The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
1,144 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 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: 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
July 24, 2023 08:26 - 1 hour - 160 MBAdam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, where he is responsible for overseeing the engineering, product, and business teams and leading Meta’s efforts on creators and Reels. Adam has been at Meta for more than fifteen years. He started at Meta as a designer for Facebook's mobile app before moving to product management, where he led the Facebook News Feed product and engineering teams, and served as the Head of Facebook News Feed. Adam began his career founding a design consultancy focused on...
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
July 21, 2023 14:56 - 50 minutes - 115 MBJean-Denis Greze is Chief Technology Officer at Plaid where oversees global product business units across North America and Europe. Prior to joining Plaid, Jean-Denis was Director of Engineering at Dropbox. Jean-Denis is also a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of Nex Health, Merge.dev and Rupa Health to name a few. In Today's Episode with Jean-Denis Greze We Discuss: 1. The Journey to One of the Most Powerful CTOs: How JD made his way into the world of tech wi...
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
July 19, 2023 11:08 - 47 minutes - 108 MBLauryn Isford is the Head of Product Growth at Notion, managing Notion's product-led growth engine and self-serve business. Before Notion, she led growth at Airtable, and previously worked on growth teams including Meta, Dropbox, and Blue Bottle Coffee. Lauryn is an active angel investor and advisor supporting companies building product-led go-to-market motions. In Today's Episode with Lauryn Isford: 1. From Blue Bottle to Airtable and Notion: How did Lauryn first make her way into the ...
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
July 17, 2023 15:02 - 43 minutes - 34.7 MBDave 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. Prior to Flexport, Dave began his career at Amazon in 1999 as an Operations Manager, working his way up to become the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business in 2021. By the time Dave left, he was responsible for over 1 million employees. Dave spearheaded the launch of Amazon Robotics and grew the company’s logistics divisions to include Am...
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
July 14, 2023 08:48 - 49 minutes - 113 MBSheel Mohnot is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $225M fund that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage fintech companies globally. Sheel and Jake (his co-founder) invested for many years together before founding BTV and wrote checks into Mercury, Flexport, Ramp, and Hippo Insurance to name a few. As for Sheel, before BTV he ran 500 Fintech for close to 7 years, and before that was a founder, founding two companies, both of which were acquired. In Today's Epi...
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
July 12, 2023 08:36 - 36 minutes - 84.6 MBKevin Egan is the Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian and brings more than 25 years of enterprise sales experience and leadership to the company. Prior to his current role, Kevin served as the Vice President of North America Sales at both Slack and Dropbox and has held various senior sales leadership positions at Salesforce. In Todays Episode With Kevin Egan We Discuss: 1. The Makings of a Truly Great Enterprise Sales Leader: How did Kevin first make his way into the world of en...
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
July 10, 2023 08:27 - 52 minutes - 120 MBSimon 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 his video on millennials in the workplace (80M views in 7 days). Simon is also a bestselling author including global bestseller Start with WHY, Leaders Eat Last and The Infinite Game. In addition, Simon is the founder of The Optimism Company, a leadership learning and development company, and he publishes other inspiring thinkers and doers thro...
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
June 30, 2023 06:52 - 42 minutes - 97.2 MBDouwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Last month Contextual closed a $20M funding round including Bain Capital, Sarah Guo, Elad Gil and 20VC. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. Previously, he was the Head of Research at Hugging Face, and before that a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research. In Today's Episode with Douwe Kiela We Discuss: 1. Founding a Foundational Mode...
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"
June 28, 2023 09:09 - 40 minutes - 92.5 MBJennifer 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 has made history by being the first company to go public with a female founder/CEO, COO, and CFO. Jennifer serves on the Board of The Estée Lauder Companies and Zalando, and also is a Founding Member of the NYSE Board Advisory Council, a Member of the Women.nyc Advisory Board and a Member of the Launch with GS Advisory Council for Goldman Sachs....
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
June 26, 2023 08:34 - 1 hour - 154 MBAkin Babayigit is a serial entrepreneur and an active angel investor. He is currently the Founder and COO of Tripledot Studios, one of the fastest-growing mobile gaming companies in the world, which was recently valued at over $1.4BN. In just 4 years, Tripledot grew to generate several hundred million dollars per year in revenue and currently entertains over 50 million people every month. Tripledot was recently named as the #1 fastest-growing European company by FT, as well as being named a...
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
June 23, 2023 13:07 - 54 minutes - 43.7 MBRob 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, Whoop, and Grove Collaborative. Prior to co-founding NextView, Rob was an investor at Spark Capital and held product and product marketing roles at Ebay. He began his career as a consultant at The Parthenon Group. In Today's Episode with Rob Go We Discuss: 1. Entry into the World of Venture: How a cold call from a VC firm led to Rob enteri...
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
June 21, 2023 08:40 - 55 minutes - 127 MBGina Gotthilf is a Co-Founder and COO at Latitud, an a16z-backed platform supporting the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through digital products, a community and fund. Previously, Gina led growth and marketing at Duolingo from 3 to 200 million users via organic strategies and was part of the executive team. She also worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign, helping oversee the creation of digital ad campaigns at a historical budget, and led growth and com...
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
June 19, 2023 09:05 - 56 minutes - 129 MBAlex 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 Wit.ai, an AI platform that makes it easy to build apps that understand natural human language. Wit.ai was acquired by Facebook in 2015. Prior to Wit, Alex was the Founder and CEO of VirtuOz, the world pioneer in customer service chatbots, acquired by Nuance Communications in 2013. In Today's Episode with Alex Lebrun We Discuss: 1. Third Tim...
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
June 16, 2023 07:51 - 51 minutes - 118 MBNoah 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 various parts of the product organization, including the self-service SMB business and product-led growth; the Virtual HQ team that launched huddles and clips; and the search and machine learning teams. Prior to Slack, Noah served as SVP of Product and Analytics at Foursquare. He started his career at Google leading the structured data search ...
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
June 14, 2023 07:33 - 21 minutes - 50.2 MBRishi 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. He was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 24 July 2019 to 13 February 2020, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 9 January 2018 to 24 July 2019. Before entering the world of politics, Rishi co-founded an investment firm. In Today's Episode with Rishi Sunak We Discuss: ...
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
June 12, 2023 07:36 - 40 minutes - 32.3 MBLarry Summers is the Former Treasury Secretary and one of America's leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank. Huge thanks to Sarah Cannon for the intro to Larry today. In Today's Episode with Larry Summers We Discuss: 1. The Journey to Bei...
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..
June 09, 2023 12:47 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBOrlando 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 the top private equity firms in the world. Tobi Lütke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shopify, the powerhouse company allowing anyone to start and grow their e-commerce business. 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. Parker Conrad is the Founder...
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
June 07, 2023 08:48 - 51 minutes - 117 MBRich Liu is the CRO @ Everlaw and a unicorn GTM exec having scaled five multi-billion dollar tech unicorns across two IPOs, a successful acquisition, and numerous funding rounds. Prior to Everlaw, Rich architected the GTM motions for companies like Navan (TripActions), MuleSoft, and Meta (Facebook). As a result of his incredible success, Rich has been recognized as a 2021 Top 100 Global Sales Leader. In Today's Episode with Rich Liu We Discuss: 1. Entry into the World of Sales: How Rich ...
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
June 05, 2023 06:20 - 59 minutes - 137 MBTJ 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 successfully sold the business to Amazon for $1B in 2018. As of last week, TJ was announced as the newest Partner @ Matrix Partners where he will initially focus on health opportunities from concept to series A. In Today's Episode with TJ Parker We Discuss: 1.) From Growing Up in Pharmacies to Selling to Amazon for $1BN: How did TJ seeing the pharmacy...
20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
June 02, 2023 10:29 - 24 minutes - 55 MBOne of the core questions in AI and investing today; who wins, startups or incumbents? Startups have speed and innovation but incumbents have scale, resources, and distribution? Today we hear from 6 leading investors and founders discussing where they place their bets who has the advantage; startups or incumbents? Emad Mostaque is CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the compa...
20VC: The On Running Memo: From Swiss Mountains to NASDAQ IPO: The Story of Three Friends Who Built a Sports Giant
May 31, 2023 08:56 - 44 minutes - 102 MBDavid 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+ countries. In 2021, On went public on the NASDAQ and today has a market cap of $8.7BN. However, it all started with three friends in the mountains experimenting with making shoes with pieces of garden hose to create a running shoe with a totally different feel. In Today's Episode with David Alleman We Discuss: 1. From the Swiss Mountains to...
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
May 29, 2023 11:21 - 43 minutes - 99.9 MBAdam Besvinick is the Founder of Looking Glass Capital, a pre-seed-focused firm started in 2020. Before starting Looking Glass, Adam spent about 5 years at Deep Fork Capital and Anchorage Capital Group investing in pre-seed through Series C. Adam's portfolio across funds includes the likes of BigID, Transfix, NomNom, and Hone Health, to name a few. In Today's Episode with Adam Besvinick We Discuss: 1. How Twitter Led to Founding a Venture Firm: How did Adam make his way into the world o...
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
May 26, 2023 09:36 - 45 minutes - 104 MBTomer Cohen is the CPO @ Linkedin. Since joining in 2012, Tomer has served in key leadership roles, helping launch and scale new innovative member and customer experiences. He previously led the growth and development of LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions portfolio and LinkedIn's consumer and mobile products. Prior to LinkedIn, Tomer worked as an entrepreneur with Greylock Partners and founded a company in the personal CRM space. In Today's Episode with Tomer Cohen We Discuss: 1.) From Israel...
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
May 24, 2023 08:20 - 58 minutes - 135 MBGuy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, the leading Developer Security platform, helping developers secure as they build. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai, co-founded Blaze.io (acquired by Akamai), and was the product manager of AppScan, the first AppSec scanner, through Sanctum, Watchfire and IBM. Guy is a public speaker, O’Reilly author, and an active early stage angel investor. In Today's Episode with Guy Podjarny We Discuss: 1.) From Israeli Military to Founding a $10BN Company: How Guy...
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
May 22, 2023 07:53 - 1 hour - 152 MBNico Wittenborn is the Founder of Adjacent, one of the best early-stage firms created over the last 5 years. Before starting Adjacent, Nico spent over 3 years at Insight Partners in New York and before that learned the craft of venture from some of the best in early-stage, Point Nine, where he spent over 4 years. Nico's portfolio across funds includes the likes of Revolut, Chainalysis, Oura, RevenueCat and PhotoRoom to name a few. In Today's Show with Nico Wittenborn We Discuss: 1.) From ...
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
May 19, 2023 07:40 - 47 minutes - 108 MBRyan 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 built Growth teams at WhatsApp, where he helped grow WhatsApp Business from 0->100M users, Workplace, and Facebook Ads. If that was not enough, Ryan is also an active angel investor. In Today's Episode with Ryan Wiggins We Discuss: 1.) From US Department of Commerce to Leading Growth Teams: How Ryan made his initial foray into the world of grow...
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 @
May 17, 2023 07:59 - 1 hour - 152 MBEmad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN. Investors include Coatue, Lightspeed, Sound Ventures, OSS Capital and Airstreet Capital, to name a few. Prior to Stability, Emad was in the world of hedge funds, that was until his son was diagnosed with autism and ...
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
May 15, 2023 08:42 - 54 minutes - 126 MBYann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science. After a postdoc in Toronto he joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1988, and AT&T Labs in 1996 as Head of Image Processing Research. He joined NYU as a professor in 2003 and Meta/Facebook in 2013. He is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Turing Award for "conceptual ...
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
May 12, 2023 12:22 - 47 minutes - 108 MBClem 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 Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few. Prior to Hugging Face, Clem was in product and marketing at two different startups both of which were acquired. In Today's Episode with Clem Delangue: 1. From Tamagotchi to Leading the World of AI: How did a Tamagotchi startup turn into one of the hottest AI startups in the world? Wha...
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
May 10, 2023 09:14 - 1 hour - 151 MBToday'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 Profiles Maggie Hott is on the GTM Team (Go-To-Market) at OpenAI. Before OpenAI, Maggie was Director of Sales @ Webflow and before Webflow spent an incredible 6 years at Slack. Stevie Case is the CRO @ Vanta. Prior to Vanta, Stevie spent an immensely successful 6 years at Twilio as VP of Mid-Market Sales. Renu Gupta is an advisor and sales cons...
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
May 08, 2023 09:41 - 1 hour - 159 MBChris 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-founding Pace, Chris was a General Partner at Thrive Capital where he spent an incredible 8 years having joined the firm when they were on their first $10M Fund. In Today's Episode with Chris Paik We Discuss: 1. From Hipster to One of NYC's Best VCs: How Chris made his way from not knowing about venture capital to being one of the most prom...
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
May 05, 2023 08:41 - 36 minutes - 84.2 MBAlex 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 startups and partners with leading global companies across the real estate, health and wellness, technology, and sports & entertainment industries. While best known as one of the world’s greatest athletes (a 14x MLB All-Star and a 2009 World Series Champion with the New York Yankees), for more than 25 years, Alex leads a team of experts building ...
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
May 03, 2023 09:11 - 50 minutes - 115 MBVince 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 of Airtable, Benchling, Lattice, and Melio. Prior to joining Thrive, Vince was an investor at Tiger Global where he learned the craft of venture from the legend that is Lee Fixel. In Today's Episode with Vince Hankes We Discuss: 1. From Tiger Global to Partner @ Thrive Capital: How Vince made his way into the world of investing with Tiger G...
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
May 01, 2023 08:48 - 49 minutes - 113 MBMark Carney is the Vice Chair and Head of Transition Investing @ Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world's leading asset managers with over $800BN in AUM. Mark is also United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. He has also served as Finance Advisor to the British Prime Minister. In addition to this, Mark is on the board of Stripe, PIMCO and The World Economic Forum. In a previous life, Mark spent over a decade as a Central Banker, most recently as Governor of The Bank...
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
April 28, 2023 08:37 - 44 minutes - 102 MBSarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve “Software 3.0” companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock where she made investments in the likes of Figma, Coda, Neeva and many more incredible companies. Sarah also hosts her own podcast, No Priors with the wonderful Elad Gil. In Today's Episode with Sarah Guo We Discuss: 1. From Large Multi-Stage Firm to Founding Conviction: Why did Sarah decide to le...
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
April 26, 2023 08:22 - 56 minutes - 130 MBJack 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 Head of Design before taking on his current role overseeing all of Product for the Snapchat application and Hardware. In his 9 years at Snap, he helped create Memories, the Snap Map, and AR Lenses like Face Swap. In Today's Episode with Jack Brody We Discuss: The Shortest Internship in Tech: How did Jack get an internship with Evan Spiegel an...
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
April 24, 2023 08:45 - 51 minutes - 118 MBAvlok Kohli is the CEO @ AngelList. Under his leadership, Avlok has taken AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is becoming the software platform for the entire industry. Today, AngelList supports over $15BN in assets and 40% of US unicorns have had a GP invest in them through AngelList. Prior to becoming CEO @ AngelList, Avlok founded 3 companies, all of which were acquired including by the likes of Square and eBay. In Today's Episode with Avlok Kohli We Discuss: 1. From 3x Fo...
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
April 21, 2023 07:26 - 53 minutes - 122 MBTomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Prior to founding Theory, Tom spent 14 years at Redpoint as a General Partner where he made investments in the likes of Looker, Expensify, Monte Carlo, Dune Analytics, and Kustomer to name a few. Tom also writes one of the best blogs and newsletters in the busin...
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
April 19, 2023 08:20 - 49 minutes - 112 MBMark Goldberger is Head of Enterprise Sales at Ramp, the fastest-growing corporate card and bill payment software in America, and recently named Most Innovative Company in North America by Fast Company. Prior to joining Ramp, Mark was the first enterprise rep at TripActions (now Navan), where he helped bring in more than $100m of ARR as an IC and sales leader. Before TripActions, Mark worked at Highfive, a video conferencing company since acquired by Dialpad. In Today's Episode with Mark G...
20VC: Scooter Braun on Being Enough, Insecurity, Wealth, Investing, Fame, Marriage and so much more...
April 17, 2023 08:48 - 1 hour - 74.2 MBFrom 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 of the most multi-faceted entrepreneurs we have ever met. As the founder of media company SB Projects and the co-founder of TQ Ventures, he has backed prominent companies such as Pinterest, Spotify and Uber and managed some of the world’s biggest names in music including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Demi Lovato. Braun’s other accolades inc...
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
April 14, 2023 10:17 - 36 minutes - 83.8 MBDavid Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, building infrastructure that extends the capabilities and utility of Bitcoin. Prior to Lightspark, David led all payment and crypto efforts at Facebook/Meta and scaled Messenger to 1.5BN users. David previously founded three other companies: Zong (acquired by eBay/PayPal for $240M), Echovox (acquired by MBO), and GTN (acquired by World Access). In Today's Episode with David Marcus We Discuss: 1. From Losing Everything to Becoming Changi...
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
April 12, 2023 08:08 - 45 minutes - 104 MBJoost 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 by 13 million sites and selling to Newfold Media in 2021. As one of the early SEO pioneers he is also an extremely coveted angel investor and invests through his company, Emilia Capital. In Today's Episode with Joost De Valk We Discuss: 1. From Side Project to Multi-Million Dollar Business: Why and how did Joost create the first version of Y...
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
April 07, 2023 08:53 - 40 minutes - 92.4 MBRob 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, Personio, Miro, and Ledgy. Prior to Visionaries, Rob founded the fashion platform AMAZE in 2014 which he sold to Zalando, and founded the European seed and growth stage venture capital fund La Famiglia in 2016. In Today's Episode with Rob Lacher We Discuss: 1.) From Novice Tennis Player to Investing on a Global Stage: When Rob realized beati...
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
April 05, 2023 09:08 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBMike Salguero is the Founder and CEO @ ButcherBox, the meat delivery subscription service that he has scaled to $600M in revenue, 215 employees and the national leader in the space. All of this achieved while raising $0 of venture capital. Prior to ButcherBox, Mike was the Founder & CEO @ CustomMade, an online marketplace that, unlike ButcherBox, raised millions in venture funding from prominent VCs. In Today's Episode with Mike Salguero We Discuss: 1.) The Makings of a Great Entrepreneur...
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
April 03, 2023 08:35 - 56 minutes - 130 MBTobi Lütke is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shopify, the powerhouse company allowing anyone to start and grow their e-commerce business. Over an incredible 18 years, Tobi has scaled Shopify to 10% of total US e-commerce, millions of merchants in over 170 countries, and a market cap today of over $60BN. Huge thanks to Harley Finkelstein for making this happen. In Today's Episode with Tobi Lütke We Discuss: 1. From a Small German Town to One of the World's Most Powerful CEOs: What did Tobi wan...
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
March 31, 2023 09:29 - 57 minutes - 132 MBJackie Reses is the Chair and CEO of Lead Bank, a community bank in Kansas City. Previously, she was the Executive Chairman of Square Financial Services and Capital Lead and Head of the People Team at Block Inc (Square). Prior, she had leadership positions at Yahoo! and was a Partner at Apax Partners Worldwide. Jackie also spent seven years at Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions and the principal investment area. Jackie is on the board of directors of Endeavor, Affirm and Nubank. Pre...
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
March 29, 2023 07:44 - 51 minutes - 118 MBJag Duggal is the CPO @ Nubank where he is responsible for product strategy and roadmap reporting to CEO David Velez. Jag leads over 200 professionals across different functions within his role. Before Nubank, he was the Director of Product Management at Facebook, leading monetization of video and third party content. Before Facebook, Jag spent close to 7 years at Quantcast as a Senior VP of Product Management & Strategy. Finally, pre-Facebook, Jag was at Google for 5 years as a Group Produ...
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
March 27, 2023 08:28 - 45 minutes - 104 MBDara 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 previously CEO of Expedia, which he grew into one of the world’s largest online travel companies. Dara was promoted to Expedia CEO after serving as the Chief Financial Officer of IAC Travel. Before joining IAC, Dara served as Vice President of Allen & Company and spent a number of years as an analyst. He currently serves on the Board of Directors ...
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
March 24, 2023 11:47 - 49 minutes - 113 MBMike 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. Mike has been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade and was also named a “Rising Star” by FORTUNE and profiled by Harvard Business School for his lifetime contributions to entrepreneurship. In Today's Episode with Mike Maples We Discuss 1.) Lesson from SVB #1: The Importance of Scenario Planning: What is the right way to do s...
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
March 22, 2023 19:02 - 52 minutes - 121 MBFrank Fillman is CRO/Country Leader Australia for Salesforce where he is responsible for responsible for the overall strategy, execution, success, and growth of the $1B+ Australian market across all industries. Prior to Salesforce, Frank was SVP/GM @ Tableau where he was responsible for the strategy, execution, and growth of Tableau's Top Accounts. Over the last 10 years at Salesforce, Frank's accomplishments include $500M+ new revenue closed in 5 years and $1B+ revenue managed. As a result...