20VC: Behind the Scenes at Y Combinator: The Interview Process | What the Best & Worst Do in the Program | Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | Why the Value is in Application Layer AI with Tom Blomfield

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 did DeepMind shape how Aravind built Perplexity? What did Aravind mean by “competition is for losers?” What did he learn about talent assembly at DeepMind? The Next AI Breakthrough: Reasoning Does Aravind think we are experiencing diminishing returns on compute & model performance? Does Aravind agree reasoning will be the next big breakthrough for models? What are the reasons Aravind thinks models suck at reasoning today? What is the timeline for reasoning improvement according to Aravind? What does Aravind think are the biggest misconceptions about AI today? Will Foundation Models Commoditise? Does Aravind think foundation models will commoditise? What will the end state of foundation models look like? Why does Aravind think the second tier models will get commoditised? Why does Aravind think the subscription model will not work for AI models with true reasoning?  Why does Aravind think the application layer companies will benefit from foundation models commoditising? Why does Aravind think foundation models will not verticalize? When does Aravind think is the right time to go enterprise? What is his strategy to differentiate Perplexity from its competitors? AI Arms Race: Who Will Win? Who does Aravind think will be the winners of foundation models? What do AI companies need to do to win the model arms race? How does Aravind think startups can compete against incumbents' infinite cash flow? What are the reasons Aravind thinks Perplexity’s browsing is better than ChatGPT? What is Aravind’s biggest challenge at Perplexity today?    

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com. In Our First Ever Episode of This Week in SaaS 1. PluralSight Goes to Zero: WTF happened to PluralSight? How did it go from $3.5BN to $0? Will this have a wider impact on the willingness of PE to buy tech companies? Who are the next contenders to go from hero to zero? Zendesk? Anaplan? Will this generation of PE funds be let off by their LPs for a poor vintage? 2. Salesforce's Worst Stock Market Drop Since 2004 + Mongo Takes a 23% Hit: Why did Salesforce lose $50BN of market cap in a single day? Is the same true for MongoDB taking a 23% hit in one day? What does it mean when the new normal is these once hyper-growth companies now growing only 6% per annum? 3. The Settlers into Slow Growth: Why does Jason believe that Dropbox and Box have both settled into a world of slow growth? What happens to Twilio from here in a world post Jeff Lawson? What happens to Retool from this point on? Would Jason be a buyer of Notion at $10BN? 4. Venture Capital is Broken: Why does Jason believe that we need to see a relation of public multiples for the math in venture capital to work again? Why does Jason believe that the way we mark portfolios with TVPI leads to corrupt and bad behaviour? How does Jason think we will solve the problem of liquidity with IPOs being shut, M&A being out of the window and now PE being a doubt as the source of buyers?

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 known when he entered the world of growth? How to Master Growth in a World of AI: What is growth to Matt? What is it not? Why does Matt think growth is more science than art? Does Matt Agee with Adam Gross @ Vimeo that paid acquisition below $100M ARR isn’t PLG? How does Matt think AI will change the world of growth today? What does Matt think are the most common growth mistakes founders make? Optimizing Growth Channels: Dos & Don’ts Why does Matt believe there are only six types of growth channels? What is the “locksmith moment" & how do startups find channels that work for them? How does Matt pick a Northstar metric?  What are the most common mistakes founders make when picking North Star metrics? When is the right time to change them? How does Matt approach horizontal product messaging? What works? What doesn’t work? How to Hire & Manage Growth Teams What does Matt look for in the first head of growth hire? What questions does Matt ask when interviewing? What were Matt’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn? Why does Matt think the best growth hires have no marketing experience? What are Matt’s two steps to master onboarding? What are the 3 most common patterns in leaders according to Matt?  

Mike Schroepfer (Schrep) is the Founder & Partner @ Gigascale Capital, a new kind of climate-focused investment firm. Prior to Gigascale, Mike was the CTO @ Meta where he scaled products to billions of users, shipped millions of units of consumer hardware, constructed tens of millions of sq ft of data centres, built teams of up to 35,000, and made breakthroughs in AI. Before Meta, Mike led engineering at Mozilla and founded a company acquired by Sun Microsystems. In Today's Show with Mike Schroepfer We Discuss: 1. Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Meta: What are Schrep's biggest lessons from Zuck on truly effective leaders? Why does Schrep believe the best leaders are like music conductors? What does Schrep mean when he says, "building a company is a game of inches"? Why does Schrep believe "inertia is one of the most underappreciated forces in company building?" 2. The Future of Energy: Why does Schrep believe that the "availability of cheap, clean energy is the biggest rate limiter to human progress?" Does Schrep agree with Sam Altman that energy will be the currency of the next decade? Or does he believe Mustafa Suleyman is right and it will soon be free and abundant? How does Schrep predict the next five years for both fusion and nuclear? Why does Schrep believe the next few years will be "messy but with huge opportunity"? 3. Investing in Climate: It has to be Profitable: Why does Schrep believe that markets and not governments or philanthropy will solve the climate challenges we face? What leads Schrep to suggest that the climate change transition is a $10TRN opportunity for investors? What is the single hardest element of investing in climate change solutions today? Why do climate change solutions need to reshape how they market to consumers? How much capital does it take to build a defensible moat in climate? 4. Schrep: The Man Behind Whatsapp and Instagram: AMA: How does Schrep reflect on his own relationship to money? How has it changed? How does Schrep think about what it takes to be a great father? How did Schrep manage the physical stress and pressure of managing engineering for products that serve billions of people in WhatsApp and Instagram?    

Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com. In Today's Episode with Jason Lemkin We Discuss: 1. Growth Rates and Churn Rates: Average/Good/Great: What is a growth rate that would excite Jason in a SaaS company? What is average? What levels of churn would worry Jason to see? What would excite him to see? What does Jason never tolerate when it comes to either growth rate or retention? 2. What Founder Combination Always Wins: Why does Jason believe you cannot lose money on a CEO salesperson and a technical CTO founding partnership? Why does Jason always meet the CTO for a second meeting in the diligence process? What questions does he ask? What do the best CTOs do or say? Why does Jason always want to sell his shares when the founders want to sell? Why does Jason believe that a company is never the same when the founders leave? 3. WTF is Happening in the World of VC: Why does Jason believe that pricing is worse than it has ever been in venture? Why does Jason believe that traditional seed VC is systemically broken? Why are companies getting stuffed with more cash than ever before? What does Jason know now about dilution that he wishes he had known when he started? Why does Jason believe that you should always recycle everything? 4. WTF is Happening in PE and Later Stage Markets: What happens to all the overpriced acquisitions like Zendesk and Salesloft where private equity way overpaid for them, they have no growth and no product innovation? What happens to the generation of public companies like Box, Dropbox and Twilio, all with low growth and little product innovation in the single-digit market caps? Why does Jason believe that Klaviyo is the most undervalued public company today? What does Jason believe will happen to Anaplan with Pigment eating their lunch?

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, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion.  Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Today Des leads all of Intercom’s R&D efforts, and parts of Intercom’s marketing. Tom Hulme is a Managing Partner of GV (Google Ventures), and leads the European team. Today, GV has over $10BN in AUM and Tom has led investments in Lemonade.com (IPO), Snyk, Secret Escapes, Blockchain.com, GoCardless, and Currency Cloud (exited to Visa). Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. 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. In Today's Episode We Discuss: Will foundation models be commoditised? What is the end state for the foundation model landscape in 10 years? How will large cloud provider incumbents approach M&A with smaller foundation model providers? When will we see marginal revenue exceed marginal cost in the foundation model business model? Where is the value: the application layer or the infrastructure layer? How can startups know whether they will be threatened by OpenAI? What are good tests/questions to know if you are in the path of one of the large foundation models? How does the business model of SaaS fundamentally change in a world of AI? Will we see the end of per-seat pricing in a new world of AI? What is the right way to approach pricing in a world of AI? Consumption? Tokens?  

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, Implementation, Regulation. How does Aaron think AI will change how we work & run a business? What does Aaron think is the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption in large organizations? Does Aaron agree with Sarah Tavel @ Benchmark AI companies will be selling work not tools?  How does Aaron think AI will change the SaaS business model? Why is Aaron not as worried about AI regulation? What are his biggest concerns today? The Next AI Breakthrough: AI Agents Why does Aaron believe the next big breakthrough in AI will be agents? How does Aaron think AI agents will change org structures? How does Aaron think agents will differ from RPA? How will RPA companies benefit from AI?  What does Aaron think AI agents will look like in five years? Startups vs Incumbents: Who Wins? What is Aaron’s advice to startups today building against OpenAI? Does Aaron think startups have more advantage in foundational models or the application layer? What advantages do incumbents have? What are their biggest weaknesses? Who does Aaron think are the biggest winners in AI today? Who is underperforming? Why does Aaron think Apple isn’t losing the AI race?    

Nikesh Arora is the CEO @ Palo Alto Networks, the leading cybersecurity company in the world with a market cap of $102BN. Before joining Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh was the President and COO of SoftBank Group. Before that, he spent ten years at Google as a senior exec, and President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before that Nikesh was CMO for the T-Mobile International Division of Deutsche Telekom AG. Nikesh serves on the board of Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A. Previously, he served on the boards of SoftBank, Sprint, Colgate-Palmolive Inc., Yahoo! Japan and Tipping Point. In Today's Episode with Nikesh Arora We Discuss: 1. From Investing with Masa @ Softbank to CEO of Largest Cyber Company: What are Nikesh's biggest lessons from working and investing with Masa @ Softbank? What are Nikesh's biggest takeaways from 10 years at Google and working with Eric Schmidt? What does Nikesh know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career? 2. What Makes the Most Valuable Businesses in the World: How does Nikesh think about competition and monopolies? How does Nikesh assess the idea of defensibility, moats and sustaining competitive advantages? What are the most common reasons why incumbents are overtaken? How have Palo Alto Networks been so successful in their M&A strategy? What has worked in M&A? What has not worked? What is their process? 3. What Makes the Best Leaders in the World: Does Nikesh agree that the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? How do the best leaders communicate with large teams at scale? How do the best leaders approach decision-making? What is Nikesh's framework? How does Nikesh approach the idea of delegation? What does he delegate vs what does he not? 4. Behind the CEO: Nikesh Arora: Husband and Father: How does Nikesh reflect on his own relationship to money today? What are Nikesh's biggest lessons in what it takes to bring children up in a world of affluence and ensure they have hunger and ambition? What are some of Nikesh's biggest lessons on parenting? How does Nikesh reflect on what it takes to have a great marriage?  

Jiaona “JZ” Zhang is the Chief Product Officer at Linktree, the world’s leading link-in-bio platform empowering 45M+ creators, brands and SMBs. JZ joined Linktree from Webflow, where she served as SVP of Product. Before that, she spent four years at Airbnb where she built and led numerous teams on the host side. JZ’s also held leadership roles at the likes of Wework, Dropbox and teaches at Stanford University and Reforge. In Today’s Episode with Jiaona Zhang We Discuss: Entry into the World of Product How did JZ first fall in love with product? Why does JZ believe the best PMs have experience in the gaming industry? Does JZ think Linktree could be a $100BN business? How could Linktree become a $100BN business? Mastering Product Metrics Why does JZ think product is the most chameleon role? Where does product start & end?  Why does JZ think every function should have tension with product? What is a KPI tree? How does JZ branch business & product metrics? When does JZ think startups should set up a metric infrastructure? What are the three levers of product? How does JZ determine which ones to trade off? How to Run Product: Planning, Strategy, & Rituals Why does JZ think planning should not exist? What are strategy and rituals? When should founders do either? What are JZ’s three core rituals? What is the scorecard method? How do they help team transparency? What are product jams? When does it work? When does it not work? Product Career Advice When does JZ think founders hire a product person?  What are the most common mistakes early stage founders make when hiring for product? Does JZ think domain expertise is important? What does she look for in product hires? What is JZ’s advice to PMs who want to get promoted today?  What is JZ’s advice to young people who want to get into product?  

Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Limitless, a personalized AI powered by what you’ve seen, said, or heard. For his latest funding round, Dan took an unusual approach resulting in 1,000 preliminary offers with valuations as high as $1BN — and resulted in a $350 million Series A valuation. Prior to founding Limitless, Dan was the Founder of Optimizely, scaling the company to $120M in ARR and raising from some of the best in the business including Peter Fenton @ Benchmark who led the Series A. In Today's Episode with Dan Siroker We Discuss: 1. Serial Entrepreneurs are More Investable: Why would Dan always prefer to invest in serial entrepreneurs than first time founders? How do serial entrepreneurs approach team building and size of team differently? How do serial entrepreneurs approach focus and prioritisation differently? How do serial entrepreneurs approach pivoting differently to first time founders? What is Dan's advice from Elad Gil and YC's Dalton Caldwell on when to pivot? 2. The Secret to Fundraising: How to Speak VC Should founders always be raising? What is the right thing to respond to investors when they reach out to you outside of a round? What question are investors really asking when they ask, how much are you raising? How should founders approach valuation, what should they say when they are asked for it? How can founders create urgency in a funding round? What works? What does not? 3. How to Raise the Best Funding Round: Should founders engage with associates or only worth it with decision-makers? Why should founders always choose the investor who is on the early arc of their career? Why was Dan's first meeting with Peter Fenton the best meeting he has ever had with a VC? Why does Dan believe that taking the highest price is never the right answer? To what extent does having a true Tier 1 VC lead your round, change the game for your company? 4. Dan Siroker: AMA: How did becoming a father change the way that Dan operates? Why is Dan scared we might see technological progress stall for the next 20 years? Why did Dan not do YC the second time around with Limitless? What is the story of how Optimizely nearly bought Amplitude?