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

Ishan Mukherjee is the Co-Founder/CEO of Rox, a Sequoia-backed AI-powered sales productivity platform. Before Rox, he was the Chief Growth Officer at New Relic where he scaled the self-serve business from $0-$100M in ARR. Prior to New Relic, Ishan founded Pixie Labs (acq by New Relic). Before that he led product at Siri Knowledge Graph at Apple, Lattice Data (acquired by Apple), Premise Data, and Amazon Robotics. Ishan was also an early engineer in Kiva (acquired by Amazon) where he joined after graduating from MIT.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:50 Biggest Lessons Scaling New Relic's PLG to $100M in ARR

05:59 How to Do PLG and Enterprise at the Same Time

07:00 How to do Content in a PLG World

08:50 Performance Marketing or Organic Content: What Works for PLG

10:27 Why You Should Stop Marketing at Events

11:47 Why SEM is a Cartel

14:15 Why Unpaid Design Partners are BS

17:17 How AI Changes the World of Enterprise Sales: Commit-Based vs. Usage-Based

20:49 How to do Sales Compensation Plans

24:44 How to Ramp New Sales Reps

25:03 The Impact of AI on Sales Research

29:18 How to do Deep Customer Research in an AI World

35:56 Changing Spending Patterns in SaaS

41:41 Retention and Churn in Enterprise AI

43:31 The Future of Sales Teams with AI

44:45 Hiring and Scaling Sales Teams

54:28 Quickfire

Welcome to The Daily Deal — the new show with Harry Stebbings and Jason Lemkin, where we break down the biggest stories in tech, venture, and B2B. From market meltdowns to billion-dollar raises, wild valuations, and the drama behind the deals. We're covering it all! Plus, we'll be joined by some incredible guests to go deeper on the moves shaping the future of our industry.

Today we discuss:

• Tech stocks were hammered in late trading today in response to the Trump administration's plans to levy tariffs of between 10% and 49% on imported goods, with Apple shares falling more than 6%.
• Rippling Deal: Illegal or Hustle?
• Emergence Raises $1B for B2B Investments
• Cursor, Replit, Windsurf: Who Wins?
• Lots of gen AI startups are crossing into the $100M ARR club. The latest entrant is talent marketplace Mercor, last valued at $2B. Is triple triple double double dead?
• ScaleAI at $25B: Pricey or Potential?

Discussion with Bhavin Shah @ Moveworks:

• ServiceNow Acquires Moveworks for $2.5B: AI Craze Continues
• Sequoia Makes 25x on Wiz: Is M&A Open Again?
• USD Stablecoin issuer Circle has filed to go public. The company, which has raised $1.2 billion in VC money, reported $1.7 billion in 2024 revenue, with $155.7 million in net income.
• Oracle Cloud Revenue Up 23%: Old Guard Wins in AI?
• Salesforce Customers Love AgentForce, But Will They Pay?
• Dustin Moskovitz Retires from Asana: Is SaaS Too Tough?

Discussion with Andrew Feldman @ Cerebras:

• Coreweave's Redemption Provision: A Time Bomb for Coatue?
• Can OpenAI's $12B Deal Save Coreweave from $5B Loss?
• OpenAI Won't Profit Until $127B in Annual Revenue
• A lot of young founders raising big in chips; bullish or bullshit?

Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft, where he leads the company's AI and technology strategy at global scale and played a pivotal role in Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI. Prior to Microsoft, Kevin spent six years at Linkedin as SVP of Engineering. Kevin has also enjoyed advisory positions with Pinterest, Box, Code.org and more.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:10 Where is Enduring Value in a World of AI

10:53 Why Scaling Laws are BS

12:26 What is the Bottleneck Today: Data, Compute or Algorithms

15:38: In 10 Years Time: What % of Data Usage will be Synthetic

20:04 How Will AI Agents Evolve Over the Next Five Years

23:34: Deepseek Evalution: Do We Underestimate China

28:34 The Future of Software Development

31:53 The Thing That Most Excites Me in AI is Tech Debt

35:01 Leadership Lessons from Satya Nadella

41:13 Quickfire Round

Dame Julia Hoggett is the CEO of the London Stock Exchange. Julia previously worked at the UK's Financial Conduct Authority as Director of Market Oversight and Head of Wholesale Banking Supervision.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:25 How to Become CEO of a National Stock Exchange

05:36 Why The Domestic Economy is F***** Despite the Boom in Financial Services

06:45 How Pension Fund Reform Dmaaged the UK Economy

09:31 Should the UK Copy the Canadian Pension Fund Structure

16:30 Will the Best Companies Like Revolut and Monzo List in London

24:17 Why Are Revolut Wrong to Want to List in the US

27:32 Are Companies Priced Lower in the UK vs US

32:05 Why is Stamp Duty a Perversity We Have to Change

35:46 Why is the Way the UK Thinks About Financial Services So Wrong

40:31 Quick Fire Round: Insights and Reflections

Mitchell Green is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lead Edge Capital. Mitchell has led or co-led investments in companies including Alibaba, Asana, Benchling, ByteDance, Duo Security, Grafana, Mindbody, and Xamarin, among several others.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:31 How Bessemer Taught Me The One Golden Rule of Investing

06:48 Why AI Infrastrcture is the Worst Investment to Make

08:51 Why it is Comical to think there will be $BN one person companies?

09:26 WTF Happens To The Cohort of SaaS Companies With Slow Growth, Not Yet Profitable and $50M-$200M in Revenue

16:12 What is the Biggest Problem with the IPO Market

23:24 When is the Right Time to Sell in VC and How a Generation F******* it Up

27:37 Biggest Advice to Smaller Emerging Managers

40:13 The One Question That Tells You if a Business is Good

43:01 Why LPs are More Important than Founders

45:03 One Question Every LP Should Ask Their VCs

46:03 Why TikTok Does Not Matter to ByteDance and It Is a Screaming Buy

51:30 Why We Drastically Underestimate the Power of Chinese AI?

55:18 Why Social Media is the Most Dangerous Thing in Society

01:00:07 Quick Fire Questions

Niklas Östberg is the Founder and CEO of Delivery Hero, a global juggernaut now present in over 70 countries across four continents. In Q4 2024, the company announced GMV of $49BN with $12.8BN in revenue and $750M in EBITDA. They have made an astonishing 35+ acquisitions including $2BN for Glovo. Before launching Delivery Hero, Niklas co-founded Pizza.nu, leading its expansion across Sweden, Poland, Finland, and Austria.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:09 How Skiing Prepared Me For Life As An Entrepreneur

10:12 Losing $200M on Gorillas Investment

17:58 Quick Commerce: Does the Business Model Work?

25:09 How to Master M&A: Lessons from 35 Acquisitions

31:45 Evaluating Acquisitions: The Glovo Example

32:39 Cohort Analysis: Lessons from $49BN in GMV

34:35 Growth Strategies: What Worked? What Did Not Work?

38:27 Competing Against Uber and Doordash

41:40 Is Cash a Weapon in the War for Food Delivery

44:29 Why Are Emerging Markets a Good Investment?

48:21 Why Are European Markets Broken? Are Regulators Killing Europe?

51:57 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

Andrew Feldman is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Cerebras, the fastest AI inference + training platform in the world. In Sept 2024 the company filed to go public off the back of a rumoured $1BN deal with G42 in the UAE. Andrew is the leading expert for all things inference.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:23 Where Was AI Landscape in 2015 When Cerebras Founded

05:57 NVIDIA's Biggest Strength Has Become Their Biggest Weakness

07:09 What Happens to the Cost of Inference?

08:55 Why Are AI Algorithms So Inefficient?

20:30 Why is it Total BS That We Have Hit Scaling Laws?

23:07 What Will Be the Ratio of Synthetic to Human Data Used in 5 Years?

31:37 What Specifically Was So Impressive About Deepseek?

31:51 Why is Distillation Not Wrong and OpenAI Need to Look in the Mirror?

32:34 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI?

34:08 How Will NVIDIA's Market Position Change Over the Next Five Years?

39:59 Why is the CUDA Lockin for NVIDIA BS? What is Their Weakness?

40:46 Why is Trump Better for Business than Biden?

49:41 Do We Underestimate China in a World of AI?

52:33 What is the Most Underappreciated Segment of AI?

54:00 Quickfire Round

Elias Torres is the Co-Founder and CEO of Agency, the AI agent for customer success teams. Prior to Agency, Elias was the Co-Founder of Drift, a company he sold to Vista for $1.2BN Before that he started Performable, which he sold to Hubspot.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

03:50 Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders: How Backgrounds Shape You

06:23 Speed: Why are Incumbents Slower than Ever

10:00 Quality: Why are Incumbents Worse than Ever

25:34 Why Was Selling Drift For $1.2BN a Massive Failure

33:30 How Did a Cushy Culture Kill Drift

37:01 What They Never Tell You About Selling for $1.2BN

41:08 How to Hire F******* Rockstars

46:52 The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Hiring

54:52 Everything You Think You Know About Working Parents is Wrong

01:02:00 Quickfire

Peter Singlehurst is the Head of Private Companies at Baillie Gifford. He has led research on a wide range of private investments including Epic Games, Bending Spoons, Anduril, Solugen, Scopely, and Grammarly, as well as a number of private holdings that have since transitioned to the public markets such as Airbnb, Affirm, Warby Parker, Wise and Tempus AI.

In Today's Episode with Peter We Discuss:

04:24 How I Accidentally Came to Manage One of the Largest Private Investment Firms in the World

07:29 What I Learned Losing 100s of $Ms

10:22 The 10 Questions Baillie Gifford Needs to Answer to Make an Investment

15:53 Why We Did Not Double Down in Stripe and Turned Down Coinbase

33:10 The ByteDance Investment Case

36:33 Why Would Any Good Company Go Public Today

39:19 Growth Stage Investing Trends

40:46 How Anduril Becomes a $200BN Company

45:39 Is 2024 Different to the Madness of 2021 and 2022

47:18 The Decision-Making Process Inside a $217BN Firm

49:00 How Does Re-Investment Decision-Making Differ from Original Investments

55:56 Future of Growth Equity Investing

58:12 Quick Fire Questions

Yamini Rangan is the CEO at HubSpot. The $32BN juggernaut that has revenues of $2.6BN, over 247,000 customers and 8,200 employees. Prior to Hubspot, Yamini served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, and before Dropbox, she was VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:16 Taking Over the CEO Role from the Founders

07:58 Wartime vs Peacetime CEOship

11:18 How to Scale Into Enterprise: What Everyone Gets Wrong

22:20 Why is B2B Not Winner Take All

29:33 How Does HubSpot Compete Against Salesforce

33:26 Where Does Value Accrue in a World of AI

37:40 How Does Yamini Use AI Everyday

41:17 What Does HubSpot Do When It's Core SEO Channel Dies

44:10 Quickfire Round: Satya Nadella, Parenting Advice, Biggest Concern

51:35 Closing Thoughts and Reflections