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

Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers globally, generating more than $5BN in annual revenue. Atlassian now employs over 10,000 people across 13 countries and is one of the most successful bootstrapped-to-IPO stories in tech history. Mike is also a leading climate investor and co-owner of several major sports teams.

AGENDA:

00:00 Why Unreasonable Men Win in Startups

07:22 How to Make Co-CEOs Work

13:22 Are We in an AI Bubble? Is Everything Overvalued?

26:46 The Future of Software Development: More or Less Devs

32:53 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI

34:02 The Future of Vibe Coding…

36:35 Does Defensibility Exist in a World of AI

42:09 Is Per Seat Pricing Dead in a World of AI

49:01 The Founder Journey and Leadership

54:28 Quick Fire Round: Parenting Advice, Relationship to Money

Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake's go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team from to more than 6,000 globally. Under his leadership, Snowflake became one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in history, achieving a record-breaking IPO in 2020.

AGENDA:

04:34 How to Build a Sales Team from Scratch 07:49 How to Hire and Evaluate Sales Leaders 15:23 Four Big Lessons Scaling Snowflake to $3BN ARR 31:30 Comparing Snowflake and Databricks: What Databricks Did Better? 35:26 How to Manage Sales Team Morale in Competitive Markets 43:53 Why Customer Success is BS and What To Do With It 48:31 How Every Sales Leader Needs to Change in An AI World 49:37 Biggest Reflections on Sales Leadership 54:38 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan

AGENDA:

03:29 OpenAI and AMD's Major Partnership

07:35 Microsoft Have F***** Up the OpenAI Partnership

17:08 OpenAI's Developer Day Announcements

20:45 Why VC is the Most Forgiving Asset Class on Price and Valuation

29:10 What Does it Take to IPO in 2025: Why Snyk Will Not IPO

42:30 Four Strategies Companies Need to Take to Own Their Own Destiny

49:31 Vercel Raises $300M at $9BN: Suicide Round or Strategic

55:39 Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Legora vs Harvey

01:08:11 Chamath Raises Latest SPAC: SPACs are Back

01:10:56 Polymarket Raises $2BN at a $9BN Valuation

01:14:53 Quick Fire Questions and Wrap-Up

Andrew Feldman is Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebras, building the world's fastest AI inference and training. Cerebras recently closed a $1.1BN Series G round at an $8.1 billion valuation, backed by top names including Fidelity, Atreides, Tiger Global, Valor Equity and 1789 Capital. Under his leadership, they've leapfrogged GPU limits in inference, operate at trillions of tokens per month, and are filing to go public soon.

AGENDA:

02:43 Why We Did Not IPO and Raised $1BN From Fidelity

05:03 Analysis of Chip and Compute Landscape Today

07:14 NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Running Out of Ideas

13:57 The Real Questions to Ask on Chip Depreciation

24:54 Energy Requirements for AI: Is it Feasible?

29:25 Mag7 Value Concentration: Feature or a Bug

31:57 Talent is the Bottleneck and Trump Makes it Worse

32:55 The War for Talent: Secrets No One Sees

34:22 Evaluating the Data Centre Economy: Many Will Lose Money

38:01 Three Changes the US Could Make to Beat China in AI

42:30 Why 80% of our Revenues are in the UAE

47:26 Quick Fire Questions

58:59 Why Work Life Balance is Total BS

Ketty Slonimsky is Chief Growth Officer at Palta, the platform behind apps like Flo (the #1 female health app with 77M+ MAU), Simple, and Zing AI, where she leads a centralized growth function across the portfolio. She was previously first VP Product & Growth at HeliosX (£900M+ ARR, bootstrapped D2C healthtech), has advised companies like SonderMind, Runna, Guardio, Cheddar, P&G Digital Ventures, and is a board advisor at HeliosX.

AGENDA:

02:33 What is Growth and When to Hire For It

06:04 Three Profiles of Successful Growth Leaders

10:07 Challenges and Learnings from Failed Ventures

21:17 How to Optimise User Onboarding for Growth

26:14 Biggest Lessons on Retention

30:25 How to Artificially Create Organic Growth and Community Building

32:10 Why LTV Models are BS

37:35 How to Use Influencers to Grow Insanely Fast

47:07 The Metrics that Matter in Growth

49:48 Push Notifications and Engagement: What To Do vs What Not to Do?

51:57 Quick Fire Round

AGENDA:

03:58 Understanding Burn Multiples and Capital Efficiency in an AI World

11:54 What Metrics Founders Need to Focus on in a World of AI

19:31 The Role of Kingmakers in Venture Capital: Harvey, Abridge, Profound

33:42 Klarna, Figma, Stubhub, all Down: Are Public Markets Turning?

36:35 OpenAI Needs the Same Energy as Japan… WTF!

41:09 How Can We Fund the $1TRN Sam Altman Needs for Energy

52:39 FiveTran and DBT: Is the Wave of Consolidation About to Begin?

59:44 Does Private Equity Need to Change in a World of AI

01:06:23 Political Expression and Corporate Responsibility

Jonathan Ross is the Founder & CEO of Groq, the AI chip company redefining inference at scale. Under his leadership, Groq has raised over $3B from top investors. The company has reached a valuation of nearly $7B, positioning itself as one of NVIDIA's most formidable challengers. Previously at Google, Jonathan led the team that built the first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), making him one of the leading architects of modern AI hardware.

AGENDA:

00:00 The Future of AI and Compute

05:07 Why the Hyperscalers Have to Keep Spending Recklessly on AI

12:49 Why OpenAI and Anthropic Will Have to Build Their Own Chips

19:47 OpenAI and Anthropic Will be $5BN Companies: The Bull Case

29:50 Why China is Behind the US in AI and Deepseek is More Expensive to Run

33:55 How Europe Could Compete in AI and Why the US is More Risk Averse Than Europe

42:51 Why AI Will Lead to Too Many Not Too Few Jobs

43:19 Deflationary Pressures and New Job Markets

45:51 The Future of Vibe Coding

47:14 Why AI Companies Should Strive to Have Low Margins

49:31 Why We Have to Have Nuclear Energy and How to Bring it Back

56:55 How Permits are Ruining the Potential of AI

01:03:58 Why OpenAI and Anthropic are so Undervalued

01:16:53 Quickfire: Biggest Fear, Nvidia: $10TRN, Zuck Buying AI: Work or Not

James Gibson is Head of Revolut Business. Under his leadership, Revolut Business now processes over $33 billion in monthly transaction volume and generates more than $1BN in annualised revenue.

AGENDA:

04:10 Is Consulting the Worst Background for Aspiring PMs

07:09 How Revolut Hires for it's Product Team

17:21 How Revolut Sets Goals: What Works, What Does Not

19:37 How Revolut Structures Their Product Teams

22:13 How Revolut Structures Product Review Sessions

27:23 New Bets Process at Revolut

29:11 How Revolut Balances Super Users and General Customers

36:55 How Revolut Drives Product Velocity and Efficiency

39:26 Future of Product with AI

44:56 Quick Fire Questions and Reflections

AGENDA:

00:00 Why I am 100% Equities and 0% Cash

04:35 Nvidia's Massive $100BN Investment in OpenAI

08:39 Is Anthropic Negatively Positioned by OpenAI Gaining NVIDIA Investment

27:30 Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead

44:00 Navan Files to Go Public at $8BN

49:31 Lockup Periods and Liquidity

50:35 Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Startups

01:02:42: Notion Hits $500M ARR Re-Accelerating

01:09:42 Why Founder Friendly is Total BS Today

Hemant Taneja is the CEO and leader of General Catalyst, the firm he has scaled over the last decade into one of the largest with over $40BN in AUM. He has been one of the most influential investors of the past two decades, leading early bets in Stripe, Snap, Gusto, Samsara, Grammarly, and Canva. He also played a pivotal role in Livongo's $18.5B merger with Teladoc, one of the largest digital health deals in history.

AGENDA:

00:00 Introduction

03:37 Is Hemant a CEO or an Investor?

05:42 With $40BN AUM Is General Catalyst Still a VC Firm?

12:11 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?

13:25 No One is Talking About the True Impact of AI on Jobs

21:30 Is Hemant Concerned by the Concentration of Value in MAG 7?

27:30 Has Trump Done More to Hurt or Help the US?

30:27 GC's Anthropic Investment: Upside from a $60BN Price

37:06 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI

45:23 Does Revenue Growth Matter in a World of AI

49:39 Why it is BS to Turn Down a Company Based on Price

56:06 We Have Invested $5BN Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds

01:00:02 VC is About To Be Flooded with Retail Investment: What Does It Mean for VC

01:08:51 "What I Learned Losing the Series A of Snap, Stripe, Samsara"

01:11:25 Future of Venture Capital: Walmart vs Chanel