The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman. If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.
Episodes
Cliff Weitzman is the co-founder and CEO of Speechify, the world's leading AI voice and text-to-speech platform, used by more than 60 million people globally. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, Cliff first built Speechify at Brown University to help him consume written material through audio.
AGENDA:
00:00 Cliff Weitzman Reveals His Biggest-Ever Strategic Mistake
03:08 Why Speechify Is Paying Millions to Build...
AGENDA:
00:00 Nvidia crushes $96.2B quarter and nears $12.9B Hugging Face deal
13:52 OpenAI cuts off Cursor as the Altman–Musk feud escalates
17:40 OpenAI's 1,000-agent cyberattack triggers an industry wake-up call
22:58 Instinct hits $2.5B valuation as AI assistants gain spending power
Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, the real-time analytics database powering companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla and Microsoft. ClickHouse just surpassed $350M in ARR and raised over $1B from investors including Dragoneer, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, 20VC and Benchmark. Previously, Aaron was CRO at Elastic, where he helped scale revenue from approximately $5M to $500M and led the company through its IPO. ...
Eno Reyes is the co-founder and CTO of Factory, the agent-native software development platform building autonomous "Droids" for enterprise engineering teams. Factory has raised $220 million, most recently a $150 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, from investors including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, 20VC, NEA, Blackstone, Insight Partners and Nvidia. Before founding Factory, Eno worked as a machine-lear...
AGENDA:
00:00 NVIDIA Launches a Three-Deal Blitz Across the AI Stack
04:31 NVIDIA's $12BN Poolside Deal Exposes Frontier AI's Capital Wall
15:39 NVIDIA Moves to Back Mercor at $20BN and Perplexity at $30BN
26:55 OpenAI Confirms 2027 IPO as Anthropic Seizes the Lead
40:42 Hugging Face Dr...
Julien Bek is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world. At Sequoia, he has partnered with companies including Rillet, Tacto, and Auctor. Before joining Sequoia, Julien spent five years at Accel, where he worked with companies including Miro, Melio, and BeReal. He is also an angel investor in Revolut and Attio.
AGENDA:
06:35 – What did Julien only discover about Sequoia ...
Jerry Murdock is the Co-Founder of Insight Partners, which manages over $90 billion in assets. Jerry personally backed companies including Twitter, Nest and Docker, while Insight's portfolio includes giants such as Shopify, Wiz and monday.com. Across three decades, Insight has helped produce 55+ IPOs and become one of the most powerful technology investment firms in the world.
AGENDA:
AGENDA:
04:20 Elon's Deal of the Decade: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60BN
06:10 Why Cursor Was Surprisingly Cheap at $60BN
07:00 Why Zuckerberg Failed to Buy the AI Prize Elon Secured
12:00 Elon vs Zuck: Who Would You Rather Work For?
14:00 Will Microsoft or Amazon Now Race to Buy Cognition?<...
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine.
AGENDA:
05:39 – How was Mac the only survivor fro...
Matt Swulinski is one of the best growth leaders in AI. He is currently Head of Growth at Viktor, the Accel-backed AI coworker. Previously, he was Head of Growth at Wispr Flow, where he was marketing hire #1 and built the growth function from pre-launch to millions of users. Matt also built the AI-powered marketing OS that automated 100 newsletter sponsorships a month and enabled a lean team to scale dramatically faster. Befor...
AGENDA:
- 05:00 Canva's Growth Gets Slashed as AI Costs Explode
- 20:00 The Great Software Reset: Why 2026 Will Punish AI Hesitancy
- 29:00 Canva's Valuation Reality Check—and the LP Liquidity Trap
Alex Atallah is the Founder and CEO @ OpenRouter, the unified interface for LLMs. The company has raised over $153M in funding, with the latest valuation pricing the company at $1.3BN. OpenRouter is reportedly in an acquisition process with Stripe for $10BN.
AGENDA:
00:00 Is OpenRouter Selling to Stripe for $10 Billion?
04:05 What Did Alex Learn From Scaling OpenSea?
David Frankel is one of the great seed investors of our time. As the Co-Founder of Founder Collective he has backed the likes of Uber, Coupang, Suno, PillPack, Airtable, Whoop, Shield AI and many more. In a world of expanding fund sizes, David and Founder Collective are one of the only successful franchises to truly stick to small, boutique funds.
AGENDA:
00:00 The Bubbles Are Getting Bigger—and There Will ...
Special Guest: Nikesh Arora, CEO @ Palo Alto Networks.
AGENDA:
04:50 Airtable Sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285B
17:00 Leo Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up as Citadel Buys His $16BN Book
22:30 Anthropic's AI Models Breach Three Companies as Cyber Threat Accelerates
Anastasios Angelopoulos is the co-founder and CEO of Arena, the real-world evaluation platform that has become a leading referee of the global AI model race. Arena has raised $250 million, with the latest round valuing the company at $1.7BN. Arena recently surpassed $100M ARR just eight months after launching its enterprise offering, powered by more than 30 million monthly users.
AGENDA:
00:00...
Joon Sung Park is the Founder and CEO of Simile, the AI simulation company building foundation models of human behaviour; allowing companies to test how real people may think, decide and act before making a decision in the real world. Simile has now raised $300 million in total, including a $200 million Series B announced last week at a $2 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Index Ventures.
AGENDA:
AGENDA:
05:00 Jensen's Open-Weights Letter Puts Anthropic on an Island
10:00 OpenAI's Model Targets Hugging Face in a Cyber-Security Scare
18:00 America's Open-Model Push Accelerates as China Looms Large
30:00 Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia
Read more
Matt Murphy is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, who just raised $3 billion in fresh capital, its largest pool ever. Matt's portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora, OpenRouter, Chai Discovery, Axiom, OpenEvidence and more.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Menlo Broke All Its Investing Rules to Back Anthropic
09:00 Why Ownership Matters Less in an Outlier-Dri...
Osvald Nitski is the Chief Product Officer at Mercor, the AI-training and expert-data marketplace powering frontier-model development. Mercor last raised a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, and is reportedly in discussions for a new round at a $20 billion valuation. Mercor crossed $2BN in ARR in June; doubling from $1 billion in only ...
AGENDA:
00:04 China's Kimi and Qwen Put Frontier AI on Notice00:08 Washington Debates Whether Chinese AI Models Should Be Banned
00:17 Can America Build a Profitable Open-Weight AI Champion?
00:21 OpenRouter's Moment: Is This the Perfect Time to Sell?
00:31 Fireworks' $1.5B Rai...
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