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

Karri Saarinen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Linear. The company has raised from some of the best in the business including Sequoia and Accel. Before founding Linear, Karri was the principal designer at Airbnb and the founding designer at Coinbase.  10 Lessons with One of Silicon Valley’s Most In-Demand Founders: How to Become a Master Fundraiser: Why does Karri believe it is BS advice that founders should “always be raising”? What is Karri’s biggest advice to founders on minimising dilution? What do most founders think they know about fundraising but do not? What is the best way to put your VCs to work? How can you give them homework to do? What has been the single best VC meeting Karri has had? What has been the worst VC meeting? Product and Growth: What does Karri mean when he says “founder must focus on quality growth over hypergrowth?” How does Karri advise founders on how soon to release and monetise their first product? Wait for platform ready or ship more feature products and monetise? What have been the single biggest product lessons for Karri from Airbnb and Coinbase? What are the most commons ways that growth plateaus? What breaks first? Karri AMA: Brian Armstrong or Brian Chesky; who would you invest in first? Would you sell Linear today for $3BN in cash? What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started? What did you believe that you now no longer believe?  

Daniel Khachab is the co-founder and CEO of Choco. Today, Choco’s AI platform facilitates half of all food traded in major cities like New York, Paris, London, and Berlin, cutting food waste and streamlining distribution. Since its founding in 2018, Choco has raised $330 million from Bessemer, Coatue (its first European investment), and Insight, reaching unicorn status within 2.5 years. Previously, Daniel was the youngest Managing Director at Rocket Internet, where he oversaw growth across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.                                     From Seed to $1BN in 30 Months: 1. We Killed a $BN SaaS Business to be AI First: Why does Daniel believe that SaaS is dead? What does an AI-first company mean?  Why does Daniel believe AI-first companies will win the next 10 years? What foundation models does Daniel and Choco use today? How has the cost of using different models changed? What categories are vulnerable to being attacked with vertical products from the foundation model providers? 2. Europe is F*******: Why and What To Do: Why does Daniel believe Europe is at a massive disadvantage in the next 10 years of AI? Chips: What can Europe do to encourage chip production and manufacturing to take place on European soil? Energy: What can European governments do to encourage energy providers and new forms of renewable energy to innovate to provide the energy AI needs? Talent: Why does Daniel believe AI talent is the hardest problem that Europe faces? What can governments in EU do to resolve this problem? 3. Lessons Scaling to $1BN in 30 Months: Does Daniel regret raising at a $1.1BN valuation?  Why did he throw a unicorn party with the round? Why does he regret it so much? What did Daniel spend money on that he wish he had not spent money on? What did Daniel not spend money on that with the benefit of hindsight, they should have spent money on? When your competition raises a lot of funding, does that mean you should also?  

Mark Goldberg is a Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Chemistry, a $350M fund announced just yesterday with the mission to lead the best seed and Series A rounds. Before Chemistry, Mark was a Partner at Index Ventures, where he led early stage investments in Plaid, Bridge, Pilot, Anrok and Persona. Prior to Index Ventures, Mark was one of the first business hires at Dropbox. In Today’s Episode with Mark Goldberg We Discuss: 1. The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms: Why are portfolio services there to help the investing partners and not the founders? What are the most broken elements within a multi-stage firm? How does decision-making break down in large partnerships? When is the right time to work with multi-stage firms? When is not? 2. From Boutique High Margins to Commoditised Low Margins:  With the immense amount of cash that has entered VC, will returns simply get worse? Who will be the winners in the next 10 years of venture? Who will be the losers? What can they do today to change this? What element of the future of venture are not enough people spending time on? 3. Lessons from Leading Unicorn Company Rounds: What happens to all the unicorns with insanely high prices they cannot grow into? What has been Mark’s biggest hit? What did he learn? What has been his biggest miss? How did that change his go-forward approach? Does Mark agree that 90% of VC do not add value?    

AJ Tennant is the Vice President of Sales & Success at Glean, Glean has more than 20x'd its revenue and 100x'd its user base in the just two and a half years he's been there. Before Glean, AJ had incredible runs at Slack and Facebook. At Slack, AJ helped grow revenue from $6 million to more than $1 billion.  In Today’s Episode with AJ Tennant We Discuss: 1. How to Sell AI Tools in 2024: Are we still in the experimental budget phase for AI? How does selling AI tools differ to selling traditional SaaS? What are enterprises biggest concerns when it comes to adopting AI tools? What buzzwords get enterprises most excited in the sales process? Will we see a massive churn problem when the first renewal cycle for many of these AI products comes? 2. Outbound, Discounting, Closing: Is outbound dead in 2024? What does no one do that everyone should do? How does AJ approach discounting? Biggest lessons and advice? What can sales teams do to create a sense of urgency in a sales cycle? How does AJ do deal reviews and post-mortems? What is the difference between good and bad post-mortems? 3. How to Master Customer Success: What are the biggest mistakes founders make today in managing their CS teams? Should CS be compensated for upsell? How should the comp structure of CS teams change? What can be done to create a good handoff experience for the customer when handing from AE to CS? What are the most common ways CS teams break over time? 4. Hiring the Best Sales Teams: How does AJ structure the hiring process for all new sales hires? What questions does AJ always need to ask when hiring sales reps? What are clear signs of outperformers when hiring new reps? Does AJ give candidates a take-home assignment? What does he want to see from them?    

Mamoon Hamid is a General Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and one of the greatest venture investors of our time. In the past, Mamoon has led rounds in Figma, Slack, Rippling, Intercom, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP).  In Today’s Episode with Mamoon Hamid We Discuss:  1. The Greatest Venture Deal of All Time: Figma or Slack: What is Mamoon’s highest returning deal? What did Mamoon see in Dylan and Figma when they had no revenue and very little user data? What compelled Mamoon to write Stewart the check with Slack? What did he not see with Slack that he should have seen? 2. Taking Control of the Great Brand in Venture: Kleiner Perkins: Is it true that Kleiner approached Mamoon and gave him the keys to the Kleiner kingdom? How did it go down? Will Kleiner go back to having multiple products, large growth funds, international funds? What does Mamoon want Kleiner to be in 5 years? What was the hardest element of the transition into Kleiner? What did Mamoon not know that he wishes he had known? 3. Becoming a Generational Defining Investor: Market, founder, product, how does Mamoon rank them 1-3? How has Mamoon changed most significantly as an investor? What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he became a VC 19 years ago? What is his biggest loss? How did it shape his mindset and go forward investing approach? 4. AI Supercycle: The Greatest Time to Invest Where does Mamoon believe the value will accrue in this wave of AI? Where are many investors spending a lot of time but Mamoon believes is not worthy of that time?  Will scaling laws continue? Have we ever seen an incumbent set spend like this incumbent class? How does that change the game for VCs?    

Antoine Le Nel is the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut, one of the fastest growing fintechs on the planet. Prior to Revolut, Antoine spent an incredible 7 years at King (Makers of Candy Crush) overseeing continuous expansion of the world's most famous mobile game as VP of Growth.  10 Questions with Revolut’s Chief Growth Officer:  Why does Antoine believe that the best product and growth teams do not need to do A/B tests? Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams do not believe in anything? What growth tactics have worked best for Revolut? What did they learn? What have been the biggest growth flops? How did that change their approach?  Why does Antoine believe localisation in product is BS and overrated?  Why does CAC never come up at Revolut? Why do they not believe it is a metric to focus on? What metrics do they focus on instead? What does Antoine mean when he says “growth is a bidding war”? How does one win the “bidding war” today? Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams focus on optimisations and 1% gains not moving the needle for a company? What are the single biggest mistakes growth teams make today? What used to work that no longer works? What growth tactic is most effective but also most under-utilised? How can startups take advantage of this?  

Zach Perret is the CEO and Co-Founder of Plaid, a technology platform reshaping financial services. To date, Zach has raised over $734M for Plaid from the likes of NEA, Spark, GV, Coatue and a16z, to name a few. Today, thousands of companies including the largest fintechs, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks use Plaid. In addition, Zach is also a Co-Founder of Mischief, an early-stage venture fund in San Francisco.  In Today’s Episode with Zach Perret We Discuss: 1. Founder Mode: Why “Founder Mode” will be the most dangerous blog post written in the last decade for founders? What is most misleading about it? What are “grinder problems”? Why does Zach believe that grinder problems are the best problems for startups to try and solve? Why does Zach believe that OKRs are BS and should be removed? What should be used instead? 2. Lessons from Raising $734M for Plaid: What is the worst advice that VCs give that most founders take? Why does Zach believe that angel investing is more distracting than helpful for founders to do? What are the pros of investing alongside running a company? Why does Zach encourage founders to raise money as infrequently as possible? What does this mean for the size and price of rounds Zach thinks we should see occur? 3. The $5BN Exit and the $13.4BN Round: Why did Zach turn down the $5BN exit to Visa? Was it the right choice? Does Zach regret raising at such a high price of $13.4BN when the exit did not happen? Would Zach sell the company today for $13.4BN if offered it? What did Zach not do that he wish he had done? What did he do that he wishes he had not done?

David Frankel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, one of the best seed firms of the last decade. David has led rounds in companies such as Suno, Coupang, SeatGeek and PillPack (sold to Amazon for ~$1B). Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT Japan. David has been named to the Midas List six times. In 2023, he was #11 and in 2024, he appeared at #15 on the Midas List of the world's best venture capital investors and at #2 on the Midas list of seed investors.  10 Questions With One of the World’s Best Seed Investors: 1. Reserves: Why are reserves the hardest part of venture? What have been David’s biggest lessons in how to do them well? 2. Why does David believe that pro-rata is the original sin of VC?  3. Has DPI died in 2024? Is PE the salvation for the VC exit market and liquidity? 4. Why does David believe LPs are so pissed of with VCs right now? What will change that? 5. When will IPO markets open? Are M&A markets shut? What would cause them to open? 6. How does David reflect on price today? When will he pay up and break his rules? 7. Biggest lessons for David on knowing when is the right time to sell? Why does David believe you should never sell your winners? What has David sold that he regrets most? 8. What companies returned the most to Founder Collective Funds? Uber? Coupang? Airtable? The Trade Desk? What did he learn from those mega hits? 9. What have been David’s biggest losses? How did losing the company change his mindset and approach to investing? 10. What does David believe is the future of venture capital? How can seed funds play in a world of mega multi-stage funds? Who wins? Who loses?      

Eoghan McCabe is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Intercom, one of the largest private software companies in the valley with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of customers. To date, Eoghan has raised over $238M from Index, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, GV, Bessemer and more incredible firms. Intercom’s goal is to reinvent customer service with AI agents replacing human agents over the next 10 years. 10 Questions with One of the Largest Private Company CEO’s: AI Investing: Why will most AI investments not do better than the S&P 500? Building SaaS Tools with AI: Why is it crazy for companies to follow Klarna and use AI to build their own tools? Going Public: Why is Bill Gurley wrong that more later stage companies should go public? Why did Intercom shelve plans to go public in 2022? Early-Stage is F*******: Why is the early-stage venture ecosystem as an asset class f******? Founder Mode: Why does Eoghan believe all of the best founders are unbalanced? What is the difference between Founder vs Manager mode?  Political Voice: Why did Eoghan decide he had to voice his political opinions now? The Danger of Harris: Why does Eoghan believe a Harris administration would rob the US of immense freedom, democracy and civil liberty? Why Vote Trump: Why does Eoghan believe that Trump will regain immense freedom for the sovereign individual? Freedom of Speech: How does Eoghan determine right vs wrong when freedom of speech leads to harm and injustice?  Middle East and Nuclear War: Why does Eoghan believe that nuclear war is much closer than we think? Will we see the Middle East descend into war?   

Jeff Wang is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Global Equities (SCGE), a public/private crossover investment firm with investments spanning from late-stage private companies to public companies. As Managing Partner, Jeff has primarily focused on public growth technology companies but has also invested $3 billion in private companies including Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe. Prior SCGE private investments that have since gone public include Airbnb, Doordash, MongoDB, Nubank, and Snowflake. Before joining SCGE in 2010, Jeff also worked at TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners where he focused on investments in technology buyouts. 10 Questions with the Leader of Sequoia’s $9BN Global Equities Fund: 1. Crossover Fund Opportunity: Why are crossover funds more attractive today than ever? Have the tourists gone? 2. Public Market Opportunity: Why is the opportunity in the public markets, not the private markets today? 3. IPO Markets: When will IPO markets open? What will cause them to open? 4. Breaking Hedge Fund Rules: What are the biggest ways that Sequoia break the traditional rules of hedge funds? 5. Google: Why does Jeff believe that Google’s cash cow of search is under threat? 6. Meta: Why does Jeff believe Meta will be the biggest competitor to Google? 7. NVIDIA: Why is NVIDIA’s price today reasonable? What is the bull and bear case? 8. China: Is there a recovery for China? How do Sequoia play China in this market? 9. AI in Public Markets: How are Sequoia playing the AI game in the public markets? 10. Investing Lessons: What have been Jeff’s biggest investing lessons from Mike Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha?