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

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  18:41 Why we created a cafe in the biggest annoyance with San Francisco  22:00 Why I am so bullish on London  23:49 Why I haven't sold a single secondary  24:19 Why people who found companies in New York prioritise dating over their company  30:46 Biggest lessons on cash comp and equity  31:13 Team members can be split into three separate groups  34:59 Biggest lesson from Brian Chesky on price  35:44 What is the right amount of time to be fundraising for?  36:47 Good companies get deals done and what makes the best venture investors?  40:34 Why AI makes sales and marketing more valuable  43:12 Why I don't like boards and I don't think they're effective  46:19 What I would like to see more of from venture funds  48:05 Who was Corgi's first believer?    

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  

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 going on with the price of memory and why is it a problem? 16:40 - Are Google best positioned to produce tokens and what challenges do they face? 19:23 - Is Coreweave dramatically undervalued or overvalued? 24:34 - My biggest advice to entrepreneurs scaling their business  30:13 - Why most of the layoffs are AI-washed and 33:41 - What will we spend on tokens for software engineers in five years? 34:48 - Why does the role of HR change so significantly in the world of AI? 35:36 - Why lawyers are the biggest inhibitor of enterprise AI adoption 39:20 - Why Jensen and Nvidia are wrong to sell chips to China 42:49 - What needs to change in the U.S. to build a strategic asset in chips? 51:00 - Should Cerebras invest in companies building on top of their platform; as Nvidia is? 53:28 - Nothing changed when Cerebras IPO'd but I did make 800 millionaires.

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    

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 57:28 – Y Combinator's Mic Drop Deal & The Drama Behind Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit 01:11:57 – The Looming Backlash: Mass Tech Layoffs and the Politics of AI 20VC: 

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?  

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 you know if foundation models are going to kill or help you? 22:15 — Why OpenAI and Anthropic doing consultancies is such an obvious move 41:00 — Biggest lesson from Jensen Huang at Nvidia 41:00 — What Founder Mode truly means 52:00 — What the founder of Duolingo taught me about sacrifice 56:37 — If I started a company again, Elad Gill would be the one investor I go to    

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?  

Patrick Forquer is the Chief Revenue Officer at Legora, the fastest growing enterprise business to ever hit $100M in ARR and now on track to hit over $250M in ARR by the end of the year. They recently raised a $550 million Series D at a $5.55 billion valuation, led by Accel, note 20VC did participate and is an investor in the company.  AGENDA: 0:00 – How Jude Law Generated $50 Million in Qualified Pipeline 4:00 – Why Implementation is Your Secret Weapon to Win in AI 5:50 – Why AI Enterprise Sales Require "Legal Engineers" 7:45 – The 6-Figure Rule: When Should Humans Control Sales 12:55 – Is Legora Vastly Overvalued at $5.5BN?  15:45 – How to do global expansion in a world of AI 18:00 – How to Win Supremely Competitive Markets 24:45 – Why Giving Your Product Away for Free is a Death Sentence 33:55 – Legora's Onboarding and Training Playbook for Sales Teams 38:25 – Spotting Red Flags: How to Know if a Sales Rep Will Fail in 45 Days 46:30 – How to Structure Sales Commissions in a World of AI 49:40 – How to do Revenue Forecasting in a World of AI 1:00:30 – Will companies vibe code solutions and no longer buy a SaaS products?    

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