Brendan Foody is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Mercor, the fastest growing company in history. The company solves talent allocation in the AI economy and they have scaled from $1M to $500M in revenue in just 17 months. With a rumoured new funding round pricing the company at a whopping $10BN, the company has the likes of Benchmark, Felicis, Emergence, and of course, 20VC, all on their cap table. 

AGENDA: 

04:34 Why My Mother Thought I Was Selling Drugs as a Kid

07:48 In The Time My Peers Graduated, I Created a $10BN Business; Is College Worth it?

10:27 Scale, Surge, Mercor, Turing: How Do Data Providers Differentiate

20:57 Scaling from $1M to $500M: We Quadrupled Since Scale was Acquired

33:43 Is There Too Much Cash in Private Markets?

34:55 Why Evaluation Benchmarks in AI are Total BS

35:44 Revenue Sustainability in AI Companies

36:48 Should Investors Give a S*** About Margins When Analysing AI Companies

40:46 The Future of AI Model Providers: Who Wins

45:58 You Cannot Create a $10BN Company without 9-9-6 Work Culture

48:56 We Literally Have Too Much Money, We Cannot Spend It… 

52:36 Quick Fire Round: OpenAI vs Anthropic, Lessons from Peter Fenton and Jack Dorsey

Amit Bendov is Co-Founder & CEO of Gong, the leading AI-sales platform. The company has raised over $600 million from some of the best in the world including Sequoia, Thrive, Salesforce and more. Gong has surpassed $300M in ARR, serves thousands of customers (including multiple Fortune 10s), and is valued at over $7BN. 

AGENDA: 

00:00 – Why CRM Was Always a Lie and Gong’s Secret Insight

04:30 – Will AI Kill Salesforce? Mark Benioff’s Nightmare

08:15 – Why 99% of VCs Said No to Gong’s Seed Round

12:00 – The Shocking Trial Close That Changed Everything

18:00 – Can AI Make Every Seller Perform Like LeBron?

20:30 – Will Sales Software Shift from Software Budget to Human Labor Budget?

25:00 – Why AI SDRs Are “Stupid” and Bound to Fail

35:00 – Gong’s Darkest Hour: Shrinking, Churn, and Losing Muscle

41:30 – The Re-Acceleration Playbook: How Gong Got Back to Hypergrowth

54:00 – Would Amit Ever Sell Gong—or Take It Public?

AGENDA:

[00:05] Musk’s $1 Trillion Pay Package: The Breakdown?

[00:15] Scale, Windsurf: Are Founders Just Mercenaries Chasing Cash Today?

[00:21] Ramp at $1B ARR, Brex at $700M — Is AI Causing All Boats To Rise?

[00:26] Sierra at $100M ARR Worth $10B — Bubble or Brilliant Bet?

[00:30] Kleiner Perkins Invests $100M into Anthropic at $183BN… WTF?

[00:36] $10B in OpenAI Secondaries — What Happens When 1,000 New Millionaires Hit SF?

[00:40] Anthropic Pays $1.5B to Authors — Fair Deal or Pure Piracy?

[00:44] Why Did ASML Just Invest into Mistral at $14BN?

[00:52] Atlassian Buys the Browser Company for $610M — Genius Move or Panic Buy?

[01:18] IRL CEO Arrested for Fraud: Is More To Come?

Mati Staniszewski is the Co-Founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the world’s leading AI voice platform. Since launching in 2022, ElevenLabs has raised over $350M, most recently at a $3.3BN valuation, making it one of Europe’s fastest AI unicorns. The company counts Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Sequoia Capital among its backers. Today, Mati announces that the company has hit a staggering $200M ARR. ElevenLabs took 20 months to hit $100M ARR. 10 months to hit $200M ARR. Can they do $300M in 5 months…

AGENDA: 

[00:00] $100M in 20 Months?! ElevenLabs Untold Growth Story

[12:20] Are AI Models Already Plateauing—or Just Getting Started?

[14:00] Why OpenAI Can’t Beat ElevenLabs 

[17:30] The Talent Wars: How Do You Retain World-Class AI Researchers?

[23:10] PR vs Product: Why Most Startups Botch Their Launch

[36:00] Are U.S. VCs Playing a Different Game Than Europe?

[44:00] The Real Cost of AI: Why ElevenLabs Built Its Own Data Centers

[59:00] Voice Agents = Multi-Billion Dollar Business of the Future?

[01:05:00] Buy OpenAI or Anthropic? Which Foundation Model Wins?

[01:09:30] Europe: Strengths, Weaknesses and What Needs to be Done

Alex Schultz is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Analytics at Meta, where he has spent nearly two decades shaping the company’s growth and marketing strategy. He has been instrumental in scaling Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to billions of users worldwide. Alex is is also the author of Click Here: The New Rules of Marketing, the definitive guide to modern growth — available now on Amazon. 

AGENDA: 

00:00 – Is All Marketing Actually Performance Marketing?

04:00 – When Did Facebook Have the Wrong North Star? What Did They Learn?

16:00 – Will AI Create Companies Run by Just ONE Person?

27:00 – Is AI About to Hit the Biggest Plateau Since Self-Driving Cars?

30:00 – Is China Secretly Winning the Global AI Arms Race?

38:00 – Does AI Kill Content or Supercharge It?

44:00 – Why Brand Marketing Is Harder (and More Important) Than You Think

47:00 – Will Glasses Replace Phones Forever?

51:00 – What Would Alex Do If He Were Sundar at Google Today?

59:00 – What is the Greatest Strength and the Greatest Weakness of Zuck?

Agenda:

04:00 – Anthropic Raises $13BN: The Analysis?

19:00 – Is Zuck’s $14BN Scale bet the biggest blunder in AI?

27:00 – Lovable Raising at $4BN and Vercel at $9BN: Justified or Madness?

36:00 – Quarterly Results for Snowflake, Mongo, Okta, Zoom Skyrocket: Is B2B SaaS back from the dead?

48:00 – Is Jensen Huang right there will be $4TRN in AI gains?

57:00 – Will AI wipe out SaaS margins with 10% GPU taxes? Or is Notion the exception?

Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:

Try NEXOS.AI for yourself with a 14-day free trial: https://nexos.ai/20vc

Nick Frosst is a Canadian AI researcher and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder of Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM. Cohere has raised over $900 million, most recently a $500 million round, bringing its valuation to $6.8 billion. Under his leadership, Cohere hit $100M in ARR. Prior to founding Cohere, Nick was a researcher at Google Brain and a protégé of Geoffrey Hinton.

AGENDA: 

00:00 – Biggest lessons from Geoff Hinton at Google Brain?

02:10 – Did Google completely sleep at the wheel and miss ChatGPT?

05:45 – Is data or compute the real bottleneck in AI’s future?

07:20 – Does GPT5 Prove That Scaling Laws are BS?

13:30 – Are AI benchmarks just total BS?

17:00 – Would Cohere spend $5M on a single AI researcher?

19:40 – What is nonsense in AI that everyone is talking about?

25:30 – What is no one talking about in AI that everyone should be talking about?

33:00 – How do Cohere compete with OpenAI and Anthropic’s billions?

44:30 – Why does being American actually hurt tech companies today?

45:10 – Should countries fund their own models? Is model sovereignty the future?

52:00 – Why has Sam Altman actually done a disservice to AI?

Jason James is the Co-Founder of Tezi and one of the leading product minds in the valley. Prior to Tezi, Jason was the VP Product at Instacart and before that was Head of Product and Design at Thumbtack. 

AGENDA:

00:00 Product lessons scaling Instacart to $40B – what really moves the needle

02:15 Why “quick optimizations” won’t build billion-dollar products

04:30 MVPs are dead? How AI is reshaping product development

07:00 Do startups even need PMs anymore in the age of AI?

11:30 The biggest product mistake Jason made building Tezi

16:30 Why most hiring managers fail at recruiting

20:00 The resume trap: how to spot if someone was just “on the elevator up”

26:00 The three roles founders always end up firing

28:00 Are most CPOs actually terrible?

36:30 The myth of startup “culture” – why growth is the only thing that matters

43:00 Did DoorDash actually beat Instacart? The inside take

48:00 Fundraising secrets founders never realize until it’s too late

AGENDA:

​​00:00 – Marc Benioff vs Snowflake, Databricks & Palantir: Who Wins the Data Cloud War?

05:10 – Does Benioff Feel The Need to Buy AI Talent Like Zuck Is?

09:00 – What Salesforce has Learned From Palantir on Forward Deployed Engineers?

18:00 – Will SaaS apps disappear in an AI world? Why Satya is Chatting S***

23:40 – Are SDRs really screwed by AI… or just evolving?

26:10 – Benioff on Who Wins: OpenAI or Anthropic?

30:00 – Nat Friedman reports to Alex Wang: Genius move or career downgrade?

34:00 – Anthropic’s $10B round: Have we hit peak AI hype?

47:00 – Klarna’s wild ride: From $45B to $6B to IPO at $15B

55:00 – Inside a16z’s seed machine: 72 bets vs Sequoia’s 27

57:45 – Martìn Casado: Is consensus investing dangerous—or the only game?

01:05:00 – The big lesson: consensus, contrarian, and why investing is harder than ever

Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and one of the most renowned SaaS investors. Byron has led 19 unicorn investments, including IPO successes like ServiceTitan, Procore, Twilio, Box, Gainsight, Intercom, DocuSign, SendGrid. His portfolio includes eight companies that have gone public. Insane. 

Agenda:

00:00 – Why are the stakes in AI higher than ever before?

05:20 – Is defensibility in AI gone for good?

07:40 – Do margins even matter when backing the next Anthropic or Perplexity?

09:50 – How does Byron think about future dilution when investing in AI today?

12:10 – With 40% of venture money going to 10 deals, is there any point investing elsewhere?

13:40 – Is vertical SaaS dead? Is there any point when the large players can own it?

18:00 – Will AI shift from the tech budget to the human labor budget and unlock trillions?

21:10 – Are we entering the era of billion-dollar businesses built by 10 people?

25:20 – Is treble-treble-double-double now too slow for AI companies?

33:10 – In today’s AI gold rush, is it better to scream the loudest or just build the best product?

41:10 – What specific growth rates are best in class, good and not good enough today? 

55:00 – Is venture now just a game of scale — Chanel vs. Walmart?

Agenda:

00:00 – Databricks hits $100B: Bubble or just the beginning?

03:15 – Is Databricks actually undervalued at 25x revenue?

07:40 – Are we on the verge of the biggest IPO wave ever?

11:30 – Can Andreessen’s Databricks bet return $30B+?

18:10 – Who really gets rich when mega-unicorns IPO?

19:30 – Is the return of Chamath’s SPACs the ultimate bubble signal?

28:00 – Should OpenAI staff be cashing out billions in secondaries?

33:30 – Founder raises $130M… then walks away. Is this the new normal?

36:30 – Nubank’s $2.5B profit: The best FinTech in the world?

48:00 – On Running at $15B: Can consumer brands still be VC-backed rockets?

52:00 – CoreWeave takes on $11B in debt: smart bet or ticking time bomb?

1:11:00 – Will AI spend really hit trillions—or is it all hype?

Max Junestrand is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Legora, the collaborative AI powering the next generation of lawyers. Now this is an insane story for many reasons; first, Max turned down a multi-million dollar career in gaming to build Legora. Second, he has raised from the best of the best including Benchmark and IVP. Third, he has scaled the firm with 1/6th of the capital of his closest competitor, Harvey have raised a reported $800M while Legora have raised just $120M. 

Agenda:

00:03 – From Pro Gamer to AI Founder: How World of Warcraft Shaped Max’s Mindset

04:58 – The $5–10M Gaming Career He Walked Away From

07:55 – Are AI Models Plateauing… or Just Getting Started?

10:02 – Swarms of LLMs: The 100x Cost Bet That Could Change Legal Forever

12:00 – Partnering With the Lawyers You’re “Killing”

15:00 – How He Cracked Sweden’s Hardest-to-Enter Law Firm

21:45 – The $500K Coffee That Saved the Company at YC

30:00 – Closing 15 Term Sheets in 7 Days – Why Benchmark Won

36:00 – Beating a $5BN Rival With a Fraction of the Funding

53:50 – Building a Cult Culture: The 9-9-6 Mentality in Europe

AGENDA:

00:04 – Was GPT-5 the Biggest AI Letdown Yet?

00:17 – Is OpenAI’s Real Target Anthropic’s $6B Revenue?

00:22 – Why Anthropic Might Secretly Be Worried

00:28 – The Hidden Business Strategy Behind OpenAI’s “Underwhelming” Launch

00:32 – Should Perplexity Really Try to Buy Chrome for $34.5B?

00:35 – The $3B N8N Deal: Genius Bet or Bubble FOMO?

00:38 – Why Datadog’s Best Quarter Ever Still Tanked the Stock

00:44 – Palantir’s 50% Growth at Scale – Can It Last? Is Palantir Overpriced?

00:53 – Shopify’s Ruthless Path to 91% Revenue Growth With 30% Fewer Staff

01:01 – Are Seed and Series A Valuations Now at Dangerous Highs?

01:06 – What Does The Highest Levels of Capital Concentration Mean For Early Stage Founders?

01:15 – Could Palantir Hit a $2 Trillion Market Cap by 2030?

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:

00:00 – Why Gross Margin is the Biggest Sin in the Early Days

04:50 – Why Most People Shouldn’t Become VCs

07:40 – Why it is BS to Suggest the Future of VC is Boutique vs Mega Fund

09:10 – Do Multi-Stage Funds Really Give a S*** About Seed

13:50 – The Founder Trait That Trumps Market Size Every Time

18:45 – How Spotify Still Haunts Index Ventures & What They Learn From It?

28:50 – The Brutal Truth About European vs. U.S. Founders

34:20 – The Case for a European AI Giant (and Who Might Build It)

40:50 – The Return of the 7-Day Founder Work Week

52:10 – Biggest Lessons from Leading Revolut’s Series A

56:40 – Betting Against Nick Storonsky? Don’t.

1:03:10 – The One Competitor Index Ventures Admires

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 into a household brand and selling it to Kellogg for $600 million. poised for over $100 million first‑year revenue  

Agenda for Today: 

00:04 – The One Piece of Advice from My Father That Made $600M

00:07 – Selling Protein Bars from a CrossFit Gym to $2M in Year One

00:12 – Why Raising Money Early Would Have Killed RXBAR’s Success

00:15 – Product vs Brand: What Every Brand Gets Wrong Today

00:17 – Why Red Bull is the Best Brand in the World? What Can We Learn From It? 

00:20 – Are Brands the New Religion? How Status and Community Really Work

00:27 – The Boiled Cod Stunt: Brilliant Marketing or Massive Waste of Time?

00:35 – Selling RXBAR for $600M: Inside the Decision and the TAM Ceiling

00:40 – $100M Overnight: What Really Changes When You Get Rich

00:44 – The Hidden Costs of Success: Health, Relationships and Obsession

00:47 – Why Peter Doesn’t Care What People Think… and Actually Likes Upsetting Them

00:53 – The $10B Plan for David: From Protein Bars to a Portfolio of Brands

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 

23:00 – CEO Compensation is Broken, Brian Halligan Doesn’t Hold Back

29:00 – The New Normal: Growth Rounds with Elon-Style Moonshot Packages

33:00 – Is Canva Next? Why Founders Should "Run, Forrest, Run" to the NASDAQ

36:00 – The Case for Going Public: VCs Are a Bigger Pain Than Public Markets

44:00 – Can AI Even Work for SMBs? Why No One’s Cracked the Code (Yet)

51:00 – Meta’s Monster Quarter: Growth, Cash Burn, and the Real AI Strategy

56:00 – CEO of the Year? Why Jensen Huang Leaves Zuck & Satya in the Dust

1:00:00 – Cognition's $15B Deal & Mass Layoffs: The Most Savage M&A Move of 2025

1:07:00 – Ramp’s $22B Raise: Genius Move or Suicide Round?

1:09:00 – CRV Shrinks, Benchmark’s Bet, and the Future of Venture Strategy

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 tenure at Databricks has been defined by hypergrowth, multi-product adoption, and world-class GTM execution.

Agenda for Today:

00:04 – The Databricks Origin Story: Ali, Ben Horowitz & 7 PhDs

00:08 – Ali vs JPMorgan: Turning Down $10M to Stay Cloud-First

00:13 – Prospecting Day: How Ron Scaled the GTM Culture

00:16 – Why Databricks’ Pricing Model Was Its Secret Weapon

00:19 – Enterprise vs SMB: The Risky Bet That Paid Off

00:23 – From $2M to $13M ARR: How Ron Built the First Sales Engine

00:29 – Can AI Replace Salespeople? Ron’s Brutally Honest Take

00:36 – How to Get Your First Million-Dollar Rep (and Keep Them)

00:42 – The Culture Secret Behind Scaling to 5,000 Sales Reps

00:45 – Why Databricks Waited Until $500M ARR to Go International

00:52 – What Makes a Great Sales Meeting? Ron’s Gold Standard

00:58 – The Snowflake Wars: Why Ron Says Databricks Is 5 Years Ahead

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:

00:04 – "I Had Cancer at 26 – It Changed Everything"

07:00 – Inside the $4BN Carnegie Mellon Endowment: The Investment Blueprint

10:45 – Are LPs Getting Screwed in Venture?

13:30 – 90% of LPs Shouldn’t Be in Venture – Here’s Why

16:00 – Seed Funds Are a Trap (And No One Wants to Admit It)

20:00 – The $140BN Problem with Multi-Stage Funds

24:00 – "Index Is the Best in the Game – Here's Why They Win"

29:30 – "The Dirty Secret of LPs: Brand Over Performance"

34:30 – "When Founder-Friendly Goes Too Far"

38:00 – "The OpenAI Bubble – Will It All Go to Zero?"

44:00 – "Ping Pong Diligence & Wildest Fundraising Stories"

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/Month Spend Reveal

26:57 - Cursor’s Growth Is Insane—But Is It Sustainable?

31:44 - Will Microsoft, Google, or Amazon Win the AI Infra War?

37:42 - Is GitHub Copilot the Biggest Miss in Microsoft’s History?

44:15 - Are Big Tech Incumbents Now Too Powerful to Fail?

48:00 - Apple’s AI Problem: Is It Time for a Management Overhaul?

52:30 - Figma’s IPO: $30B Return, Zero Hype. What Happened?

1:06:00 - Final Bets: Cursor to $4B ARR, Lovable to $400M ARR, OpenAI to $800BN?

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 computing stack.

Agenda:

00:00 – Analysis of Current AI Investment Landscape

04:45 – Will Anthropic Kill the AI App Layer?

09:20 – “The Oligopoly Is Coming—Just Like Cloud”

12:50 – Are AI Models Actually Terrible Venture Investments?

15:40 – Why it is BS to Put Down AI Apps for Having Temporary Revenue

21:30 – “Open Source Is a National Security Weapon—And We're Losing”

26:40 – “Have the Foundation Models of the Future All Been Founded Already”

34:30 – Why it is BS to Denigrate AI Apps for Having Low Margins

38:40 – Does AI Make 1x Engineers 10x or 10x Becomes 100x

44:10 – “We’re All Dead Wrong About AI and Job Loss”

50:30 – “The Only Sin in Venture: Backing the Wrong Winner”

55:10 – What People Think They Know About Wealth But Do Not

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?

03:15 – Why do most products suck—and what separates the great ones?

07:20 – Should we kill the PM role entirely? Fernando says maybe.

11:45 – Is Monzo’s obsession with trust more powerful than speed?

16:10 – What’s the #1 reason internal tools will never replace SaaS?

21:00 – Will AI wipe out the need for designers and PMs?

26:30 – Is it arrogant for product teams to protect users from “bad” choices?

32:15 – What’s the future of product when OpenAI controls the whole stack?

37:40 – What Monzo product blew up—and why no one saw it coming?

42:55 – Can a bank built on principles really become a $100B company?

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 or OpenAI at $300B?

24:15 – Inside OpenAI’s Secret Weapon: The Calvin French-Owen Memo

27:50 – Perplexity Just Crushed ChatGPT and Claude

32:15 – Will Cursor Build Their Own Models Before Anthropic Cuts Them Off?

33:20 – Figma’s IPO at $16B: Outrageous or Fair Game?

41:55 – 90% of Seed Funds Are Cooked—Is Rob Go Right?

52:15 – How Often Do You Meet a Founder Who Can Return the Fund?

1:08:00 – Which Seed Fund Would You Back Today?

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 a Body Shop” — Edwin Calls Out the Whole Industry

01:05 — Why 90% of Big Tech Is Wasting Time on Useless Problems

03:45 — “I Don’t Do 1-on-1s” — How Surge Kills Meetings and Still Moves 10x Faster

05:55 — Will a Single Person Build a $1B Company? 

08:10 — 100x Engineers Are Real — Here’s How to Spot Them

12:10 — Why Most PhDs Are Useless in AI Training

14:20 — Built to a Billion With Zero VC — Edwin Explains How and Why

17:00 — “No Sales Team, No PR, No BS” — Why Surge Stays in the Shadows

21:15 — The Real Reason AGI Might Take Until 2040

24:45 — Will Synthetic Data Kill Human Labelling? 

29:00 — “Academic Benchmarks Are a Scam” 

31:05 — Why the Real Bottleneck in AI Isn’t Compute or Models — It’s THIS

33:00 — What Every AI Company Should Be Asking (But Isn’t)

35:15 — “No, I Wouldn’t Sell Surge for $100B” 

39:00 — Is the Application Layer Doomed? Edwin Predicts the Future of AI Startups

46:30 — Have the Leading Foundation Models Already Been Founded? 

48:10 — AGI Could Be Dangerous — And Most People Are Ignoring Why

20VC: Scaling to $1BN+ in Revenue with No Funding: Surge AI | The Most Insane Scaling Story in Tech | 

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. Before Cognition, he was a founding engineer at Scale AI, helping shape the early AI infrastructure stack.

AGENDA:

00:00 – Why are founders walking away instead of going down with the ship?

01:05 – How did Cognition pull off the $220M Windsurf deal in just 72 hours?

04:45 – What really happened behind closed doors the weekend Windsurf was acquired?

07:15 – Did Google overlook a goldmine in the Windsurf team and IP?

09:00 – Who are the 100 people that secretly shape the future of AI?

12:30 – Can application startups ever gain leverage over foundation model giants like Anthropic?

14:15 – Is coding about to be replaced by simply describing what you want?

17:30 – 50% of new code is AI-written. Where does that go next?

20:45 – “We’ve gone from 0 to $80M ARR in 6 months. Quietly.”

25:00 – Are IDEs and agents just the training wheels for the real future of software engineering?

28:20 – If you could only back one—OpenAI or Anthropic—who’s the better bet?

30:00 – Why has Cognition kept its insane growth a secret… until now?

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?

23:00 Cognition’s genius $220M acquisition of Windsurf: Most brilliant Deal of the Year

26:00 The biggest recruiting flex in Silicon Valley this year

35:00 “Roll your own SaaS” is complete nonsense

38:00 Lovable vs Cursor vs Replit: who wins the coding war?

41:00 Why Lovable could be the ChatGPT of builders

44:00 Will these vibe-coded apps become durable businesses?

48:00 The shocking churn rates hidden inside AI SaaS

55:00 Are these $2B valuations actually... cheap?

56:30 Grok just destroyed GPT-4 in benchmarks—WTF?!

01:01:00 Why Grok might overtake OpenAI in the next 12 months

01:11:00 Meta just invested $3.5B in Ray-Bans—WTF?

01:12:30 Should every S&P 500 company buy Bitcoin now?

01:15:00 Will Meta kill open source? What happens to Llama 5?