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

Roman Chernin is Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Nebius, one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies in the world. Today, Nebius operates some of the largest AI compute clusters globally and serves leading AI labs, enterprises, and developers. Today, Nebius has a market cap of $57BN.

AGENDA:

00:00 — Why AI Infrastructure Is Not a Bubble

05:00 — The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic

11:00 — Jevons Paradox: Why Cheaper AI Creates More Demand

13:00 — The Four Layers of AI Infrastructure Explained

19:00 — If Nebius Had 10x More Capacity Tomorrow

26:00 — The Shift from Training to Inference and Agents

31:00 — How Token Factory Cuts AI Costs by 70%

44:00 — Sovereign AI, Europe, and the Future of Model Building

49:00 — Competing Against Hyperscalers with 10x More Capital

59:00 — The Biggest Threat to Nebius Isn't Competition—It's Consolidation

Jacob Lauritzen serves as the CTO at Legora, the fastest growing B2B enterprise company in history; hitting $100 million in ARR in just 18 months . Legora boasts a valuation of $5.6BN and has raised a total of $866 million in funding. Legora's investors include the likes of Accel, Benchmark, and Bessemer Venture Partners, alongside strategic tech giants NVIDIA (NVentures) and Salesforce Ventures.

AGENDA:

• 05:01 - How to Hire the Best Product Talent in 2026

• 06:21 - The New Product Bottleneck: Shifting Beyond Code Creation

• 09:24 - System Design vs. Code Creation: The Future Role of the Engineer

• 14:04 - The Evolving Software Development Lifecycle & The Death of the Design Phase

• 22:23 - Will Product and Engineering Fully Converge?

• 29:16 - Scalability and UX: Designing for 10x vs. 100x Spikes

• 38:15 - Scaling the Organization: What Breaks with a 250 Person Product Team

• 47:05 - Quick-Fire Round: Hyper-Growth Tactics & Out-Working the Giants

AGENDA:

00:00:00 — Private Markets Are "F***ing Done" & The Shift to Heavy CapEx

00:00:46 — Anthropic Files to Go Public

00:04:59 — Will the Anthropic IPO Break the Startup Ecosystem?

00:06:22 — The "Billion-Dollar Position" Era: VCs Reset Their Expectations

00:18:11 — The Trillion-Dollar Cash Grab: Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI Rush the Queue

00:23:15 — Is the SaaS Apocalypse Over? Bouncing Off the Bottom

00:25:34 — The Death of Human Per-Seat Licenses as Multiples Shift

00:27:18 — Winners vs. Losers: How Agentic Focused Products Captured the Market

00:30:26 — Cognition Raises $1 Billion at a $26 Billion Valuation

00:33:04 — Token Budgeting Panic Hits Corporate America

00:35:46 — Multi-Model Workflows and the Future of Cost Containment

00:41:20 — Choosing Tokens Over Humans: The 2027 Engineering Reality Check

00:46:42 — Can Large Companies Survive Slashing One-Third of Their Engineering Talent?

00:57:40 — Big Law Flex: Kirkland & Ellis Pledges $500 Million to Build In-House AI

01:01:21 — Giving Away the Crown Jewels: Will Firms Trust Claude?

01:08:44 — Robinhood's AI Move: Automating Financial Planning vs. Beating the Market

01:16:15 — Apollo Warns PE Software Returns Are About to Be Disastrous

01:19:15 — $10 Billion Carry Pools: Will VC Winners Quit the Game?

01:24:10 — The 9-9-6 Work Ethic: Performative Theatre or Startup Reality?

01:30:10 — The Great Valley Contradiction: Working 24/7 to Automate White-Collar Work

Brendan Foody is the Founder and CEO @ Mercor, one of the leading data providers to the largest labs on the planet including OpenAI. In the last two years, Brendan has scaled the company to $1.5BN in ARR and a valuation of $10BN.

AGENDA:

True or False:

• Mercor lost Meta and OpenAI as a customer with the hack?

• Mercor has been poaching competitor talent, paying them millions?

• Mercor revenue is not real revenue and is only GMV?

12:56 Would Brendan sell Mercor for $30 billion?

14:23 Why everyone is wrong that AI will lead to labor displacement?

15:59 We will create many new jobs that do not exist with AI.

16:59 Why training agents will be a massive labor category that does not exist today

19:51 Will we see the data provider market unbundle and specialize into verticals?

22:24 Is the stated revenue really revenue or is it really GMV?

27:55 How a 1 million ARR company secured one of the best investors in the world with a helicopter ride

29:41 How Felicis secured the deal of the decade with a race track and a set of Ferraris

32:59 Which investment round felt like the highest price to grow into?

34:49 Why will value accrue to the infrastructure layer, not the application layer, in the next 12 months?

35:46 Why the model is the product and why application layer companies should be scared as a result

37:22 Why network effects will be the determinant of value creation

38:46 Why the forward-deployed motion, not the GTM motion, will determine true value creation.

41:59 Why token spend within organizations is going to continue to increase

43:54 Why agent evaluation to commoditize the model layer will be a massive business for enterprises?

51:13 Why we should have increased capital gains tax

01:01:31 How to compete with $20 million a year from Meta?

01:08:49 Will Mercor go public and when?

Nico Laqua is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgi Insurance, an AI-native insurance carrier built for startups. Corgi is the most intense workplace culture in America. The team works 7 days per week. The founder sleeps in the office. ⅔ of the first 30 team members have a Corgi tattoo. This week, Corgi raised $106M, valuing the company at a whopping $2.6BN.

AGENDA:

06:35 Why going to university was a massive waste of time

09:42 Why we work seven days a week

11:58 Why we do work trials and how that is a test of people's stamina

18:41 Why we created a cafe in the biggest annoyance with San Francisco

22:00 Why I am so bullish on London

23:49 Why I haven't sold a single secondary

24:19 Why people who found companies in New York prioritise dating over their company

30:46 Biggest lessons on cash comp and equity

31:13 Team members can be split into three separate groups

34:59 Biggest lesson from Brian Chesky on price

35:44 What is the right amount of time to be fundraising for?

36:47 Good companies get deals done and what makes the best venture investors?

40:34 Why AI makes sales and marketing more valuable

43:12 Why I don't like boards and I don't think they're effective

46:19 What I would like to see more of from venture funds

48:05 Who was Corgi's first believer?

AGENDA:

05:16 Nvidia Blowout Quarter: $81BN Revenues and Stock… Flat!

10:39 Uber and Microsoft Declare Productivity Gains Questionable from AI

25:26 The Layoffs Continue: ClickUp and Cloudflare

34:39 OpenAI S1: Is it a Race? How Will it be Received?

38:28 Do Anthropic Rush Out Their IPO Also?

45:49 SpaceX S-1: "Why I Would Never Invest"

48:06 Why Colossus is a Stroke of Genius By Elon

51:31 Data Centers In Space is BS and Will Not Be Core to SpaceX

58:04 Polsia Raises $30M at $250M Price: Is this the Peak?

01:06:08 Exa Raises at $2.2BN to Build Search for Agents

01:14:34 Is Replacing Your CRM with Vibe Coding Always Ragebait

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a monumental, multi-year $20 billion compute agreement from OpenAI.

AGENDA:

05:58 - Why we are not in an infrastructure bubble and it is just the start

08:00 - Sam Altman's superpower is his ability to forecast capex spend.

08:58 - Anthropic did not get a good deal with Elon. They got a deal that was available.

10:39 - What is going on with the price of memory and why is it a problem?

16:40 - Are Google best positioned to produce tokens and what challenges do they face?

19:23 - Is Coreweave dramatically undervalued or overvalued?

24:34 - My biggest advice to entrepreneurs scaling their business

30:13 - Why most of the layoffs are AI-washed and

33:41 - What will we spend on tokens for software engineers in five years?

34:48 - Why does the role of HR change so significantly in the world of AI?

35:36 - Why lawyers are the biggest inhibitor of enterprise AI adoption

39:20 - Why Jensen and Nvidia are wrong to sell chips to China

42:49 - What needs to change in the U.S. to build a strategic asset in chips?

51:00 - Should Cerebras invest in companies building on top of their platform; as Nvidia is?

53:28 - Nothing changed when Cerebras IPO'd but I did make 800 millionaires.

Chad Peets is one of the most straight-talking, no BS sales leaders of our time. Today, he partners with founders of the fastest growing companies in the world, like Harvey, Factory to build the best sales teams in a world of AI.

Chris Degnan is a legendary technology sales leader who achieved the historic feat of scaling Snowflake from $0 to $4BN in ARR.

AGENDA:

00:00 – The $100M CRO Packages Nobody Believes Are Real

04:10 – Why Most "Elite" Salespeople Are Actually Just Order Takers

08:00 – The Secret to Hiring Killer Sales Talent at Early-Stage Startups

10:05 – 20x Quotas & The Death of Traditional Pipeline Generation

16:20 – The ARR Scam: Why Most AI Revenue Numbers Are Fake

17:45 – Why the Best Engineers Do Not Want to Be Forward Deployed Engineers

21:10 – Why Paying Everyone the Same Kills Great Sales Organisations

24:15 – Anthropic's Crazy Compensation Is Breaking the Entire Sales Market

29:00 – The Brutal Truth About Replacing CROs & Firing Sales Leaders

32:20 – Forecasting in AI Is Completely Broken

38:20 – The Fatal Mistake Founders Make Chasing Venture Valuations

39:40 – Why Most VCs Give Absolutely Terrible Sales Advice

42:10 – Global Sales From Day One: The New AI Go-To-Market Playbook

44:15 – "Anthropic Is a $5 Trillion Company"

47:40 – The Death of the Traditional SDR & The Rise of Full-Stack AI Sellers

49:00 – Consumption Pricing, Vertical AI & Why SaaS Is Getting Rewritten

52:00 – What the Best Sales Cultures Still Get Right in the AI Era

AGENDA:

00:00 – Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation & Andre Karpathy's Shock Move

04:46 – Unpacking Anthropic's $30 Billion War Chest

10:52 – The True Cost of AI Tokens: Is Salesforce Spending Too Much?

15:59 – The Bear Case for Token Growth & Why Software Leaders Must Adapt

22:56 – Public Tech Rebound: Figma & Datadog Crush Expectations

26:59 – The Death of Traditional Web Builders? The Decline of Wix & Squarespace

36:59 – Compute Starvation: Is the Semiconductor & Hardware Boom Sustainable?

45:59 – Cerebras IPO Smashes Day One: The Biggest Tech Public Debut Since Snowflake

48:17 – SpaceX Sets Date For the Largest IPO in History

57:28 – Y Combinator's Mic Drop Deal & The Drama Behind Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit

01:11:57 – The Looming Backlash: Mass Tech Layoffs and the Politics of AI

20VC:

Josh Browder is my favourite emerging manager. As the Founder of Browder Capital he has been the first check into unicorns like Micro1, Owner.com and Yuzu Health to name a few. He turned his Thiel Fellowship Grant of $100K into a whopping $10M angel portfolio. All new investments move into Josh's Four Seasons Residence where he then trains them on company building. They are only allowed to leave when they raise their seed round. In addition to this, Josh is the Founder & CEO @ DoNotPay, the now profitable company that has raised $22M from Marc Andreessen and others.

AGENDA:

00:00 Why I believe young founders make the best founders

02:10 What do I look for in founders I'm investing in?

10:00 How I test for founder commitment pre-investment

11:00 What do I want to see in the childhoods of the entrepreneurs that I back?

12:05 Why I make founders live with me in my Four Seasons residence after investing

14:00 There are three reasons why pre-seed companies fail and how I solve for them

15:45 What do I look for in a team to assure me they will last?

16:50 Is $5 million post still attainable in this world?

17:15 Should we be worried about the increasing levels of fraud at the early stages?

18:10 Which Silicon Valley investor was the most impressive?

20:00 Do VCs really add value?

20:50 Does university carry less value than ever and should founders drop out if they have a dream and an idea?

24:00 The advice of one lawyer changed the entire trajectory of this multi-million dollar company

28:10 I would never invest in someone that I met over Zoom

29:20 Are all the best founders you invest in delusional?

31:10 What is the biggest benefit of being a Thiel Fellow?

36:20 The problem of accelerators and why artificial constraints can enforce quality

38:20 How we used Mark Zuckerberg's house as a viewing instrument tool to get users

41:20 My pre-seed cheque in Micro One is now worth hundreds of millions and my lessons

43:20 The biggest mistake VCs are making in assessing founders

44:10 Why I will never tell the entrepreneur what to build and why I place little value on ideas

47:00 Why kingmaking is real and why you should accept half the price from a tier one firm

49:00 My biggest lessons on reserve investing

53:00 Why price rounds are bullshit and we should do more SAFEs

54:20 What all founders need to know about signing with a VC

55:10 Single biggest advice to founders on how to get the best price

57:30 What role does not exist today that will be massive in five years' time?

59:10 Stocks are bullshit. Cash is bullshit. I put my money in land. My personal investing strategy

1:01:00 Why the Trump administration is unwaveringly good for US business

1:03:20 Why competitive markets are the best investments

1:05:40 The serendipity of San Francisco is unmatched

1:08:10 What things does no one know about Marc Andreessen that everyone should know?