Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft, where he leads the company’s AI and technology strategy at global scale and played a pivotal role in Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI. Prior to Microsoft, Kevin spent six years at Linkedin as SVP of Engineering. Kevin has also enjoyed advisory positions with Pinterest, Box, Code.org and more. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:10 Where is Enduring Value in a World of AI

10:53 Why Scaling Laws are BS

12:26 What is the Bottleneck Today: Data, Compute or Algorithms

15:38: In 10 Years Time: What % of Data Usage will be Synthetic

20:04 How Will AI Agents Evolve Over the Next Five Years

23:34: Deepseek Evalution: Do We Underestimate China

28:34 The Future of Software Development

31:53 The Thing That Most Excites Me in AI is Tech Debt

35:01 Leadership Lessons from Satya Nadella

41:13 Quickfire Round

Dame Julia Hoggett is the CEO of the London Stock Exchange. Julia previously worked at the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority as Director of Market Oversight and Head of Wholesale Banking Supervision.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:25 How to Become CEO of a National Stock Exchange

05:36 Why The Domestic Economy is F***** Despite the Boom in Financial Services

06:45 How Pension Fund Reform Dmaaged the UK Economy

09:31 Should the UK Copy the Canadian Pension Fund Structure

16:30 Will the Best Companies Like Revolut and Monzo List in London

24:17 Why Are Revolut Wrong to Want to List in the US

27:32 Are Companies Priced Lower in the UK vs US

32:05 Why is Stamp Duty a Perversity We Have to Change

35:46 Why is the Way the UK Thinks About Financial Services So Wrong

40:31 Quick Fire Round: Insights and Reflections

Mitchell Green is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lead Edge Capital. Mitchell has led or co-led investments in companies including Alibaba, Asana, Benchling, ByteDance, Duo Security, Grafana, Mindbody, and Xamarin, among several others.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:31 How Bessemer Taught Me The One Golden Rule of Investing

06:48 Why AI Infrastrcture is the Worst Investment to Make

08:51 Why it is Comical to think there will be $BN one person companies?

09:26 WTF Happens To The Cohort of SaaS Companies With Slow Growth, Not Yet Profitable and $50M-$200M in Revenue

16:12 What is the Biggest Problem with the IPO Market

23:24 When is the Right Time to Sell in VC and How a Generation F******* it Up

27:37 Biggest Advice to Smaller Emerging Managers

40:13 The One Question That Tells You if a Business is Good

43:01 Why LPs are More Important than Founders

45:03 One Question Every LP Should Ask Their VCs

46:03 Why TikTok Does Not Matter to ByteDance and It Is a Screaming Buy

51:30 Why We Drastically Underestimate the Power of Chinese AI?

55:18 Why Social Media is the Most Dangerous Thing in Society

01:00:07 Quick Fire Questions

Niklas Östberg is the Founder and CEO of Delivery Hero, a global juggernaut now present in over 70 countries across four continents. In Q4 2024, the company announced GMV of $49BN with $12.8BN in revenue and $750M in EBITDA. They have made an astonishing 35+ acquisitions including $2BN for Glovo. Before launching Delivery Hero, Niklas co-founded Pizza.nu, leading its expansion across Sweden, Poland, Finland, and Austria.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:09 How Skiing Prepared Me For Life As An Entrepreneur

10:12 Losing $200M on Gorillas Investment

17:58 Quick Commerce: Does the Business Model Work?

25:09 How to Master M&A: Lessons from 35 Acquisitions

31:45 Evaluating Acquisitions: The Glovo Example

32:39 Cohort Analysis: Lessons from $49BN in GMV

34:35 Growth Strategies: What Worked? What Did Not Work?

38:27 Competing Against Uber and Doordash

41:40 Is Cash a Weapon in the War for Food Delivery

44:29 Why Are Emerging Markets a Good Investment?

48:21 Why Are European Markets Broken? Are Regulators Killing Europe?

51:57 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

Andrew Feldman is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Cerebras, the fastest AI inference + training platform in the world. In Sept 2024 the company filed to go public off the back of a rumoured $1BN deal with G42 in the UAE. Andrew is the leading expert for all things inference. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:23 Where Was AI Landscape in 2015 When Cerebras Founded

05:57 NVIDIA’s Biggest Strength Has Become Their Biggest Weakness

07:09 What Happens to the Cost of Inference?

08:55 Why Are AI Algorithms So Inefficient?

20:30 Why is it Total BS That We Have Hit Scaling Laws?

23:07 What Will Be the Ratio of Synthetic to Human Data Used in 5 Years?

31:37 What Specifically Was So Impressive About Deepseek?

31:51 Why is Distillation Not Wrong and OpenAI Need to Look in the Mirror?

32:34 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI?

34:08 How Will NVIDIA’s Market Position Change Over the Next Five Years?

39:59 Why is the CUDA Lockin for NVIDIA BS? What is Their Weakness?

40:46 Why is Trump Better for Business than Biden?

49:41 Do We Underestimate China in a World of AI?

52:33 What is the Most Underappreciated Segment of AI?

54:00 Quickfire Round

Elias Torres is the Co-Founder and CEO of Agency, the AI agent for customer success teams. Prior to Agency, Elias was the Co-Founder of Drift, a company he sold to Vista for $1.2BN Before that he started Performable, which he sold to Hubspot. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

03:50 Do Rich Founders Make Better Founders: How Backgrounds Shape You

06:23 Speed: Why are Incumbents Slower than Ever

10:00 Quality: Why are Incumbents Worse than Ever

25:34 Why Was Selling Drift For $1.2BN a Massive Failure

33:30 How Did a Cushy Culture Kill Drift

37:01 What They Never Tell You About Selling for $1.2BN

41:08 How to Hire F******* Rockstars

46:52 The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Hiring

54:52 Everything You Think You Know About Working Parents is Wrong

01:02:00 Quickfire

Peter Singlehurst is the Head of Private Companies at Baillie Gifford. He has led research on a wide range of private investments including Epic Games, Bending Spoons, Anduril, Solugen, Scopely, and Grammarly, as well as a number of private holdings that have since transitioned to the public markets such as Airbnb, Affirm, Warby Parker, Wise and Tempus AI. 

In Today’s Episode with Peter We Discuss:

04:24 How I Accidentally Came to Manage One of the Largest Private Investment Firms in the World

07:29 What I Learned Losing 100s of $Ms 

10:22 The 10 Questions Baillie Gifford Needs to Answer to Make an Investment

15:53 Why We Did Not Double Down in Stripe and Turned Down Coinbase

33:10 The ByteDance Investment Case

36:33 Why Would Any Good Company Go Public Today

39:19 Growth Stage Investing Trends

40:46 How Anduril Becomes a $200BN Company

45:39 Is 2024 Different to the Madness of 2021 and 2022

47:18 The Decision-Making Process Inside a $217BN Firm

49:00 How Does Re-Investment Decision-Making Differ from Original Investments

55:56 Future of Growth Equity Investing

58:12 Quick Fire Questions

Yamini Rangan is the CEO at HubSpot. The $32BN juggernaut that has revenues of $2.6BN, over 247,000 customers and 8,200 employees. Prior to Hubspot, Yamini served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, and before Dropbox, she was VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:16 Taking Over the CEO Role from the Founders

07:58 Wartime vs Peacetime CEOship

11:18 How to Scale Into Enterprise: What Everyone Gets Wrong

22:20 Why is B2B Not Winner Take All

29:33 How Does HubSpot Compete Against Salesforce

33:26 Where Does Value Accrue in a World of AI

37:40 How Does Yamini Use AI Everyday

41:17 What Does HubSpot Do When It’s Core SEO Channel Dies

44:10 Quickfire Round: Satya Nadella, Parenting Advice, Biggest Concern

51:35 Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Matt Biilmann is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify. Under his leadership, Netlify has become one of the fastest-growing platforms for modern web development. Matt recently introduced agent experience (AX), a new way of thinking about how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Matt is also known for coining Jamstack, a concept that redefined how developers build for the web. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 

03:43 How Does the Design Process Change When Designing For Agents

06:27 How Does the Product Building Process Change When Building for Agents

12:52 Will AI Kill SaaS Tools

16:12 If Prototyping Becomes Phase 1: Does Figma Survive?

17:35 Is Chat the Best Interface for a World of AI

21:52 Why AI Services Will Be One of the Biggest Economies

27:24 Open vs. Closed Platforms in an Agent-First World

31:09 Specialization of Large Language Models

35:13 Shifting Labor Costs to Agent Spend

36:28 The Future of Stripe and What Happens with 100M Developers in the World

38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Predictions

Jake Saper is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last 20 years. Their many wins include being early investors in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and more. In total, the firm has invested $2BN and returned an astonishing $8BN in cash with much more to come. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:45 The Zoom Investment Story

10:21 Founder, Market, Traction: Rank Them

26:37 Why Market Pull is the Most Important Thing and How to Know

27:23 Are the Best Deals Always Expensive?

28:25 What is the One Framework Emergence Use for Every Investment

29:08 Lessons from the 16x DPI Zoom Fund

30:44 Why Does Every Partner Do Reference Calls on Every Deal?

35:16 We Have Lied to SaaS Founders: The Revenue Rules Changed

37:53 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI? 

41:37 Three Reasons Why AI Will Not Replace Vertical SaaS

46:38 Who Wins in AI: Startups or Incumbents?

50:09 Why Should Every Company Aim to Be a “Board Discussion”

55:12 Why is Jake Worried About AI’s FTX Moment?

56:00 What Losing Billions on Salesforce Taught Us About Selling

01:00:07 Why Most VC Partnerships are Broken

01:03:07 Grok vs Anthropic vs OpenAI: Buy and Sell?

01:14:25 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

Julian Teixeira is the Chief Revenue Officer at 1Password, where he has grown B2B revenue over 8x and scaled a team of more than 450 in go-to-market. 1Password set the record for the largest raise in Canadian history at the start of 2022 and has raised nearly $1B in capital throughout his time with the company. Prior to 1Password, Julian served as the head of global sales at Lightspeed Commerce, a company he helped scale from startup to IPO and through over 10 acquisitions throughout his decade-long tenure. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:27 Sales Lessons from Scaling to $1BN in ARR

05:20 How to Create and Master a Sales Playbook

07:53 Lessons on First Sales Hires

09:41 Setting Goals and Targets for Sales Teams

13:22 The Reality of Tech Sales Today

16:19 Evaluating and Managing Sales Reps

19:07 Outbound Prospecting and Pipeline Generation

22:22 Hunter vs. Farmer Sales Models

24:15 Compensation and Specialization in Sales Teams

28:56 Outbound vs Inbound Sales

32:47 Pipeline and Deal Reviews

37:37 Sales Tech Stack and Tools

38:40 Maintaining Sales Morale

44:55 Are Remote Sales Teams Less Effective

46:44 Final Thoughts and Advice

This episode is brought to you by:

Gong, the revenue AI platform centralising all your revenue workflows in a single unified platform. 

Capchase, helping SaaS companies grow without dilution. Learn more at capchase.com/20vc

Anton Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable, the fastest growing startup in Europe. With Lovable, you can turn your idea into an app in seconds with just a prompt. After just 3 months, the company has scaled to $17.5M in ARR. They are adding $2M in net new revenue every single week. Even better, Lovable has 85% Day 30 retention rate, making it more retentive than ChatGPT. 

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

03:41 How a Side Project Turned into a $200M Company 

05:39 Why Talent is 10x More Valuable Than Experience

08:57 How to Use a Waitlist Pre-Launch to 10x Growth

12:29 How to Master a Public Launch: $0 - $1M ARR in a Week

18:02 Why Raise a Large Seed Round

22:22 How Sustainable is Lovable and AI Revenue

25:22 What are Lovable’s Biggest Threats: Incumbents or Open Source

27:00 Raising Series A: Should You Always Take the Money

27:46 How to Compete in the US from Europe 

28:25 Is Europe as F****** as the World Thinks

29:02 Building in Europe vs. Silicon Valley

31:20 The Future of Foundation Models: Who Wins

33:47 Grok vs OpenAI vs Anthropic: Buy and Short

41:37 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

Mike Krieger is the Co-Founder of Instagram and now CPO @ Anthropic. 

In Today’s Episode with Mike Krieger We Discuss:

03:07 Where Will Value Be Created and Sustained in a World of AI?

04:59 Are Foundation Models Commoditised Today?

08:36 Should Founders Build for the Models of Today or Build for Models of the Future

12:19: Why Will Models Become More Different Than More Similar

16:38: Will Human or Synthetic Data Be More Prominent in the Future 

19:28 Model Quality vs. Product UX

23:36 The Competitive Landscape of AI

32:27 Do We Underestimate China's AI Capabilities

33:59 What Did Anthropic Learn from Deepseek

34:07 Is Deepseek a Sustaining and Credible Threat?

37:04 Transitioning from Model Provider to Application Provider

38:26 Where Has Anthropic Chronically Under-Invested

39:08 Why Has Anthropic Been Slow On Consumer Product Development

43:50 What is the Role of a Software Developer in the Future

48:29 Balancing API and Consumer Products

51:09 Is Europe Stronger or Weaker in a World of AI

52:40 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections