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

Founder and CEO of LADbible Group, Solly Solomou has built one of the largest and most engaged digital media entertainment companies in the world. Under his leadership, LADbible has grown to reach two-thirds of 18-34-year-olds in the UK, with a global audience of over 494 million followers, including 141 million in the US. The company's content now has a total reach of over 1 billion people worldwide.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

From Printer Shop Office to Ringing the IPO Bell:

• How did Solly start LADbible with no money and no experience?

• How did a moment with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube show Solly that he had something special with LADbible?

• In the expansion of the business, what new products did not work? What did Solly learn from the failures of products?

• Why did Solly always want to build the business without an external funding?

• What are the top 3 pieces of advice Solly gives to young entrepreneurs starting a business today?

The Future of Content and Social Media:

• How does Solly see wearables changing the future of media and social?

• Does Solly agree that the friendship graph has been eradicated by interest graphs?

• Does Solly think TikTok should be banned?

• Why does Solly think TikTok Shop is the most interesting product in social today?

Europe vs US: Is Europe F******:

• What are the single biggest differences between doing business in the US vs Europe?

• Why did Solly decide to go public in London on The London Stock Exchange?

• How tough is it being a public company in London?

• How important are local liquidity markets if Europe is to regain competitiveness?

• If Solly were advising Keir Starmer on how to stimulate growth in the UK, what would he say and advise?

TS Anil is the CEO @ Monzo, where he has been the mastermind behind the greatest turnaround in tech in the last 10 years. When TS took over at Monzo they had £40M in revenue, very little runway, had a 40% down round and had large layoffs and low employee NPS. Today they are at £1BN in revenue, profitable and the UK's largest digital bank with more than 10m customers.

From $40M Revenues to $1BN Revenues and Profitable:

1. What are the most profitable elements of Monzo's business today? How will that change in time?

2. What did TS do with Monzo that he wishes he had not done? What did he not do that he wishes he had done?

3. How does TS approach expansion? How will he win Europe against the competition of Revolut?

4. Why have no European fintechs won when expanding into the US? What do they do wrong?

5. How does TS think about the decision to go public? Will he go public in London?

6. How does TS respond to the notion that Monzo has a "work life balance" culture in the face of the fierce culture of Revolut?

7. What have been TS' biggest lessons from raising $1BN for Monzo from the largest institutions in the world? What was the easiest round? What was the hardest?

8. What three core traits does TS believe all great leaders need to have? If you do not have them, how can you develop them most efficiently?

Fabien Pinckaers is the Founder & CEO of Odoo, one of the most incredible businesses that you might not have heard of. Built from the countryside of Belgium, they do an astonishing $650M in ARR, they have over 5,000 employees and have over 50,000 companies as customers. Even better, Fabian openly does not ever want to sell the company, IPO, believes that titles in companies are total BS and most management is done completely wrong.

In Today's Episode with Fabien We Discuss:

1. Everything You Know About Management is Wrong:

• Why is it BS to give people titles in a company?

• How does Odoo hire people after only one interview?

• Why does Odoo prefer to hire really young people under 30?

• Why does Fabien think it is the worst to build a team in Silicon Valley?

2. The Billionaire Who Does Not Care About Money:

• Why does Fabien literally not care about money and does not even own a house?

• Why does Fabien refuse to ever sell or IPO Odoo?

• How does Fabien plan to offer liquidity to investors if he never wants to sell or IPO?

3. Why Did Every VC Turn Down the $5BN Odoo:

• What are Fabien's biggest lessons from being rejected by every VC for Odoo?

• What did they not see that they should have seen?

• Why did Fabien always want the price of the company on every funding round to be as low as possible?

• How does Fabien advise founders on pitching VCs today, knowing all he knows?

4. Scaling to $650M in ARR: The Biggest Lessons:

• Why does Fabien believe the biggest mistake companies make is they lose focus?

• What did Fabien not do with Odoo that they should have done?

• What did Fabien do and invest in, that with the benefit of hindsight they should not have done?

• When did the business start to break with scale? What would Fabien have done differently knowing all he does know?

Sridhar Ramaswamy is the CEO @ Snowflake, the $60BN public company with $3.5BN in revenue growing 30% per year. Sridhar joined Snowflake following his company, Neeva, being acquired by them for $150M. Prior to founding Neeva, Ramaswamy spent 15 years at Google where he had an integral part in the growth of AdWords and Google's advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

1. OpenAI vs Deepseek vs Anthropic:

• Why will OpenAI beat Deepseek? What does no one see with Deepseek that they should see?

• Why has OpenAI beaten Anthropic? What elements turn a model from a commodity into a sustaining product suite?

• Will model providers become application providers?

• Will OpenAI be the biggest killer of startups in the next 10 years?

2. Snowflake vs Nvidia & Databricks:

• To what extent is Sridhar concerned NVIDIA will move into the data layer and compete with Snowflake?

• How does Sridhar view the competition from Databricks? What have they done better than them? What have they done worse than them and lost on?

• Does being private hurt or help Databricks in their fight against Snowflake?

• If Sridhar could, would he take Snowflake private today?

3. Leadership, Parenting, Money:

• Do richer leaders make better leaders? How does being rich change the mindset of a leader?

• What are Sridhar's biggest lessons when it comes to parenting?

• What about the way that Sridhar was brought up, did he do deliberately differently with his kids?

Brian Tolkin is the Head of Product @ Opendoor where he has spent the last 6 years and is responsible for product strategy and product and design teams. Before Opendoor, Brian spent an incredible 5 years at Uber through their wildest growth periods.

In Today's Episode with Brian Tolkin:

03:53 Brian's Journey at Uber: Launching China Pool

05:07 Product Lessons from Uber's China Launch

08:22 The Role of a PM in a Pre vs. Post AI World

10:16 Product Development Process in an AI World

17:43 The Importance of Simplification in Product Management

19:21 OKRs and Prioritization in Product Management

23:12 The Importance of Feedback Loops in Product Development

23:38 Evaluating Product Changes: User Adaptation vs. Bad Decisions

25:00 Balancing Gut Instinct and Data in Product Leadership

25:38 The Role of Simplicity in Product Design

27:02 Consensus vs. Dictatorial Product Leadership

27:54 Hiring for the Best Product Teams

31:33 How to do Effective Sprint Management

38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Advice

Max Levchin is one of the great founders and technologists of our time. As the Founder and CEO of Affirm, he has built am $18.7BN monster in the buy no pay later space. Prior to Affirm he was one of the original co-founders of PayPal. Max is also the co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company. Max is also an immensely successful angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of Yelp, Pinterest and Evernote.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

04:19 How to Hire the Best People in the World

05:05 How to Manage Extreme Personalities

08:18 Biggest Lessons on Trust and What Happens When Lost

12:05 Is Grading Talent A and B Players Total BS?

15:31 How to Think About Calculated vs Uncalculated Risk

27:18 How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems: Step by Step

32:08 Why Every Person Must Write and How to Create a Writing Culture

36:01 Leadership Lessons from Layoffs

38:38 Is Affirm Losing or Beating Klarna in the US?

47:03 Peter Thiel or Elon Musk: Who Would Max Rather Start a New Company With?

48:37 Quickfire Round

Wayne Ting is CEO of Lime. The global leader in micromobility, the first to achieve a fully profitable year (2022). Last year, Lime did over $600M in gross bookings, $90M in EBITDA. Their 4-year top-line CAGR is 30%. Before joining Lime, Wayne spent four years at Uber in various roles, including Chief of Staff to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and General Manager of Uber's Northern California business. Wayne previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor on the White House's National Economic Council under President Obama.

In Today's Episode with Wayne Ting We Discuss:

1. Is Lime Really a Good Business:

• How did Wayne turn Lime from losing $3 on every $1 to $90M in EBITDA?

• What worked? What did not work?

• What did Lime do that he wishes they had not done?

• What did they not do that he wishes they had done?

1. The Moments that Changed Everything:

• COVID: Lime lost 95% of their revenues overnight. What did Wayne and Lime do to save the business in such a short space of time?

• Uber Deal: How did the Uber deal led by Uber CEO, Dara, save Lime as a business?

• Battery Innovation: How did an innovation on the transportability of batteries and replacing them change the entire Lime business?

1. The Dangers of VC Funding and Capital Efficiency:

• Why does Wayne believe that VC hype cycles are so damaging for companies and sectors?

• How did the heat around micromobility damage Lime?

• What did Wayne and Lime do to increase their capital efficiency so much? What worked? What did not?

1. AMA with the CEO of Lime:

• What company did Lime not acquire that Wayne wishes they had?

• How did having a stroke change the way that Wayne leads?

• Which competitor does Wayne most respect and admire?

• What were his biggest lessons from working with Dara @ Uber?

Jonathan Ross is the Co-Founder and CEO of Groq, providing fast AI inference. Prior to founding Groq, Jonathan started Google's TPU effort where he designed and implemented the core elements of the original chip. Jonathan then joined Google X's Rapid Eval Team, the initial stage of the famed "Moonshots factory," where he devised and incubated new Bets (Units) for Alphabet.

The 10 Most Important Questions on Deepseek:

1. How did Deepseek innovate in a way that no other model provider has done?

2. Do we believe that they only spent $6M to train R1?

3. Should we doubt their claims on limited H100 usage? Is Josh Kushner right that this is a potential violation of US export laws?

4. Is Deepseek an instrument used by the CCP to acquire US consumer data?

5. How does Deepseek being open-source change the nature of this discussion?

6. What should OpenAI do now? What should they not do?

7. Does Deepseek hurt or help Meta who already have their open-source efforts with Lama?

8. Will this market follow Satya Nadella's suggestion of Jevon's Paradox?

9. How much more efficient will foundation models become?

10. What does this mean for the $500BN Stargate project announced last week?

Carlos Delatorre is one of the legendary go-to-market leaders of the last 20 years. Today, Carlos is the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Harness, where he oversees global sales and go-to-market (GTM) operations. Before Harness, Carlos was the CRO @ MongoDB and Navan. Carlos is also an investor with a portfolio including the likes of Modern Treasury and Starburst to name a few.

In Today's Sales Masterclass We Discuss:

03:48 The Art and Science of Sales

04:42 How to Hire Sales Talent

06:26 How to Build a Sales Team

15:28 Why Every Sales Rep Should do Pipeline Generation

19:45 How the Best Reps to Pipeline Generation

21:34 Biggest challenges of Pipeline Generation

22:44 Pipeline Generation Success Stories

34:59 Sales Metrics and Conversion Rates

35:32 Customer Acquisition Strategies

37:17 Evaluating Sales Performance

39:14 Effective Sales Training

43:10 Pipeline Generation and Deal Reviews

45:05 Maintaining Sales Team Morale

46:20 Verticalized Sales Playbooks

48:37 Addressing SaaS Churn Rates

49:49 Discounting and Deal Slippage

52:02 Transitioning to CEO Role

54:15 Hiring Mistakes and Sales Rep Evolution

57:03 In-Person vs. Remote Sales Teams

57:55 Account Management Strategies

01:02:47 Creative Sales Tactics

01:04:12 Final Advice for Sales Leaders

01:04:46 Adapting Sales Strategies During Crisis

George Sivulka is the founder and CEO of Hebbia, is one of the fastest-growing gen AI companies and they recently raised a $130M series B. Investors include the company include hailed names such as a16z, Peter Thiel, Index, GV and others.

In Today's Episode with George Sivulka We Discuss:

04:47 Three Traits The Best Founders All Share?

08:11 How Cold Calling NASA Changed My Life

12:01 From Stealing Food From Stanford to Pitching Peter Thiel

17:22 Lessons working with Peter Thiel

26:39 The Future of AI and Business Applications

33:03 The Future of Employment with AI

33:45 Debunking the Myths of AI Job Displacement

35:09 The Future of Models: Many specialised or few generalised?

35:56 Scaling at Inference: A New Frontier

38:10 The Impact of Scaling Laws on Foundation Models

40:40 The Future of AI and Enterprise Value

43:43 The Geopolitical Influence on AI

45:03 The Commoditization of AI Models

47:47 Why Foundation Models Will Not Follow the Same Path of Cloud

52:53 Why All Companies, Both AI and Non-AI Are Undervalued