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.
20Growth: How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow and Superhuman | Why You Should Do Paid Ads Today and How To Do Them | How to Build the Best Referral Programs and How to Crush UGC with Matt Swulinski
Matt Swulinski is one of the best growth leaders in AI. He is currently Head of Growth at Viktor, the Accel-backed AI coworker. Previously, he was Head of Growth at Wispr Flow, where he was marketing hire #1 and built the growth function from pre-launch to millions of users. Matt also built the AI-powered marketing OS that automated 100 newsletter sponsorships a month and enabled a lean team to scale dramatically faster. Before Wispr Flow, Matt worked in growth at Superhuman.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why SaaS Founders Should Steal the E-Commerce Growth Playbook
04:47 How Does PLG Change When A...
20VC: Canva Slashes Growth: How Much is it Really Worth | Demis Hassabis and Jeff Dean: Talent Exodus at Google | Revolut's $50BN CEO Pay Package | Elon Musk's $55BN Terrafab
AGENDA:
05:00 Canva's Growth Gets Slashed as AI Costs Explode 20:00 The Great Software Reset: Why 2026 Will Punish AI Hesitancy 29:00 Canva's Valuation Reality Check—and the LP Liquidity Trap 35:00 Google's AI Brain Drain: Jeff Dean Leaves, Demis Steps Back 43:00 Why Google Can't Afford to Cure Alzheimer's 50:00 The Data-Centre Revolt: Can AI Survive the Political Backlash? 55:00 Elon Musk's $55BN Terrafab Bet to Break Free from TSMC 57:00 Revolut's $50BN CEO Pay Package—and the Return of Founder Control 01:13 AI Shopping, Atlassian's Revival, and Airtable's Brutal Sale Reality
20VC: Will OpenRouter Sell for $10BN to Stripe? | Why Chinese Open Models Are Beating America—and What Happens Next | Why Enterprises Are More Fearful of Anthropic and OpenAI Than China | Is the Routing Layer Becoming a Commodity with Alex Atallah
Alex Atallah is the Founder and CEO @ OpenRouter, the unified interface for LLMs. The company has raised over $153M in funding, with the latest valuation pricing the company at $1.3BN. OpenRouter is reportedly in an acquisition process with Stripe for $10BN.
AGENDA:
00:00 Is OpenRouter Selling to Stripe for $10 Billion?
04:05 What Did Alex Learn From Scaling OpenSea?
06:38 What Did OpenRouter's Founding Thesis Get Wrong?
14:47 Is AI Model Routing Already Being Commoditized?
19:12 Do Falling Token Prices Help or Hurt OpenRouter?
27:16 Should America Be Alarmed by Chinese Open Models?
32:43 Will US Open-Source M...
20VC: The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses | Why Founders Should Never Take Multi-Stage Money at Seed | Why Triple, Triple, Double, Double is Good Enough
David Frankel is one of the great seed investors of our time. As the Co-Founder of Founder Collective he has backed the likes of Uber, Coupang, Suno, PillPack, Airtable, Whoop, Shield AI and many more. In a world of expanding fund sizes, David and Founder Collective are one of the only successful franchises to truly stick to small, boutique funds.
AGENDA:
00:00 The Bubbles Are Getting Bigger—and There Will Be a Lot of Roadkill
05:21 The Worst-Performing Funds Will Be the $50M–$100M Seed Funds
25:06 "We're Greedy for Returns, Not Management Fees"
20VC: Airtable Sold for $1.285BN | Leo Achenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up | Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B | Anthropic Model Breaches Three Companies' Security | Big Tech Earnings: Why Palantir Beat The Rest
Special Guest: Nikesh Arora, CEO @ Palo Alto Networks.
AGENDA:
04:50 Airtable Sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285B
17:00 Leo Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up as Citadel Buys His $16BN Book
22:30 Anthropic's AI Models Breach Three Companies as Cyber Threat Accelerates
33:35 Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B as Chinese Models Crush AI Prices
38:05 Valar Atomics Triples to $6B as Sequoia Bets on Nuclear Power for AI
42:50 OpenAI and Anthropic Could Trigger a Massive Public-Market Dislocation
52:55 Big Tech and Palantir Earnings Ignite the Next Phase of the AI Gold Rush
1:04:30 Procore Buys Dr...
20VC: 70% of Neolabs Will Die | There Will be a $100BN US Open-Source Model | Data is a Trillion $ Market | Governments Cannot Regulate Models: It is Too Late | The Cyber Attacks to Come Will be Insane with Anastasios Angelopoulos @ Arena
Anastasios Angelopoulos is the co-founder and CEO of Arena, the real-world evaluation platform that has become a leading referee of the global AI model race. Arena has raised $250 million, with the latest round valuing the company at $1.7BN. Arena recently surpassed $100M ARR just eight months after launching its enterprise offering, powered by more than 30 million monthly users.
AGENDA:
00:00 – Intro: "Kimi beat every American model": What Nobody Wants to Admit…
05:20 – Is this the true commoditization of models? Are they just a utility layer now?
07:30 – Do Chinese open source models cannibalize the closed f...
20VC: The Best AI Companies Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies | Will Simile Kill Kalshi, Polymarkets and NASDAQ | How to Sign Fortune 500 Companies As Customers in Weeks with Joon Sung Park, Simile
Joon Sung Park is the Founder and CEO of Simile, the AI simulation company building foundation models of human behaviour; allowing companies to test how real people may think, decide and act before making a decision in the real world. Simile has now raised $300 million in total, including a $200 million Series B announced last week at a $2 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Index Ventures.
AGENDA:
00:00 We Will Pay $100M for a Single Query on Some Models
10:00 Why Stock Markets May Not Exist in 5 Years Time
15:00 The Best Companies All Have...
20VC: Jensen's Open-Weights Letter | Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7B for Atoms | Google Cloud Grows 82% But The Market Tanks | Francisco Partners Raises $21BN | Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia
AGENDA:
05:00 Jensen's Open-Weights Letter Puts Anthropic on an Island
10:00 OpenAI's Model Targets Hugging Face in a Cyber-Security Scare
18:00 America's Open-Model Push Accelerates as China Looms Large
30:00 Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia
34:00 Google Cloud Grows 82%—So Why Did the Market Panic?
41:00 Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7B for Atoms and Physical AI
51:00 Francisco Partners Raises $21B: Can Private Equity Still Save SaaS?
1:00:00 Mark Pincus Says Quit When It's Too Hard—Jason Lemkin Erupts
1:07:00 Stripe vs Revolut: Which $100B+ Fintech Would You Own?
20VC: Leading Anthropic's First Ever Round | Will Open Source Threaten Anthropic's Business | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | Why Triple, Triple, Double, Double is Not Good Enough Today | Why Series A is Hard Today with Matt Murphy @ Menlo
Matt Murphy is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, who just raised $3 billion in fresh capital, its largest pool ever. Matt's portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora, OpenRouter, Chai Discovery, Axiom, OpenEvidence and more.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Menlo Broke All Its Investing Rules to Back Anthropic
09:00 Why Ownership Matters Less in an Outlier-Driven Venture Market
13:00 Do We Have an SPV Problem in Venture Today?
20:00 Do Margins Still Matter in AI?
23:00 Why Open Source Won't Derail Anthropic's Growth
26:00 Does Every Model Provider Need to Build Its Own Chips?
29:00 Why Anthropic Is Not a T...
20VC: Mercor CPO on Revenue Concentration from Frontier Labs | Why Large Enterprise is Scared to Partner with Frontier Labs | Why Small Specialised Models is the Future with Osvald Nitski
Osvald Nitski is the Chief Product Officer at Mercor, the AI-training and expert-data marketplace powering frontier-model development. Mercor last raised a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, and is reportedly in discussions for a new round at a $20 billion valuation. Mercor crossed $2BN in ARR in June; doubling from $1 billion in only four months.
AGENDA:
00:04:00 Will open-source models kill the data-provider business?
00:07:00 Are enterprises still terrified of working with frontier model companies?
00:09:00 Does every company end up with its own specialised AI model?
00:10:00 Do enterprises actually have an AI...
20VC: OpenAI and Anthropic Threatened by Kimi? | Should the US Ban Chinese Open-Source Models | Should Openrouter Sell & Value in the Routing Layer? | Stripe Buying Paypal: What You Need to Know
AGENDA:
00:04 China's Kimi and Qwen Put Frontier AI on Notice
00:08 Washington Debates Whether Chinese AI Models Should Be Banned
00:17 Can America Build a Profitable Open-Weight AI Champion?
00:21 OpenRouter's Moment: Is This the Perfect Time to Sell?
00:31 Fireworks' $1.5B Raise Signals the Real AI Money Is in Infrastructure
00:39 Why Every Great AI App May Need to Build Its Own Model
00:50 Stripe's Bold Play to Buy PayPal
01:01 The AI Funding Frenzy: Why Late-Stage Venture Is Winning
01:12 Nuclear Startups Go Wild While Databricks and Stripe Stay Private
01:15 The AI Supply Chain...
20VC: Are OpenAI and Anthropic Overvalued? The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10x And Usage Will Explode 100x | The Future Is Not One AGI; It's Millions of Specialised Models with Lin Qiao, Founder and CEO @ Fireworks
Lin Qiao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, the leading specialized intelligence and AI inference platform that last week raised $1.5BN at a whopping $17BN valuation. With just 200 people, the company has hit $1BN in ARR and expects to hit $2BN before the end of the year. Prior to Fireworks, Lin spent several years at Meta including on the founding team of PyTorch.
AGENDA:
00:07 — Why Did Fireworks Bet on Inference When Everyone Else Was Chasing Training?
00:13 — Can Open-Source Models Turn AI Infrastructure into a Commodity?
00:19 — Should Enterprises Trust Chinese Open Mo...
20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner
Fred Turner is the Founder and CEO @ Curative, one of the wildest stories in tech. Fred scaled a COVID testing business from $0 to $5BN in revenue and took the team from 7 to 7,000 employees in just 9 months. They did over 206,000 COVID tests in a single day and signed contracts in the 100s of $Ms with several of the largest states. Today, Curative is a unicorn health insurance business taking on the incumbents for one of the largest markets in healthcare.
AGENDA:
00:00 How Did a Spare-Time COVID Test Become a $5BN Business?
07:00 How Do You G...
20VC: Apple Sues OpenAI | Zuckerberg Back on X and Challenging Codex and Claude Code | SK Hynix's $26BN IPO | Is Seed Investing Dead: Jason Calacanis Departs Seed for Growth | Greylock Raises New $1.5BN Fund
AGENDA:
00:00 – Apple SUES OpenAI: Did They Steal Apple's Biggest Secrets? 05:10 – Is OpenAI's $6BN Hardware Bet Already Dead? 12:50 – Zuckerberg Is Back: Meta Finally Takes On OpenAI 18:05 – The AI Spending Bubble Nobody Is Talking About 23:45 – Claude Is Coming for Designers, Product Managers & Figma 27:15 – Anthropic's $50BN Explosion: Have We Already Hit AI's TAM? 36:00 – The $26BN AI IPO Powering the Entire Industry 40:00 – Seed Investing Is Dead? Jason Calacanis Changes Strategy 57:00 – SaaS Is in Trouble: AI Is Accelerating Terminal Decay 01:15:00 – Why Greylock Said No to Billions of Extra Dollars
20VC: Wix's Founder on What Wall St Gets Wrong About AI and Wix | Will Base44 Win the Vibe Coding Wars | The Truth About the Economics of Vibe-Coding | The Buyback Disaster: Lessons Learned with Avishai Abrahami
Avishai Abrahami is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wix, the NASDAQ-listed website creation platform serving millions of businesses worldwide. Today, Wix generates more than $2BN in ARR and has a market capitalization of approximately $2.1BN, after reaching a peak valuation of $17BN over the past two years. The company also acquired Base44, one of the fastest-growing AI application-building platforms, scaling it to $150M in ARR in record time.
AGENDA:
00:00 The SaaS Apocalypse: What Does Wall Street Still Not Understand About Wix?
07:00 Is the Market Valuing Wix's Core Business at Less Than Zero?
<...20VC: Why OpenAI and Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Teams Will Get Bigger Not Smaller in a World of AI | Why AI Removes Incumbents Advantage of Bundling | China vs America: Who Wins the AI War with Arvind Jain, Co-Founder @ Glean
Arvind Jain is the Founder & CEO of Glean, the enterprise AI leader valued at $7.2 billion after raising more than $770 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, DST Global, and more. Before Glean, Arvind co-founded Rubrik, helping build it into one of the world's leading cloud infrastructure companies before its successful IPO. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, working across Search, Maps, and YouTube.
AGENDA:
00:00 – The Shocking Truth About Frontier AI: 90% Is Already a Commodity
02:04 – Can OpenAI & Anthropic Own Enterprise AI? The Battle for the Workplace Begins
10:18 – Will Op...
20VC: Sam Altman Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI: Fool or Genius? | Alex Karp Sounds the Alarm: Enterprises Fear Frontier Models & Questionable ROI of AI | The Rise of Chinese Open Source: Deepseek Building Own Chips
AGENDA:
05:00 Washington Just Put Frontier AI on a Leash
06:30 Sam Altman's Wild 5% Government Stake Idea
19:00 The AI Funding Bubble: Why Founders No Longer Fear Dilution
28:00 Alex Karp's Brutal Warning: Enterprises Don't Trust Frontier AI
33:00 Meta's Shock Pivot: Has Zuck Accidentally Built the Next CoreWeave?
41:00 Nvidia's Dangerous New Game: "Compute Now, Pay Later"
45:00 Anthropic & DeepSeek Go After Nvidia's Crown
48:00 Kling vs Sora: Did China Just Win AI Video?
52:00 Is China Secretly Winning the Open Source AI War?
01:02:00 Microsoft & Amazon's $6B Bet: AI Still Needs Humans
01:11:00 Ashton Kutcher Walks...
20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV
Mike Mignano is a General Partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the most iconic venture firms in the world, whose investments include Coinbase, Stripe, Etsy, Twilio, Cloudflare. Before joining USV, Mike was a Partner at Lightspeed, where he backed breakout AI companies including Granola and Suno. Prior to investing, he co-founded Anchor, acquired by Spotify.
AGENDA:
00:00 Is Fear of Failure the Secret Weapon Behind Great Founders?
07:20 Why Leave Lightspeed for USV — and Is Thesis-Driven Venture Still Alive?
09:50 Is the Real AI Money Still in Infrastructure, or Are Apps Finally About to...
20VC: Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100,000 Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need | Why Forward-Deployed Engineers Are the Future of Enterprise AI with Clay Bavor, Co-Founder of Sierra
Clay Bavor is the Co-Founder of Sierra, one of the world's fastest-growing enterprise AI companies. Sierra is valued at approximately $15.8 billion, has raised more than $1.5BN from leading investors including Sequoia, Benchmark, Greenoaks, GV and Tiger Global, and today serves more than 40% of the Fortune 50. The company recently surpassed $150 ARR, making it one of the fastest-growing enterprise software businesses in history.
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why Frontier AI Demand Will Be Unlimited
08:00 – Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins?
17:00 – China's AI Advantage & The Distillation Debate
20:30 – Inside Sierra: The AI Agents Running the Enti...
20VC: Dario and Anthropic Declare War on Open-Source | Coinbase Slash AI Spend by 50% | Kalshi's $40BN Valuation and Impending IPO | Bending Spoons: Smartest IPO of 2026 and the Year for SaaS Roll-Ups
AGENDA:
00:00 Coinbase Slashes AI Spend 50%—Is the AI Token Bubble Bursting?
12:55 Anthropic Warns Open Source Could Destroy the AI Business Model
18:10 Dario Escalates the AI War with China & Open-Source
22:00 Should the US Ban Chinese AI Models?
33:15 Microsoft's AI Strategy Is Breaking Down
38:00 Kalshi's $40B Valuation Signals a New Consumer Gold Rush
41:15 Has SpaceX Frozen the AI IPO Market?
43:20 Why Bending Spoons May Be the Smartest IPO of the Year
46:00 The $100B Opportunity to Buy Broken SaaS Companies
53:30 Which Software Co...
20VC: Leo Aschenbrenner's Largest Holding: Inside the $90BN Bloom Energy | Why Electricity, Not AI Models, Will Decide the Winners of the AI Race | Why We Are Not in an AI Capex Bubble | Energy Sovereignty and The Future of Power with KR Sridhar
KR Sridhar is the Founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, the distributed power company powering the AI revolution. Under his leadership, Bloom has grown to a market cap of approximately $93 billion, with revenue surpassing $2 billion as demand from AI data centres has surged. Over the last 12–18 months, Bloom has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure boom. It's also the largest position in Leo Aschenbrenner's investment portfolio, making up around 16% of his fund.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Failure Is Never an Option: The Mindset That Built a $90B Company
05:20 The 25-Year Bet: Wh...
20VC: How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong | Why 1-1s are BS and What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Equity | Why Taste Beats AI But How AI Kills Org Charts with Paul Erlanger, CEO @ fomo
Paul Erlanger is the Co-Founder and CEO of FOMO, the social-first trading platform building the future of on-chain investing. Since founding the company in 2025, Paul has raised approximately $94 million, including a $17 million Series A led by Benchmark and a $75 million Series B led by Index Ventures with participation from USV, valuing the company at $550 million. Today, FOMO has grown to 600,000 users, processed over $4 billion in trading volume, and is adding thousands of new users every day—all with a team of just 17 people.
AGENDA:
00:00 – Building a $550M Company with No Salaries, No Managers & No 1:1s
20VC: Deepseek Raises $50BN | Wall St's $725BN AI Question | The Rise of Open Source & How it Threatens OpenAI & Anthropic | OpenAI Builds it's Own Chip: Jalapeno | The Death of Moats & The New AI Software Winners
AGENDA:
00:00 – Google Loses Two AI Legends as Anthropic Wins the Talent War
14:45 – China's $50B DeepSeek Bet Changes the AI Power Balance
27:15 – AI's Memory Crisis Has Begun — Apple Warns of a '100-Year Flood'
30:00 – Wall Street Finally Asks the $725 Billion Question: Who Pays for AI?
41:00 – We Built an AI Finance VP... and It's Better Than Humans
46:30 – The Death of Moats? Why Founders Should Stop Talking About Defensibility
58:30 – Databricks, ServiceNow & the New AI Software Winners
01:07:00 – The Seat-Based SaaS Model Is Dying
01:12:00 – OpenAI's Custom Models Could Rewrite...
20VC: Nikesh Arora on the Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth | The Future of Token Costs | Memory Becoming the Moat | Where Value Accrues: Infra, Models, or Apps? | Why Enterprise AI is Not Ready & Systems of Record vs Systems of Intelligence
Nikesh Arora is the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader. Since taking over in 2018, he has transformed the company from an $18 billion market cap business into one worth more than $225BN with more than 21,000 employees globally. Previously, Nikesh was President and COO of SoftBank, where he worked alongside Masayoshi Son and helped shape the firm's technology investment strategy.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why AI Token Prices Will Fall 90% — And Why That's Bullish for AI
07:40 The Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth in AI
11:30 Most Enterprises Are Using AI Completely Wro...
20VC: Why Remote Work is White Collar Fraud | Why Revenge and Patriotism are the Best Founder Traits | Two Questions Every Founder Needs to Ask | The Wild Story of Raising $1BN from Masa Son in an Hour Long Meeting with Ryan Peterson, Founder @ Flexport
Ryan Peterson is the Founder & CEO @ Flexport, the logistics darling of the venture capital world that has raised $900M+ with the last round valuing the company at $8BN. Today, the company does $450M in revenue growing 30% YoY.
AGENDA:
00:00 — Why Does Ryan Petersen Call Remote Work "White Collar Fraud"?
08:30 — Does Having More Money Actually Make You a Better Founder?
11:40 — When Will Flexport IPO? What Price Would It Go Out At?
19:00 — Can AI Actually Automate Entire Companies or Is the Productivity Boom Overhyped?
22:00 — Which Jobs Will Exist in 5 Years That Don't E...
20VC: SpaceX Soars to $2.7TRN | Anthropic's Fable Banned by US Government | Wix and Adobe Hit All-Time Lows | Mistral Raising at $20BN and The Case for Sovereign Models | Fin Acquired by Salesforce for $3.6BN
AGENDA:
00:00 — SpaceX Completes the Largest IPO in History 03:45 — Elon Musk Adds a Warren Buffett Fortune in 24 Hours 20:45 — Anthropic's Claude Fable Launches Monday, Gets Banned by Thursday 25:00 — Washington Declares War on Frontier AI 39:00 — Europe's Sovereign AI Push Accelerates as Mistral Targets $20B 43:30 — Benchmark Admits Its Biggest Miss: Passing on the Model Labs 45:15 — Salesforce Buys Fin for $3.6B and Rewrites the SaaS Survival Playbook 1:02:00 — Adobe Beats, Raises, and Still Crashes as AI Fears Intensify 1:06:30 — Why Every Legacy SaaS Company Is Trapped in an AI Death Spiral 1:10:00 — The AI Acquisition Window Has Officially Closed 1:13:00 — Nvidia at 16x Earnings vs SaaS at 8x Cash Flow: Where Sho...20VC: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta | How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China | Power is the Bottleneck to AI | Why Dario Has Done a Disservice to AI with his Labour Replacement Messaging with Aravind Srinivas, Founder @ Perplexity
Aravind Srinivas is the Founder and CEO of Perplexity, one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world. Since the start of the year, Perplexity has tripled revenue to well over $500M in ARR. Aravind has raised over $1BN for the company with reported valuations reaching $20BN.
AGENDA:
05:40 – "Perplexity Changed Google More Than Any PM Ever Has"
10:15 – Why Search Is Not the Future of AI
13:05 – The Most Important Insight in AI: The Model Is NOT The Product
16:10 – Why AI Agents Will Become Bigger Than Google Search
22:00 – AI Will Design...
20VC: Who Wins the Model War: OpenAI, Anthropic or Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning | Labour Displacement Fears are BS & Overblown | From Physicist to Sequoia Founder with Matan Grinberg, Founder @ Factory
Matan Grinberg is the Founder and CEO @ Factory, an AI research lab, bringing autonomy to software engineering. Matan has raised over $220M for the company from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, NEA, Evantic and 20VC. Last round valued the company at a whopping $1.5BN.
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why AI Means Everyone Will Become a Builder
04:55 – Will AI Finally Break the 200-Year GDP Growth Ceiling?
06:45 – The Rise of the 100x Engineer & Load-Bearing Talent
08:00 – The New Executive Job: Allocating Tokens Like Capital
10:35 – Kirkland's $500M AI Bet: Brilliant or Delusional?
12:45 – The AI Value W...
20VC: SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO | OpenAI Files to Go Public | Uber Cuts 23% of HR | Lovable Hits $500M ARR | Founders Revolt Against VCs: The Fundraising Horror Stories Going Viral
AGENDA:
00:00 – SpaceX Launches the Largest IPO Roadshow in History at $1.77T Valuation
05:00 – Did Elon Break the IPO Playbook? The High-Risk Pricing Strategy Explained
12:00 – Will SpaceX Create a New Generation of Venture Billionaires?
17:00 – OpenAI Files to Go Public as the AI IPO Race Officially Begins
19:00 – Sam Altman's Vision: Why AI Is Becoming Always-On Infrastructure
22:00 – Apple Admits Defeat on Siri and Turns to Google AI
25:00 – Uber Cuts 23% of HR as AI Reshapes White-Collar Work
31:00 – Founders Revolt Against VCs: The Fundraising Horror Stories Going Viral
38:00 – Lovab...
20VC: Nebius Co-Founder on AI Infrastructure Bubbles | The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic | How Price Elastic is Demand for Compute | Could Nebius Sell 10x More Compute If They Had It & more with Roman Chernin
Roman Chernin is Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Nebius, one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies in the world. Today, Nebius operates some of the largest AI compute clusters globally and serves leading AI labs, enterprises, and developers. Today, Nebius has a market cap of $57BN.
AGENDA:
00:00 — Why AI Infrastructure Is Not a Bubble
05:00 — The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic
11:00 — Jevons Paradox: Why Cheaper AI Creates More Demand
13:00 — The Four Layers of AI Infrastructure Explained
19:00 — If Nebius Had 10x More Capacity Tomorrow
26:00 — T...
20Product: Inside Legora's Tech Stack: Why Token Maxing is Failing Enterprise Startups with Jacob Lauritzen, CTO @ Legora
Jacob Lauritzen serves as the CTO at Legora, the fastest growing B2B enterprise company in history; hitting $100 million in ARR in just 18 months . Legora boasts a valuation of $5.6BN and has raised a total of $866 million in funding. Legora's investors include the likes of Accel, Benchmark, and Bessemer Venture Partners, alongside strategic tech giants NVIDIA (NVentures) and Salesforce Ventures.
AGENDA:
05:01 - How to Hire the Best Product Talent in 2026
06:21 - The New Product Bottleneck: Shifting Beyond Code Creation
20VC: Anthropic Files to Go Public | Token Budgeting Panic Hits Corporate America | Cognition Raises $1BN at $26BN Valuation | Apollo Warns PE Software Returns Will be Disastrous | The 9-9-6 Work Ethic: Performative Theatre or Startup Reality?
AGENDA:
00:00:00 — Private Markets Are "F***ing Done" & The Shift to Heavy CapEx
00:00:46 — Anthropic Files to Go Public
00:04:59 — Will the Anthropic IPO Break the Startup Ecosystem?
00:06:22 — The "Billion-Dollar Position" Era: VCs Reset Their Expectations
00:18:11 — The Trillion-Dollar Cash Grab: Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI Rush the Queue
00:23:15 — Is the SaaS Apocalypse Over? Bouncing Off the Bottom
00:25:34 — The Death of Human Per-Seat Licenses as Multiples Shift
00:27:18 — Winners vs. Losers: How Agentic Focused Products Captured the Market
00:30:26 — Cognition Raises $1 Billion at a $26 Billion Valuation
00:33:04 — Token Budgeting Panic...
20VC: Mercor CEO on Why Application Layer Companies Have No Defensibility, The Model is the Product | Token Spend Will Exceed Headcount Spend in 5 Years | The True Cost of Hiring AI Researchers in the Valley Today with Brendan Foody
Brendan Foody is the Founder and CEO @ Mercor, one of the leading data providers to the largest labs on the planet including OpenAI. In the last two years, Brendan has scaled the company to $1.5BN in ARR and a valuation of $10BN.
AGENDA:
True or False:
Mercor lost Meta and OpenAI as a customer with the hack?
Mercor has been poaching competitor talent, paying them millions?
Mercor revenue is not real revenue and is only GMV?
12:56 Would Brendan sell Mercor for $30 billion?
14:23 Why everyone is wron...
20VC: Corgi Insurance: The Most Intense Workplace Culture in America: 7 Days Per Week, Founder Sleeps in Office, Corgi Cafe Open 24 Hours a Day, 60% of First 30 Employees Have Corgi Tattoos | The Journey from $0 to $2.6BN Valuation in Just 2 Years
Nico Laqua is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgi Insurance, an AI-native insurance carrier built for startups. Corgi is the most intense workplace culture in America. The team works 7 days per week. The founder sleeps in the office. ⅔ of the first 30 team members have a Corgi tattoo. This week, Corgi raised $106M, valuing the company at a whopping $2.6BN.
AGENDA:
06:35 Why going to university was a massive waste of time
09:42 Why we work seven days a week
11:58 Why we do work trials and how that is a test of people's stamina
...
20VC: OpenAI & SpaceX S1 Drops | NVIDIA's $81BN Revenue Quarter | Cloudlfare and ClickUp Do Controversial Layoffs | Exa, OpenRouter and Polsia Raise Mega Rounds | Uber and Microsoft Declare AI ROI for Developers is Questionable
AGENDA:
05:16 Nvidia Blowout Quarter: $81BN Revenues and Stock… Flat!
10:39 Uber and Microsoft Declare Productivity Gains Questionable from AI
25:26 The Layoffs Continue: ClickUp and Cloudflare
34:39 OpenAI S1: Is it a Race? How Will it be Received?
38:28 Do Anthropic Rush Out Their IPO Also?
45:49 SpaceX S-1: "Why I Would Never Invest"
48:06 Why Colossus is a Stroke of Genius By Elon
51:31 Data Centers In Space is BS and Will Not Be Core to SpaceX
58:04 Polsia Raises $30M at $250M Price: Is this the Peak?
20VC: Cerebras CEO on the Future of Data Centres, Token Costs and Memory | We are Not in an Infra Bubble & Dario Got a Bad Deal with Elon for Compute | Should US Companies Sell to China & Why Most Layoffs are AI Washed with Andrew Feldman
Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a monumental, multi-year $20 billion compute agreement from OpenAI.
AGENDA:
05:58 - Why we are not in an infrastructure bubble and it is just the start
08:00 - Sam Altman's superpower is his ability to forecast capex spend.
08:58 - Anthropic did not get a good deal with Elon. They got a deal that was available.
10:39 - What is go...
20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan
Chad Peets is one of the most straight-talking, no BS sales leaders of our time. Today, he partners with founders of the fastest growing companies in the world, like Harvey, Factory to build the best sales teams in a world of AI.
Chris Degnan is a legendary technology sales leader who achieved the historic feat of scaling Snowflake from $0 to $4BN in ARR.
AGENDA:
00:00 – The $100M CRO Packages Nobody Believes Are Real
04:10 – Why Most "Elite" Salespeople Are Actually Just Order Takers
08:00 – The Secret to Hiring Killer Sales Talent at...
20VC: Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic & Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1: What it Means for IPOs | Why Mass Layoffs Are More Worrying Than Anyone Sees
AGENDA:
00:00 – Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation & Andre Karpathy's Shock Move
04:46 – Unpacking Anthropic's $30 Billion War Chest
10:52 – The True Cost of AI Tokens: Is Salesforce Spending Too Much?
15:59 – The Bear Case for Token Growth & Why Software Leaders Must Adapt
22:56 – Public Tech Rebound: Figma & Datadog Crush Expectations
26:59 – The Death of Traditional Web Builders? The Decline of Wix & Squarespace
36:59 – Compute Starvation: Is the Semiconductor & Hardware Boom Sustainable?
45:59 – Cerebras IPO Smashes Day One: The Biggest Tech Public Debut Since Snowflake
48:17 – SpaceX Sets Date For the Largest IPO in History
...
20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder
Josh Browder is my favourite emerging manager. As the Founder of Browder Capital he has been the first check into unicorns like Micro1, Owner.com and Yuzu Health to name a few. He turned his Thiel Fellowship Grant of $100K into a whopping $10M angel portfolio. All new investments move into Josh's Four Seasons Residence where he then trains them on company building. They are only allowed to leave when they raise their seed round. In addition to this, Josh is the Founder & CEO @ DoNotPay, the now profitable company that has raised $22M from Marc Andreessen and others.
20VC: Lessons from Jensen Huang on "Founder Mode" | How to Know if OpenAI or Anthropic Will Kill your Company | How USV Liking Music Made Them $1BN on an Investment | The Five Year Desert to Product Market Fit & a $5.3BN Valuation with Shiv Rao @ Abridge
Shiv Rao is the CEO and Co-Founder of Abridge, a leader in generative AI for healthcare. The company reached a $5.3 billion valuation following a $300 million funding round with investors including Jensen Huang, Henry Kravis, USV, Bessemer Venture Partners and Elad Gill. A practicing cardiologist, Shiv has scaled the company to 450 employees and partnered with major health systems like Emory and Yale.
AGENDA:
04:00 — You just have to survive long enough to not die
06:00 — Did USV liking music make them billions of dollars?
13:58 — The three variants of an AI native company
15:00 — How do yo...
