The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a monumental, multi-year $20 billion compute agreement from OpenAI.
AGENDA: 
05:58 - Why we are not in an infrastructure bubble and it is just the start
08:00 - Sam Altman's superpower is his ability to forecast capex spend.
08:58 - Anthropic did not get a good deal with Elon. They got a deal that was available. 
10:39 - What is going on with the price of memory and why is it a problem?
16:40 - Are Google best positioned to produce tokens and what challenges do they face?
19:23 - Is Coreweave dramatically undervalued or overvalued?
24:34 - My biggest advice to entrepreneurs scaling their business 
30:13 - Why most of the layoffs are AI-washed and
33:41 - What will we spend on tokens for software engineers in five years?
34:48 - Why does the role of HR change so significantly in the world of AI?
35:36 - Why lawyers are the biggest inhibitor of enterprise AI adoption
39:20 - Why Jensen and Nvidia are wrong to sell chips to China
42:49 - What needs to change in the U.S. to build a strategic asset in chips?
51:00 - Should Cerebras invest in companies building on top of their platform; as Nvidia is?
53:28 - Nothing changed when Cerebras IPO'd but I did make 800 millionaires.

Chad Peets is one of the most straight-talking, no BS sales leaders of our time. Today, he partners with founders of the fastest growing companies in the world, like Harvey, Factory to build the best sales teams in a world of AI. 
 
Chris Degnan is a legendary technology sales leader who achieved the historic feat of scaling Snowflake from $0 to $4BN in ARR. 
AGENDA:
00:00 – The $100M CRO Packages Nobody Believes Are Real
04:10 – Why Most "Elite" Salespeople Are Actually Just Order Takers
08:00 – The Secret to Hiring Killer Sales Talent at Early-Stage Startups
10:05 – 20x Quotas & The Death of Traditional Pipeline Generation
16:20 – The ARR Scam: Why Most AI Revenue Numbers Are Fake
17:45 – Why the Best Engineers Do Not Want to Be Forward Deployed Engineers
21:10 – Why Paying Everyone the Same Kills Great Sales Organisations
24:15 – Anthropic's Crazy Compensation Is Breaking the Entire Sales Market
29:00 – The Brutal Truth About Replacing CROs & Firing Sales Leaders
32:20 – Forecasting in AI Is Completely Broken
38:20 – The Fatal Mistake Founders Make Chasing Venture Valuations
39:40 – Why Most VCs Give Absolutely Terrible Sales Advice
42:10 – Global Sales From Day One: The New AI Go-To-Market Playbook
44:15 – "Anthropic Is a $5 Trillion Company"
47:40 – The Death of the Traditional SDR & The Rise of Full-Stack AI Sellers
49:00 – Consumption Pricing, Vertical AI & Why SaaS Is Getting Rewritten
52:00 – What the Best Sales Cultures Still Get Right in the AI Era

AGENDA: 
00:00 – Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation & Andre Karpathy's Shock Move
04:46 – Unpacking Anthropic's $30 Billion War Chest
10:52 – The True Cost of AI Tokens: Is Salesforce Spending Too Much?
15:59 – The Bear Case for Token Growth & Why Software Leaders Must Adapt
22:56 – Public Tech Rebound: Figma & Datadog Crush Expectations
26:59 – The Death of Traditional Web Builders? The Decline of Wix & Squarespace
36:59 – Compute Starvation: Is the Semiconductor & Hardware Boom Sustainable?
45:59 – Cerebras IPO Smashes Day One: The Biggest Tech Public Debut Since Snowflake
48:17 – SpaceX Sets Date For the Largest IPO in History
57:28 – Y Combinator's Mic Drop Deal & The Drama Behind Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit
01:11:57 – The Looming Backlash: Mass Tech Layoffs and the Politics of AI
20VC:

Josh Browder is my favourite emerging manager. As the Founder of Browder Capital he has been the first check into unicorns like Micro1, Owner.com and Yuzu Health to name a few. He turned his Thiel Fellowship Grant of $100K into a whopping $10M angel portfolio. All new investments move into Josh's Four Seasons Residence where he then trains them on company building. They are only allowed to leave when they raise their seed round. In addition to this, Josh is the Founder & CEO @ DoNotPay, the now profitable company that has raised $22M from Marc Andreessen and others. 
AGENDA:
00:00 Why I believe young founders make the best founders
02:10 What do I look for in founders I'm investing in?
10:00 How I test for founder commitment pre-investment
11:00 What do I want to see in the childhoods of the entrepreneurs that I back?
12:05 Why I make founders live with me in my Four Seasons residence after investing
14:00 There are three reasons why pre-seed companies fail and how I solve for them
15:45 What do I look for in a team to assure me they will last?
16:50 Is $5 million post still attainable in this world?
17:15 Should we be worried about the increasing levels of fraud at the early stages?
18:10 Which Silicon Valley investor was the most impressive?
20:00 Do VCs really add value?
20:50 Does university carry less value than ever and should founders drop out if they have a dream and an idea?
24:00 The advice of one lawyer changed the entire trajectory of this multi-million dollar company
28:10 I would never invest in someone that I met over Zoom
29:20 Are all the best founders you invest in delusional?
31:10 What is the biggest benefit of being a Thiel Fellow?
36:20 The problem of accelerators and why artificial constraints can enforce quality
38:20 How we used Mark Zuckerberg's house as a viewing instrument tool to get users
41:20 My pre-seed cheque in Micro One is now worth hundreds of millions and my lessons
43:20 The biggest mistake VCs are making in assessing founders
44:10 Why I will never tell the entrepreneur what to build and why I place little value on ideas
47:00 Why kingmaking is real and why you should accept half the price from a tier one firm
49:00 My biggest lessons on reserve investing
53:00 Why price rounds are bullshit and we should do more SAFEs
54:20 What all founders need to know about signing with a VC
55:10 Single biggest advice to founders on how to get the best price
57:30 What role does not exist today that will be massive in five years' time?
59:10 Stocks are bullshit. Cash is bullshit. I put my money in land. My personal investing strategy
1:01:00 Why the Trump administration is unwaveringly good for US business
1:03:20 Why competitive markets are the best investments
1:05:40 The serendipity of San Francisco is unmatched
1:08:10 What things does no one know about Marc Andreessen that everyone should know?

Shiv Rao is the CEO and Co-Founder of Abridge, a leader in generative AI for healthcare. The company reached a $5.3 billion valuation following a $300 million funding round with investors including Jensen Huang, Henry Kravis, USV, Bessemer Venture Partners and Elad Gill. A practicing cardiologist, Shiv has scaled the company to 450 employees and partnered with major health systems like Emory and Yale. 
AGENDA:
04:00 — You just have to survive long enough to not die
06:00 — Did USV liking music make them billions of dollars?
13:58 — The three variants of an AI native company
15:00 — How do you know if foundation models are going to kill or help you?
22:15 — Why OpenAI and Anthropic doing consultancies is such an obvious move
41:00 — Biggest lesson from Jensen Huang at Nvidia
41:00 — What Founder Mode truly means
52:00 — What the founder of Duolingo taught me about sacrifice
56:37 — If I started a company again, Elad Gill would be the one investor I go to