The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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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20VC: Inside Bending Spoons Acquisition Machine: Evernote, Eventbrite, Vimeo | How Evernote Evaluates Acquisitions and New Product Ideas | How Evernote Mastered Product Launches, User Retention and Monetisation with Federico Simionato
<p >Bending Spoons is the acquisition machine of the tech world. They have acquired the likes of Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Streamyard and more. However, they never open their gates to the secrets behind Evernote's product machine. Today that changes with Federico Simionato joining 20Product. Fede has been a Product Lead at Bending Spoons for 8 years where he has led product teams at Evernote, WeTransfer and more. </p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >03:02 From Dentist Games to $11BN Bending Spoons</p> <p >04:54 Advice for Aspiring Product Managers</p> <p >05:38 Building a Coveted Brand at Bending Spoons</p> <p >07:43 Evaluating and Testing New Pr...
20VC: Thrive & OpenAI Partnership | Eventbrite Acquired for $500M | Databricks Raising $5BN at $134BN Valuation: Cheap or Not? | Why SaaS is Like Japan and The TAM Trap in Software
<p >AGENDA:</p> <p >04:20 Thrive and OpenAI Partnership </p> <p >07:14 Databricks Raising $5BN at $134BN Valuation: Cheap or Not?</p> <p >17:39 Eventbrite Acquired by Bending Spoons for $500M</p> <p >21:39 Pagerduty's $1BN Market Cap, Just 2x Revenue</p> <p >26:59 The TAM Trap: Why SaaS Is Like Japan</p> <p >37:42 Lessons from Companies Hitting $100M ARR</p> <p >44:57 The Future of Labour Markets is F******</p> <p >52:10 The Importance of Compounding in Investments</p> <p >56:45 The Relevance Game in Venture Capital</p> <p >01:05:01 Supabase at $5BN or Lovable at $6BN: Which One?</p> <p> </p>
20VC: Scale, Surge, Turing, Mercor: Who Wins & Who Loses in Data Labelling | Is Revenue in Data Labelling Real or GMV? | Why 99% of Knowledge Work Will Go and What Happens Then? | Why SaaS is Dead in a World of AI with Jonathan Siddharth @ Turing
<p >Jonathan Siddharth is Founder and CEO of Turing, one of the fastest-growing AI companies advancing frontier models. Jonathan has led the company to an astonishing $350M ARR with just $225M raised and a profitable company. A Stanford-trained AI scientist, Jonathan previously helped pioneer natural language search at Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft.</p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >03:35 Data, Compute, Algorithms: What is Most Abundant? What is Lacking Most?</p> <p >09:18 What Does No One Know About AI's Data Requirements That Everyone Should?</p> <p >17:05 The Biggest Challenges Enterprises Have with AI Adoption</p> <p >20:38 Why Will 99% of Knowledge...
20Sales: John McMahon on How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Sales Reps | How Sales Changes in a World of AI | Sales Lessons from Snowflake and MongoDB | How to Create and Drive a Sales Process with Urgency
<p >John McMahon is widely regarded as one of the greatest enterprise-software sales leaders of all time. He's the only person to have served as Chief Revenue Officer at five public software companies: PTC, GeoTel, Ariba, BladeLogic and BMC Software. He helped scale BladeLogic from a startup into a public company — ultimately leading to its ~$880M sale to BMC — and drove GeoTel into a multi-billion dollar acquisition. Today he sits on the boards of top names such as Snowflake and MongoDB, while also mentoring and influencing a who's-who of modern SaaS sales leaders.</p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >03:33 The Art and...
20VC: Anthropic Raises $30BN from Microsoft and NVIDIA | NVIDIA Core Business Threatened by TPU | Sam Altman's "War Mode" Analysed | Sierra Hits $100M ARR: Justifies $10BN Price? | Lovable Hits $200M ARR & Rumoured $6BN Round
<p >AGENDA:</p> <p >04:06 Anthropic's $30BN Investment from Microsoft and NVIDIA</p> <p >07:01 Google vs. OpenAI: Sam Altman's "War Mode" Memo</p> <p >15:27 NVIDIA's Customer Concentration: Bull or Bear</p> <p >22:12 Is "War Mode" BS: Does Hyper-Aggressive Ever Work?</p> <p >36:12 Sierra Hits $100M ARR: Justify $10BN Price?</p> <p >46:14 Implementation is the Biggest Barrier to Enterprise AI Growth</p> <p >01:04:04 Is LLM Search Optimisation (GEO) Selling Snake Oil? What AI is a Fraud vs Real?</p> <p >01:14:27 Figma Market Cap: Is the IPO Market F****** for 2026</p> <p > </p> <p> </p>
20VC: Base44's Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS and Salesforce | Why it is BS that Vibe Coding Platforms Do Not Have Defensibility and Bad Margins | Why He Worries About Google, Not Replit and Lovable | Why Long Anthropic, Not OpenAI?
<p >Maor Shlomo is the Founder and CEO of Base44, the AI building platform that Maor built from idea to $80M acquisition by Wix, in just 8 months. Today the company serves millions of users and will hit $50M ARR by the end of the year. Before Base44, Maor was the Co-Founder and CTO of Explorium.</p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >00:05 – 00:10: How Vibe Coding is Going to Kill Salesforce and SaaS<br /> <br /></p> <p >00:13 – 00:15: Do Vibe Coding platforms have any defensibility?<br /> <br /></p> <p >00:22 – 00:24: I am not worried about Replit and Lovable, I am worried about Google…<br /> <br /></p> <p >0...
20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
<p >Max Altman is Co‑Founder & Managing Partner at Saga Ventures, a US$125 M early‑stage fund. Before Saga Max was an investor with Apollo Projects, Hydrazine Capital and Altman Capital (where he helped deploy over US$500 M) into breakout names such as Rippling and Reddit.</p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >03:55 – Venture Capital Is FULL of Tourists With Single-Digit IQs</p> <p >06:20 – Inside the Madness of Parker Conrad: Genius, Chaos, and WTF Emails</p> <p >10:35 – The Rippling Deal That Changed Everything</p> <p >12:40 – Living in Sam Altman's Shadow: The Confession</p> <p >17:30 – $200M Fund Mistakes: Max's Brutal Lessons From Hydrazine</p> <p >22:05 – The $2B...
20VC: Cursor Raises $2.3BN: Who Wins the Coding War | Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: Analysed | Why Venture Capital Will Hit $1TRN and the Opening of Retail | Why Stripe and the Best Companies Will Never Go Public
<p >AGENDA:</p> <p >04:47 Cursor Raises $2.3BN at $29BN Valuation</p> <p >11:36 What Gemini 3 Means for Lovable, Cursor and Replit</p> <p >30:54 Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: The Bubble Bursting?</p> <p >48:54 Oracle Credit Default Swaps: The Risk is Increasing</p> <p >01:07:22 Stripe Does Tender at All-Time High: Why the Best Companies Will Never IPO</p> <p >01:19:18 Why Retail WIll Cause a Surge of Capital into VC Funds</p> <p> </p>
20VC: Andrew NG on The Biggest Bottlenecks in AI | How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI? | Is Defensibility Dead in a World of AI? | Will AI Deliver Masa Son's Predictions of 5% GDP Growth?
<p >Dr. Andrew Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI. He is Founder of DeepLearning.AI, Executive Chairman of LandingAI, General Partner at AI Fund, Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera. As a pioneer in machine learning Andrew has authored or co-authored over 200 research papers in machine learning, robotics and related fields. In 2023, he was named to the Time100 AI list of the most influential AI persons in the world.</p> <p >Agenda:</p> <p >03:19 What are the Biggest Bottlenecks in AI Today? </p> <p >08:51 How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon</p> <p >15:48 Should AI Talent Really B...
20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
<p >Carl Rivera is the Chief Design Officer at Shopify, where he previously led both Merchant Services and the Shop App as VP of Product. Before joining Shopify through its acquisition of Tictail, Carl was the co-founder and CEO of Tictail, the "Tumblr for e-commerce," where he built one of the most beloved design-forward commerce platforms of its era.</p> <p >AGENDA:</p> <p >05:05 Biggest Lessons from Selling My Company to Shopify</p> <p >09:55 Where Does Shopify Suck at Product: Lessons from that?</p> <p >17:37 What makes Truly Great product Design: The Five Pillars</p> <p >31:02 The Future of Design...
