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

Martin Mignot is a Partner at Index Ventures, the best-performing fund in the world right now. In the last three months, they have sold Wiz for $ 32 billion, sold Scale for $14.9 billion, and IPO'd Figma as the largest investor. In addition to this, they are the largest or second-largest shareholders in Roblox, Revolut, Adyen and Datadog. 

Agenda for Today:

Peter Rahal is the Co‑Founder & CEO of David Protein, the highest protein‑to‑calorie ratio for any protein bar on the market. Peter has raised over $85M from Greenoaks, Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman with the latest round valuing the company at $725 million. The company is poised for over $100 million in first‑year revenue. Formerly, Peter co‑founded RXBAR in his mom’s basement with a $10k start, growing it in...

Agenda:

00:00 – The Worst IPO Mis-Pricing Ever: What Really Happened at Figma

02:30 – Fidelity vs Founders: How Important is Fidelity When Going Public

07:00 – Why Founders Secretly Want a Pop, Even If It Makes Them Look Stupid

10:15 – The Truth Behind the $3B Figma "Left on the Table" 

14:00 – Direct Listings vs IPOs: Should Figma Have Gone Direct 

Ron Gabrisko is the Chief Revenue Officer at Databricks, where he joined in 2016. Under his leadership, Databricks has scaled from $0 to $3.7BN annualized revenue. He has grown the sales team from 0 to over 1,000 globally, leading expansion into enterprise, government, and international markets. Ron previously held senior sales roles at Cloudera and IBM, bringing deep experience in data and AI infrastructure. His tenur...

Miles Dieffenbach is Managing Director of Investments at Carnegie Mellon University, where he helps oversee a $4 billion endowment with a focus on venture capital, private equity, and alternative investments. Under his leadership, CMU’s private book has remained self-funding during some of the toughest years for liquidity. 

Agenda for Today:

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Agenda:

00:00 - Why Benchmark Is Bleeding Partners (and Why That’s the New Normal)

04:57 - “I Wouldn’t Leave Benchmark… Unless I Had THIS” — Jason on Brand vs Autonomy

09:01 - The Rise of the Solo GP & The Death of LP Conventional Wisdom

13:50 - The Unstoppable Force of Elad Gil & The Myth of LP Discipline

18:45 - Is Vibe Coding the New SaaS? Jason’s $10K...

Martin Casado is a General Partner @ a16z where he leads the firms $1.25BN infrastructure fund. At a16z, Martin has led investments in companies like Cursor, dbt Labs, and Fivetran to name a few. Before joining a16z, he co-founded Nicira, acquired by VMware for $1.26B. At VMware, he served as CTO of Networking. Widely regarded as a visionary in enterprise infrastructure, Martin has helped shape the modern cloud computi...

Fernando Fanton is one of the most respected product leaders in Europe, having held Chief Product Officer roles at Monzo and Just Eat. He previously led product and tech at Rappi, one of Latin America's most valuable startups. Today, Fernando is the CPO @ Property Finder; one of the biggest breakout unicorns from MENA. 

Agenda:

00:00 – Is “having a vision” actually killing great product teams?

Agenda:

00:00 – Did Jason Just Kill Replit? 

03:45 – Why Claude Lies To You and Cannot Be Trusted

06:50 – You Cannot Trust Agents. Period.

10:20 – Why Windsurf Was Dead Without Claude

12:30 – Cursor vs. Lovable: What’s the Better Bet?

14:40 – Should You Still Invest in Cursor at $28B?

18:05 – Would You Bet on Anthropic at $100B o...

Edwin Chen is the Founder and CEO of Surge. Founded in 2020, Surge has scaled to $1BN+ in revenue with zero external funding. At the same time, their competitor, Scale.ai raised over $1.3BN to reach $850M ARR. Today, Surge have the world’s largest model providers as customers and have just 120 employees. 

Agenda:

00:00 — “Everyone Else Is Just ...

Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin, the world’s first AI software engineer. On Friday last week they pulled off the acquisition of the year, acquiring Windsurf, following their licensing agreement with Google. Previously a world-class competitive programmer, he was a gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics and a member of the U.S. Math and Physics Olympiad teams...

Agenda:

00:00 Windsurf was dead—then this deal changed everything

05:00 The Windsurf x Google x Cognition saga explained

09:00 The OpenAI deal collapsed—what really happened

15:00 FTC rules forced a brutal deal structure—who lost?

17:00 The investors’ returns: who actually made money?

21:30 Will Google’s corp dev team get fired over this?

23:...

Vlad Tenev is the Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the greatest story on Wall St of the last decade. In the previous 18 months, Robinhood has increased its net revenue by 58% to nearly $3B; a $500M loss in 2023 turned into a $1.1B profit in 2024. Robinhood’s stock is up roughly 4x, lifting their market cap to north of $80B. Today, Robinhood has nine lines of business that do over $100M in revenue. 

Agenda: 

Kieran Flanagan is the CMO at HubSpot, where he’s led the transformation of their growth strategy from SEO-led to multi-channel and AI-powered. Formerly SVP of Marketing, he helped scale HubSpot’s user base to millions and revenue past $2B. Before HubSpot, he drove breakout growth at Marketo and Salesforce. Kieran is one of the most respected voices in SaaS marketing and a pioneer in growth-driven content strategy.

Agenda:

[00:00] The AI Talent Crisis No One’s Ready For

[03:00] Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Why Two Legendary VCs Walked Away From $1B to Join Meta

[12:00] Meta’s AI Talent Magnet: Will It Actually Work?

[15:00] Cursor Is Breaking the Market: Can Anyone Compete?

[18:30] OpenAI’s SBC Bombshell: More Stock Comp Than Revenue

[22:00] CoreWeave...

Scott Galloway is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern, where he’s taught for over two decades. He’s the founder of several successful companies, including L2 (acquired by Gartner for over $150M), Red Envelope, and Prophet. He’s a New York Times bestselling author of four books on business and tech, and co-hosts the award-winning Pivot podcast. Galloway also serves on the boards of The New York Times Company and Paner...

AGENDA:

00:00 – $400B in AI CapEx: Rational Investment or Madness?

05:00 – Figma's IPO: Rule of 80, $1.5B in cash, 40% margins. Unreal.

08:00 – Adobe Screwed the Deal—Should They Have Just Bought Canva?

16:00 – Pay-to-Play Deals: Heroic Hail Mary or Guaranteed Write-Off?

21:30 – How Index Is Returning $3.5...

Philipp Freise is Co-Head of European Private Equity at KKR, where he manages the largest private fund in Europe with $8BN in the latest fund. Philip has led KKR's investments in FGS Global, Superstruct, Axel Springer SE, BMG Rights Management, Fotolia, GetYourGuide, GfK SE, Leonine, Mediawan SAS, Scout24 Switzerland and Trainline. Previously, Philip worked at McKinsey & Company in and co-founded Berlin-based VC firm V...