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Harry Stebbings

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.

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

AGENDA: 
 
00:00 NVIDIA Launches a Three-Deal Blitz Across the AI Stack
 04:31 NVIDIA's $12BN Poolside Deal Exposes Frontier AI's Capital Wall
 15:39 NVIDIA Moves to Back Mercor at $20BN and Perplexity at $30BN
 26:55 OpenAI Confirms 2027 IPO as Anthropic Seizes the Lead
 40:42 Hugging Face Draws $13BN Takeover Interest as Open Models Boom
 44:56 Citadel Cashes Out 80% of Its Leopold Aschenbrenner AI Trade
 51:51 AI Boom Is "Less Than One-Third Over"—But Token Addiction Has a Price
 01:04:07 Stripe Reaccelerates to 41% as AI Reshapes Software's Leaderboard
 01:07:45 Instinct Security Scare Exposes Why AI Agents Still Cannot Be Trusted
 01:23:55 VCs Name AI's Biggest Bubbles: Support, Defense, Humanoids and Roll-Ups

20VC: NVIDIA Bonanza: Buys Poolside & Invests in Mercor and Perplexity | Anthropic's $30TRN Revenue Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service, Defence and Robotics are Overinflated

Julien Bek is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world. At Sequoia, he has partnered with companies including Rillet, Tacto, and Auctor. Before joining Sequoia, Julien spent five years at Accel, where he worked with companies including Miro, Melio, and BeReal. He is also an angel investor in Revolut and Attio.
 
AGENDA:
 
06:35 – What did Julien only discover about Sequoia after joining the firm?
 08:05 – What does everyone get wrong about Sequoia?
 13:00 – Is Series A the hardest stage at which to invest today?
 14:00 – Is Sequoia less focused on ownership as outcomes become larger?
 19:20 – Does Sequoia simply pay more than everyone else to win deals?
 22:00 – Is the "triple, triple, double, double" growth model dead?
 25:00 – What is Sequoia's investment process really like behind the scenes?
 27:15 – Can a partner still invest when the rest of Sequoia votes against them?
 30:00 – Why can a flawless founder pitch actually be a warning sign?
 31:00 – How do you judge whether a founder is exceptional in just 30 minutes?
 33:00 – How can investors tell whether a founder's story is genuine?
 35:10 – Is arrogance a bad trait in a founder?
 36:00 – Which great founder did Julien completely misread?
 37:15 – How should investors adjust their founder assessment across different cultures?
 39:00 – What does a founder's childhood reveal about their future trajectory?
 40:30 – What has Julien learned from Doug Leone, Pat Grady, Alfred Lin and Shaun Maguire?
 47:00 – What does it mean when "agents become the new customer"?
 49:00 – Does UI become irrelevant in an agent-first economy?
 50:15 – Will answer-engine optimisation become larger than SEO?
 52:00 – Will AI agents destroy software margins and brand loyalty?
 53:00 – How quickly will enterprises allow agents to make purchasing decisions?
 54:00 – Is AI infrastructure a safer investment than applications?
 56:00 – Do software margins matter less when the potential outcomes are larger?
 58:00 – Could the next trillion-dollar company masquerade as a services business?
 01:00:00 – Which service industries can AI truly automate end-to-end?
 01:02:00 – Are enterprises simply crying out for more help implementing AI?
 01:03:10 – Will AI lead to dramatically smaller teams?
 01:06:15 – Is traditional private equity screwed?
 01:07:00 – The most overfunded and underfunded categories in venture
 01:08:15 – What is the best AI agent company outside Sequoia's portfolio?
 01:09:00 – Which missed investment still haunts Julien?
 01:09:45 – Which founder trait will Julien never compromise on?
 01:10:00 – Which competing fund makes Sequoia bring its A-game?
 01:10:45 – How Julien missed Revolut—and helped his mother retire by investing anyway
 01:14:00 – What does Julien believe that other Sequoia partners might disagree with?
 01:15:00 – What is Julien most excited about over the next five years of AI?

20VC: Inside Sequoia's Investment Committee: Lessons from Don Valentine, Doug Leone and Alfred Lin | How the SpaceX and Citadel Deals Went Down | What Sequoia Specifically Looks for in Founders with Julien Bek

Jerry Murdock is the Co-Founder of Insight Partners, which manages over $90 billion in assets. Jerry personally backed companies including Twitter, Nest and Docker, while Insight's portfolio includes giants such as Shopify, Wiz and monday.com. Across three decades, Insight has helped produce 55+ IPOs and become one of the most powerful technology investment firms in the world. 
 
AGENDA:
 
00:00 — Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?
 
11:00 — Will Half of All Neoclouds Disappear Within 36 Months?
 
13:00 — Can Open Source Models Actually Beat OpenAI and Anthropic?
 
22:00 — Are We Entering the Golden Age of Cybersecurity Attacks?
 
32:00 — Have AI Valuations Completely Lost Touch With Reality?
 
42:00 — Is AI About to Wipe Out an Entire Generation of SaaS & Private Equity?
 
47:00 — Should We Ban U.S. Chips From Being Exported to China?
 
48:00 — Should We Be Fearful of Open-Source Chinese Models?
 
49:00 — Will Continuous Learning Kill Every AI Model We Use Today?
 
53:00 — Why Microsoft Remains a Mega Buy
 
56:00 — Which Mag 7 Giant Would You Short — and Is Apple's AI Strategy a Disaster?

20VC: The AI Bubble Will Burst: Half the Neoclouds Will Die | China: Should We Ban Chip Exports & Be Fearful of Chinese Open-Source | Mag7: Who Dies and Who Thrives: Why Meta is Meh and Microsoft is Mega

AGENDA:
 
04:20 Elon's Deal of the Decade: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60BN
 06:10 Why Cursor Was Surprisingly Cheap at $60BN
 07:00 Why Zuckerberg Failed to Buy the AI Prize Elon Secured
 12:00 Elon vs Zuck: Who Would You Rather Work For?
 14:00 Will Microsoft or Amazon Now Race to Buy Cognition?
 17:05 Stripe's $7BN OpenRouter Deal Creates Huge VC Winners
 25:00 OpenRouter's Fatal Risk: Enterprises Don't Want 10 Models
 28:15 Anthropic Turns Its First Profit on $11.5BN of Quarterly Revenue
 32:15 Can Anthropic Really Reach $600BN in Revenue?
 37:00 Why Every Elite Engineer Could Soon Get $100K in AI Tokens
 39:30 Would Rory Buy Anthropic at a $2.5TN Valuation?
 44:50 Silver Lake's $43BN Workday Bet: SaaS Isn't Dead, It's Mature
 53:00 How Silver Lake Could Make $30BN From Workday
 57:00 Lovable vs Higgsfield: Similar Revenue, Radically Different Valuations
 58:00 Is Lovable's $13.3BN Price Actually Cheap?
 63:30 Why the DOJ Is Coming After Andreessen Horowitz
 69:00 Why A16Z Has "50 Legal Battles" Happening at Once

20VC: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60BN | Stripe's $8BN OpenRouter Bet | Anthropic's First Profit & The Math Behind Reaching $600BN in Revenue? | Lovable and Higgsfield Raise Mega Rounds

Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine. 
 
AGENDA:
 
05:39 – How was Mac the only survivor from the Travis era?
 10:39 – How does Uber decide what to include in Uber One membership?
 11:45 – How does Uber decide which new products to pursue?
 16:08 – What does Uber need to do to reach 500 million users?
 20:37 – Why Uber was right to focus on its core business and divest autonomy?
 24:08 – Why India and Brazil will delay Uber's autonomous future?
 28:34 – The craziest story from Uber's battle in China
 29:27 – Why Travis Kalanick believed money was the moat?
 31:17 – Was Uber structurally disadvantaged in China from day one?
 35:48 – Inside Uber's SWAT team of its 30 best AI engineers
 37:55 – How companies need to extract real efficiency from AI?
 42:00 – Will Uber have more or fewer employees in five years?
 43:52 – Will companies that do not work with frontier models be disaggregated?
 46:02 – Will AI agents disaggregate Uber's interface and customer relationship?
 48:26 – Why Brian Chesky was right: chat is not the best interface for everything
 55:52 – Why it is bullshit to say DoorDash would not be number one if Travis were still CEO
 59:13 – The single biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick
 1:00:07 – The second biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick

20VC: Uber President on The Untold Uber Stories: Travis, China and Self-Driving | Why Autonomy Is Existential | How to Beat DoorDash to #1 in Food with Andrew MacDonald

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 AI Agents Become the Customer?
 07:46 When Should an Early-Stage Founder Start Spending on Paid Growth?
 10:36 How Do You Build the Tracking Stack to Know Whether Paid Is Working?
 17:38 How Much Should You Spend on Creative—and How Do You Produce 500 Ads a Month?
 23:10 How Long Should You Test Paid—and How Do You Scale Meta, Google and YouTube?
 39:38 How Do You Build Referral, Paywall and AEO Loops That Compound?
 49:46 How Do You Hire and Structure an AI-Native Growth Team?
 1:04:27 Which Growth Channels Are Most Underrated—and Most Overrated?
 1:09:28 How Do You Build an AI Operating System That Makes Your Work Compound?

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

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: 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

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 Models Compete With Chinese Models in the Next 12 Months?
 39:26 Will the Router Be Swallowed by the Agent Framework?
 48:56 Is Distillation Wrong—and How Should We Look at It?
 50:01 Is the Reported $10 Billion Stripe Deal Actually Happening?

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

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"
 
30:10 "Pro Rata Is the Original Sin"
 
32:59 "A $1BN Valuation Is the New Series A"
 
46:39 "I Have Never Seen Secondary Markets This Liquid"
 
58:03 Microsoft Has Done a Crappy Job of AI—and Another Dot-Com Crash Is Inevitable
 
01:08:25 OpenAI and Anthropic Will Be Disrupted—and China Could Do It
 
01:16:12 "Anyone Who Claims They Knew Is Full of Shit"
 
01:19:56 Our Children Won't Need to Drive—and Chemotherapy Will Look Prehistoric

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

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 DroneDeploy for $900M in a High-Stakes 12x Revenue Bet
 1:10:55 Scale AI Hits $1.5B ARR After the Meta Deal Left It for Dead

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

20VC: NVIDIA Bonanza: Buys Poolside & Invests in Mercor and Perplexity | Anthropic's $30TRN Revenue Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service, Defence and Robotics are Overinflated

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