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

• 20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

  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  

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• 20VC: Why To Win in AI, Investors Need to Change Their Approach | Why VC is Run by Principals and Associates and is a Broken System | The Bull Case for Anthropic & Whether Deepseek Changes Their Strategy with Nabeel Hyatt @ Spark Capital

  Nabeel Hyatt is a General Partner @ Spark Capital, one of the leading firms of the last decade with portfolio companies including Twitter, Anthropic, Coinbase, Affirm, Discord, Deel and more.  In Todays Show with Nabeel Hyatt We Discuss: 1. The Rules of Investing: What have been Nabeel’s biggest lessons on price sensitivity? When did he not pay up and with the benefit of hindsight, wish he had of paid up? How important is ownership to Nabeel and Spark? How does Nabeel think about reserve investing and doubling down? Why does Nabeel not engage in secondary markets? How does Nabeel think about when is the right time to sell? Why does Nabeel think the majority of market sizing is total BS? 2. The Venture Landscape: Run by Principles and Broken:  Why does Nabeel believe this generation of AI investing will require a different mindset to the one that made VCs successful over the last decade? Why does Nabeel believe that venture is currently run by principals and associates? Why is that such a problem? Why does Nabeel believe that the majority of venture firms today are dead but do not know it yet? What does Nabeel believe happens to the mega multi-stage firms who have raised billions and billions? 3. How to Win the VC Game in a World of AI: Infrastructure, models, apps: where does Nabeel believe the most value will accrue in the next decade of AI investing? What does Nabeel mean when he says there are three categories of AI apps today? Where does Nabeel believe the most valuable will be built? Does Nabeel believe Deepseek hurt or helped the future for Anthropic? How could Anthropic be a $100BN company from this point? What does no one see about the next 10 years of AI that everyone should see?  

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• 20VC: Monzo: The Greatest Turnaround in Tech: From £40M Revenues, Layoffs, Downrounds and Low Employee NPS to $1BN in Revenue, Profitable and 10M Customers with TS Anil, CEO @ Monzo

  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?  

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• 20VC: Lime's CEO on Going from Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | How Lime Built the Global Leader in Micromobility When Competitors Went Bust | Losing 90% of Revenues in COVID and The Uber Deal That Saved the Company with Wayne Ting

  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: 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?  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? 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? 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?      

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• 20VC: Deepseek Special: Is Deepseek a Weapon of the CCP | How Should OpenAI and the US Government Respond | Why $500BN for Stargate is Not Enough | The Future of Inference, NVIDIA and Foundation Models with Jonathan Ross @ Groq

  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: How did Deepseek innovate in a way that no other model provider has done? Do we believe that they only spent $6M to train R1? Should we doubt their claims on limited H100 usage? Is Josh Kushner right that this is a potential violation of US export laws? Is Deepseek an instrument used by the CCP to acquire US consumer data? How does Deepseek being open-source change the nature of this discussion? What should OpenAI do now? What should they not do? Does Deepseek hurt or help Meta who already have their open-source efforts with Lama? Will this market follow Satya Nadella’s suggestion of Jevon’s Paradox? How much more efficient will foundation models become? What does this mean for the $500BN Stargate project announced last week?  

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