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

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

1,063 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 months ago - ★★★★ - 292 ratings

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman.

If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.

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Episodes

20VC: Why Every Employee Should Re-Apply For Their Job Every Year & The Strategies To Prepare For A Successful Fundraise with Kyle Hill, Founder & CEO @ HomeHero

July 15, 2016 06:16 - 29 minutes - 24 MB

Kyle Hill is the Co-Founder & CEO @ HomeHero, one of the largest providers of non-medical home care in California. HomeHero has provided over 1 million hours of care to thousands of families and won "Best Employment Website of 2014". Due to this immense success Kyle has been on CNN, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and many more. HomeHero has raised funds from some of the world's best investors including Chamath & Mamoon @ Social Capital, Jason Calacanis @ TWIST and Peter & Michael @ Science Inc....

20VC: USV's Brad Burnham on Co-Founding USV with Fred Wilson, What They Look For In Potential Partners & Whether We Are Entering a Period of Consolidation or Expansion

July 13, 2016 07:07 - 24 minutes - 19.8 MB

Brad Burnham is the Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Union Square Ventures. I feel Brad is far better described by his partner Fred Wilson, than I ever could so this is Fred's words on Brad. "Brad and I founded USV together in 2003. We had both been in the venture business for more than a decade, had made a fair bit of money, but were still hungry to prove ourselves. Brad is the strategist and the most principled investor in our firm. It was Brad's idea to write a treatise on venture capital ...

20VC: USV's Albert Wenger on Automation Replacing Humans, The Universal Basic Income and The Instalment & The Deployment Phase

July 11, 2016 06:35 - 26 minutes - 21.6 MB

Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the world's leading VC firms with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Zynga, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Lending Club and many more. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert also writes a fantastic blog at Co...

20VC: When To Transition From Growth to Profitability & The KPI's of The On Demand Economy with Frank Mycroft @ Booster Fuels

July 08, 2016 10:28 - 29 minutes - 23.5 MB

Frank Mycroft is the Founder & CEO @ Booster Fuels, the on-demand fuel delivery service backed by the likes of our friends at Maveron and Version One. As for Frank himself, he is literally a former rocket scientist with Nasa and has more degrees that I have done podcast episodes, making him one of the smartest guests we have ever had on the show. Directly prior to Booster Fuels, Frank was the VP of Strategy @ Planetary Resources, the Redmond based, asteroid mining company.   In Today’s Epi...

20VC: What It Takes To Raise A VC Fund & Investing in First Time Fund Managers with Michael Kim @ Cendana Capital

July 06, 2016 06:49 - 27 minutes - 22.3 MB

Michael Kim is the founder and Managing Partner of Cendana Capital, a fund of funds which invests in seed VC funds. Michael has many of our previous guests in his portfolio including the likes of SoftTech, Freestyle, Founder Collective, Collaborative Fund and many more, clearly great minds think alike! Prior to Cendana, Michael was one of the original partners of Rustic Canyon Partners a VC firm with $1bn AUM. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Michael made his way into VC and th...

20VC: The 4 Required Powers For A Startup To Be A $500m Business with "The Most Powerful Woman in Startups", Ann Miura Ko, Co-Founder @ Floodgate

July 04, 2016 09:22 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MB

Ann Miura-Ko has been called "the most powerful woman in startups" by Forbes and is the Co-Founder of Floodgate, one of the valley's leading early stage funds with investments in the likes of Twitter, Twitch and TaskRabbit. Some of Ann's investments at Floodgate include Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Maker Media, Wanelo, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. Ann is also a lecturer in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where she got her PhD focused on mathematical mod...

20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden

July 01, 2016 08:51 - 28 minutes - 22.8 MB

Josh Udashkin is the Founder and CEO @ Raden, essentially making the unsexy sexy with a design-forward app-connected piece of luggage that provides a superior end-to-end travel experience. Prior to founding Raden, Udashkin practiced law and did international development for Canadian shoe company, Aldo. To date, Raden have raised funds from our friends @ First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Pritzker Group and many more incredible investors.     In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How J...

20VC: Felicis' Wesley Chan on The Rise of IoT, Getting Recruited by Larry Page & Creating Google's Biggest Success Disaster

June 29, 2016 09:25 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MB

Wesley Chan is a Manging Director @ Felicis Ventures where he has led investments in the likes of Canva, Flexport and Luma, just to name a few. Prior to Felicis, Wesley was a General Partner @ Google Ventures. Before Google Ventures he was an early employee at Google, where he founded and launched Google Analytics and Google Voice, resulting in his being awarded Google’s Founders Award–the company’s most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google’s early client efforts, wh...

20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid

June 27, 2016 08:35 - 26 minutes - 21.3 MB

David Cohen is the founder and managing partner at Techstars, so a few amazing stats on techstars first, they have a total of 762 companies of which 90% are active or have been acquired, having raised more than 2bn in funding, as for David he is a serial entrepreneur having founded Pinpoint Technologies which was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation in 1999. and David was also the founder and CEO of earFeeder.com, a music service which was sold to SonicSwap.com in 2006. In Today's Episode ...

20VC: X.ai's Dennis Mortensen on Why There Is No Incumbency Advantage in Artificial Intelligence

June 24, 2016 11:55 - 30 minutes - 24.9 MB

Dennis Mortensen is the CEO and Founder of X.ai, the artificial intelligence driven personal assistant that lets people schedule meetings using plain English and nothing more than a CC to [email protected]. Their female persona Amy is so lifelike that users have asked her on a date at a rate of one request per month! X.ai is now one of the best funded AI startups having raised over $30m from our friends at FirstMark and a big thanks to Matt Turck for making the intro and from DCM, who also helped u...

20VC: Why Bots Are The New Black, Conversational Interface Is The Next of For Consumerisation and The Determinants Of A Successful Marketplace with Annie Kadavy, General Partner @ CRV

June 22, 2016 09:37 - 31 minutes - 25.6 MB

Annie Kadavy is a General Partner @ Charles River Ventures. The prestigious VC fund that is now on it's 16th fund and has backed the likes of Twitter, Yammer and Mailbox just to name a few. At CRV, Annie focuses on all things consumer and has either led or sourced their investments in ClassPass, Cratejoy, Patreon, Laurel & Wolf and DoorDash. Prior to CRV, Annie spent time with SV Angel and Warby Parker. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Annie made her way into the world of VC? ...

20VC: Andy Rachleff, Founder @ Benchmark & Wealthfront on What Makes The Best CEO & Board Member & Why Ivy League Endowments Are The Best Managed Capital In The World

June 20, 2016 08:19 - 26 minutes - 20.9 MB

From 1995 until 2004 Andy Rachleff was a co-founder and General Partner of Benchmark Capital, who have backed the likes of Twitter, Snapchat, Dropbox, Uber and Instagram. Upon his retirement from Benchmark, Andy joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to teach a variety of courses on entrepreneurship. In 2008 he co-founded Wealthfront Inc, the online financial advisor and investment management solution,  where he now serves as Executive Chairman. In just 3 years, Wealt...

20VC: Raising $150m, Meeting Yuri Milner & Revolutionising Mobile Finance with Sasha Orloff @ LendUp

June 17, 2016 11:30 - 24 minutes - 19.9 MB

Sasha Orloff is the CEO and Co-founder of LendUp, a fintech startup offering online and mobile personal loans and credit cards in the United States. Prior to launching LendUp Sasha was on the other side of the table as a VC with Citi Group’s corporate venture capital arm. On the topic of VC funding, LendUp raised an incredible $150m in Jan 2016 from likes of SV Angel, Yuri Milner our friends at Susa and Google Ventures just to name a few.  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Sa...

20VC: Will LPs Replace GPs with Chris Douvos, Managing Director @ VIA

June 15, 2016 05:56 - 29 minutes - 23.9 MB

Chris Douvos is Managing Director @ Venture Investment Associates (VIA) where he is a member of the Firm’s Investment Committee and has responsibility for the management of relationships with the funds’ managers and its limited partners, as well as the identification and development of new relationships for the Firm. Prior to joining VIA, he spent time at The Investment Fund For Foundations (TIFF). where he was responsible for over $1 billion. Prior to that, Chris worked on Princeton Unive...

20VC: What LP's Want In VCs with Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures

June 13, 2016 07:20 - 28 minutes - 22.8 MB

Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures where she leads Sapphire’s investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Prior to joining Sapphire, Beezer managed day-to-day operations @ DFJ’s Global Network, which had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide. She has also spent time at Omidyar Network created by Ebay founder, Pierre Omdiyar, Hewlett Packard and Morgan Stanley. Beezer also runs the incredible openlp.com which is really opening...

20VC: Start Niche, Move Broader & Become Profitable Quickly with Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO @ Canva

June 10, 2016 07:45 - 26 minutes - 20.9 MB

Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO at Canva the disruptive online platform allowing anyone to create professional quality designs. They have over 10m users from 179 countries and have funding from our friends at Shasta, Felicis and upcoming guests Blackbird Ventures and Airtree in Australia. Prior to Canva, Melanie was the Fusion Yearbooks which she grew to be the largest Yearbook publisher in Australia.  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Melanie come to found Canva, what was th...

20VC: Spark's Nabeel Hyatt on Investing in Oculus and Cruise & What It Takes To Invest Ahead Of The Curve

June 08, 2016 08:16 - 26 minutes - 21.5 MB

Nabeel Hyatt is a venture partner at Spark Capital where he invests in entrepreneurs using that rare combination of design and technology to transform markets. He is currently on the board of Spark Capital’s investments in Cruise (acquired by General Motors), Fig, Harmonix, Postmates, Proletariat, and Thalmic Labs. Nabeel was previously cofounder and CEO of Conduit Labs, which was sold to Zynga in 2010, where he then became General Manager up through the IPO. Prior to that he was variously c...

20VC: Spark's Bijan Sabet on Investing in Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare & Why First Time Founders Are So Exciting

June 06, 2016 08:08 - 24 minutes - 19.7 MB

Bijan Sabet is General Partner @ Spark Capital where he primarily invests in digital canvases and online communities for people at work and at play. Bijan led early investments for Spark in the likes of Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, OMGPOP and Runkeeper just to name a few. Before becoming an investor, Bijan led product management and business development at GameLogic (acquired by Scientific Games), Moxi Digital (acquired by Digeo) and WebTV Networks (acquired by Microsoft Corporation).   ...

20VC: inDinero's Jessica Mah on Why Angel Money Is Better Than Institutional Money and Boards Should Work For Founders

June 03, 2016 09:06 - 24 minutes - 19.6 MB

Jessica Mah is Founder and CEO of inDinero, which she started back in 2010 to help entrepreneurs with all their accounting and tax needs after going through the same challenges with her own businesses. Jessica has grown inDinero from zero to multi-million dollar revenues with over 100 full-time employees and has been featured in the Forbes and Inc 30 Under 30 Lists.  The company has raised over $10M to date and is growing rapidly. Her goal is grow inDinero into being the leading accounting p...

20VC: The Future For Autonomous Vehicles & How Software Is Eating Cars with Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Investor @ Shasta Ventures

June 01, 2016 05:53 - 27 minutes - 22.4 MB

Nikhil Basu Trivedi is an early stage investor with Shasta Ventures, where he focuses on consumer, mobile and SaaS. Prior to joining Shasta, Nikhil was a member of the Insight Venture Partners team in NYC. Before making the move into venture, Nikhil co-founded Artsy in his sophomore year at Princeton University, Artsy now employs over 100 people and has raised over $50m in venture financing. One of Nikhil's main passions is self driving cars and so today's show will be centred around the p...

20VC: Is Big Data Still A Thing with Matt Turck, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital

May 30, 2016 09:35 - 30 minutes - 24.5 MB

Matt Turck is Managing Director of FirstMark Capital where he invests across a broad range of early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. Prior to FirstMark, he was a Managing Director at Bloomberg Ventures, the investment and incubation arm of Bloomberg LP. Previously, Matt was the co-founder of TripleHop Technologies, a venture-backed enterprise search software startup that was acquired by Oracle. Matt organizes two large monthly events, Data Driven NYC (focuses on Big Data and AI) and...

20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model

May 27, 2016 09:35 - 26 minutes - 21.4 MB

Jessica Lessin founder and Editor in Chief of The Information. Prior to The Information, she covered Silicon the technology industry for eight years at the Wall Street Journal where she wrote nearly 1,000 articles for the paper, consistently breaking news about major products, management changes and strategy shifts. Jessica was also part of a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Now you can follow both Jessica and me on Snapchat on @jlessk and @hstebbings    In Today’s Episod...

20VC: Sam Lessin on Why Bots Will Change Business & The Internet Has Mostly Failed

May 25, 2016 08:22 - 27 minutes - 21.7 MB

Sam Lessin is a Partner at Slow Ventures who have made investments in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Mattermark, AngelList,Dropbox and many more. On top of this, Sam is also the Founder and Co-CEO at Fin, which is basically like Siri Echo or Google now except it actually works, truly a phenomenal product. Prior to Fin and Slow, Sam was VP of Product Management at Facebook following the acquisition of his company, Drop.io by Facebook in 2010. Sam is also an intern at The Information where he...

20VC: K9's Manu Kumar on His Approach To Risk, Valuation & Believing What Other People Don't

May 23, 2016 08:38 - 23 minutes - 19.1 MB

Manu Kumar founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage micro-VC fund based in Palo Alto, according to K9 they invests ‘frighteningly early’ and like to be the first institutional capital invested in a startup. K9 is an investor in Lyft, Twilio, Occipital, eShares, and their companies have been acquired by the likes of Linkedin, Facebook, Dropbox, Paypal and more. Prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of 4 companies, 3 of which with successful ex...

20VC: Xero's Rod Drury on IPO on Day 1 To Hedge Fund to VC & Doing Startups Backward

May 20, 2016 09:53 - 23 minutes - 18.7 MB

Rod Drury is the Founder & CEO @ Xero, essentially beautiful accounting software for small business. Xero has received funding from some of the best investors in the world including the likes of Peter Thiel, Accel and Matrix Partners. Prior to Xero, Rod has founded and exited several successful startups including being acquired by QuestSoftware (later acquired by Dell). This success has led to a mass of awards including the likes of NZ Entrepreneur of The Year and NZ High Tech Hall Of Fame. ...

20VC: How Startups Should React To Today's Funding Environment & Why Big Markets Are More Forgiving with Jenny Lefcourt, Partner @ Freestyle.vc

May 18, 2016 07:43 - 30 minutes - 24.1 MB

Jenny Lefcourt is a Partner @ Freestyle where she invests in early stage tech companies. Prior to Freestyle, Jenny was the Founder of Weddingchannel.com and Bella Pictures which were both acquired. During this time, Jenny raised funds from titans of VC including Kleiner Perkins, Trinity Ventures, Amazon and more. Jenny has also angel invested and advised some incredible entrepreneurs with the likes of Minted and Style Seat.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jenny made his...

20VC: Rob Go @ NextView on WTF Is Seed Investing Today and Why Raising Too Much Money Can Harm Your Startup

May 16, 2016 08:16 - 28 minutes - 23 MB

Rob Go is a co-founder and Partner at NextView Ventures, Next View are hands on, high conviction true seed stage investors. Prior to founding NextView, Rob was at Spark Capital and focused on early stage investments in consumer web and mobile. Before joining Spark Capital, Rob worked at Ebay as the Business Product Lead for “Finding”. In this role, he oversaw the launch of major products that enhanced the search, browse, and product discovery experience for tens of millions of users.  In To...

20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay

May 13, 2016 08:37 - 27 minutes - 22.2 MB

Aaron Hirschhorn is the founder, CEO and “Top Dog" of DogVacay, the leading online and mobile pet sitting company. DogVacay connects pet parents in need of services with more than 25,000 vetted and insured pet caregivers in 10,000 cities across the country. Founded in March 2012 and based in Santa Monica, CA, the company has over 80 employees and has raised $47M from investors including Omers, Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Prior to DogVacay, Aaron spent several years in venture ...

20VC: Why More People Should Be Entrepreneurs & How Do You Know When You Are Ready with Matt Clifford @ Entrepreneur First

May 11, 2016 08:56 - 26 minutes - 21.3 MB

Matt Clifford is co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, Europe's leading pre-seed investment programme for founders of deep technology startups. Founded in 2011, EF backs the world's top technical talent pre-company. EF's startups have raised over $100m in funding and are breaking ground in artificial intelligence, robotics and infrastructure, among other fields. Outside EF, he is co-founder and non-executive director of Code First Girls and non-executive director of Techfortrade. Before ...

20VC: Raising A Solo GP Fund & Why They Are So Prominent Today with Charles Hudson, Managing Partner @ Precursor Ventures

May 09, 2016 09:14 - 27 minutes - 22.4 MB

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner with Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on first check investments in strong teams developing innovative hardware and software products and services. Prior to founding Precursor, Charles was a Partner with SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Internet and mobile startups. Prior to SoftTech, Hudson spent time at Google,  IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How d...

20VC: Why VC Is The Perfect Preparation For Founding A Startup & Changing The World Of Online Fashion with Chris Morton, Co-Founder & CEO @ Lyst

May 06, 2016 08:55 - 27 minutes - 22 MB

Chris Morton the Founder & CEO @ Lyst, the fashion aggregation and discovery app and universal checkout cart that has pulled in more than $60m in funding from the likes of Balderton, Accel and DFJ. Chris was previously in the wonderful world of venture himself as an early stage investor with Balderton Capital where he focused on consumer internet companies. Prior to that Chris worked on various projects from making custard suits to working in renewable energy!    In Today’s Episode You W...

20VC: Accel's Brian O'Malley On The Prioritisation Of Growth, The Metrics That Show True Customer Retention & Why The Most Interesting Companies Create A Market

May 04, 2016 10:12 - 33 minutes - 26.9 MB

Brian O’Malley is a Partner @ Accel Partners, where he spearheads Accel's work with next-generation marketplaces and consumer-focused companies. He led the firm’s investments in Amino, Gametime, HotelTonight and Luma, as well as disruptive software-as-a-services businesses Duetto and Narvar. Brian joined Accel from Battery Ventures, where as a general partner he led investments in companies like Dollar Shave Club, BazaarVoice (public), Coupa, Skullcandy (public) and TradeKing (acquired by Al...

20VC: Bessemer's Byron Deeter on The Commonalities Of Truly Great Founders and Learnings From Investing In Box, Twilio and GainSight

May 02, 2016 08:19 - 28 minutes - 22.5 MB

Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC, Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO & Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead Bessemer’s global cloud practice where he has been actively involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally as he i...

20VC: Why It Is All Still About User Growth and How To Address Retention For A Consumer Social App with Mike Mignano, Co-Founder & CEO @ Anchor

April 29, 2016 08:34 - 24 minutes - 19.7 MB

Mike Mignano is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Anchor, the app that allows you to share and engage with your network via audio, essentially radio for the people. Prior to founding Anchor, Mike was Head of Product @ Aviary, prior to it's acquisition by Adobe. Anchor was one of the hottest products at SXSW this year and has received funding from our good friends at Homebrew, SV Angel, Betaworks, Eniac Ventures, Scott Belsky and many more.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Mike come t...

20VC: Why Every Successful Company Pivots and Good Companies Get Funded in Good & Bad Markets with John Frankel, Founding Partner @ ff Venture Capital

April 27, 2016 08:46 - 24 minutes - 19.5 MB

John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital and has been an early-stage investor since 1999. He has served on the boards of more than 35 companies and has led investments in more than 80 companies, including Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), Indiegogo, Ionic Security, Unikey, Socure, Skycatch, Plated, 500px, Distil Networks, and Bottlenose. Prior to founding ffVC, John worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering an...

20VC: Europe's Youngest Series A Venture Partner, James Wise @ Balderton Capital on How To Get Into Venture & What The Future Of The VC Industry Looks Like

April 25, 2016 09:42 - 36 minutes - 28.9 MB

James Wise is a partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage venture funds with $2.5B in funds. The youngest partner at a Series A fund in Europe, at 29 James has already led on deals including the likes of Crowdcube, SketchFab, 3D Hubs, Sunrise and Workable amongst others. He discusses his unusual background, coming into VC after previously setting up and running a charity, why he thinks geography matters less than every and why he continues to focus on areas in healtht...

20VC: Fundraising Is Also Business Development with Nicolas Dessaigne, Co-Founder & CEO @ Algolia

April 22, 2016 10:17 - 25 minutes - 20.3 MB

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Algolia. Algolia are a brilliant case study for the successful pivot, having started off life as an offline search engine for mobiles but really took off by helping companies deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on their websites and mobile apps. They participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch and raised $18.3M in May 2015 from the likes of Accel Partners, Point Nine Capital, Storm Ventures and many more incredible investors. ...

20VC: The Rise Of The Celebrity VC & The Pros and Cons Of Staying Private with Logan Bartlett @ Battery Ventures

April 20, 2016 09:45 - 27 minutes - 21.7 MB

Logan Bartlett is an investor @ Battery Ventures, where he focuses on growth investments for B2B software companies. He is currently involved in Battery’s investment in Pendo and StreamSets. Before joining Battery, Logan was in investment banking with Spurrier Capital Partners, a boutique merchant bank focused on the technology sector. There, he sourced application-software deals with a focused on the marketing-automation sector as well as sales force automation, human-capital management, wo...

20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

April 18, 2016 09:38 - 27 minutes - 21.9 MB

Neeraj Agrawal is a general partner at Battery Ventures investing in SaaS and Internet companies across all stages.  He was a founding investor in BladeLogic in 2001 and has invested in several other companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage and Wayfair. His current, private investments include AppDynamics, Catchpoint, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Glassdoor.com, Nutanix, Optimizely, Pendo, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, StellaService, T...

20VC: From Netscape To Friendster To Nuzzel: Jonathan Abrams on A Silicon Valley Adventure

April 15, 2016 09:22 - 29 minutes - 23.5 MB

Jonathan Abrams is the founder & CEO of the social news service Nuzzel.  Jonathan is also co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs and their friends. Previously, Jonathan was the founder & CEO of Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks, and a software engineer at companies such as Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan is a board member at Girls in Tech, an advisor to CodeNow, and has previously been a mentor in Steve Blank's en...

20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta

April 13, 2016 08:32 - 31 minutes - 25.3 MB

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a new venture fund backed by Bloomberg L.P. Prior to Bloomberg, Roy was chairman of OUYA, a new kind of game console, where he was the first investor. Before that Roy spent five years leading News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment, an online media company with a monthly audience of 70 million people, a top 10 YouTube channel, and the leading website in its category in almost every market globally. Roy served on the board of Revision3 (acquired by Discov...

20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

April 11, 2016 09:07 - 30 minutes - 24.6 MB

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have be...

20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant

April 08, 2016 08:34 - 28 minutes - 22.5 MB

Gagan Biyani is the CEO and Co-Founder @ Sprig, on a mission to build the world's largest restaurant providing healthy and sustainable food. Sprig has attained funding from the likes of Greylock Partners, Accel and Battery Partners. Prior to Sprig, Gagan was the Interim Head of Marketing @ Lyft, where he wrote the first Lyft new market launch playbook and launched Lyft LA. Before that Gagan, was the Co-Founder and CEO of the world's largest online teaching and learning marketplace with the f...

20VC: Greylock's Sarah Tavel on What Founders Need From A Good Investor and Why Products Need To Be 10X Better & Cheaper

April 06, 2016 09:19 - 28 minutes - 22.7 MB

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth...

20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

April 04, 2016 08:49 - 25 minutes - 20.6 MB

Josh Elman is a Partner at Greylock Partners, which he joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform ...

20VC: RobinHood's Baiju Bhatt on The Importance Of Design in Fintech and Having A 10X Better Product

April 01, 2016 09:26 - 24 minutes - 19.5 MB

Baiju Bhatt is the Co-Founder and CEO at RobinHood, the wildly successful stock market trading app with absolutely no commission fees. Since launching RobinHood there have been many amazing milestones including being awarded an Apple Design Award (first Finch company ever to achieve this), funding from the likes of Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and even movie star Jared Leto. They were also nominated for best mobile app at The Crunchies by TechCrunch this year. In Today's Epis...

20VC: 'The Best Seed Investors Hunt' with Paige Craig @ Arena VC

March 30, 2016 10:34 - 22 minutes - 18.1 MB

Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle...

20VC: Homebrew's Satya Patel on The Key Components of Being A Great VC & The 3 Main Reasons Startups Fail At Seed

March 28, 2016 09:42 - 24 minutes - 20 MB

Satya Patel is a Partner @ Homebrew alongside Hunter Walk. Prior to Homebrew, Satya was VP Product at Twitter, building and leading the Product Management and User Services teams. Before Twitter, Satya was a Partner at Battery Ventures, where he co-led the seed and early stage investing practices. In 2003, Satya joined Google and was responsible for AdSense product management and partnerships. Before heading to Silicon Valley for Google, I worked for DoubleClick, in venture capital and as a ...

Immediately's Branko Cerny on The Rise Of Bottoms Up Sales and The Importance of Branding For Enterprise SaaS Companies

March 25, 2016 09:44 - 28 minutes - 23 MB

Branko Cerny is the Founder and CEO at Immediately, the mobile platform for modern sales professionals whose mission is to elevate sales back to it’s core foundation, a relationship driven craft. Immediately has some of the US’s finest backing in terms of investment with the likes of Naval Ravikant @ AngelList, Ryan Holmes @ Hootsuite, Jonathan Abrams @ Friendster and Nuzzel and previous guest Kate Shillo @ Galvanize. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Branko made his way into the ...

20VC: Maveron's Rebecca Kaden on The Patterns Of Entrepreneurship and Taking A Consumer Product From Niche To Mass Market

March 23, 2016 10:23 - 26 minutes - 21.3 MB

Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Maveron where she identifies emerging consumer-focused entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Southern California, and New York. Rebecca also plays a leading role in Maveron's seed program, where they partner with emerging consumer companies at their earliest stages. She’s a Board Observer at August, Common, Darby Smart, Dolls Kill, Eargo, Earnest and General Assembly. Her outstanding achievements have been recognised by Forbes who included Rebecca is their annual '30...

Guests

Bill Gurley
4 Episodes
Fred Wilson
3 Episodes
Paul Graham
3 Episodes
David Cohen
2 Episodes
Jason Brown
2 Episodes
John Doerr
2 Episodes
Justin Kan
2 Episodes
Kamal Ravikant
2 Episodes
Reid Hoffman
2 Episodes
sam lessin
2 Episodes
scott belsky
2 Episodes
Alexis Ohanian
1 Episode
Anu Hariharan
1 Episode
Armon Dadgar
1 Episode
ashton kutcher
1 Episode
Barry Schuler
1 Episode
Ben Marcus
1 Episode
Bill Gates
1 Episode
Brad Feld
1 Episode
Daniel Ek
1 Episode
Elizabeth Yin
1 Episode
Eric Ries
1 Episode
Ezra Galston
1 Episode
Gabriel Weinberg
1 Episode
Harley Finkelstein
1 Episode
Joel Gascoigne
1 Episode
Josh Wolfe
1 Episode
Kevin Chou
1 Episode
Kim Scott
1 Episode
Melanie Perkins
1 Episode
Ryan Petersen
1 Episode
Shaka Senghor
1 Episode
Steve Jurvetson
1 Episode
Tim Draper
1 Episode

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