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

Donald Tang is the Executive Chairman of SHEIN, with oversight of public affairs, business strategy, corporate development, and finance. Donald began his career at Merrill Lynch & Co. He later joined Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. in Los Angeles as Senior Managing Director of Investment Banking. At Bear Sterns, Donald quickly rose to become the Vice Chairman of the firm, as well as Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings, Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asia, Ltd, and a member of the board of directors at Bear Stearns & Co.

1. How SHEIN Became a Global Giant:

• As specifically as possible, what did you and the SHEIN team do that enabled you to be one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet?
• Real-Time Retail: What is this? How is it the core of SHEIN's growth and efficiency?
• Supply Chain Innovation: How did SHEIN innovate on the supply chain to give them such an advantage over the competition?
• Price King: How does Donald respond to the statement that SHEIN wins due to price, not quality?
• Social Media: What social media tactics allowed SHEIN to grow so fast? What did not work?
• Paid Media: How have SHEIN approached paid marketing? What works? What does not?

2. The Big Questions: IPOs, Impact on Climate and Worker Conditions:

• IPO: Why does SHEIN want to go public? Is London the right place for the company to go public?
• Climate: How does Donald respond to the common idea that "SHEIN is bad for the climate" and encourages fast fashion like never before?
• Tariffs: How does Donald respond to the common question around tariffs and SHEIN benefitting from being under a certain tariff threshold?

3. Marriage, Fatherhood and Happiness:

• Marriage: What have been Donald's biggest lessons on how to have a successful marriage?
• Fatherhood: What does being a great father mean to Donald? If he could call himself up the night before his first child was born, what would he advise himself?
• Happiness: How does Donald think about happiness today? What does everyone get wrong about happiness?

Jeetu Mahtani was an early member of the HubSpot team. Under his leadership and the sales organization, the business grew its non-US revenue from $3M ARR to close to $1B ARR. After running the International business as the global MD and Sales leader, he then moved to lead the customer success org which expanded to managing 1,500 people in customer success.

1. How to Go International for Startups:

• What are Jeetu's biggest lessons from Hubspot on what startups can do to make their international expansion a success?
• What were the biggest mistakes Hubspot made in their international expansion?
• How should every team in each new location be structured?
• What should the ramp time and onboarding process look like or each new team and expansion?

2. Scaling Sales from $3M to $1BN in ARR:

• What did Hubspot do so well to successfully scale to $1BN in international ARR?
• What were the biggest mistakes Jeetu made in the expansion of Hubspot's sales teams?
• What are the first things to break in sales teams? How do you handle them?
• Why does Jeetu hate discounting? Why does Jeetu not like customer references?

3. Scaling Customer Success to 1,500 CS Reps:

• When should founders make their first customer success hires?
• What are the biggest mistakes people make in the scaling of CS teams?
• Why should customer success be incentivised in the same comp plans that sales teams have?
• How do the best CS teams work with sales and product teams most effectively?

4. Hiring the Best and Ramping Them:

• What does Jeetu's hiring process look like for all new sales reps?
• What are the must ask questions for Jeetu in all candidate interviews?
• How fast do you know when you have made a mistake with a new hire?
• What is the secret to effective onboarding? What are the biggest mistakes people make in onboarding?

20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani

Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013.

1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today:

• How does Eric think through where value will accrue in the stack between chips, models and applications?
• Why does Eric believe foundation models are the fastest commoditising asset in history?
• Why does Eric believe that Nvidia will not be the only game in town in the next 3-5 years?

2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully:

• How does Eric analyse between a standalone and deep product vs a product that foundation model will commodities and incorporate into their feature set?
• How does Eric differentiate between the 10 different players all going after customer service, or sales tools or data analyst products etc?
• How does Eric analyse the quality of revenue of these AI application layer companies? What does he mean when he describes their revenue as "sugar high"?

3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions:

• What is the decision-making process for all new deals in Benchmark?
• As specifically as possible, how does the voting process inside Benchmark work?
• What deal was the most contentious deal that went through? What did the partnership learn?
• How has the Benchmark decision-making process changed over 10 years?

4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models:

• Does the price of AI deals and size of their rounds break the Benchmark model?
• Will foundation model companies all be acquired by the larger cloud providers?
• Unless multiples reflate in the public markets, does venture as an asset class have hope?
• Why does AI make paying ludicrously high prices potentially rational?

Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch).

1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS:

• Why does Dmitry believe that speed is not the most important thing?
• Why does Dmitry believe that competition is actually a good thing?
• Why does Dmitry believe that craziness not intelligence is the most important trait in founders?
• Why does Dmitry believe that fundraising is simply a numbers game?
• What does no one understand about retention that everyone should know?

2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps:

• What a childhood in potato farming taught Dmitry about leadership and technology?
• How mushroom farming taught Dmitry about diversification and focus?
• How does Dmitry advise people analyse the hardest moments in their life?
• Why Dmitry does not believe in talent? What else is there?

3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users:

• What were Dmitry's biggest lessons from two failed prior versions of Flo?
• What is the secret to success in consumer subscription?
• How did Flo acquire their first customers? What worked? What did not work?
• Why does Dmitry not believe in brand and PR?

4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader:

• What have been Dmitry's biggest lessons on monetisation?
• How does Dmitry think about retaining product simplicity with time?
• What are the first things to break in the scaling of a company?
• What did they do with Flo that he wishes they had not done?

Phil Carter is one of the best growth leaders of the last decade helping world-class companies like Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta accelerate their growth. Today, Phil is a growth advisor and angel investor who helps Seed - Series C consumer subscription businesses define their growth strategy.

The Seven Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription:

1. How to Optimize Subscription Pricing and Packaging:

Step:

• Single vs multiple subs tiers?
• Monthly, weekly or annually?
• How often should it be revisited?
• Biggest mistakes companies make with pricing and packaging?

1. How to deliver immediate value through new user onboarding?

Target Metrics:

• Best tactics for delivering value in the shortest amount of time?
• Biggest mistakes companies make in user onboarding?
• Thoughts on the very long surveys companies like Noom make people fill out pre getting access to the product?

1. How to boost paid marketing efficiency by investing in desktop web flows?

Target Metrics:

• Why is now the time to be investing in desktop workflows?
• What are the most effective and specific tactics to do so?

1. How to optimize paywall visibility and conversion?

Target Metrics:

• Why is paywall view rate so important?
• What is good vs bad?
• What are the most common places to trigger paywall?
• Thoughts on hard paywall vs consumer value first?
• Specific tactics to refine paywall design to maximize conversion?
• Single biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to paywall conversion?

1. How to distinguish and emphasize premium value props?

Target Metrics:

• What are the most effective ways to do this?
• Who does it best? Lessons from them?

1. How to leverage motivation tactics (stats, streaks, badges, leaderboards, notifications)?

Target Metrics:

• What is the most effective?
• Do we not have notification overload?
• What used to work but now does not work?
• Who does this best? Why them?

1. How to leverage strategic discounts and promotions?

Target Metrics:

• What are the most effective discounting methods used?
• What are the biggest mistakes companies make when using promos or discounts?
• Who does it best? What do they do?

Akshay Kothari is Co-Founder at Notion, one of the fastest-growing companies of the last decade. Akshay has run every function in the company from sales, to marketing to finance and even led their fundraising efforts raising $340M+ from Sequoia, Index and Coatue with the latest round pricing them at $10BN. Before Notion, Akshay was VP Product at Linkedin for 5+ years, leading all of their content efforts. He joined LinkedIn when his previous company, Pulse, was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013.

1. Founder Mode, Veto Powers and Focus:

• Does Akshay agree with "founder mode"? What are the biggest downsides to founder mode that not enough people are discussing?
• Why does Akshay believe that the single greatest power of a founder is their "veto power"?
• What is the biggest opportunity that Notion jumped on that they should not have done?
• What is the biggest opportunity that Notion did not jump on that they should have jumped on?

2. Raising $50M @ $2BN Valuation:

• Why did Ivan and Akshay decide to do this raise when they did not even need the money?
• How did the fundraising process for this round go? Why did they choose Coatue and Index?
• Why did Sequoia say no to this round?
• With the benefit of hindsight, what does Akshay wish that they had done differently?

3. Raising $270M @ $10BN Valuation:

• How did Sequoia come back into the frame with this round? Why did they say yes here when they did not before?
• Why does Akshay believe that of all the investor brands, Sequoia is the most powerful? In what way does having Sequoia as an investor change the trajectory of the company?
• Is Akshay concerned about how he will be able to scale into the $10BN valuation?
• How does Akshay address the challenge of bringing new team members in with stock options priced at $10BN? How much of a blocker is that?

4. Boards and Social Media are F*******:

• How is the way in which boards are constructed broken?
• How does Akshay believe that boards should be constructed?
• What roles should founders hire for in their board members?
• Why is Akshay most concerned about the "Tiktokification of everything"?
• Why does Akshay believe that social media has never been more concerning?

Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and one of the greatest cyber security investors of the last two decades. Among his many wins, Shardul has led rounds in Datadog, Wiz, Duo Security, Coalition and more. Shardul is also the only Partner investing at Index to have worked in every single Index office from London, to SF, to NYC to Geneva. Prior to Index, Shardul worked with Summit Partners, focusing on healthcare and internet technologies.

1. Investing Lessons from Wiz and Datadog:

• Why does Shardul believe that TAM (total addressable market) is BS?
• Why does Shardul believe that every great deal will be expensive?
• How does Shardul evaluate when to double down and concentrate capital vs when to let someone else come in and lead a round in an existing company?
• How does Shardul think about when is the right time to sell a position in a company?

2. How the Best VCs Make Decisions:

• How does Shardul and Index create an environment of truth-seeking together, that is optimised for the best decision-making to take place?
• What are the biggest mistakes in how VCs make decisions today?
• Why does Shardul believe that all first meetings should be 30 mins not 60 mins?
• Why does Shardul believe it is so much harder to make investment decisions when partnerships are remote? What is better remote?

3. The Core Pillars of Venture: Sourcing, Selecting, Securing and Servicing:

• Which one does Shardul believe he is best at? What is he worst at?
• Does Shardul believe with the downturn we have moved into a world of selection and not just winning every new deal?
• Does Shardul believe that VCs provide any value? What are the biggest misnomers when it comes to "VC value add"?

4. Lessons from the Best Investors in the World:

• Who is the best board member that Shardul sits on a board with?
• What has Shardul learned from Gili Raanan and Doug Leone on being a good board member?
• What have been some of Shardul's biggest investing lessons from Danny Rimer?
• Why does Shardul hate benchmarks when it comes to investing?

Mike Hudack is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sling, a peer-to-peer payments app whose vision is to simplify the way the world connects financially. Previously, he held roles at Monzo Bank as Chief Product Officer, Deliveroo as Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Facebook where he led ads product and sharing product.

1. Product: Art vs Science:

• What is the true art of product? What makes the great product leaders and PMs?
• Is simple always better in product? How do you retain product simplicity with time?
• When should data be used over intuition in product building?

2. Lessons from Leading Ads at Facebook:

• What are Mike's single biggest product lessons from building the ads product at Facebook?
• How did a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg discussing a product change, alter how Mike thinks about product today? What makes Zuck so special on product?
• What are the biggest mistakes that Facebook made when it came to the ads product?
• What did they not do that he wishes they had done?

3. Leading Product at Deliveroo: What I Learned:

• What are Mike's biggest takeaways from his time at Deliveroo on how to make consumer products?
• What did Deliveroo do from a product perspective that worked so well? What did he learn?
• What were the single biggest product mistakes that Deliveroo made? What did he learn?
• How fast do you know when a consumer app is working or not working? When do you go against data and follow your intuition?

4. Building the Biggest Bank in Britain with Monzo:

• What are Mike's biggest lessons on product building from his time at Monzo?
• What did Monzo not do that he wishes they had done?
• Why does Mike think the US is crucial for Monzo?
• How did Monzo change how Mike thinks about competition? What do you do when your competitor, Revolut, is outshipping you at such a speed?

David Schneider is a General Partner @ Coatue and one of the great operators of the last 20 years. Prior to Coatue, David was instrumental in ServiceNow's growth to over $100B+ public market value. David led the growth of the company from $100M to $5BN in revenue. Before joining ServiceNow, David held senior positions at Data Domain, the company he joined at $0 in revenue and scaled to $1BN in revenue and an IPO and acquisition.

1. ServiceNow: Secrets to Scaling to $5BN in ARR:

• What are David's biggest lessons from scaling ServiceNow to $5BN ARR?
• What worked? What did not work?
• What are the most common reasons companies plateau?
• How did ServiceNow roll out so many different products so effectively?
• How did David hire and ramp 180 people in 90 days?

2. From OG Operator to Newbie Investor:

• What have been the single most challenging elements of making the transition to VC?
• What advice did David get from the biggest names on entering venture?
• How long did it take David to do his first deal? What advice does he give other operators entering?
• How does doing deals in 2024 compare to when David started doing deals in 2021?

3. VC Value: Do 90% of VCs Really Damage Companies:

• Does David agree that 90% of VCs actually detract value?
• What does David mean when he says that the worst VCs are "seagull VCs"?
• What are David's biggest tips to founders on how to get the most out of their board?
• What is enough ownership for David to really give the time needed to a company?

4. Lessons from the Greats: Doug Leone, Bill McDermott, Frank Slootman:

• Doug Leone: What has David learned from Doug on what it takes to be a great investor and board member?
• Frank Slootman: What has David learned from Bill on how to be the best leader of a mega company?
• Bill McDermott: What has David learned from Frank about decision-making and execution.

Sean Rad is the Founder and former CEO of Tinder. Sean has made more romantic connections between humans than anyone in history with Tinder having matched 50BN different people. Sean is also the Founder of Rad Fund which has made over 100 investments in companies and funds.

1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App:

• Starting: How did the idea for Tinder come to Sean in a restaurant in LA?
• Scaling: What are Sean's biggest lessons for consumer apps scaling to their first 10,000 users?
• User Acquisition: How did a party change the entire user acquisition strategy for dinner?
• What did Tinder not do that Sean wishes they had done?
• What did Tinder do that with the benefit of hindsight, they should not have done?

2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship:

• Annual Product Redesign: Why does Sean believe that every consumer company should have a complete redesign of the app every year? What are the benefits?
• Detachment: How does Sean advise founders when it comes to detaching their happiness from the performance of the company? What works? What does not work?
• Common Mistakes: What are the most common mistakes that Sean sees early-stage founders make when it comes to leadership?

3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office:

• How does Sean analyse his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time?
• At what stage of wealth does Sean believe you have true financial freedom?
• What is the single best investment Sean has made? What did he learn?
• What is the worst investment he has made? What did he learn?
• What have been the single hardest and most surprising elements of creating a family office?

4. Love, Death, Marriage:

• In what ways does Sean think love has changed with time? How do we deal with the loneliness pandemic?
• What does Sean believe are the most non-obvious but important secrets to a happy marriage?
• How does Sean approach and think about his own spirituality today? Why does he not fear death?