Bending Spoons is the acquisition machine of the tech world. They have acquired the likes of Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Streamyard and more. However, they never open their gates to the secrets behind Evernote’s product machine. Today that changes with Federico Simionato joining 20Product. Fede has been a Product Lead at Bending Spoons for 8 years where he has led product teams at Evernote, WeTransfer and more.
AGENDA:
03:02 From Dentist Games to $11BN Bending Spoons
04:54 Advice for Aspiring Product Managers
05:38 Building a Coveted Brand at Bending Spoons
07:43 Evaluating and Testing New Product Ideas
13:35 How Evernote has Mastered User Retention
25:24 The Impact of AI on Product Design and Prototyping
31:19 How Bending Spoons Does Product Launches and Lessons Learned
33:27 How Every Product Team Should Do Monthly Updates to Users
36:38 Recording and Transparency in Updates
38:06 Lessons from Failed Product Launches
45:14 Structuring Teams and Acquisitions
47:12 Monetization Strategies and Push Notifications
57:21 Quick Fire Round: Insights and Reflections
AGENDA:
04:20 Thrive and OpenAI Partnership
07:14 Databricks Raising $5BN at $134BN Valuation: Cheap or Not?
17:39 Eventbrite Acquired by Bending Spoons for $500M
21:39 Pagerduty’s $1BN Market Cap, Just 2x Revenue
26:59 The TAM Trap: Why SaaS Is Like Japan
37:42 Lessons from Companies Hitting $100M ARR
44:57 The Future of Labour Markets is F******
52:10 The Importance of Compounding in Investments
56:45 The Relevance Game in Venture Capital
01:05:01 Supabase at $5BN or Lovable at $6BN: Which One?
Jonathan Siddharth is Founder and CEO of Turing, one of the fastest-growing AI companies advancing frontier models. Jonathan has led the company to an astonishing $300M ARR with just $225M raised and a profitable company. A Stanford-trained AI scientist, Jonathan previously helped pioneer natural language search at Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft.
AGENDA:
03:35 Data, Compute, Algorithms: What is Most Abundant? What is Lacking Most?
09:18 What Does No One Know About AI’s Data Requirements That Everyone Should?
17:05 The Biggest Challenges Enterprises Have with AI Adoption
20:38 Why Will 99% of Knowledge Work Will be Gone in 10 Years
27:12 How Will Data-Driven Feedback Loops Replace Technology as the Moat
36:08 Who Wins the Data Labelling Market? Who Loses?
38:23 Is Revenue BS in Data Labelling? Are Players Calling GMV Revenue?
45:20 Why is SaaS Dead in a World of AI?
51:23 Will the Phone be the Primary User Interface to an AI World?
57:07 Quickfire Round
John McMahon is widely regarded as one of the greatest enterprise-software sales leaders of all time. He’s the only person to have served as Chief Revenue Officer at five public software companies: PTC, GeoTel, Ariba, BladeLogic and BMC Software. He helped scale BladeLogic from a startup into a public company — ultimately leading to its ~$880M sale to BMC — and drove GeoTel into a multi-billion dollar acquisition. Today he sits on the boards of top names such as Snowflake and MongoDB, while also mentoring and influencing a who’s-who of modern SaaS sales leaders.
AGENDA:
03:33 The Art and Science of Sales: Insights from a Veteran
04:29 Adapting Sales Strategies in the Age of AI and PLG
07:47 The Ultimate Framework to do Deal Qualification
14:13 How to Drive Urgency and Maintain Sales Process
20:06 How to Hire the Best Sales Reps
25:11 Step-by-Step Guide to Training Sales Reps
45:22 The Mindset of the Best Sales Reps
54:55 Single Most Important Skill to Win in Sales
AGENDA:
04:06 Anthropic's $30BN Investment from Microsoft and NVIDIA
07:01 Google vs. OpenAI: Sam Altman’s “War Mode” Memo
15:27 NVIDIA’s Customer Concentration: Bull or Bear
22:12 Is “War Mode” BS: Does Hyper-Aggressive Ever Work?
36:12 Sierra Hits $100M ARR: Justify $10BN Price?
46:14 Implementation is the Biggest Barrier to Enterprise AI Growth
01:04:04 Is LLM Search Optimisation (GEO) Selling Snake Oil? What AI is a Fraud vs Real?
01:14:27 Figma Market Cap: Is the IPO Market F****** for 2026
Maor Shlomo is the Founder and CEO of Base44, the AI building platform that Maor built from idea to $80M acquisition by Wix, in just 8 months. Today the company serves millions of users and will hit $50M ARR by the end of the year. Before Base44, Maor was the Co-Founder and CTO of Explorium.
AGENDA:
00:05 – 00:10: How Vibe Coding is Going to Kill Salesforce and SaaS
00:13 – 00:15: Do Vibe Coding platforms have any defensibility?
00:22 – 00:24: I am not worried about Replit and Lovable, I am worried about Google…
00:28 – 00:29: Margins do not matter, the price of the models will go to zero
00:31 – 00:32: Speed to copy has never been lower; has the technical moat been eroded?
00:47 – 00:48: How does Base44 beat Cursor?
00:56 – 00:57: Do not pay attention to competition: focus on your business
00:57 – 00:58: How Base44 is helped, not hurt by not being in Silicon Valley?
00:58 – 00:59: What percent of code will be written by AI in 12 months?
01:01 – 01:02: OpenAI or Anthropic: Why Maor is Long Anthropic?
01:03 – 01:04: If I could have any board member in the world it would be Jack Dorsey
Max Altman is Co‑Founder & Managing Partner at Saga Ventures, a US$125 M early‑stage fund. Before Saga Max was an investor with Apollo Projects, Hydrazine Capital and Altman Capital (where he helped deploy over US$500 M) into breakout names such as Rippling and Reddit.
AGENDA:
03:55 – Venture Capital Is FULL of Tourists With Single-Digit IQs
06:20 – Inside the Madness of Parker Conrad: Genius, Chaos, and WTF Emails
10:35 – The Rippling Deal That Changed Everything
12:40 – Living in Sam Altman’s Shadow: The Confession
17:30 – $200M Fund Mistakes: Max’s Brutal Lessons From Hydrazine
22:05 – The $2B Reddit Return… and the $2B Left on the Table
25:00 – Why Climate Tech Is a Total VC Mirage
28:40 – The New Seed War: Can Anyone Survive Sequoia & Andreessen?
46:55 – Max’s Boldest Predictions
AGENDA:
04:47 Cursor Raises $2.3BN at $29BN Valuation
11:36 What Gemini 3 Means for Lovable, Cursor and Replit
30:54 Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA: The Bubble Bursting?
48:54 Oracle Credit Default Swaps: The Risk is Increasing
01:07:22 Stripe Does Tender at All-Time High: Why the Best Companies Will Never IPO
01:19:18 Why Retail WIll Cause a Surge of Capital into VC Funds
Dr. Andrew Ng is a globally recognized leader in AI. He is Founder of DeepLearning.AI, Executive Chairman of LandingAI, General Partner at AI Fund, Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera. As a pioneer in machine learning Andrew has authored or co-authored over 200 research papers in machine learning, robotics and related fields. In 2023, he was named to the Time100 AI list of the most influential AI persons in the world.
Agenda:
03:19 What are the Biggest Bottlenecks in AI Today?
08:51 How LLMs Can Be Used as a Geopolitical Weapon
15:48 Should AI Talent Really Be Paid Billions?
29:07 Why is the Application Layer the Most Exciting Layer?
36:22 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI?
38:02 Is Defensibility Dead in a World of AI?
45:29 Will AI Deliver Masa Son’s Predictions of 5% GDP Growth?
49:39 Are We in an AI Bubble?
57:31 Will Human Labour Budgets Shift to AI Spend?
Carl Rivera is the Chief Design Officer at Shopify, where he previously led both Merchant Services and the Shop App as VP of Product. Before joining Shopify through its acquisition of Tictail, Carl was the co-founder and CEO of Tictail, the “Tumblr for e-commerce,” where he built one of the most beloved design-forward commerce platforms of its era.
AGENDA:
05:05 Biggest Lessons from Selling My Company to Shopify
09:55 Where Does Shopify Suck at Product: Lessons from that?
17:37 What makes Truly Great product Design: The Five Pillars
31:02 The Future of Design in an AI-Driven World
36:00 Do We Skip the Design Phase in AI: Figma's Evolving Role in Design
40:09 Remote Work vs. In-Person Collaboration: Where Remote Loses?
42:43 What Happens to the Vibe Coding Market
47:06 Product Management and Team Dynamics
59:48 Does AI Favour Incumbents or Startups
AGENDA:
04:22 Sequoia's Leadership Transition
09:46 Michael Burry's Big Short on Nvidia and Palantir
17:41 Gamma Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation
32:34 Does Defensibility Exist Today When Copying is Easy
40:31 Should All Funds Be Way More Diversified
47:12 How to Run a Fundraising Process & What Not To Do
57:57 Datadog Surges 20% and Duolingo Crashes: What Happened
Ev Randle is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the best funds in venture capital. In their latest fund, they have Mercor ($10BN valuation), Sierra ($10BN valuation), Firework ($4BN valuation), Legora ($2Bn valuation) and Langchain ($1.4Bn valuation). To put this in multiples on invested capital, that is a 60x, two 30x and two 20x. Before Benchmark, Ev was a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and before Kleiner, Ev was an investor at Founders Fund and Bond.
AGENDA:
05:25 Biggest Investing Lessons from Peter Thiel, Mary Meeker and Mamoon Hamid
14:36 OpenAI Will Be a $TRN Company & OpenAI or Anthropic: Who Wins Coding?
22:27 Why We Should Not Focus on Margin But Gross Dollar Per Customer
30:25 Why AI Labs are the Biggest Threat to AI App Companies
44:26 Do Benchmark Fire Founders? If so… Truly the Best Partner?
54:38 People, Product, Market: Rank 1-3 and Why?
57:36 Why the Mega Funds Have Just Replaced Tiger
01:04:08 GC, Lightspeed and a16z Cannot Do 5x on Their Funds…
01:14:09 Single Biggest Threat to Benchmark
Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio.
In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We Discuss:
1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product:
Why does Chad believe that SaaS companies need a CRO pre-product?
Should the founder not be the right person to create the sales playbook?
What should the founder look for in their first CRO hire?
Does any great CRO really want to go back to an early startup and do it again?
2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams:
Why are most sales reps not performing?
How long does it take for sales teams to ramp? How does this change with PLG and enterprise?
What are the benchmarks of good vs great for average sales reps?
How do founders and VCs most often hurt their sales teams and performance?
3. How to Build a Hiring Machine:
What are the single biggest mistakes people make when hiring sales reps and teams?
Are sales people money motivated? How to create comp plans that incentivise and align?
Why does Chad believe that any sales rep that does not want to be in the office, is not putting their career and development first?
Why is it harder than ever to recruit great sales leaders today?
4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake:
What are the single biggest lessons of what worked from scaling Snowflake's sales team?
What did not work? What would he do differently with the team again?
What did Snowflake teach Chad about success and culture and how they interplay together?
AGENDA:
04:27 Navan's IPO: Winners, Losers and 20% Crater
12:55 Harvey Raises $150M at an $8BN Valuation
35:36 Was Sam Altman Wrong to Snap at Brad Gerstner
41:25 Why GOOG is a Buy and Amazon is a Short
47:43 Meta Down 10%, Buy or Sell?
51:12 If You Have Not Accelerated with AI, You Are Dead
01:05:20 Why Now is the Best Time for Series A and Worst for Seed
Joelle Pineau is the Chief AI Officer at Cohere, where she leads research on advancing large language models and practical AI systems. Before joining Cohere, she was VP of AI Research at Meta, where she founded and led Meta AI’s Montreal lab. A professor at McGill University, Joelle is renowned for her pioneering work in reinforcement learning, robotics, and responsible AI development.
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction to AI Scaling Laws
03:00 How Meta Shaped How I Think About AI Research
04:36 Challenges in Reinforcement Learning
10:00 Is It Possible to be Capital Efficient in AI
15:52 AI in Enterprise: Efficiency and Adoption
22:15 Security Concerns with AI Agents
28:34 Can Zuck Win By Buying the Galacticos of AI
32:15 The Rising Cost of Data
35:28 Synthetic Data and Model Degradation
37:22 Why AI Coding is Akin to Image Generation in 2015
48:46 If Joelle Was a VC Where Would She Invest?
52:17 Quickfire: Lessons from Zuck, Biggest Mindset Shift
00:00 – “How Do You Stay True to Yourself When You Have to Perform for the World?”
06:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Refused to Go All-In on YouTube”
09:00 – “You Don’t Need 10 Million Fans—You Need 1,000 True Believers.”
12:00 – “The Internet Is Not a Relevance Machine—It’s a Sensationalism Machine.”
15:00 – “Money Fixes Money Problems—And Nothing Else.”
22:30 – “When Did Tim Ferriss Feel Completely Lost?”
27:00 – “The Million-Dollar Mistake That Still Haunts Tim Ferriss.”
36:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Never Raised a Fund—Even Though He Could Have.”
45:00 – “The Truth About Uber, Duolingo, and the Power of Relationship Investing.”
54:00 – “Why Tim Ferriss Stopped Angel Investing at His Peak.”
1:04:00 – “The Podcast That Changed Everything.”
1:15:00 – “The Real Cost of Love: Is Efficiency Killing Connection?”
1:31:00 – “What Tim Ferriss Has Changed His Mind About Most.”
1:36:00 – “Erections Matter.”
AGENDA:
05:17 OpenAI's Restructuring: Winners and Losers
17:17 Andreessen Horowitz's Raise $10BN in New Funds
26:38 Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation
43:08 Spray and Pray: Does it Work: Data Breakdown
47:04 The Role of Option Checks Venture Capital
48:36 The Three Ways to Win in VC Today
54:26 Why IRR is a BS Metric and What Matters More
01:08:47 Amazon's Struggles: How Do They Return to Greatness in AI
David Cahn is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and one of the world’s leading AI investors. At Sequoia David has led investments in Clay, Juicebox, Sesame, Kela, Stark, etc.. Before Sequoia, David was a General Partner @ Coatue where he led investments in Notion and Hugging Face.
AGENDA:
00:00 We Are in an AI Bubble
05:04 Why Building Physical Data Centres is a Moat
13:58 Winners and Losers in a World of AI
19:13 The Role of Big Tech and Monopolies
23:37 Breaking Down Circular Deals in AI: The Truth No One Sees?
38:19 Why Kingmaking is BS and VCs Do Not Make or Break Companies
41:30 The Importance of Margins in AI Investments
43:41 The Required Growth Rates in AI to Get Funded by Sequoia
45:30 The $0-$100M Revenue Club: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
51:53 Why the Most Important Hire for Startups Today is 23 Year Olds
01:01:19 The Future of Defence: Who Wins and Who Loses
01:10:15 Quickfire: Biggest Miss, Parenting Advice, Doug Leone Advice
Sandy Diao is one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy has scaled products to over 200M+ users and led growth teams at Descript, Meta and Pinterest. She is also a prolific writer all on things growth here.
AGENDA:
03:59 Biggest Growth Lessons from Pinterest
08:01 What is a Good vs a Bad Growth Hypothesis
11:11 Common Mistakes in Growth Strategies
14:57 Channel Fit: When You Have It & What To Do
25:43 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 101: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine
30:08 How to Do SEO and Long-Term Growth Investments
33:22 Doubling Down on Successful Channels
36:31 The Unchanging Foundations of SEO
37:52 Generative AI Engines vs. Traditional Search Engines
41:12 Paid Marketing Channels: What's Overrated?
43:42 The Rise of User-Generated Content (UGC)
46:34 TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality
49:55 Brand Marketing: What is Real vs What is BS?
53:33 The Importance of Feature Launches
01:01:50 Hiring for Growth: When and Who?
01:08:55 Quick Fire Round: Onboarding, Notifications, and Growth Channels
AGENDA:
04:50 Benchmark's New Partner: Everett Randall
10:19 Revolut Raises $3BN at a $75BN Valuation: Another Loss for Public Markets?
28:39 Why Today is as Bad as the Hype of COVID in 2021
32:10 Why Vertical SaaS is a Bad VC Investment Today
36:14 Why Everyone Investing in Legal SaaS Will Lose Money
44:16 Why King Making is More Real Than Ever
55:23 Why Your Smallest Customers Need to Pay $10K Minimum
01:01:37 Why VC is a S*** Asset Class
01:09:29 Why Today is Harder Than It Has Ever Been in VC
01:25:18 Closing Thoughts and Reflections
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Deel, the $17BN global payroll juggernaut that just last week announced their latest $300M fundraise led by Ribbit, a16z and Coatue. Deel has been on the most insane journey, they do $1BN+ in ARR, they just had their first $100M revenue month and they have been profitable for over 3 years.
AGENDA:
03:38 Announcing $300M Fundraise at a $17BN Valuation
06:24 Rippling vs Deel: WTF is Going On? Where is the Lawsuit?
14:01 Why 1-1s Are BS and Leaders Should Stop Doing Them
17:31 Do Rich Leaders Make Better Leaders
28:33 Biggest Lesson from Ben Horowitz? Why Most CMOs Are Bad?
34:48 Lessons from Nik @ Revolut and Why Companies Need to Make Their Own Software
42:23 Deel’s Acquisition Playbook: Lessons from 13 Acquisitions
45:17 How to Price Acquisitions? How to Align Incentives with Founders?
55:45 Deel is Profitable and Growing Fast: When is the IPO?
01:01:35 Best Acquisition Ever + Worst Ever: What Did We Learn?
Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Field, and Elad Gil. Before founding Warp, Zach was Principal Engineer at Google, where he led development of Google Docs, and later served as CTO at Time. He’s one of the most respected engineering minds redefining the future of developer tools.
AGENDA:
04:14 Biggest Product Lessons from Rewriting Google Sheets
07:10 Why I Would Short Google: Leadership and AI Strategy
09:55 Comparing AI Models: GPT, Claude, and Gemini: Who Wins and Loses
17:04 Do Margins Matter in AI?
24:57 Adding $1M in ARR Every Week: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead?
33:58 How to Build Defensibility in a World of AI?
43:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins and Why?
44:25 Biggest Fundraising Lessons Raising from Sequoia, Elad Gil and GV
50:56 Why Sequoia are the Best VC
53:51 What Every Founder Gets Wrong in Fundraising
01:01:30 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts
AGENDA:
03:44 Rory Is So Old He Worked with Arthur Rock!!!
07:28 Goldman Sachs Acquires Industry Ventures for $665M
16:37 Thinking Machines Co-Founder Raises $2BN and Then Leaves for Meta
29:36 SoftBank Goes for $5BN Leverage Against ARM Stock To Buy More OpenAI
39:35 More Data Centres Than Offices: Are We In a Bubble
43:28 Where is the Alpha in Venture in 2025
51:48 What 90% of Managers Get Wrong About Portfolio Management
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers globally, generating more than $5BN in annual revenue. Atlassian now employs over 10,000 people across 13 countries and is one of the most successful bootstrapped-to-IPO stories in tech history. Mike is also a leading climate investor and co-owner of several major sports teams.
AGENDA:
00:00 Why Unreasonable Men Win in Startups
07:22 How to Make Co-CEOs Work
13:22 Are We in an AI Bubble? Is Everything Overvalued?
26:46 The Future of Software Development: More or Less Devs
32:53 Do Margins Matter in a World of AI
34:02 The Future of Vibe Coding…
36:35 Does Defensibility Exist in a World of AI
42:09 Is Per Seat Pricing Dead in a World of AI
49:01 The Founder Journey and Leadership
54:28 Quick Fire Round: Parenting Advice, Relationship to Money
Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team from to more than 6,000 globally. Under his leadership, Snowflake became one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in history, achieving a record-breaking IPO in 2020.
AGENDA: