Ely Lerner is an EIR at Reforge and an advisor for startups transitioning from traction to hypergrowth. Previously he was Head of Consumer Product at Chime, and before that spent an incredible 8 years at Yelp in a number of different roles including Head of Product at Eat24, and Product Leader/GM at Yelp.

In Today's Episode with Ely Lerner We Discuss:

1. Entry into Growth:

• How did Ely make his way from engineering manager to growth leader?
• What are a couple of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Yelp and Chime?
• Why do employees in large companies have to have P&L ownership when innovating within the larger company they are in?

2. Advisors: What, When and How:

• What are the three different types of advisors founders can work with today?
• When is the right time to engage with each of them?
• Should the advisor have had direct experience with the problem you need help with?
• How should these advisors be compensated; what is normal?
• What are 1-2 of the biggest reasons startup advisory roles do not work out?

3. Offense vs Defence: The Tricky Balance:

• What is the difference between offense and defense in product strategy?
• What should the resource allocation be between the two?
• What is the right amount of offensive strategies to have on at the same time?
• How can leaders prevent their defensive teams from feeling like second-class citizens?

4. Ely Lerner: AMA:

• Why does Ely disagree with many and suggest that horizontal products do have a core ICP?
• Should growth teams sit on their own or within functions in the org?
• What are the core reasons teams fail to ship fast?
• What state should your data be in when you bring in your first growth hire?

Matthieu Rouif is the Co-Founder and CEO @ PhotoRoom, one of the fastest-growing YC companies having scaled to an astonishing $50M in ARR in just 3 years. Their capital efficiency is immense having scaled to $20M in ARR on just $2M of invested capital. Prior to founding PhotoRoom, Matthieu founded several start-ups, including an app for ski resorts, HeyCrowd, and Replay, a video editor which was ultimately acquired by GoPro. Whilst at GoPro, Mattheiu led all image editing products.

In Today's Episode with Matthieu Rouif We Discuss:

1. From GoPro to One of YC's Fastest Growing Companies:

• How did Matthieu make the move from GoPro to founding PhotoRoom?
• What are the big mistakes Matthieu made on prior companies that he did differently with PhotoRoom?
• What does Matthieu know now that he wishes he had known when he started PhotoRoom?

2. Scaling to $20M in ARR with $2M of Cash:

• What allowed Matthieu and PhotoRoom to be so capital-efficient in their scaling?
• What are the biggest mistakes founders make when it comes to resource allocation and capital efficiency?
• On reflection, what did Matthieu not spend money on that he wishes they had spent money on?

3. Consumer Subscription + Photo Editing: Is it a Good Business:

• What are the customer acquisition costs by channel for PhotoRoom?
• What are their payback periods on a per-customer basis?
• How can it be a good business when the churn rate annually is 30-40%?
• How does this space play out with Canva, Adobe, Veed, Kapwing? Who wins?

4. The Future of AI:

• Who wins; incumbents or startups?
• What matters more; data size or model size?
• Will UI be more or less important in an AI-first world?
• Why does Matthieu believe that everyone hates command line prompts?
• Will we see $BN revenue companies created with just 10 people?

Harry Stebbings is the Founder of 20VC, building the next great financial institution at the intersection of media and venture capital. 20VC has reached over 125M downloads in 100+ countries and has featured the likes of Doug Leone, Bill Gurley, Marc Benioff, Daniel Ek and more. On the investing side, Harry has raised over $400M and made investments in the likes of Pachama, Linear, TripleDot, Superhuman, AgentSync, Linktree, Sorare and more.

In Today's Episode We Cover:

1. Are LPs Open for Business:

• How has what LPs look for in new manager investments changed?
• What type of funds will be able to raise? Which will not be able to raise?
• What can managers do to significantly increase their chances of raising a new fund?

2. The Seed Investing Landscape: Harder Than Ever

• Why is seed pricing as high as ever?
• Why are multi-stage funds more active in seed than ever? How does this impact seed?
• How will seed change and evolve over the next 6-12 months?

3. Series A + B: The Best Place to be Investing

• Why is Series A the best risk/reward insertion point when investing today?
• How has the competition level at Series A and B changed?
• What do many people not see or know about this stage of the market today?

4. Is Growth Dead: Are Growth Deals Getting Done:

• What two core elements are needed if you want to raise a growth round today?
• How have growth round valuations been impacted over the last 12 months?
• To what extent do founders need to change their expectations on the price of rounds they will be able to get done today?

5. M&A and IPOs: Tough Times Ahead

• Why will we see continued low levels of activity in M&A markets?
• What acquisitions are we seeing take place?
• When will the IPO window crack open?
• Why were Klaviyo, Instacart and Arm not enough to open the windows?

Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer has invested in some of the best firms of a generation including USV and Point Nine to name a few. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.

In Today's Episode with Beezer Clarkson We Discuss:

1. LP Landscape: WTF is Going On:

• Are LPs really all closed for business?
• What has changed in what LPs want to see from managers they are looking to invest in?
• What has changed about the size and pace of new commitments for LPs?
• Are all LPs moving away from growth?

2. 2020-2022: Years in Review:

• Are LPs frustrated by managers who reduced deployment timelines to 12-18 months?
• Are LPs frustrated with managers who did not take liquidity when they could have done?
• How does Beezer advise managers on when and how to take liquidity in their best positions?
• Are managers accurately marking their portfolios to their LPs today?
• Why does Beezer believe the incentive mechanism for LPs is broken today in many ways?

3. How To Build a Top Decile Firm:

• Why does Beezer believe if you want to have the best returns, you have to have one company that returns the fund? Can you not do it with multiple half-fund returners?
• Is ownership core to all the best firm's top performance? Is it the size of outcome or the size of ownership that drives the best performance across the board?
• What does data show on how the best funds take significant risk? What are their loss ratios?
• What are the core tradeoffs to Beezer between scaling AUM and providing top decile returns?

4. LP Markets: The Times They are a Changing:

• Does Beezer believe LPs will remain cold on large $1BN+ growth firms?
• Which segments of the market are hot? Which are cold?
• What are the most significant changes we will see in the LP markets moving forward?
• Is today the new normal or are we in a downturn that we will come out of?

Matthew Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, on a mission is to help build a better Internet. Matthew has scaled Cloudflare to over $1BN in revenue, $20BN in market cap, and over 3,200 employees. Today the company runs one of the world's largest networks, which spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. Matthew is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, winner of the 2011 Tech Fellow Award, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law.

In Today's Episode with Matthew Prince We Discuss:

1. From Selling Fireworks to Public Company CEO:

• How did Matthew first make money selling fireworks as a kid?
• Does Mathew believe in the trope "you have to love what you do"?
• What does Matthew know now that he wishes he had known when he started Cloudflare?

2. Money, Identity and Happiness:

• Why does Matthew feel many of the most successful founders lose their way when they leave their companies? How does he assess Gates, Bezos and others?
• Does Matthew tie his own identity to Cloudflare and the success of the company?
• How does Matthew evaluate his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time?
• How does Matthew keep score today on how he is doing? What is success to Matthew?

3. The Three Outcomes for Companies Today:

• What are the three outcomes available to companies today?
• What is the worst and why?
• What are the two biggest mistakes Matthew sees founders make today?
• Why does Matthew know that diverse teams are more successful? What is the proof?
• What is Matthew's single biggest advice to founders when it comes to selecting a co-founder?

4. Focus is BS: You Have to Have Mega Ambition:

• Why does Matthew believe it is BS to have a very specific target customer from the offset?
• What does Matthew believe are the benefits of not having an ICP in the early days?
• What are the biggest pieces of VC advice to founders that Matthew knows to be wrong?

Michael Eisenberg spent 15 years as a General Partner @ Benchmark working alongside Bill and the Benchmark partnership. Following Benchmark, Michael co-founded Aleph, one of the leading Israeli venture funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Lemonade, Melio and HoneyBook, just to name a couple of Aleph’s unicorns.

Adi Levanon is the Founder & Managing Partner @ Selah Ventures, a solo-GP-founded venture fund investing $500k checks into AI-based solutions that enhance financial services, healthcare organizations, fintechs, and SMBs, with a focus on founders in the US and Israelis globally.

In Today's Episode on Israeli Resilience We Discuss:

1. Where are we at today? What is it like on the ground, today?
2. Have the international community reacted as expected? What more can be done?
3. What does it mean to be called up for "reserve"?
4. How are companies dealing with 25% of their teams being called into the armed forces?
5. Are VCs investing still? Does work carry on?
6. Whose reactions are exemplary and we should look to follow?
7. Whose have been woeful and should be called out?
8. What are the single biggest misconceptions of the situation?
9. What can people do to help? What can be done?

Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years. Deven has made more than 90 investments since joining in 2000 including in the likes of Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Chargebee and Automattic (WordPress) to name a few.  

Woody Marshall is a General Partner @ TCV, one of the most successful growth funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, AirBnB, Spotify, LinkedIn and many more incredible companies.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few. 

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

1. The Growth Landscape Overview:

• Is growth dead? Are any growth deals getting done?
• How has the price changed for growth deals that are getting done?
• Which type of growth companies will vs will not be able to raise?
• What happens to all of the growth companies with $300-$500M in cash but little revenue?

2. The Great Reset: Valuations Need to Change:

• Why should companies be actively resetting their valuations? What are the benefits?
• What will happen between VCs and LPs when there is no incentive for VCs to reset their portfolio valuations when they need to go out and raise from those same LPs?
• Structure is often part of these valuation resets, is structure to rounds always bad? When is it good? What type of structure is acceptable vs unacceptable?

3. Are the Public Markets Creeping Open:

• Should we take comfort from ARM, Instacart and Klaviyo and assume the public markets are going to open again? If not, what will cause them to open?
• How should we analyze the performance of the IPOs above? Many have been negative, are they right to suggest this is not the response we wanted?
• Why does Woody believe, like Instacart taking a 75% discount to their last round, we should have more and more companies go public at discounts to their last private round?

4. Late Stage Growth is Dead and Revenue Multiples:

• Why is late-stage growth dead? How long do we think this will last?
• How should we assess revenue multiples today? New normal? Same as always? How will revenue multiples look in 12 months from now?
• How should we analyse the large late stage growth rounds for hyped AI companies? What happens there?

Scott Farquhar is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Atlassian. Scott co-founded the company with his university friend, Mike Cannon-Brookes, in 2002 from Australia. Over an incredible 20-year journey they have grown to a market cap of $50BN today, over 11,000 staff globally and serving over 260,000 customers. Scott is also a co-founder of Skip Capital, a private investment fund with a portfolio including Figma, Snyk, Canva and more.

In Today's Episode with Scott Farquhar We Discuss:

1. The 20-Year Journey to $50BN Market Cap:

• How did Scott first make his way into the world of tech and come to co-found Atlassian?
• What does Scott know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
• From 20 years with Mike, what is Scott's biggest advice on choosing your co-founder?

2. The Fundraising Masterclass with Atlassian:

• An emergency phone call, a honeymoon cut short; how did the first funding round for Atlassian come to be? Where was the business revenue-wise at the time?
• Why did Scott not like the traditional fundraising process? What did he do to add game theory and ensure that they got the best deal as a company?
• Why did Scott choose Accel with their offer? How did Peter Fenton lose a $3BN deal with Atlassian?

3. Lessons Scaling Atlassian to $4BN in Revenue:

• What does Scott believe are the 4 core roles of the CEO? Is resource allocation the most important?
• What are the single biggest acts of commission and omission that Scott regrets?
• What are the biggest lessons Scott has from shutting down Stride, their Slack competitor?

4. Scott: The Father, Husband and Philanthropist:

• What does great fatherhood mean to Scott today?
• What is the secret to a truly successful marriage?
• How does Scott assess his relationship to money today? How has it changed with time?
• How does Scott think about bringing children up in a world of affluence and abundance?

Fun Fact: Every single 20VC episode is recorded with Riverside.FM. It is the one product that I could not live without. Try it today here (https://creators.riverside.fm/20VC) and use the code 20VC for 15% off.

Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO @ Vercel, giving developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized Web. To date, Guillermo has raised $312M from Accel, Bedrock, Greenoaks, GV and more. Prior to founding Vercel, Guillermo co-founded LearnBoost and Cloudup where he served the company as CTO through its acquisition by Automattic in 2013.

In Today's Episode with Guillermo Rauch We Discuss:

1. From Argentina to SF: The Boy Making Money Online:

• How did Guillermo first get into computers and start making money online?
• Does Guillermo still believe the US and SF offers the same opportunities it did when he came?
• Did Guillermo feel the weight of responsibility of providing for his family at a young age?

2. Timing, Markets and Narrative Violations:

• Why does Guillermo believe it does not matter being first but being right?
• Why does Guillermo believe the most important thing for a company is market selection?
• Why does Guillermo believe it is crucial that founders and companies have "narrative violations"?

3. The Future of AI:

• What model will win in the future; open or closed?
• Where does the value accrue; startups or incumbents?
• How will the SaaS business model change in a world of AI?

4. Silicon Valley's Most Successful Angel You Did Not Know:

• What are some of Guillermo's biggest lessons from angel investing?
• What is his single biggest miss? How has it changed how he thinks?
• What have been his biggest hits? How did they impact how he thinks about what it takes to win?

Matt Rosenberg is Grammarly’s Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Grammarly Business. He leads all B2B revenue, operations, and growth for Grammarly Business, Grammarly for Education, and Grammarly for Developers. Previously, as CRO of Compass, he took the company into the Fortune 500 and contributed to a more than eightfold increase in business growth. Prior to Compass, Matt served as Eventbrite’s CRO leading them to become the largest event platform in the world by event count.

In Today's Episode with Matt Rosenberg We Discuss:

1. From Miserable Lawyer to World Beating Sales Leader:

• How did Matt make the transition from lawyer to sales leader?
• What does Matt know now that he wishes he had known when he started in sales?
• What are Matt's biggest pieces of advice for anyone who wants to make a career change and is lacking confidence?

2. The Playbook and Hiring The Team:

• How does Matt define the "sales playbook"?
• Should the founder be the one to create and execute V1 of the playbook?
• Should the first sales hire be a rep or a sales leader?
• When is the right time to make that all-important first sales hire?

3. Discounting, Champions and Urgency:

• What can sales team do to create urgency in deal cycles? What works? What does not?
• How does Matt approach discounting? When to do it vs when not to? What level is acceptable?
• What are the biggest secrets to creating champions within prospects?
• Why does Matt believe that deals are won and lost in prospecting?

4. Developing Great Sales Talent:

• How does Matt use sales call recordings to train teams? What is his 3x3 matrix for coaching calls?
• What is a good reason to lose a deal vs a bad reason? How does Matt do deal reviews?
• What are the single biggest elements sales leaders can do to nurture sales talent?
• What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make when developing talent internally?

Phin Barnes is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of The General Partnership (TheGP), a venture capital firm that’s redefining what partnership means for founders. Previously, Phin spent over a decade at First Round Capital, where he was responsible for over 60 investments including Blue Apron, Notion, Clover Health, Gauntlet and Persona. Before First Round, he created an independent video game company and before that was an early employee at AND 1 Basketball where he helped scale the brand from $15 to $225 million in revenue and served as the Creative Director for Footwear.

In Today's Episode with Phin Barnes We Discuss:

1. From Creative Director to Venture Capitalist:

• How did Phin make his way into the world of venture having been a Creative Director at a basketball brand?
• What does Phin know now that he wishes he could tell himself on his first day in venture?
• What are 1-2 of Phin's biggest lessons from his 10 years at First Round which shapes how he invests?

2. The Venture Capital Model is Broken:

• Why does Phin believe the current services model of venture is broken?
• Do the best founders need your help?
• What have been some of the biggest lessons in what the best founders want from their VCs?
• What happens to this generation of firms with massive support teams?
• Do VCs use these support teams merely to justify massive fund size scaling to LPs?

3. The Venture Landscape Today:

• How can we compete in a seed landscape of $5M on $25M against large multi-stage firms?
• What founders types are attracted to big brands? What founder profiles are taken in by large rounds and high prices?
• Is Phin more or less excited about seed-stage investing now than he has been before?

4. Investing Lessons 101:

• What is Phin's biggest hit? How did seeing their success impact his mindset?
• What is Phin's biggest loss? How did the loss impact how he views investing?
• Traction, team, market; how does Phin rank the three in prioritisation?
• What should all young people know when entering the venture landscape?

Kevin Niparko is the VP of Product @ Twilio. Kevin joined Twilio through the acquisition of Segment where he spent an incredible 8 years in numerous different roles including as Head of Product. Before entering the world of product, Kevin was a Management Associate at the world-renowned, Bridgewater Associates.

In Today's Episode with Kevin Niparko We Discuss:

1. From Bridgewater to Head of Product:

• How Kevin made his way from the world of asset management and analytics to leading product teams?
• What are 1-2 of Kevin's biggest takeaways from his time at Bridgewater with Ray Dalio?
• How did the 8 year journey with Segment leading to their $3BN acquisition impact his approach to product?

2. What Makes a Great Product Person:

• Does Kevin believe that product is more art or science? If he were to put a number on it? What would it be out of 100?
• Why does Kevin believe that all product people should learn to write?
• Why does Kevin believe that the best product people are generalists and not specialists?
• Why does Kevin think that analytics is an insanely good start for product people?

3. How to Hire the Best Product People:

• How does Kevin approach the hiring process for product hires today?
• What are the non-obvious traits of hires he looks for? How does he test for them?
• Does Kevin use case studies? Where do many fall down? What do the best do?

4. Product Reviews: Good vs Great:

• How often does Kevin do product reviews? Who is invited?
• How have product reviews changed in a world where the company is now fully remote?
• What is the difference between good and great product reviews?
• What is the single best product decision Kevin has made? What did he learn?
• What is the worst product decision Kevin made? How did that change his approach?

Christian Lanng is the Founder and Former CEO @ Tradeshift, a company he took from garage to unicorn raising over $900M for with a latest price of $2.7BN in 2021. Just last month, Christian stepped away from the company and is now Chairman @ Beyond Work, building a better work experience through AI native software.

In Today's Episode with Christian Lanng We Discuss:

1. Burnout: When it Hits:

• How did Christian know when something was really seriously wrong? What were the signs?
• How did being a founder literally almost kill Christian? How was that not a wakeup moment?
• How does being a founder make you so out of touch with reality?

2. The Things We Are Never Told:

• Why does Christian think one of the biggest crimes is the myth that everyone can be a founder?
• What are the single biggest things about VCs that founders are not told?
• Why does Christian believe fundraising is absolutely a game? What are the rules to win it?
• What makes the best VCs? What makes the worst VCs?
• Why does Christian not like to take a discount for a brand name VC?

3. The Chaos That Happens Inside a Company:

• Why does Christian believe politics should not be discussed within companies?
• What are Christian's biggest lessons on working with friends? Why after 14 years does Christian only have 3 friends that still talk to him?
• How did Christian fire 50% of his leadership team and productivity not change at all?
• Why does Christian believe US startups are inherently better than European ones?

4. Parenting and Relationship to Money:

• Does Christian regret not being a present father for his child when building Tradeshift?
• What are the two options as a founder you have when bringing up kids?
• Was Christian scared to leave Tradeshift? How does he reflect on his relationship to money?

5. AI: Co-Pilot is BS, The Future Business Model and more...

• Why does Christian believe co-pilot is the last dying breathe attempt from incumbents?
• Why does Christian believe that per-seat pricing will die? What will replace it?
• Why does Christian believe that AI will negate the importance of consumer-facing brands?
• In what way does Christian believe that UI is total BS? How does it change over time?

Marc Benioff is Chair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing. Under Benioff's leadership, Salesforce is the #1 provider of CRM software globally and one of the world's fastest-growing enterprise software companies. Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999, and it is now a Fortune 150 company with 70,000+ employees. Benioff is the owner and co-chair of TIME, and the founder of TIME Ventures. Benioff is the author of the New York Times bestseller Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change. Benioff was named “Innovator of the Decade” by Forbes and is recognized as one of the World’s 25 Greatest Leaders by Fortune.

In Today's Episode with Marc Benioff We Discuss:

1. The Future of San Francisco:

• What would Marc do if he were in charge of San Francisco today?
• What would he change with regards to housing, policing and crime?
• Why does Marc believe there are doomsday proclaimers on SF? What do they have to gain?
• Will Dreamforce always be held in San Francisco?

2. Money and Ambition: The Mind Behind a $200BN Machine

• Does Marc believe that money makes you happy?
• How has Marc's relationship to money changed over time?
• How does Marc think about bringing children up in a more affluent home?
• What does Marc advise anyone who is seeking "happiness" today?

3. Mastering Decisions and Prioritisation:

• How does Marc assess his own decision-making framework today? Has it changed with time?
• What is Marc's 5 step process to understand your own priorities today?
• What does Marc believe are the three biggest priorities for Salesforce today?
• What are the single biggest blockers that would prevent Salesforce from achieving their goals?

4. Marc Benioff: AMA:

• What does great fatherhood mean to Marc?
• Who would win the cage fight, Zuck or Elon?
• What does a day in the life of Marc Benioff look like?
• What does Marc think about work from home?

Christian Kleinerman is the SVP of Product @ Snowflake. Before Snowflake, Christian spent close to 5 years at Google as a Senior Director of Product Management @ YouTube working on their infrastructure and data systems. Before YouTube, Christian spent over 13 years at Microsoft serving as General Manager of the Data Warehousing product unit where he was responsible for a broad portfolio of products.

In Today's Episode with Christian Kleinerman We Discuss:

1. Lessons from the Greats:

• How did Christian first make his way into the world of product?
• What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from working with Satya Nadella and Frank Slootman?
• What are 1-2 of hs biggest product lessons from Google and Microsoft?

2. Generative AI: Real vs Fake:

• How does Christian analyze the current generative AI landscape?
• Which segments will be the fastest to adopt? Which will be the slowest?
• What aspects of the ecosystems are overblown? Which are under-appreciated?
• How does Christian respond to many VCs who suggest that many startups are simply wrappers on GPT?

3. Models 101: Why Size is Not Everything!

• What matters more, the size of the data or the size of the model?
• Will any of the models used today be used in a year?
• Does Christian believe Alex @ Nabla is right in saying that "the most successful companies will be those that are able to transition between models the easiest"?
• How are we seeing the evolution of model size impact the accuracy of result snad size of data required?

4. Incumbent vs startup & Open vs Closed:

• Who is best positioned to win; startups or incumbents?
• What are the nuances; which spaces are best served for startups to win vs incumbents?
• Will open or closed source be the dominant mode?
• What are the single biggest challenges preventing open from being successful?

Eric Paley is the Managing Partner at Founder Collective, one of the world’s most successful seed funds with investments in the likes of Uber, The Trade Desk, Coupang and Airtable.

Mike Maples is one of the OGs of seed investing. As the Co-Founder of Floodgate, he has backed the likes of Twitch, Okta, Lyft, Twitter and more.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds with a portfolio including Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few.

In Today's Episode on Is the Venture Model Broken? :

1. Is the classic seed model dead? Can seed funds play in a world of $25M valuations?
2. Why is having a firm grasp of the present the best thing an early-stage investor can have?
3. Why does Mike Maples believe no company with true product-market-fit has ever failed?
4. Why does Eric Paley believe "go faster" is the worst startup advice?
5. Why does Mike Maples believe there is a direct relationship between price and risk?
6. Why does Mike Maples believe that outliers by their very nature are lower priced?
7. Why does Eric Paley not focus on ownership? Why can it be dangerous?
8. What are the biggest risks for founders raising at valuations that are too high?
9. Why does Eric Paley believe we will have the biggest chasm between TVPI and DPI in the prior vintage of venture capital returns?
10. Why does Eric believe the majority of SPACs were BS and great companies can always go public?
11. Why does Jason believe that if multiples do not reflate, the venture model is broken?
12. Why does Jason believe we will see the biggest hiring spree in tech next year?
13. How has illiquidity allowed Eric Paley to make some of the best investment decisions?
14. What is Mike Maples biggest lesson from selling Twitter stock early at $1BN?

Miles Grimshaw is a General Partner @ Benchmark, widely considered one of the best venture capital firms in history. Prior to joining the Benchmark Partnership, Miles was a General Partner @ Thrive Capital where he led investments in Airtable, Monzo, Lattice, Github, Segment, Slack and Benchling to name a few.

In Today's Episode with Miles Grimshaw We Discuss:

1. Straight into VC From University: From Yale to Thrive

• How did Miles come to land a role with Josh Kushner and Thrive right out of Yale?
• What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from working with Josh @ Thrive for 8 years?
• What does Miles know now that he wishes he had known when he started in venture?

2. The Pillars of Venture Capital: Sourcing, Selecting, Servicing:

• What does Miles believe are the 5 core pillars of successful venture capital?
• 1-5, what is his strongest and what is his weakest?
• Does Miles really believe that VCs add value today?
• What are the most clear ways that Miles have seen VCs destroy value in portfolio companies?

3. Investment Decision Making: From Github to Segment:

• What is the single most important question that Miles has to answer to say yes to an investment?
• How does Miles think about both market sizing risk and market timing risk?
• What have been Miles' biggest hits? What did he learn from making those investments?
• What have been Miles' biggest misses? What did he learn from missing Figma and Plaid?
• What have been 1-2 of Miles's biggest lessons so far from working with Bill Gurley and Peter Fenton?

4. AI: What Happens Next:

• Does Miles believe we are in an AI bubble today? How does he assess the landscape?
• Why does Miles believe that the "Co-Pilot" strategy is an incumbent strategy?
• Where does Miles believe the value will accrue; the application layer or the infrastructure layer?
• What does Miles mean when he says the future is in "selling the work and not the software"?
• What business model disruption and adoption disruption does Miles believe AI will enable?
• Why does Miles believe that the analogy of AI to the rise of mobile is wrong?

Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce.

Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Previously, he was the Head of Research at Hugging Face, and before that a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research.

Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded Wit.ai, acquired by Facebook in 2015. 

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.

Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve “Software 3.0” companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock where she made investments in the likes of Figma, Coda and Neeva.

Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity’s potential. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN. 

Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. To date, Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few.

Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few.

Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI. A renowned computer scientist and researcher, Shazeer is one of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). 

The Two Most Pressing Questions in AI:

1. What matters more the size of the model or the size of the data?
2. Where does the value accrue in the next 5-10 years; to startups or to incumbents?

Suchit Dash is the VP of Core Product Experience at Reddit, responsible for the surfaces that millions of users interact with daily. Prior to Reddit, Suchit was a cofounder at Dubsmash, a short video platform that was used by millions globally and acquired by Reddit in December 2020. In just 10 days, Suchit scaled the product to an immense 43M users, and gained fans such as Neymar and Jimmy Fallon. Suchit previously held roles at Soundcloud and PayPal.

In Today's Episode with Suchit Dash We Discuss:

1. The Founding of Dubsmash & V1:

• How did the founding of Dubsmash come to be?
• Suchit scaled V1 of the product to 43M users in 10 days, what was the secret? What worked?
• What were the first signs that all was not right?
• How did the team respond to the realization that their retention numbers were terrible?
• What are Suchit's biggest lessons and pieces of advice from this massive V1 and launch?

2. Data: Retention, Cohorts and The Smiley Face:

• What specific data did Suchit and the team really use to understand their level of product market fit?
• What level of retention were they looking for? What is average, good, and great in terms of retention in consumer social?
• What is really important for founders to try and observe and analyze in net new user cohorts?
• When and why did the team start to see the hailed smiley face of consumer returning to the app?

3. Battling TikTok:

• Despite the resurgence, TikTok was roaring, what did TikTok do so well to take the market?
• How did TikTok leverage both FB and Snap's ad platform to acquire so many users so fast?
• What did TikTok not do well? What could they have done better?
• How did TikTok pay and incentivize the creator community?
• What are some of Suchit's biggest lessons and advice for founders battling a better-funded incumbent?

4. The Decision to Sell: Being Acquired by Reddit:

• Ultimately, why did Suchit decide to sell the company to Reddit?
• Why did the first two acquisition attempts fail?
• What are 1-2 of the biggest pieces of advice Suchit has for founders debating whether it is right to sell their company?
• What do all founders being acquired need to remember?
• With the benefit of hindsight, if Suchit could do the acquisition process again, what would he do differently?

David Velez is the Founder and CEO of Nubank, one of the largest and fastest-growing financial institutions in the world. 1 in 2 people in Brazil alone have a Nubank account. Nubank's purple credit card in Mexico is the highest-rated NPS product of any consumer product in the world. Before founding Nubank in 2013, David was a partner at Sequoia Capital between 2011 and 2013, in charge of the firm’s Latin American investments group. Before Sequoia, David worked in investment banking and growth equity at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and General Atlantic.

In Today's Episode with David Velez We Discuss:

1. From Sequoia Partner to Creating One of the Largest Financial Institutions:

• What was the Sequoia interview process like?
• What questions did Doug Leone really dive into when hiring David?
• What impressed David most about how Sequoia interview and win talent?
• What are 1-2 of David's biggest lessons from working with Doug Leone?

2. From a Small House to a $BN Public Company:

• What does David believe are the 1-2 core but non-obvious reasons why Nubank scaled so fast?
• What does David believe are the most non-obvious but massive opportunities Nubank has to 10x from here?
• Why does David believe emerging market fintech providers will be more valuable than Western fintechs?
• What does David believe Western fintechs and regulators can learn from BRIC economy fintechs?

3. How AI Changes The Future of Financial Services:

• How does David believe AI will change financial services?
• What products are the lowest-hanging fruit? Which products will be harder for AI to serve?
• How will AI handle the ambiguity of which master to serve; the consumer and their experience or the bank and their fees and profit motive?
• Will banks need to own and operate their own models? If using other models, what will differentiate them when they are layers on top of someone else's technology?

4. David Velez: The Leader and Father:

• What does it mean to be a great listener? How does David approach it?
• What has been David's biggest lessons from Sequoia on culture? What works? What does not?
• What are David's biggest pieces of advice to raise kids that are not spoiled and are hard-working and humble?
• How does David think about "efficient giving" with the philanthropy he does today?
• What is the big paradox and challenge in philanthropy today?

Doug Adamic is the CRO @ Brex and leads the company's revenue and growth strategy. Prior to Brex, Doug was most recently the Chief Revenue Officer at SAP Concur, a provider of travel spend management solutions and services. During his 16-year tenure oversaw an organization of 600+ employees. He was responsible for all aspects of revenue, generating go-to-market strategies and departments. Prior to SAP Concur, he had a five-year tenure as an Enterprise Sales Manager for Kronos, Inc.

In Today's Episode with Doug Adamic We Discuss:

1. Entry into Sales:

• Does Doug believe that love of sales is innate or can be learned? When did he discover his love?
• What does Doug know now about sales he wish he had known when he started?
• What are 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from leading 600+ people at SAP?

2. Discovery, Pipeline and Qualification:

• What are the three core reasons why companies buy software today? How do the best sales teams use those needs to get deals done fast?
• What does great sales discovery mean today? Why do you have to make customers feel uncomfortable to understand their true needs?
• What are the biggest mistakes sales teams make when asking questions, determining customer pain, willingness to pay etc etc?
• Why does Doug believe that everyone in the company is responsible for demand creation?
• What are the core pillars to success in qualification? Where do so many go wrong?

3. Getting Deals Done:

• Why does Doug disagree that now is the hardest time to be selling? Are companies buying new software today?
• What is the secret to opening up organizations that say they are not open for buying new software?
• How can sales teams create multiple champions in a prospect? How can they determine who is really a buyer vs who is an influencer in a prospect?
• What are the biggest tactics that can be used to reduce sales cycles and create urgency in a sales process?

4. Discounting, Trust and Deal Reviews:

• What is a good reason to lose a deal?
• What is a bad reason to lose a deal?
• How does Doug and Brex conduct deal reviews? What makes a good vs a bad deal review?
• What is the fastest way to lose trust either with prospects or with customers?
• Why does Doug believe discounting is BS and should not be used?

Nikhil Basu Trivedi is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm investing its first fund. In his venture career, he has invested in the early rounds of several companies that have exited or are currently valued at over $1B, including Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color Health, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, and The Farmer's Dog. Prior to Footwork, Nikhil was a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, on the investment team at Insight Partners, and on the founding team at Artsy.

In Today's Episode with Nikhil Basu Trivedi We Discuss:

1. From Summer Intern to Founding a Firm: The 13 Year Journey:

• How did Nikhil first make his way into venture as an intern at Insight Partners in NYC?
• What does Nikhil know now that he wishes he had known on his first day in venture?
• Why does Nikhil advise all young VCs to "not look at their business card"? Why does title not matter in venture?
• Should founders meet with Juniors as well as GPs and more senior people?

2. Small Funds Outperform Large Funds:

• Why does Nikhil believe that small funds outperform large funds?
• Why is AUM the biggest bullshit metric in VC?
• How does Nikhil advise seed stage founders who have offers from seed firms for smaller rounds at lower valuations and are weighing them against larger rounds with higher valuations from multi-stage funds?
• Does Nikhil believe that platform value-added services really provide any value?

3. The Art of Investing:

• What has been Nikhil's biggest investing win? How has it changed his approach to investing?
• How does Nikhil prioritize between people, traction, and market? What is most important?
• What has been Nikhil's biggest investing miss? How has that changed his approach?
• Does Nikhil believe the great founders are immediately obvious?
• Why is market size the single question that keeps Nikhil up the most?

4. The Dysfunctions of Venture Capital:

• What are the single biggest areas of misalignment between GP and LP?
• What do many GPs see and know well that LPs should know and see more of?
• What are the biggest ways that decision-making breaks down in a venture fund?
• Why does Nikhil believe that so much of the investment in AI is going to go up in flames?

Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and Co-Founder of Careem. Over the last 11 years, Mudassir has scaled the service to more than 80 cities in 10 countries, with 1,400+ colleagues and more than 2.5 million Captains. With such success, in 2020 Uber announced they would be acquiring Careem for a reported $3.1BN. Prior to Careem, Mudassir co-founded “DeviceAnywhere”, a company that was acquired by “Keynote” in 2008 before joining the management consulting firm “McKinsey & Company” in Dubai.

In Today's Episode with Mudassir Sheikha We Discuss:

1. From McKinsey to $3.1BN Exit to Uber:

• What was the founding a-ha moment for Mudassir with Careem?
• What does Mudassir know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
• What does Mudassir believe he is running away from?

2. Finding Product-Market Fit:

• What is the single biggest mistake founders make when trying to find product-market fit?
• Does Mudassir believe you have to do things that do not scale, to scale? What did Careem do?
• What are some of Mudassir's biggest pieces of advice to founders on finding a core target audience and doing customer discovery the right way?

3. Competing with Giants: How To Win When You Cannot Outspend:

• How did Careem beat Uber when they had 1/100th of their budget?
• What advice does Mudassir have for founders who have competition that is much better funded?
• What is the story of spending the night in bunk beds and barely sleeping before raising $300M the next day? How did that happen?

4. The Acquisition: How it Went Down:

• How did Mudassir and Dara @ Uber first come to meet?
• How did Dara's approach contrast with the prior approach of Travis Kalanick?
• Why did Mudassir decide to sell and join Uber?
• What were the main reasons or arguments against the acquisition?

5. Talk to me About:

• Careem's Pakistan MD having to flee Pakistan for his safety post a marketing campaign?
• Elon Musk likes one of Careem's promotional videos and why?
• An investor who wired $1M with absolutely no paperwork?
• The catch up meeting that turned into a $3BN offer?

Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI, a full-stack AI computing platform that gives people access to their own flexible superintelligence. A renowned computer scientist and researcher, Shazeer is one of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). He is a key author for the Transformer, a revolutionary deep learning model enabling language understanding, machine translation, and text generation that has become the foundation of many NLP models. A former member of the Google Brain team, Shazeer led the development of spelling corrector capabilities within Gmail, the algorithm at the heart of AdSense.  

In Today's Episode with Noam Shazeer We Discuss:

1. Entry into the World of AI and NLP:

• How did Noam first make his way into the world of AI and come to work on spell corrector with Google?
• What are 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from spending 20 years at Google?
• What does Noam know now that he wishes he had known when he started Character?

2. Model Size or Data Size:

• What is more important, the size of the data or the size of the model?
• Does Noam agree that "we will not use models in a year that we have today?" What is the lifespan of a model?
• Does Noam agree that the companies that win are those that are able to switch between models with the most ease?
• With the majority of data being able to be downloaded from the internet, is there real value in data anymore?

3. The Biggest Barriers:

• What is the single biggest barrier to Character today?
• What are the most challenging elements of model training? Why did they need to spend $2M to train an early model?
• What are the most difficult elements of releasing a horizontal product with so many different use cases?
• Where does the value accrue in the race for AI dominance; startups or incumbents?

4. AI's Role on Society:

• Why does Noam believe that AI can create greater not worse human connections?
• Why is Noam not concerned by the speed of adoption of AI tools?
• What does Noam know about AI's impact on society that the world does not see?

Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few. Runway’s customers include academy-nominated movies, TV shows, media companies, and creatives across industries.

In Today's Episode with Cris Valenzuela We Discuss:

1. From Childhood in Chile to Founding one of the Hottest AI Startups:

• What was the founding moment for Cris with Runway?
• His investors described Cris as an "outsider". Does Cris believe he is an outsider? What are the biggest pros and cons of being an outsider?
• What does Cris believe he is running from? What is he running towards?

2. Models are not a Moat: Models 101:

• What does Cris believe is more important; model size or data size?
• Why does Cris believe that models are not a moat?
• How does Cris think about the lifespan of models? Will any used today be used in a year?
• Are hallucinations a feature or a bug? What are the nuances?

3. The World Has Got AI Wrong: We Need Different Stories:

• Why does Cris believe the world has got AI wrong?
• Why do we need different stories for what AI can do and will be? Who should tell them?
• Why do groups like screenwriters riot and protest if the tool is empowering and not replacing?

4. Company Building 101: Hiring and Fundraising:

• What are the biggest pieces of startup advice that are total BS?
• What has been the single biggest lesson Cris has learned when it comes to fundraising?
• Does Cris believe that VCs really add value?
• What have been the single biggest hiring mistakes that Cris has made?
• How has Cris structured their interview process to make it the best interview process in the world?