20VC: The Twenty Minute VC
Fast, focused interviews with the top venture capitalists shaping AI investment. The pulse of where AI money is moving.
199 episodes curated
Episodes
20VC: Perplexity's Aravind Srinivas on Will Foundation Models Commoditise, Diminishing Returns in Model Performance, OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins & Why the Next Breakthrough in Model Performance will
Aravind Srinivas is the Co-Founder & CEO of Perplexity, the conversational "answer engine" that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $100 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, and Susan Wojciki. In Today's Episode with Aravind Srinivas We Discuss: Biggest Lessons from DeepMind & OpenAI What was the best career advice Sam Altman @ OpenAI gave Aravind? What were Aravind's biggest takeaways at DeepMind? How d
20Growth: The Six Channels Startups Need to Dominate to Grow, Why the Best Growth Talent Never Comes from Marketing or Product, Who and How to Hire Growth Leaders and Teams and Why in a World of AI, G
Matt Lerner is one of the OGs of growth having spent 11 years leading growth teams at PayPal. Post PayPal, Matt led the growth marketing program at 500 Startups. He is also the bestselling author of Growth Levers and How to Find Them. Today, Matt is the Co-Founder and CEO of SYSTM, an accelerator program helping startups find their growth drivers. In Today's Episode with Matt Lerner We Discuss: From Philosophy Student to PayPal Growth Leader: How did Matt make his way into the world of growth? What were Matt's biggest lessons from 11 years at PayPal? What did Matt know now that he wished he'd
20VC: OpenAI's Sam Altman, Mistral's Arthur Mensch and more discuss: Will Foundation Models Be Commoditised | Which Startups Are Threatened vs Enabled by OpenAI | Is the Value in the Infrastructure or
Sam Altman is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue. Brad Lightcap is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue. Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI . Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspee
20VC: Box's Aaron Levie on Predictions for the Next Wave of AI: Will Foundation Models Be Commoditised | How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever | Startups vs Incumbents: Who Wins | App vs Infr
Aaron Levie is one of the OG founders of the last two decades as the Co-Founder and CEO of Box. Today, Box does over $1BN in revenue with a market cap of $3.85BN, and has raised over $560 million from the likes of DFJ, Andreesen Horowitz, and Coatue. In Today's Episode with Aaron Levie We Discuss: What You Need to Know Entering This AI Wave: Why does Aaron think we are currently in a transformative window in AI? What does Aaron think it takes to be successful in this next wave? Which areas does Aaron think founders should be focusing on today? Where should they not? AI Adoption: Business Model
20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Are Foundation Models Commoditising | Why Frontier Models Will Be Closed Source | Why the Value is in the Application Layer | The Future of AI is "Selling the Work" No
Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners. Before Greylock, Sarah was the first 30 employees at Pinterest. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. In Today's Episode with Sarah Tavel We Discuss: 1. Becoming a GP at The Most Renowned Firm in Venture: How did the process of Sarah joining Benchmark sta
20VC: Mistral's Arthur Mensch: Are Foundation Models Commoditising | How Do We Solve the Problem of Compute | Is There Value in the Application Layer | Open vs Closed: Who Wins and Mistral's Position
Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion. Before founding Mistral, Arthur was a research scientist at DeepMind, one of the leading AI institutions in the world. In Today's Episode with Arthur Mensch We Discuss: From Models to Team Building: Arthur's Greatest Lessons at DeepMind What were Arthur's biggest lessons from his time at DeepMind? How did DeepMind shape how Art
20VC: Three Core Lessons Scaling Freshworks to a $5.2BN Market Cap | Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR | How India Can Compete Globally in Tech and AI with Girish Mathru
Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, India's first SaaS company to list on NASDAQ. Today, Freshworks has over $596M in ARR with a $5.27BN market cap, with investors like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, and CapitalG. Girish is also a founding member of SaaSBOOMi, Asia's largest community of founders and product builders, and has invested in over 60 startups. On top of that, Girish is also the Founder of Together Fund, a $150M fund focusing on Indian B2B companies going global from day 1. In Today's Episode with Girish Mathrubootham We Discuss: Fro
20VC: OpenAI's Sam Altman and Brad Lightcap on The Future of Foundation Models: Will They Be Commoditised | How to Solve the Problem of Compute | Open vs Closed: Which Dominates and Why | Which Compan
Sam Altman is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President and CEO @ Y Combinator and made angel investments in the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Pinterest, Asana and more. Brad Lightcap is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue. Before OpenAI, Brad was an investor at Y C
20VC: a16z's Chris Dixon on Who Will Win the Next Generation of Venture, The Two Ways to Make Great Venture Investments and Find the Best Entrepreneurs & Why AI Will Strengthen the Position of the Inc
Chris Dixon is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with investments in Oculus (acquired by Facebook), Coinbase, and many more. Chris also founded and leads a16z crypto, a division of the firm that he has grown from $300 million in 2018 to more than $7 billion of committed capital. Due to his many successes, Chris was named #1 on the Forbes Midas List in 2022. In Today's Episode with Chris Dixon We Discuss: From Founder to Leading GP in Venture: How did Chris make his way into the world of venture and startups? When did he realize invest
20Product: Top Five Product Lessons from Creating Snapchat "Discover" and "Chat", How to Hire the Best Product Talent and Why Case Studies in Interviews are not Helpful & How AI Impacts the Future of
Will Wu is the CTO @ Match Group , the owner and operator of the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, and Hinge to name a few. Prior to Match, Will was VP of Product at Snap Inc . As the 35th employee, Will spearheaded the creation of Snapchat's "Discover" content platform. He also led the creation and growth of the "Chat" messaging feature, which today is a primary Snapchat engagement driver that connects hundreds of millions of people each day. In Today's Episode with Will Wu We Discuss: 1. The Journey to Snap CPO: How did Evan make
20VC: Why Small Markets are Better Than Big Markets, The Biggest Delusion of Early Stage VC, Why AI Investing is like a Horserace and Why The Most Ambitious Companies Growing the Fastest are not the B
Adam Fisher is a Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners and one of the most successful investors in Israel over the last two decades with seed investments in Fiverr, Wix, Melio, HiBob and more. Adam has now made over 60 investments and has had an incredible 23 successful exits. Adam has now been in venture for over 27 years having started his career at Jerusalem Venture Partners in 1996. In Today's Episode with Adam Fisher We Discuss: 1. Lessons from 27 Years in Venture Capital: How did Adam first make his way into the world of venture straight out of college? Does Adam agree with Doug Leone that
20VC Roundtable: Spotify, Adobe & Linkedin CPOs on How AI Changes The Future of Product, Why AI is Now the Product, How TikTok Changed Product, Why Cost is the Biggest Barrier to LLM Usage & Why Incum
Gustav Söderström is the Co-President, CPO & CTO at Spotify . Gustav has been instrumental in taking Spotify from a 30-person operation in Sweden when he joined to being the global leader of the space. Scott Belsky is Adobe's Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott oversees all of product and engineering for Creative Cloud, as well as design for Adobe. Tomer Cohen is the Chief Product Officer @ Linkedin where he is responsible for setting and executing the global product strategy at LinkedIn. In Today's Episode on How AI Changes The Future of Product and Desig
20VC: AI's Biggest Questions: The Commoditisation of LLMs, Open vs Closed: Who Wins, Model Size vs Data Quality, Why Google are Vulnerable and Apple are the Dark Horse
Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom , and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science. Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI , the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential. Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digi
20VC: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play, Why Apple Will Win in an AI World, Why Google is the Most Vulnerable Incumbent, Will LLMs Be Commoditised, Which Startups Are Thin vs Thick Wrapper
Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits , building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC. Jeff previously served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, a position he came to following the acquisition of his prior company, Crashlytics. Today, Crashlytics is the de-facto mobile crash reporting solution for iOS and Android and runs on over 6 Billion monthly active smartphones worldwide. In Today's Episode with Jeff Seibert We Discuss: 1. The Art of the Pivot: What are Jeff's biggest pieces of advice to founders pivot
20VC Will Seed Pricing Remain High | Where is the Funding Crunch? | Three Core Elements Required to Raise a Series B/C | Why AI is Like the Lottery Today | Why Now is the Best Time to be Investing in
Rebecca Kaden is a Managing Partner @ Union Square Ventures, one of the leading early-stage firms of the last decade with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Coinbase and many more. Nicole Quinn is a General Partner @ Lightspeed where she has led investments or sits on the board of Calm, Cameo and LunchClub to name a few. Eurie Kim is a Managing Partner @ Forerunner Ventures, the leading early-stage consumer fund. Eurie has led investments and sits on the board of Oura, The Farmers Dog, Curology and more. In Today's Roundtable We Discuss: 1. Seed Rounds: Is it even possible for traditional seed fu