Why Founders Should Not Meet Investors in Between Rounds with Clem Delangue @ Hugging Face
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. To date, Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of S...
20Sales: How to Scale a Career While Scaling a Family, Strategies and Specific Tools To Help Maintain Work-Life Balance, What Companies Can Do To Empower Parents To Be Their Best Selves & How to Prevent Parental Leave Being an Inhibitor To Your Career
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today's 20Sales is a special Mother's Day edition where we are joined by 6 of the best sales leaders who also happen to be rockstar mothers. The Pr...
20VC: Why VC Subsidizes the Wrong Type of Business, Why Capital Gains Tax is Crazy, The Biggest Misalignments Between VCs, Founders and LPs, Why Business Model - Product Fit is as Important as Product-Market-Fit with Chris Paik @ Pace Capital
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Paik is a General Partner @ Pace Capital, an early-stage venture firm in NYC. Pace's first fund was $150M and their second was $250M. Before co...
20VC: Alex Rodriguez (AROD) on Investing Lessons from Warren Buffet, How a Meeting with Magic Johnson Changed His Approach to Business and The Single Best and Worst Investment Decisions he has Made and Why AROD Is Not Buying More Real Estate
05 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Rodriguez is a businessman and the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of A-Rod Corp, a broad-based investment firm that bets on world-class st...
20VC: The OpenAI Memo: Why Invest? Is it too Late to Catch OpenAI? Are OpenAI's Models Truly Defensible? Does the Value in AI Accrue to Incumbemts or Startups - Application Layer/Infrastructure? What Happens with Regulation? with Vince Hankes @ Thrive
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vince Hankes is a Partner @ Thrive Capital where he has led the firm's investments in OpenAI, Melio, and Airplane.dev. He currently sits on the board...
20VC: First Republic; Management Responsibility or Result of Contagion in the System, The Future of Regional Banks, Will Interest Rates Go Higher | Net Zero, Where Are We? The Best and the Worst Actors with Mark Carney, Former Governor of The Bank of Engl
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Carney is the Vice Chair and Head of Transition Investing @ Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world's leading asset managers with over $80...
20VC: In AI Who Wins? Startups or Incumbents? What Happens to Wealth Inequality? Why Will $10BN+ Companies Only Have 10 People | Why Defensibility in Startups is BS & Speed is Everything? Why Large Groups Worsen Decision-Making with Sarah Guo
28 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve "Software 3.0" companies. Prior to founding Convic...
20Product: Snap's VP Product on How Snap Hires 10x Product People, What Makes Evan Spiegel So Special at Product, Three Ways to Prioritise Product Ideas in Teams, The Future of AR, Why Snap Glasses Will be Huge and Snap Will Be Massive in Japan with Jack
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Brody is the VP Product @ Snap. Jack joined Snap in 2014 as a Product Designer, and ultimately helped build out the design organization as the H...
20VC: WTF Is Going On In Venture Capital; Seed Round Pricing Will Remain High, Series B & C Has Gone Completely, Downrounds Are Coming | Why Defensibility is BS on Day 1, Why Market is More Important Than Founder & Why Being First To Market Doesn't Matter
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Avlok Kohli is the CEO @ AngelList. Under his leadership, Avlok has taken AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is becoming the software p...
20VC: Who Wins in AI; Startup vs Incumbent, Infrastructure vs Application Layer, Bundled vs Unbundled Providers | From 150 LP Meetings to Closing $230M for Fund I; The Fundraising Process, What Worked, What Didn't and Lessons Learned with Tomasz Tunguz
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-sta...
20Sales: Why You Should Never Hire a VP Sales First, How To Create Urgency in a Sales Process, How to Do Traditional Outbound 10x Better, Why Revenue Doesn't Matter with Your First Customers | Mark Goldberger, Head of Enterprise Sales @ Ramp
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Goldberger is Head of Enterprise Sales at Ramp, the fastest-growing corporate card and bill payment software in America, and recently named Most...
20VC: Scooter Braun on Being Enough, Insecurity, Wealth, Investing, Fame, Marriage and so much more...
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From college party promoter to managing global stars to CEO and investor. Scott "Scooter" Braun is one of the most powerful people in media and one o...
20VC: Biggest Challenge Facing Crypto Today & The Winners and Losers of the Next 10 Years | Why AI Will Lead to More Wealth Equality Than Inequality | Why The Current State of the US Feels Like the End of an Empire with David Marcus, CEO @ Lightspark
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, building infrastructure that extends the capabilities and utility of Bitcoin. Prior to Lightspar...
20Growth: How AI Will Change the Game For Content Creation and SEO, The Secret to Mastering SEO, When and How To Invest in SEO Most Effectively & The Best and Worst SEO Strategies with Joost De Valk, Founder @ Yoast
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Joost De Valk is one of the OGs of SEO. As the Founder of Yoast, he scaled what was a side project plugin into a multi-million dollar business, used ...
20VC: Why Signalling Risk is Real, What Founders Need to Know About Taking Multi-Stage Money vs Seed Fund Money, Lessons Scaling to $600M AUM, The Secret to Hiring in VC; Hire People with No VC Experience & How Venture Will Be Disrupted with Rob Lacher
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Lacher founded Visionaries Club in 2019, in just 3 years he has scaled the firm to $600M AUM and backed some of Europe's best including Xentral, ...
20VC: The Memo: Scaling to $600M Revenues with No Venture Funding, The Most In Detail Breakdown of Consumer Subscription Unit Economics & Why D2C and Consumer Subscription is Not a VC Backable Model with Mike Salguero, Founder @ ButcherBox
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Salguero is the Founder and CEO @ ButcherBox, the meat delivery subscription service that he has scaled to $600M in revenue, 215 employees and t...
20VC: Shopify Founder Tobi Lütke on Why Micromanagement is Good | Why You Will Learn More From Studying World of Warcraft Guilds Than You Will Companies | Why Happiness is BS; Lessons on Marriage, Fatherhood & Decision-Making Quality
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tobi Lütke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shopify, the powerhouse company allowing anyone to start and grow their e-commerce business. Over an incredi...
20VC: The Secret to Negotiating; Making $50BN for Yahoo on Alibaba | Why Everything You Know About Hiring is Wrong; Domain Knowledge and Past Experience are Dangerous | The Next 10 Years for Fintech; Winners, Losers and Crypto with Jackie Reses, CEO @ Lea
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jackie Reses is the Chair and CEO of Lead Bank, a community bank in Kansas City. Previously, she was the Executive Chairman of Square Financial Ser...
20Product: Nubank's CPO on Why Product is 90% Science and 10% Art, Why Execution is Overrated and Strategic Clarity is Under-Appreciated, Why You Should Never Fall in Love With Your Own Ideas & Nubank's Biggest Product Challenges Scaling to 80M Users
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jag Duggal is the CPO @ Nubank where he is responsible for product strategy and roadmap reporting to CEO David Velez. Jag leads over 200 professional...
20VC: Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi on Why Uber Eats is Not Losing the Fight to Doordash | Uber's M&A Strategy; A Scorecard Analysis from Careem to Postmates & Skip | Why Uber's Investment in Scooters was a Mistake | Secret to Marriage, Parenting & High Per
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, where he has managed the company's business in more than 70 countries around the world since 2017. Dara was pre...
20VC: Three Core Lessons for Founders From the SVB Crisis From Financial Agility (Banking) to Constructing Scenario Plans and Mastering Crisis Communications | How The Western World Has Not Been Responsible with its Money & Why The Fed Is Backing Itself I
24 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Maples is one of the OGs of seed investing. As the Co-Founder of Floodgate, he has backed the likes of Twitch, Okta, Lyft, Twitter and more. Mik...
20Sales: The 3 Profiles of a Sales Rep, How to Negotiate in a Sales Process, How to Sell to a CFO & How You Should Shift Sales Messaging in a Downturn with Frank Fillmann, CRO @ Salesforce Australia
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Fillman is CRO/Country Leader Australia for Salesforce where he is responsible for responsible for the overall strategy, execution, success, an...
20VC: Bill Ackman on The Banking Crisis, What the Fed Should Do, The Three-Tiered Banking System, Why SVB is the Safest, Why Jamie Dimon Should Run For President & Investing Lessons; Losing $400M on Netflix and Making $2.8BN in COVID
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Ackman is the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P., an SEC-registered investment adviser founded in 2003. Pershing Square is a concen...
20VC: Why Growth Investors Ruined the Venture Market, Why Marketing in Venture Has No Substance, Why Follow-On Investing Can Damage Returns and The Mistakes VCs Made in the Last 18 Months with Ophelia Brown, Founder @ Blossom Capital
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ophelia Brown is the Founder of Blossom Capital, one of Europe's newest but leading early-stage venture firms. Ophelia and the Blossom team have inve...
20Growth: The Inside Story to Uber's Hypergrowth Scaling; What Worked, What Did Not? | Spending a $1BN Budget at Uber and Why China was the Wild West for Uber | Why You Do Not Need a Growth Team with Adam Grenier
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Grenier is an OG of the growth world. His first role in growth, was none other than Uber where he was Head of Growth Marketing and Innovation bu...
20VC: SVB: What Happened? What Happens Now? Will Depositors Have Deposits Guaranteed? How Long Will It Take? Will There Be a Buyer? Who is the Most Likely Buyer? What is the Best and Worst Outcome?
12 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jackie Reses is the CEO of Lead Bank and previous Exec Chair of Square Financial Services and Head of Lending and Banking. One of only people to have...
20VC: Why AI Will Lead to Thousands of Billionaires and Elon Musk's, Will TikTok Be Banned and How Facebook Should Be Investing in AI & Why Startups Have Become Too Soft; We Need a Spiritual Reform with Amjad Masad, Founder & CEO @ Replit
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amjad Masad is the Founder and CEO @ Replit, whose mission is to bring the next billion software creators online. With Replit, Amjad has raised over ...
20Product: Shopify's VP Product on Why the Founder is Always the Head of Product, What Makes Truly Special Product Managers, Why The Majority of Product Managers Need to Change, Why Top-Down Decision-Making in Product is Good & How Shopify Will Be Bigger
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Glen Coates is the VP of Product @ Shopify, leading the development of Shopify's core commerce platform. He also oversees the core developer platform...
20VC: Meta CMO Alex Schultz on The Crucible Moments Scaling Facebook to 1BN Users, Turning Facebook Reels Into a Monetisation Engine, Competing Against TikTok and SNAP, Coming Out in the World of Tech; The Challenges and What Needs to Change
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Schultz is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Analytics for Meta (formerly Facebook), leading Marketing, Analytics, and Internationalization....
20VC: Will LPs Pull Out of Existing Managers, How Will Fund Sizes Change Moving Forward, Is Now The Time to be Aggressive on Secondaries, What is the Discount on Secondaries Today, Who Will Win and Lose in the Next Five Years with Hunter Somerville, Partn
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hunter Somerville is a Partner @ Stepstone, one of the largest secondary buyers, fund investors and players in our ecosystem with over $600BN in capi...
20VC: The Story of Ring: Scaling from an Idea in a Garage to Richard Branson Investing and a Reported $1BN Amazon Acquisition | Why Building a Brand is Like Making Great Wine | The Secret to Hiring Success; Hire Marathoners and more with Jamie Siminoff
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jamie Siminoff is the Founder and Chief Inventor @ Ring, with Ring Jamie, created the world's first Wi-Fi video doorbell while working in his garage ...
20VC: How Multi-Stage Funds Changed The Game For Seed Rounds, Why Signalling Risk is BS, The Three Most Important Variables for Founders When Raising Rounds & A Debate on Portfolio Construction: Does Ownership Matter with David Tisch
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, one of the leading seed-stage investment firms of the last decade having invested in over 500 seed...
20VC: Why Value Investing is BS, The Most Insane Elements of SPACs, Why Simplification is the Secret to High Margins & Why Good Values Should Make You Uncomfortable with Joey Levin, CEO @ IAC
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Joey Levin is the CEO of IAC where he has overseen the constant evolution of the company, including the initial IPO and subsequent spin-off of Match ...
20VC: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger on Why Social Networks Should Be Less Social & The Next Wave of Social | Why San Francisco Will Return with a Vengeance and The Future For Remote Work | Let's Get Personal: Relationships to Money, Be
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are the co-founders of Instagram. Since its release in 2010, Instagram has become of the most significant products in ...
20Sales: What is Sales Engineering? When and How to Hire Them? How They Should Work With AE's? How to Measure Their Success? How They Change Close Rates and Sales Comp Plans with Zach Lawryk, Head of Solutions Consulting @ Rippling
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zach Lawryk is Head of Solutions Consulting @ Rippling, what is solutions consulting? They are the product expert in the solution that ties a busines...
20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions"
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Aloe Blacc is a GRAMMY nominee and the voice behind such hits as Wake Me Up, The Man, SOS, I Need A Dollar, and many more. Aloe has toured the world,...
20Growth: Top Five Growth Lessons Scaling Stitchfix to IPO, How to Master the Art of Paid Marketing, Why CAC/LTV is a BS Metric & How To Use Payback Period as an Alternative to CAC/LTV with Mike Duboe, Partner @ Greylock
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Duboe is a Partner @ Greylock where he sits on the board of Builder, Inventa, Novi, Pepper, Postscript. Prior to entering the world of venture, ...
20VC: Why This Time Will Be Worse Than The Great Financial Crisis, Why Down-Rounds, Firesales and Shutdowns Will Happen & The Ultimate Startup Survival Guide; 7 Steps to Ensure Your Company Survives The Storm
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Loverro is a Partner @ IVP where he has led or was actively involved in investments in Amplitude, Coinbase, Hashicorp and Datadog to name a few. ...
20VC: Boston Celtics' Steve Pagliuca on The Future of Sports Team Ownership; What Happened with the Chelsea Acquisition | Why More Money is Pouring Into Sport Than Ever & Do These Assets Keep Increasing in Value
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Pagliuca is a Senior Advisor at Bain Capital, the firm he joined in 1982 and as a Managing Director of Bain Capital, he has helped build the fi...
20VC: Why Salesforce, SAP and Concur Will Die | Scaling 3x and Raising at a $9.2BN Valuation in COVID | How OpenAI is Changing the Travel Industry Forever | Never Before Revealed Margins on Travel and Expense Management with Ariel Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ariel Cohen is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Navan (formerly TripActions), the #1 travel management super-app used by over 8,000 companies. Ariel has rais...
20VC: Thoma Bravo's Orlando Bravo on Why Now is The New Normal, Why Every Company in the World is Worth its Future Cashflows, The Three Core Elements Thoma Bravo Need to See in Any Potential Deal & Orlando's Relationship to Risk, Wealth and Parenting
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Orlando Bravo is a Founder and Managing Partner of Thoma Bravo. He led Thoma Bravo's early entry into software buyouts and built the firm into one of...
20Product: When to Hire a CPO, The Three Different Types of CPO, How To Know What You Need, How To Structure the Hiring Process, What Are the Must-Ask Questions, What Tests and Case Studies Should Be Used, How Should Their Compensation Package Be Structur
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Annie Pearl is the CPO @ Calendly, the company that makes scheduling meetings simple and painless. Before Calendly, Annie led Glassdoor's product v...
20VC: From $57M in ARR to $297M in Just 12 Months; Why Speed of Execution is the Most Important Factor to Success, Hiring 2,000 People in 3 Years Remotely & Secondaries; Why, When and How Much To Take Out with Alex Bouaziz, Co-Founder & CEO @ Deel
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Deel, the all-in-one platform made to simplify all things HR, built for global teams near and far. In the la...
20VC: Homebrew's Hunter Walk and Satya Patel on Why $100M is Not Enough To Execute a Seed Strategy Today | Why They Decided not to Raise New External Funds | Where Are We in the Cycle & What is Truly F***** | Why Founders Should Take Secondaries Earlier
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hunter Walk and Satya Patel are Co-Founders and Partners @ Homebrew, one of the leading seed funds of the last decade. Following 10 years of stellar ...