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: OpenAI's $6BN Jony Ive Deal | YC Is Both Chanel and Walmart—and Has Officially Won | Builder.ai Implodes and Hinge IPOs: Who Wins & Who Loses | Seed Is Easy. Series A Is Brutal & The Dirty Truth About Late-Stage Venture
Agenda:
00:00 – Why “Fund Returners” Are a Myth in Late-Stage VC
05:02 – Builder.ai Implodes: $500M Gone & Fraud Allegations Begin
11:40 – The Dirty Truth About Late-Stage Venture Math
15:57 – The Hi…
20VC: The Most Insane Story in Startups: Airwallex: The Angel That Turned $1M into $1BN | The Fund That Pulled a Term Sheet & Lost $1BN | Rejecting Stripe's $1.2BN Offer | Scaling to $1BN in Revenue & 100% YoY Growth for 8 Years with Jack Zhang
Airwallex is the most insane story in startups:
- The best angel investment ever: The angel that turned $1M into $1BN.
- One of the world's best VCs pulled a term sheet and lost $1BN.
- The company turne…
20VC: ElevenLabs Head of Growth on Why You Do Not Need PMs | The 7-Part Launch Playbook That Gets 700K+ Views Per Product | The Truth About CAC, Payback & Performance Marketing in AI with Luke Harries
Luke Harries is Head of Growth at ElevenLabs, where he leads marketing, product, engineering, and developer experience. ElevenLabs has raised $281M with the latest round pricing the company at $3.3B …
20VC: Chime IPO: The Breakdown | Why Fund Returners Are Not Enough & Seed is for Suckers | Are IPOs Dead & The Future of the Late Stage Private Market | Rippling vs. Deel Lawsuit: WTF Happens Now?
Agenda:
04:34 Chime's IPO Announcement: Who Wins & Who Loses06:28 The Lopphole That Means Chime Has a Better Business than JP Morgan
10:51 Why Investors Who Invested at $25BN Will Make Money When it…
20VC: Duolingo Co-Founder on Why $3M is Harder than $100M to Raise | Why You Should Always Take Tier 1 VCs Even at Worse Terms | Why Europe Can't Win Unless the US Screws Up | How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education with Severin Hacker
Severin Hacker is the Co-Founder and CTO of Duolingo, the world’s most downloaded education app with over 100 million monthly users. Since its 2021 IPO, Duolingo has reached a market cap of $20BN. Th…
20Product: Figma CPO on How Figma Builds Products: What Works, What Does Not | How Figma Does Testing and Product Reviews | The Future of Design, Engineering and Product with Yuhki Yamashita
Yuhki Yamashita is the Chief Product Officer at Figma, where he leads the development of one of the world’s most beloved design platforms. Previously, he was Head of Product at Uber, overseeing the c…
20VC: Tiger Global Saved by OpenAI | Coatue's New Fund: Hype or Substance | Why SBF is the Greatest Investor of the Last 5 Years | Why Big Funds are Investing in Perplexity
Items Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
04:11 Owner’s New $120M Round at $1BN
06:05 Why Series A is F****** Today
14:55 Could Tiger Global Be Saved by OpenAI and Scale
22:43 Why SBF is the Greatest Inves…
20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund | Why Founders Should Take the Highest Price | Why Serial Entrepreneurs are Better | Why AI Is So Overhyped | The Future of Venture Capital with Immad Akhund
Immad Akhund is the CEO of Mercury. Launched in 2019, Mercury has raised $500M in funding from Sequoia, Coatue, CRV, Andreessen Horowitz and others. He is a former part-time partner at Y Combinator a…
20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment
Eléonore Crespo is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Pigment, one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies. With Pigment, Eleonore has raised over $397M from the best in the world including ICONIQ, Greenoaks and…
20VC: Benchmark vs a16z: Why Stage Specific Firms Win | Windsurf Sells For $3BN | Decagon Raises at 100x ARR | Do Mega Funds Win the Future of VC | What Does Harvard's Losing Their For-Profit Status Mean for VC
Today’s Topics:
04:44 Analysis of $3 Billion Windsurf Acquisition
12:39 Will Mega Funds Win the Future of Venture Capital
18:39 Does Every Fund Have to do Pre-Seed to Win Series A and B Today
27:53 W…
20VC Exclusive: Why Mega Platforms Will Win in VC | Why You Cannot Do VC If You Do Not Do Pre-Seed | Why Market Sizing is BS | Where Will Foundation Models Build/Buy Apps vs Where Will They Not with Bucky Moore
Bucky Moore is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, announced exclusively in the show today on 20VC. Prior to Lightspeed, Bucky spent an incredibly successful 7 years at Kleiner Perkins working w…
20Sales: Sierra: Inside Silicon Valley's Fastest Growing Sales Machine & How to Prospect, Outbound and Close Enterprise Deals in AI
Reggie Marable is the Head of Global Sales at Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Sierra enables companies like ADT, Sonos, SiriusXM, and WeightWatchers to build AI agents that trans…
20VC: Why Fund Returners Are Not Enough Anymore | Why Sequoia Had the Best Strategy at the Worst Time | What it Takes to Be Good at Series A and B Today | Benchmark Leads Manus Round: Should US Funds Invest in Chinese AI
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
03:56 Why The Risk Lever Has Been Turned Higher than Ever in VC
06:04 Why IRR is the Hardest Thing to Control
09:36 Is Lack of Liquidity Short Term Temporary or Long Te…
20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus
Taavet Hinrikus is a Partner at Plural, the early-stage fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. He co-founded Wise in 2010, where he was CEO a…
20Growth: Inside Kraken’s $1.5BN Growth Playbook: What Works, What Doesn’t and What No Founders Understand About Growth That Will Change Their Company with Mayur Gupta
Mayur Gupta is currently the CMO at Kraken, one of the largest crypto platforms in the world. Prior to that, he lead Marketing, Business Transformation and Growth at Gannett - USA Today Network, led …
20VC: OpenAI's $3BN Acquisition of Windsurf: The Breakdown | Are Endowment Funds F******* & How LP Deployment to Venture Will Change in 2025 | Why Revenue Multiples are BS, The Rise of AI Rollups and Multi-Stage Funds Destroying Seed Investing
In Today’s Show We Discuss:
04:49 Breaking Down the $3BN Windsurf Acquisition
06:18 Why Sam Altman is Playing a Master Game
12:40 Why Multi-Stage Funds are Destroying Seed Managers
21:52 Are Endowme…
20VC: Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders | The Best Performing Fund Would Only Back YC Founders on Their Second Time | Why SPACs Will Come Back | Why Short Sellers Should Be Banned | Is Trump Better for Business than Biden with Jason Wilk @ Dave
Jason Wilk is the Founder and CEO of Dave, the greatest turnaround in the public markets of the last 12 months. Dave went public with a market cap of $4BN, just months later the company had a market …
20VC: Foundation Models: Who Wins & Who Loses | How Economies and Labour Markets Need to Change in a World of AI | China vs the US in an AI Race: What You Need to Know | Rich Socher, Founder @ You.com
Rich Socher is the Founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Before that, Richard was the CEO/CTO of the AI startup MetaMind, which Salesforc…
20VC: Why Seed is for Suckers | a16z's $20BN Fund & Founders Fund's $4.6BN: What Makes Them So Good | Why Josh Kushner Is the Master of Venture Capital Strategy | Why Extended Private Markets Screw US Citizens with Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll
Jason Lemkin is one of the leading SaaS investors of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Algolia, Talkdesk, Owner, RevenueCat, Saleloft and more.
Rory O’Driscoll is a General Par…
20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling
Victor Lazarte is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the mot renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Victor has led deals into the likes of HeyGen and Mercor. As an angel, he was the fi…