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.
- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 40 minutes
- Episodes
- 1351
- Years Active
- 2015 - 2025
20VC: Cognition CEO Scott Wu on Acquiring Windsurf: The Process, The Deal, The Rationale | Did Google Overlook a Goldmine in the Core Asset and Did Founders Leave a Sinking Ship | How Cursor and Cognition Deal with Ever Increasing Reliance on Anthropic
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the world’s first AI software engineer. On Friday last week they pulled off the acquisition of the year, acquiring Windsurf,…
20VC: Windsurf x Google x Cognition: Full Breakdown: Who Made Money, Who Did Not | Lovable vs Replit: Will These Be $100BN Businesses | Why Elon Could Beat Sam Altman with the New Grok | Why Every S&P 500 Company Will Buy Bitcoin?
Agenda:
00:00 Windsurf was dead—then this deal changed everything
05:00 The Windsurf x Google x Cognition saga explained
09:00 The OpenAI deal collapsed—what really happened
15:00 FTC rules forced a …
20VC: Vlad Tenev on Robinhood’s $85BN Resurgence | Tokenizing SpaceX & OpenAI | Building Nine Revenue Lines Over $100M | Why Crypto Will Be Robinhood's Biggest Revenue Line | Why Stablecoins Will Replace Banking Rails
Vlad Tenev is the Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the greatest story on Wall St of the last decade. In the previous 18 months, Robinhood has increased its net revenue by 58% to nearly $3B; a $500M loss…
20Growth: The Death of Growth Teams? | How Hubspot Use AI to Triple Email Conversion | The Future of AI SEO | Why Prompt Engineering is the New Coding | What Every CMO Needs to Know About AI in 2025
Kieran Flanagan is the CMO at HubSpot, where he’s led the transformation of their growth strategy from SEO-led to multi-channel and AI-powered. Formerly SVP of Marketing, he helped scale HubSpot’s us…
20VC: Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Acquired by Meta | OpenAI’s SBC Bombshell: More Stock Comp Than Revenue | Privat Equity is Back: Olo Bought for $2BN | Microsoft Lays Off 9,000 People: Is This Just the Start | Will Sequoia Part with Shaun Maguire
Agenda:
[00:00] The AI Talent Crisis No One’s Ready For
[03:00] Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Why Two Legendary VCs Walked Away From $1B to Join Meta
[12:00] Meta’s AI Talent Magnet: Will It Actuall…
20VC: Scott Galloway on Are Billionaires Happy & The Impact of Money on Psychology and Self-Worth | Becoming a Better Father & Husband | Why We Should Drink More and Not Work From Home | The Tinder Effect & How it Makes Young Men Radical
Scott Galloway is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern, where he’s taught for over two decades. He’s the founder of several successful companies, including L2 (acquired by Gartner for over $150M), R…
20VC: Figma's IPO: The Full Breakdown | Index Returns $3.5BN on Two Deals | Why Melio's $2.5BN Acquisition is "Discouraging" | Asana's New CEO and the Great Founder Exodus | Oracle's $30BN AI Deal and What it Means for Incumbents
AGENDA:
00:00 – $400B in AI CapEx: Rational Investment or Madness?
05:00 – Figma's IPO: Rule of 80, $1.5B in cash, 40% margins. Unreal.
08:00 – Adobe Screwed the Deal—Should They Have Just Bought Can…
20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise
Philipp Freise is Co-Head of European Private Equity at KKR, where he manages the largest private fund in Europe with $8BN in the latest fund. Philip has led KKR's investments in FGS Global, Superstr…
20Sales: How to Layer Enterprise Sales on PLG | How to Sell AI Tools To Enterprises That Are Scared | Should Reps Own Their Own Pipeline | Mistakes All Founders Make When Moving From Founder-Led to Rep-Led Sales with Kim Graves
Kim Graves is GM, Americas at Notion, where she oversees all Sales and Customer Success efforts across the region. She brings extensive experience in building and scaling high-performing sales organi…
20VC: Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross Bought with Zuck's $100BN AI Budget | Navan Files to Go Public and Canva Pulls the Brakes: Why and What Happens | Why Larry Ellison is the Smartest Man in Tech | Substance or Sizzle: What is Real and What is BS in AI
Agenda:
04:21 - The Meta Acquisition Bombshell: Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross Join Facebook?!
06:00 - Facebook’s $100 Billion Gamble: Can Zuck Buy the Future?
09:27 - The “Magic Room” Theory: Why Only …
20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide
Johannes Reck is the Founder and CEO of GetYourGuide, the $2BN company that started with a holiday to China and nothing to do. For the first two years, GetYourGuide received only 5 bookings. Today th…
20Product: How Duolingo Build Product 10x Faster with AI | Duolingo's Biggest Lessons on Paywalls, Push Notifications and In-App Purchases | Why Small Teams are the Future of Product | Why PMs Will Become Extinct with Cem Kansu, CPO @ Duolingo
Cem Kansu is the Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, where he leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners. Since joining Duolingo, Cem has played a pivotal role in driving recor…
20VC: Scale's $14.8BN Acquisition: Is Scale a Dead Man Walking / What Did Meta Buy | Chime IPO: Are IPOs Hotter Than Ever | Ramp Hits $16BN Diluting Only 1% | Salesforce, Slack and Dropbox Falling Behind: Are Incumbents Losing Ground
Agenda:
00:00 – Meta’s $14.8B Deal for Scale: The Analysis
05:40 – Will Scale Lose Their $800M ARR? Will All Customers Leave?
13:00 – Who is the Winner from All Scale Customers Leaving?
21:30 – Who M…
20VC: How We Made $800M on Coursera | We Lost Money on Uber and Made Money on Lyft | We Did 3x on Postmates in 18 Months | DPI is King, MOIC is BS | We Dodged Theranos and I Still Lost Millions with Larry Aschebrook @ G Squared
Larry Aschebrook is the Founder and Managing Partner of G Squared in what is one of the wildest stories of venture capital. Larry started G Squared with nothing, dialling for dollars having personall…
20VC: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink: Elon’s Empire After the Firestorm | Are Circle and Coreweave Meme Stocks: IPO Analysis | Anduril Raises $2.6BN & Becomes Founders Fund's 1st and 2nd Largest Check Ever | Cursor Now 20% of SaaS Spend and the SaaS Slowdown
Agenda:
00:03 – Circle’s IPO: Investors Just Left $BNs on the Table
00:06 – CoreWeave & Circle: Are We Back to Meme Stock Madness?
00:11 – Should Stripe and Databricks Finally Go Public?
00:17 – US S…
20VC: Fiverr CEO: ‘If You’re Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You’re Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman
Micha Kaufman is the Founder and CEO of Fiverr, the leading online marketplace for freelance services. Fiverr has had an insane ride in the public markets, in 2019 the company went public with a $650…
20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson
Matt Pohlson is the co-founder and Chairman of Omaze, the most insane story in startups that you have never heard. From near death experience to working with Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney and…
20VC: Is Chamath Right: Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters | Does OpenAI Even Matter | Mary Meekers AI Report: The Analysis| IPO Breakdown: Chime, Circle & Thoma Bravo's New Fund
Agenda:
00:00 – The Most Unfiltered Episode Ever Begins
03:30 – Does OpenAI Even Matter? Sam Lessin Says Maybe Not.
05:45 – TVPI Is Bullshit?
09:20 – Asset Gatherers vs Real Investors: Who Actually …
20VC: Windsurf Founder on Will Model Companies Own the App Layer | Why Moats Do Not Exist in a World of AI | Why the Notion of Single Person $BN Companies is BS | Lovable vs Bolt & Cursor vs Windsurf: How Does it All End with Varun Mohan
Varun Mohan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Windsurf, the leading AI-native IDE, which has over a million users and generates over 50% of all committed software across thousands of companies. Prior to W…
20Sales: From $2M ARR to $40M ARR: The Playbook | How to Use AI To Supercharge Your Sales Team | Why Pipeline Reviews are BS | The Sales Call Script that Closes 99% of Prospects and How to Hire the Best Sales Reps with Kyle Norton, CRO @ Owner
Kyle Norton is the Chief Revenue Officer at Owner.com, where he scaled revenue from $2M to $40M ARR in under 3 years while selling to one of the toughest markets: SMB restaurants. Before Owner, Kyle …