The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
1,144 episodes - English - Latest episode: 30 days ago - ★★★★ - 292 ratingsThe 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: 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 MBNikhil 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 MBMatt 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 MBJessica 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 MBSam 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 MBManu 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 MBRod 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 MBJenny 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 MBRob 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 MBAaron 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 MBMatt 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 MBCharles 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 MBChris 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 MBBrian 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 MBByron 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 MBMike 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 MBJohn 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 MBJames 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 MBNicolas 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 MBLogan 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 MBNeeraj 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 MBJonathan 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 MBRoy 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 MBAydin 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 MBGagan 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 MBSarah 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 MBJosh 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 MBBaiju 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 MBPaige 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 MBSatya 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 MBBranko 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 MBRebecca 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...
Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
March 21, 2016 09:46 - 29 minutes - 23.4 MBRob Hayes is a partner at First Round Capital where he opened up the firm's San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber, eero, and Planet Labs. Prior to joining First Round, Rob became the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. While there, he led most of the initial venture capital deals and later built and r...
Pre-YC Demo Day: Msg.ai's Puneet Mehta on The Rise of AI, The Potential For Messaging and Life As A Current YC Startup
March 18, 2016 11:53 - 24 minutes - 19.9 MBPuneet Mehta, Founder @ Msg.ai, an artificial intelligence startup for conversational commerce and for an AI founder you don’t get much better than starting your career at IBM's TJ Watson Center, which is exactly what Puneet did. He then went on to build predictive platforms to power large-scale trading systems aka bots on Wall St. It is clearly not joust us who think he is awesome as Advertising Age named Puneet to the Creativity 50 list in 2014, honoring the most creative and innovative th...
20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard
March 16, 2016 10:17 - 23 minutes - 18.8 MBCiaran O'Leary is the General Partner at one of Europe's newest funds, BlueYard. A $120m fund located at the early stage, centring around 3 key areas: The decentralisation of markets, the democratisation of capabilities, and the liberation of data. Prior to BlueYard, Ciaran was a Partner at Earlybird with investments in the likes of Peak Games (emerging markets social gaming), 6Wunderkinder (productivity apps), Moped (private messaging), B2X Care Solutions (outsourcing platform), madvertise ...
20VC: Lowercase's Matt Mazzeo on Being Chris Sacca's Partner and The 3 KPIs to Successful Investing
March 14, 2016 12:38 - 36 minutes - 29.4 MBMatt Mazzeo is Managing Director at Lowercase Capital, alongside legendary angel investor, Chris Sacca. At Lowercase Matt leads a seed and series A investment strategy managing a portfolio of over forty investments including Uber, Twitter, Stripe and Optimizely just to name a few. Prior to joining Lowercase Capital, Matt spearheaded many of the digital and venture efforts at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Matt helped shape the agency’s seed stage investment strategy and played an integral ro...
20VC: Niccolo De Masi on The Bursting Of The Tech Bubble and What It Takes To Be A Celebrity Partner with Glu Mobile
March 11, 2016 10:42 - 39 minutes - 31.8 MBNiccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world’s hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special...
20VC: Christian Hernandez on The Importance of Mobile and The Relationship Between Growth vs Revenue
March 09, 2016 11:16 - 28 minutes - 23.1 MBChristian Hernandez is the Co-Founder and Partner @ Whitestar Capital in London. Prior to co-founding White Star Capital, Christian worked at Facebook and led the international expansion of the company’s Business Development, Platform and Developer Network groups. He previously held leadership roles in the U.S. and Europe at Google and Microsoft and started his career in technology at MicroStrategy, a startup he joined prior to its 1999 IPO. Christian has worked closely with entrepreneurs an...
20VC: Tom Tunguz on Why Now Is The Best Time To Be Investing and The Effect of Late Stage Valuations on Startups
March 07, 2016 10:56 - 24 minutes - 22.3 MBTom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Tom is also the author of the world famous blog and newsletter which can be found at http://tomtunguz.com We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check ou...
20VC FF: Hiten Shah on VC Funded vs Bootstrapped Businesses and How He Decides Which Startups To Advise
March 04, 2016 11:19 - 27 minutes - 21.8 MBHiten Shah is one of the most prominent players in the data marketing industry having co-Founded both KissMetrics (raised $10m+ VC Funding) and Crazy Egg (bootstrapped), both wildly successful businesses serving some of the world's largest companies. Hiten is also an extremely successful angel investor with investments in the likes of Buffer, Mattermark and MessageMe (acquired by Yahoo.) In addition, Hiten is also a serial startup advisor having been an advisor with Linkedin, SlideShare and ...
20VC: Building a Game Changing Consumer Startup and Hunting His 4th Unicorn with Jim Scheinman @ Maven Ventures
March 02, 2016 12:43 - 24 minutes - 19.9 MBJim Scheinman is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Maven Ventures, a leading seed stage consumer VC with investments in the likes of AngelList, WealthFront and Altspace. Prior to founding Maven, Jim was a pioneer in the early days of the social media revolution as Head of Business Development and Sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. However, in 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. Bebo ...
20VC: SoftTech VC's Andy McLoughlin on The Series A Crunch, Maximising Runway and Minimising Burn and For Startups
February 29, 2016 11:55 - 24 minutes - 20 MBAndy McLoughlin is a Partner with SoftTech VC, where he primarily invests in B2B, SaaS, developer tools and mobile applications. Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-based Huddle, under Andy’s leadership, Huddle became one of Europe’s most awarded and well-known technology startups, raising over $80M of venture funding to date. Since 2010 Andy has been a prolific angel investor building a portfolio covering 35 startups, mostly in the SaaS / B2B space. Just to name a few ...
20VC: Digg CEO, Gary Liu on The Rebirth Of Digg & The Evolution Of Content
February 26, 2016 07:05 - 27 minutes - 22.2 MBGary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Cli...
20VC: Investing In The Next Frontiers Of Tech & Harry Potter with Adam Draper, Founder & CEO @ Boost VC
February 24, 2016 09:04 - 27 minutes - 22 MBAdam Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist and the Founder & CEO @ Boost VC, a specialised seed stage accelerator that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups. Before starting Boost, Adam angel invested in 20 companies including Coinbase, Plangrid and Practice Fusion. During his angel investment period, Adam was also the Founder of Xpert Financial in his aim to revolutionise the financial markets for private companies. We would like to say a special thank you to Matter...
20VC: Tim Draper on Investing In Tesla, The Best Pitch He Has Ever Seen & The Evolution of Venture and Startups
February 22, 2016 06:46 - 23 minutes - 19.2 MBTim Draper is the founding partner of leading venture capital firms Draper Associates and DFJ. Some of his Venture successes include Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, Twitch.tv, and hundreds of others. Fun fact about Tim, it was his original suggestion to use viral marketing in web-based email to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail, YahooMail, and Gmail and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by thousands of businesse...
20 VC: Niccolo De Masi @ Glu Mobile on Private Market Valuations, Being A Public Market CEO & The Trends Of Mobile Gaming
February 19, 2016 07:00 - 29 minutes - 23.6 MBNiccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world's hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special...
20VC: Tyler Willis on How To Be Innovative With Customer Acquisition and The Future Of Innovation
February 17, 2016 07:20 - 26 minutes - 21 MBTyler Willis is probably one of the best angel investors around and has invested in seed stage companies that have gone on to raise from the likes of Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and others. Some of these investments include the likes of wildly popular ride sharing app Lyft, the incredible Patreon (now delivering 2m a month to creators) and Change.org which now has over 80m users. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the...
20VC: Arielle Zuckerberg @ Kleiner Perkins: A Review Of My First 6 Months in Venture
February 15, 2016 05:45 - 28 minutes - 22.7 MBArielle Zuckerberg, Partner @ Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Arielle Zuckerberg joined KPCB in 2015 and focuses on early-stage investments in the firm’s digital practice as part of the venture team. Arielle joined Kleiner from Humin, where she led product for the company’s mobile apps. She started her career as a product manager by day and Hackathon host by night at Wildfire Interactive, Inc., which was acquired by Google in 2012. After the acquisition, Arielle worked as a product manag...
20VC FF 035: Why Crowdfunding Is Not Right For Tech Startups with Ryan Caldbeck @ CircleUp
February 12, 2016 07:18 - 25 minutes - 20.1 MBRyan Caldbeck is the Founder & CEO @ CircleUp, the online investing platform that allows you to invest in innovative consumer companies. They have raised funding from some of the best including USV, Maveron and Canaan Partners (all past guests). Before Ryan founded CircleUp, he worked in consumer product and retail-focused private equity at TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital exposing him to many great consumer and retail businesses that were too small to obtain funding through...
20VC: The First Online Venture Fund Built On AngelList with Dustin Dolginow @ Maiden Lane
February 10, 2016 08:16 - 24 minutes - 19.7 MBDustin Dolginow is the General Partner @ Maiden Lane, the first online venture fund which uses AngelList as it's operating system, serving as the institutional capital partner to the best angel investors in the world. Dustin has made investments in the likes of Getable, PipeDrive, Beepi and many more incredible companies. Dustin is also a venture partner with Accomplice where he serves some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet. Prior to investing, Andy cut his teeth in the operations game...
20VC: Gil Penchina on Building The World's Largest AngelList Syndicate with Flight.vc
February 08, 2016 06:17 - 21 minutes - 17.4 MBGil Penchina is the Founder @ Flight.vc, a network of AngelList syndicates that covers a wide range of sectors from SaaS to security from Israel to England. Gil also has the title of the largest raise for an AngelList syndicate, essentially turning himself into a one man fund. Some of Gil's investments include the likes of Paypal, Indiegogo, AngelList, Linkedin and many more. Prior to his investing career, Gil cut his teeth with operating roles at numerous companies including Ebay. We would ...