The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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 – Lovable Hits $500M ARR: The Rise of the 100-Person Billion-Dollar Company 48:00 – Elon's Masterstroke: Why the Cursor Acquisition Could Be the Deal of the Year

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 09:24 - System Design vs. Code Creation: The Future Role of the Engineer 14:04 - The Evolving Software Development Lifecycle & The Death of the Design Phase 22:23 - Will Product and Engineering Fully Converge? 29:16 - Scalability and UX: Designing for 10x vs. 100x Spikes 38:15 - Scaling the Organization: What Breaks with a 250 Person Product Team 47:05 - Quick-Fire Round: Hyper-Growth Tactics & Out-Working the Giants

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 wrong that AI will lead to labor displacement? 15:59 We will create many new jobs that do not exist with AI. 16:59 Why training agents will be a massive labor category that does not exist today 19:51 Will we see the data provider market unbundle and specialize into verticals? 22:24 Is the stated revenue really revenue or is it really GMV? 27:55 How a 1 million ARR company secured one of the best investors in the world with a helicopter ride 29:41 How Felicis secured the deal of the decade with a race track and a set of Ferraris 32:59 Which investment round felt like the highest price to grow into? 34:49 Why will value accrue to the infrastructure layer, not the application layer, in the next 12 months? 35:46 Why the model is the product and why application layer companies should be scared as a result 37:22 Why network effects will be the determinant of value creation 38:46 Why the forward-deployed motion, not the GTM motion, will determine true value creation. 41:59 Why token spend within organizations is going to continue to increase 43:54 Why agent evaluation to commoditize the model layer will be a massive business for enterprises? 51:13 Why we should have increased capital gains tax 01:01:31 How to compete with $20 million a year from Meta? 01:08:49 Will Mercor go public and when?

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? 01:06:08 Exa Raises at $2.2BN to Build Search for Agents 01:14:34 Is Replacing Your CRM with Vibe Coding Always Ragebait

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 Early-Stage Startups 10:05 – 20x Quotas & The Death of Traditional Pipeline Generation 16:20 – The ARR Scam: Why Most AI Revenue Numbers Are Fake 17:45 – Why the Best Engineers Do Not Want to Be Forward Deployed Engineers 21:10 – Why Paying Everyone the Same Kills Great Sales Organisations 24:15 – Anthropic's Crazy Compensation Is Breaking the Entire Sales Market 29:00 – The Brutal Truth About Replacing CROs & Firing Sales Leaders 32:20 – Forecasting in AI Is Completely Broken 38:20 – The Fatal Mistake Founders Make Chasing Venture Valuations 39:40 – Why Most VCs Give Absolutely Terrible Sales Advice 42:10 – Global Sales From Day One: The New AI Go-To-Market Playbook 44:15 – "Anthropic Is a $5 Trillion Company" 47:40 – The Death of the Traditional SDR & The Rise of Full-Stack AI Sellers 49:00 – Consumption Pricing, Vertical AI & Why SaaS Is Getting Rewritten 52:00 – What the Best Sales Cultures Still Get Right in the AI Era

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. AGENDA: 00:00 Why I believe young founders make the best founders 02:10 What do I look for in founders I'm investing in? 10:00 How I test for founder commitment pre-investment 11:00 What do I want to see in the childhoods of the entrepreneurs that I back? 12:05 Why I make founders live with me in my Four Seasons residence after investing 14:00 There are three reasons why pre-seed companies fail and how I solve for them 15:45 What do I look for in a team to assure me they will last? 16:50 Is $5 million post still attainable in this world? 17:15 Should we be worried about the increasing levels of fraud at the early stages? 18:10 Which Silicon Valley investor was the most impressive? 20:00 Do VCs really add value? 20:50 Does university carry less value than ever and should founders drop out if they have a dream and an idea? 24:00 The advice of one lawyer changed the entire trajectory of this multi-million dollar company 28:10 I would never invest in someone that I met over Zoom 29:20 Are all the best founders you invest in delusional? 31:10 What is the biggest benefit of being a Thiel Fellow? 36:20 The problem of accelerators and why artificial constraints can enforce quality 38:20 How we used Mark Zuckerberg's house as a viewing instrument tool to get users 41:20 My pre-seed cheque in Micro One is now worth hundreds of millions and my lessons 43:20 The biggest mistake VCs are making in assessing founders 44:10 Why I will never tell the entrepreneur what to build and why I place little value on ideas 47:00 Why kingmaking is real and why you should accept half the price from a tier one firm 49:00 My biggest lessons on reserve investing 53:00 Why price rounds are bullshit and we should do more SAFEs 54:20 What all founders need to know about signing with a VC 55:10 Single biggest advice to founders on how to get the best price 57:30 What role does not exist today that will be massive in five years' time? 59:10 Stocks are bullshit. Cash is bullshit. I put my money in land. My personal investing strategy 1:01:00 Why the Trump administration is unwaveringly good for US business 1:03:20 Why competitive markets are the best investments 1:05:40 The serendipity of San Francisco is unmatched 1:08:10 What things does no one know about Marc Andreessen that everyone should know?

AGENDA: 00:05:11 — Anthropic freezes secondary sales, requiring board approval for all transfers. 00:10:45 — Why Anthropic is buying capacity from Elon Musk. 00:15:35 — Anthropic's massive $200B revenue commit to Google. 00:18:55 — Goldman Sachs predicts a 24x surge in token consumption driven by agents. 00:31:05 — Will AI labs eat the app layer? The threat to Legal and CX verticals. 00:37:55 — SaaS public markets: HubSpot tanks 18% while Monday.com finds its footing. 00:42:40 — Growth theft: How Clay is commoditizing ZoomInfo's data business. 00:46:25 — Cerebras prices IPO at $150–$160 with a $48B market cap. 00:52:15 — Real Venture Capital: Celebrating the early bets by Foundation and Benchmark. 00:58:30 — Ramp's valuation vs. the Chapter 7 collapse of e-commerce card Parker. 01:06:20 — Success and Sacrifice: Is mental health the price of building a $20B company?

Cliff Weitzman is the Founder & CEO of Speechify AI. He solved his dyslexia and ADHD in college by building a Voice AI agent that's now used by over 60 million people and has over 1 million five-star ratings. Over 200 software and AI engineers work on Speechify which won the Apple Design award last year. AGENDA: 00:00 — Until You Hit $100K Do Not Spend on any Channel Other than Meta 04:53 — How I hacked the college system by applying to 26 universities 06:33 — The "Great Guy" yearbook prank that accidentally outed me 08:35 — What I learned from hunting down the top 100 CEOs in the world 11:51 — The "Warrior" rule: Why I force my senior leaders to edit their own ads 13:52 — Why companies are like bodybuilders: The Bulking and Cutting cycle 17:34 — I test 1,000 AI-generated ads every single day 20:13 — How I built a custom AI ad platform in just four days 23:19 — The one $3,000,000 ad I filmed in a hot tub with red headphones 32:15 — Why we will soon spend more on AI tokens than employee salaries 34:55 — "I'm disappointed in you": The 1,000-credit daily AI requirement 36:31 — How LLMs helped me find my father's cancer when doctors couldn't 41:13 — Why 40% of billionaires are dyslexic—and why you should be too 45:41 — Why I refuse to hire anyone who has worked at Google 47:05 — I flew into a war zone in Ukraine just to keep one engineer 55:49 — Why performance reviews are a total waste of time 58:32 — QA is the most valuable skill in the world (and you're probably bad at it) 01:03:59 — Why we keep our valuation and funding a total secret 01:07:51 — The "Virus" Strategy: How Logan Paul hijacked the WWE 01:11:32 — What I learned from sleeping at Mr Beast's house for three weeks 01:14:15 — How we made a 36X return on Nvidia using high-leverage options 01:23:44 — I found the hacker who stole $200k—then I hired him 01:32:45 — Why I spent 11 days sleeping in a Walmart parking lot

Tobi Lütke is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify, the global e-commerce titan with a $160 billion market cap. Under his leadership, the company generates over $7 billion in annual revenue and has seen its valuation grow nearly 100x since its 2015 IPO. Today, Shopify has over 8,000 employees and AI now generates over 50% of the Shopify's code. AGENDA: 00:10:36 - The $160 billion CEO who did not want to be CEO. 00:11:51 - Why don't companies become public? Because it is much worse to be an untrusted public company. 00:16:53 - Why we are about to enter a golden age of entrepreneurship. 00:17:54 - Why AI is being used as a scapegoat for mass layoffs. 00:17:41 - How will labor markets change in a world of AI? 00:24:43 - Why we should praise Elon Musk so much more than we do. 00:27:59 - Why we need to place more, not less, scrutiny on charitable giving. 00:31:56 - Why we have too many charity dollars and why they are inefficient. 00:34:57 - Why governments are so bad at what they do. 00:37:27 - The Trump derangement syndrome in Canada. 00:39:51 - Why will governments regulating technology push us into the hands of the Chinese? 00:41:59 - Europe has to get rid of the bullshit green parties and go back to Prussian economics. 00:48:29 - Why is looking at the ticker such bullshit? 00:50:48 - Why young coders are not as advantaged in AI as I thought they would be. 00:53:56 - The best engineers in Shopify are not writing code anymore and the AI does it for them. 00:56:40 - The cheat code for any career from the billionaire founder of Shopify.

AGENDA: 00:00 $45B Floods into Anthropic from Google & Amazon 05:10 OpenAI Misses Growth Targets — Is This a Real Problem? 08:40 The Rise of AI Agents: Why Humans No Longer Pick Models 12:05 "Compute ≠ Revenue": The First Crack in the AI Business Model 20:30 China Blocks $2B Manus Deal — AI Cold War Escalates 34:10 Why Google May Be the Biggest Winner in AI Infrastructure 41:50 The Death of SaaS? Agents Replace Apps Like Jira & Canva 46:20 Thoma Bravo Hands Medallia to Creditors — $5B Wiped Out 52:10 The Collapse of Private Equity Exit Routes in VC

Amjad Masad is the Co-Founder and CEO of Replit, one of the leading "vibe-coding" platforms. Under his leadership, Replit has raised a total of $922 million in funding, recently raising at a whopping $9 billion valuation. Replit has over 50 million registered users and is used by employees at 85% of Fortune 500 companies. Replit's revenue jumped from $10 million to $100 million in nine months, and the company is on track to reach $1BN in ARR by the end of 2026. AGENDA: 00:00 — Why Coding Models are Hitting a Performance Plateau 07:21 — Is Most of the Value of Replit Not Anthropic Model Quality? 10:04 — Why Did Replit Decide to Not Build Their Own Model, Like Cursor Did? 11:58 — Why Product Quality Must Always Beat Cost Optimization 14:51 — How Do Replit Choose Which Model To Route To For Different Tasks? 24:43 — The SaaS Apocalypse: Why it is Fair and Just? 29:55 — What Will the Cost of Tokens Be in 5 Years? 31:09 — Is Cursor Dead? Debunking the Twitter Narrative 33:36 — Are IDEs Dead? 35:54 — Should Students Still Study Computer Science? 42:47 — Are US Companies Using CCP Subsidised Open-Source Chinese Models 56:59 — What Do No Founders Know About True Product-Market Fit

Aaron Levie is one of the most forward-thinking public company CEOs when it comes to enterprise adoption of AI. Aaron is the CEO of Box, the enterprise storage company that does over $1BN in revenue but only has a market cap of $3.2BN. Something we discuss today… AGENDA: 00:00 — Why the Experts are DEAD WRONG About the US-China AI Race 10:55 — Everyone is Wrong About Labour Markets: You Will Not Lose Your Job 13:10 — What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in 5 Years 16:45 — Is Your SaaS Tool Actually a Valueless Database in an Agentic World? 20:50 — The Cybersecurity Tsunami: Why Agents are Your Biggest Threat 25:50 — Token Maxing: What Every Company Needs to Know About Budgeting Tokens 34:55 — Is Silicon Valley Secretly Being Powered by Open-Source CCP Models? 39:15 — The Brutal Truth: Is This Generation of CEOs Too Low-IQ for AI? 46:55 — Frontier Labs: Why Aaron is Still Betting Everything on the Labs

AGENDA: 00:00 — Anthropic Unveils Mythos: The Model "Too Good at Hacking" to Release 05:56 — Why Mythos is a Quantum Leap in Cyber Risk 10:11 — The "Boy Who Cried Wolf": Jason's Critique of Dario Amodei 14:00 — The Oppenheimer Moment: Are Founders Using Doom as a Marketing Tool? 19:22 — Amazon's $20B Secret: Is NVIDIA's Chip Stranglehold Finally Loosening? 22:28 — Claude vs. Lovable & Replit: Anthropic Moves into App Building 25:24 — The 60% Death Spiral: Why Public SaaS Stocks are Entering a Doom Loop 39:51 — Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Alex Wang's First Model from Super Intelligence Labs 44:18 — OpenAI's $50B Ad Vision: The Plan to Monetize Intelligence 53:50 — Token Maxing: How CIOs are Reclaiming Control Over AI Budgets 57:57 — SpaceX's Leaked Financials: The Math Behind the $2 Trillion IPO 1:08:00 — Thoma Bravo Shuts Growth Equity 1:16:18 — Who IPOs First; OpenAI or Anthropic?