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

AGENDA:

00:00 — Anthropic's Monster Month: 6 Billion in February Revenue

04:30 — The "Claude Mythos" Leak: 10 Trillion Parameters

11:50 — OpenAI Kills "Sora": A Massive Strategic Own Goal?

14:30 — OpenAI Hits $100M in Ads: Why OpenAI Must Make Ads Work

20:50 — Masa Son's $40BN Bridge Loan: Investing More Into OpenAI

21:50 — Cybersecurity Stocks Tank: Is the Anthropic Panic Justified?

27:10 — The Golden Age of Cyber: Why AI Agents are a "Golden Goose" for Security

31:30 — Gross vs. Net: The Truth Behind AI Revenue Accounting

34:50 — The "Vibe Coding" Era: Reselling Tokens and Triple-Counting ARR

41:00 — Oura Going Public & Whoop Raises $500M at $10BN Valuation

49:50 — Epic Games Layoffs: The Reality of the Attention Economy

52:40 — The Manus Scandal: Founders Trapped in China After Meta Deal

59:00 — The Billionaire Tax: Why the Golden Geese are Leaving California

01:03:20 — Do VCs Actually Add Value? The Ron Conway vs. Matthew Prince Spat

Marc Andreessen is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. The firm now manages over $90BN and has invested in the likes of OpenAI, Airbnb, Coinbase, Anduril and many more. Marc is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape (sold to AOL for $4.2 billion). He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion.

AGENDA:

05:00 — Why Introspection is Overrated: The Dangers of Learning from the Past

08:00 — The One Trait Marc Andreessen Looks For in Every Founder

14:30 — Are the Best Founders Broken? What Makes the Best Founders?

16:00 — "Extreme Ownership": Why Everything Being Your Fault Changes Everything

19:00 — "Do You Read the Comments?" Fame, Criticism & How to Deal with Haters

26:00 — Is Venture Now Go Big or Go Home? The Real Future of VC

30:00 — Does Price Matter Anymore? The Dangerous Truth About Valuations

33:00 — "Stop Chasing Diamonds in the Rough": Why Most VCs Get This Completely Wrong

36:00 — Do You Actually Need to Like Founders? The Uncomfortable Answer

40:00 — Are Companies 75% Overstaffed? The Most Controversial Take on Hiring

45:00 — When Will a16z Go Public?

50:00 — Why Labour Displacement Theory Around AI is Totally Wrong

55:00 — Why Silicon Valley Is More Dominant Than Ever?

01:00:00 — Why a16z Invested $300M into Adam Neumann

01:05:00 — What Still Drives Marc Andreesen?

01:10:00 — What is the Biggest Mistakes VCs Still Make Today?

Gili Raanan is the Founder of Cyberstarts, one of the best performing venture funds of the last decade. He is famed for being the seed investor in Wiz, Islands and Cyera, leading to multiple 10x+ funds. He has the only remaining monopoly in venture; cyber security in Israel. If it is good, Gili sees it, it is that simple.

AGENDA:

00:00 — Does the Venture Business Even Work Anymore?

05:58 — The Insane Rise of $150M Seed Rounds!

08:58 — Will Mega Funds Ever Actually Return Venture Economics?

11:13 — How Do You Value Companies Growing at Impossible Speeds?

14:50 — The Truth About Growth: Why Most Companies Eventually Plateau

18:50 — Do Margins Still Matter in the Age of AI?

24:32 — How To Make Mega Money in the World of Secondaries

28:11 — What Are Core Misalignments Between GPs and LPs That No One Discusses?

37:57 — Quick Fire: Best Investment, Most Memorable Founder, Investing Icon

AGENDA:

05:00 — Anthropic vs. OpenAI: Who Is Actually Winning the Enterprise War?

07:55 — "Air of Desperation": Is OpenAI Losing Its Invincibility?

18:00 — SpaceX at $2 Trillion: Elon's Insane Plan to Build Data Centers in Space

29:00 — Jeff Bezos' $100 Billion Fund: The End of "Doing It the Hard Way"

34:00 — The $20 Billion "Acqui-hire": The Groq Deal Broken Down

40:40 — Figma's Death Spiral? Why the Markets Are Terrified of AI Disruption

56:00 — The Broken VC Math: Why You Need $1BN To Do Series A

01:04:00 — Win or Die: The Terrifying Reality of the Unicorn "Dead Zone"

Matthew Steckman is the President and Chief Business Officer of Anduril. Matt played a central role in securing the $20BN contract Anduril just won with the US military. Prior to Anduril, Matt served as Chief Revenue Officer for Zipline. Before Zipline, Matt held several leadership positions at Palantir.

AGENDA:

3:45 — Anduril's $20BN Army Contract Broken Down

6:30 — What Do Most Defense Founders Get Completely Wrong?

9:15 — Can You Build a Billion-Dollar Defense Company Without the US?

12:05 — Why Government Contracts Are Brutal (And Why Most Fail)

15:40 — How Does Anduril Predict Wars 5–10 Years Before They Happen?

18:20 — Why Cyber Warfare Is the Most Dangerous Battlefield No One Understands

23:50 — Why There Will Only Be ONE Winning Drone Company

28:10 — How Anduril Decides Where to Deploy $100M+ Product Bets

35:20 — What Would Anduril Buy If They Had an Unlimited Checkbook?

41:10 — Why Anduril Must Go Public

45:00 — Quickfire: The Future of War, VC Mistakes & Career Advice

Shaunt Voskanian is the CRO @ Figma, where he has scaled the sales machine to over $1BN in ARR and over 400 people. Prior to Figma, Shaunt was Senior VP of Global Sales at Datadog where he scaled the revenue org to $1BN in ARR.

AGENDA:

04:33 - Are Great Sales Leaders Born or Trained?

06:55 - In a world of PLG, is sales less important than ever?

11:51 - Why does Shaunt not believe in traditional customer success teams?

14:31 - Does the role of the SDR survive in two years' time?

19:19 - When is the right time for sales to intercept in a PLG motion?

21:43 - How to Set Sales Quotas in a PLG AI Sales World?

31:19 - How has what you look for in sales hires changed over time?

42:54 - How do you judge sales performance if not on quota?

54:49 - Quick fire: Outdated sales tactic, What Role Dies, Best Sales AI Tool

AGENDA:

04:02 NVIDIA's GTC: What You Need to Know

11:39 Meta's 20% Layoffs & Atlassian Lets Go of 1,600

21:42 How to Test AI Fluency in Employees

30:59 Anduril Lands $20BN Army Contract

46:46 Travis Kalanick Returns With Atoms

49:55 If Travis Kalanick Ran Uber Today, Would it be $1TRN Company?

56:03 When is it Right to Replace Founders

01:04:24 Adobe CEO Exit Shock

Gokul Rajaram is one of the greatest operators turned investors of the last 2 decades. He is trusted as the go to advisor for the greatest founders in the world. Today he serves as a Board Director at three public companies: Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Prior to Marathon (his firm), Gokul served on the executive team at DoorDash and Block. Before Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense. Gokul is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in 700+ companies, including Airtable, Figma, Groq, Runway, Supabase, and Vercel.

AGENDA:

03:53 — Investing Lessons from Google, Doordash and Facebook

05:32 — Why Mark Zuckerberg is the Greatest Distribution Genius Alive

07:23 — Why Every Company Today Needs to be Multi-Product

09:16 — Negative Gross Margins: Are the Best Companies Actually Built on "Shit" Economics?

10:50 — The SaaS Apocalypse: Is the Entire Sector Going to Zero?

12:15 — The 8 Moats of Enduring Software Companies: How to Analyse Companies

14:50 — Why Brand is No Longer a Strong Moat (And What Replaced It)

16:13 — Salesforce vs. Atlassian: Which Systems of Record are Dying?

18:13 — Outcome-Based Pricing: Is This the Total Death of Seat Pricing?

20:16 — The Bolt-On AI Trap: Why Rebuilding Your Entire UX is Non-Negotiable

23:44 — Are the Outcome Sizes of Vertical SaaS Large Enough for VC Today?

28:16 — The Zombie Cohort: What Happens to Private Companies with High Valuations?

32:44 — Is "King Making" Complete Bullshit?

34:21 — Durability Over Margins: What Really Matters in a 100x Growth World

35:36 — The Non-Consumption Miracle: Why Granola and Gamma are Crushing It

38:50 — The PayPal Rule: Can You Raise Prices 5 Times in 3 Years?

42:47 — My Biggest Miss: How I Misread the Shopify Billion-Dollar Mark

45:18 — The Courage to Bet: Why Instacart is the Best VC Deal Ever

46:33 — Seed vs. Growth Pricing: When Does Price Actually Destroy Returns?

50:53 — Does "Proprietary Founder Access" Even Exist?

54:33 — Double Down or Diversify? The Truth About Fund Reserves

59:44 — The Vanta Anti-Portfolio: A Mistake I'll Never Forget

01:01:21 — When to Sell: The "Sell a Third, Hold a Third, Trade a Third" Rule

01:04:12 — Why Remote Early-Stage Companies are Dying

01:07:33 — Why Mid-Level Partners are Fleeing Mega Funds

01:09:47 — The Best CEO Superpowers: Larry, Mark, Jack, and Tony

01:12:33 — The Next 10 Years: Why Dropouts are "AI Maxing" the World

Elena Verna is the Head of Growth at Lovable, one of the fastest growing companies in the world having hit $400M in ARR in just 18 months. Prior to Lovable, Elena was Head of Growth at both Dropbox and Miro.

AGENDA:

00:00 – Why "Growth Is Now a Trust Problem" (Not a Marketing Problem)

06:10 – Is SEO Dying Because of AI Search?

07:00 – Did Lovable's Growth Come From the Founder's Personal Brand?

08:30 – Why Every Founder Should Push Employees to Be Marketers?

13:10 – Why Every Employee at Lovable Ships Code (Even Marketing)

21:20 – Why Paid Marketing in Year One Is a "Death Trap"

31:50 – Why Annual Subscriptions Are the Wrong Monetization Model for AI

37:00 – If Elena Had an Unlimited Marketing Budget, What Would She Do?

48:00 – How Lovable Does Product Launches

AGENDA:

00:00 - ANTHROPIC VS. THE PENTAGON: The Billion Dollar Supply Chain War

07:11 - B2B PANIC: Why Leading Companies Are Losing Deals to OpenAI

12:19 - THE ANTHROPIC ENDGAME: Will Claude Eclipse ChatGPT?

17:39 - THE DATA CENTER ARMS RACE: Is the AI Hype Cycle Finally Dead?

24:43 - 24/7 PERSISTENT AI: Why You'll Soon Need Data Centers in Space

30:37 - THE DEATH OF THE JUNIOR: Why Entry-Level Jobs are Vanishing

41:55 - AGENT-LED GROWTH: The Secret Reason Startups are Exploding in 2026

46:58 - THE ERA OF GENTLE DECELERATION IS DEAD: Public Markets Turn Brutal

55:54 - FIGMA MAKE IS TERRIBLE? The Failure of Quarterly Software Releases

01:00:54 - THE ULTIMATE STOCK PICKS: What to Buy and Sell Right Now