Harry Stebbings

After 10 years and 150 seed investments, I realize we over complicate seed investing.

Find truly amazing people. Truly world class.

Invest in enough of them per fund. 30 plus.

Help where possible but do not get in the way.

Voila. Seed investing. 🚀

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Odoo is the best company you’ve NEVER heard of.

Built out of the countryside in Belgium:

- $650m ARR 
- Over 5,000 employees
- 50,000 companies as customers

They never want to IPO. They never want to sell. They DON’T believe in titles.

Everything you thought you knew about management, is wrong. 

My 6 key takeaways Fabien Pinckaers👇

1. Why Odoo Will Never Sell

- We never want to sell the company.
- We are always buying shares, every funding round.
- That is why we don’t mind if the share price is low.

2. Why There Will Never Be an Odoo IPO

- I don’t want the constraints & complexity of being public.
- Public companies tend to refocus on the short term.
- We always want to build for the long term.

3. Why It Is Easier to Scale With Young People

- It is easier to scale when you don’t need to get the top people.
- We recruit a lot of young people, train them & make them evolve.
- It is much easier than spending too much time  looking for the best VP of a category.

4. Hire Talent from Tier 2 Cities

- The key to scaling a business is talent retention.
- There will be high turnover rates when you are next to Google or Apple.
- We do not have that issue in Buffalo.

5. The Danger When You Have Managers of Managers 

- They all have ideas & want to do something.
- This will push everyone to complexify the company.
- You have to fight back against that if you want to keep your company simple.

6. This Company Allows Everyone to Have Their Own Titles   

- Some people choose to be directors, other people pick funny titles.
- We do not care.
- I want to push the idea that it’s about what you do & not the title you have.

(links in comments)

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding

Honestly, Lovable just breaks all scaling rules.

The fastest-growing startup in Europe.

🤯 $17.5M ARR in 3 months
💰 $2.1M ARR added every week
👀 85% Day 30 retention- better than ChatGPT
🚀 30,000 new apps built every single day

Just the start and my 5 Key takeaways with Anton Osika 👇

1. We Have Better Retention Than ChatGPT

- Our month-one retention on paying customers is better than ChatGPT’s.
- It is 85% and going up.

2. North Star Metric and How Many Hit It?

- We focus on how many users go all the way to site publish.
- We want them getting visitors to the sites they built.
- We have almost 40,000 paying users as the proxy metric.

3. When Your Comps Raise Big, Do You Have to Also?

- No, you can always bootstrap.
- They can outspend you on talent, customers & marketing.
- But the only thing that matters is execution.

4. Why Europe Is Not F***ed and Companies Will Be Mega Here

- Even though the US has a better startup culture, Europe has more raw talent available.
- I want to prove you can build a category defining company in Europe.
- We have a strong underdog mentality and that is crucial.

5. Why the Fastest Growing Company in Europe Turned Down YC

- We felt like at best we would get some acceleration but a lot of dilution.
- At worst it is a distraction to go to SF for all those events.
- We took some funding instead and focused on building talent.

(links in comments)

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #AI

In 2024 at 20VC we:

💵 Raised $415M

🎤 Released 104 podcast episodes

🦸 Brought 3 amazing investing partners to 20VC.

🦄 Made 15 investments.

📈 Had 100M downloads.

LFG 2025. It’s time to build.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

In Nov 2021, Doordash announced they were acquiring Wolt for a reported $8.1BN.

For their Series B Miki Kuusi was rejected by 70 VCs. The 71st, said yes.

Here is the wild story from our 20VC: 🔥 👇

1. Hire People Who Have Not “Done It”

Very few people do things twice in their life.

Hire for potential.

To build a successful company, you need to have a large group of people that do things for the very first time with you.

2. How To Use Compensation to Create Culture

People care about the things they own.

To make people care about your company, make them owners.

Make every single employee a stockholder.

3. The KPI of Success as a CEO

A CEO is the knight on a white horse, leading troops into battle from the front.

To build something big, you need to build a team that can succeed without you.

The biggest KPI:

If you die tomorrow, will the company still succeed in your absence?

4. Why Companies Should Act Like a Team, Not Family

A lot of companies say they want to be a family.

Wolt wants to be a team.

The difference is, a family will be a family no matter what.

Teams are defined by their capability to win.

5. The Biggest Sacrifice Founders Make

Founders have to sacrifice their mind, space, and freedom.

You will always think about what the company has to do next.

It can’t be turned off.

You have to learn to live with it.

6. Why Transparency Makes Leadership Less Lonely

In an environment with full transparency, teams come up with better solutions than a single person can come up with on their own.

This makes the job less lonely.

It makes the responsibility of leadership less heavy on your shoulders.

7. How to Build an Environment of Trust, Not Safety

A team is only as strong as the weakest player.

Give people the opportunity to learn and make mistakes.

If someone brings the team down, take them out of the game.

Create trust without a safety net for bad performance.

8. Why Growth Companies Are Glorified Recruiting Operations

Every senior person in a growth company has to be a great recruiter.

They have to get people as excited about the opportunity as they are.

9. What Makes a Good Company vs. a Great Company

The difference between bad and good companies is that bad companies don't know what to do.

With good and great companies, both know what needs to be done.

The difference is, only the great ones execute on the truly difficult things.

10. How to Create a Company Culture Where People Actually Care

Give people ownership over what they’re building.

Let them make decisions and have accountability.

The way you get people to care about the small things by giving them ownership over big things.

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #ceo #management #hiring #recruitment #sales #marketing #team

(Link in comments)

I started 20VC 10 years ago with one core belief that no one agreed with me on:

I believed a massive media brand could be used by a VC to help portfolio companies get the three most important things required for success:

1. Talent
2. Funding
3. Customers

Distribution is everything. Make sure you have it on your cap table. cc Din Bisevac.

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

I do not care how long it takes for a company to get to $1M in revenue.

But I do care desperately, how long it takes for a company to get from $1M-$50M in revenue.

The road to PMF is messy, post PMF, it is a game of execution and velocity (speed in a given direction.)

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

If you are starting the week and need some inspiration, 15 years ago my mother was diagnosed with MS and told her condition would worsen.

This weekend we walked back-to-back marathons on Saturday and Sunday.

She is a reminder to us all that only you set the limits of your abilities.

Make this week a great one.

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

The single best founders I work with share one trait:

They have a minimal time between decision and action.

Does not mean they decide fast. They can take a long time to make a decision but once decided, the speed they move at is unparalleled. No delays.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

HOT TAKE: When raising for a fund or a company at the early/small stages, do not send a fundraising deck pre-first meeting.

Investors will make pre-conceived judgments about your market/product/pricing etc etc and you are not there to walk them through it.

Do not give them a reason to say no before the first meeting.

Share a short paragraph on the focus for the company pre-first meeting. Use the deck as an assist in the meeting if needed to aid the discussion. Then if the discussion goes well, use the deck as a reason to follow up post-meeting.

#fundraising #invest #business #finance #money #venturecapital #success #career #seed #founder #founders #entrepreneur #startups #brand #content

Project Europe has product market fit so much faster and so much stronger than even we hoped.

In the first 6 months:

- 10 cracked teams invested in

So what… of those 10:

- 1 acquired by category leader

- 1 up round from top valley VC

- 1 accepted into YC and crushing.

This is just the start. We are hungrier, we are more ambitious than ever.

Come build with us.

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

To everyone starting a podcast now, I give you one piece of advice:

It took 125 shows before 20VC gained over 1,000 plays for a single show.

2 per week for 2 years. 🤯

This is a game of who can survive the longest. Start and just keep going.

Consistency is everything.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

When I was a child, I would go to bed and hear my mother crying in pain as she went to sleep.

My mother was diagnosed with MS 17 years ago and was told she would be in a wheelchair within 5 years.

Today we start four marathons in four days. 170KM. The woman has defied all odds.

She taught me, “only you can tell yourself that you are not capable of something and even then, you don’t see your own strength.”

To the strength of so many mamas who hold families together. We love you and appreciate you. ❤️

(Link in comments) if you want to donate and help more amazing people with MS achieve what they are told they would not be able to do.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

My single best investment from 20VC Fund I broke advice everyone gave me.

Don’t write small checks. If it is less than 1% of the fund, it won’t move the needle.

Wrong.

I wrote a $50K check. Today it is marked at $8.7M with upside. (Fund returner)

You will always underestimate the size of your winners.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Two reasons why 99% of seed stage companies don’t make it to Series A:

1. They don’t build something people want.

2. Co-Founder breakup.

Avoid these two and you are the 1%.

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Four core pillars to win in venture capital:

1. Sourcing (finding companies)
2. Selecting (picking companies)
3. Securing (winning the right to invest)
4. Servicing (helping them be the best)

If you are not using technology efficiently to do the above four, you will lose.

We found a company through Harmonic, within 24 hours, we had written them a term sheet for $5M.

One friend of mine has sourced 4 out of their last 9 deals through Harmonic.

If you do not innovate, you will be outcompeted. In venture, every 1% advantage counts.

First episode of my chat with Max Ruderman 👇

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #entrepreneur #startup #investment #20VC

Every week I meet three new LPs (investors in funds). Every week. Even when I am not fundraising. And... I never ever sell 20VC to them.

Why? The single biggest reason VCs struggle with fundraising is they do not build relationships in between fundraises.

They treat it like an on/off switch. This is wrong. You have to continuously build relationships and trust with LPs over time.

I never sell 20VC to LPs. I understand what is important to them, what they like, what they do not like, how they think about building a venture portfolio. I then advise them. I try to provide as much value to them as possible, with nothing in return.

I always get their Whatsapp at the end. Relationships are built, deepened and sustained when you get off email and onto Whatsapp.

I also ask them, what three other LPs do you most respect? If I do not know them, I ask for an intro? Every week, I get 6-9 new LP intros from the LPs I meet.

Lines not dots. Build relationships over time. Play the long game.

#founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

90% of founders make this one mistake when fundraising and it can kill the whole raise:

Good or bad; VCs like the illusion of something being “hot” or coveted.

When they ask; what is the timeline for the fundraise.

You must strike the perfect balance.

Bad: we are closing on Friday. (Does not give people time to do the work. Locks you into a timeline.)

Bad also: looking to close before Christmas. (Long timeline suggests no heat and momentum.)

Perfect: “we are super grateful to have had a lot of interest for this round. It is really important for us that we choose the right partner but people are moving.” Humble, shows respect for partnership but suggests they need to move.

*Follow @hstebbings1996 on Instagram and message me for “Three Other Ways You Will Kill Your Fundraise Without Knowing It”

#Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Just seen SetterVC's latest report on the most in-demand secondaries for private companies in Q3:

Top 3 Risers in the Top 30:

1. Canva up 8 places to #12
2. Crusoe up 7 places to #11
3. Anthropic up 2 places to #1 and dethrones SpaceX.

Flip side, top fallers:

1. Scale AI down 12 to #18
2. Circle, Klarna, Figma graduated the list post-IPO
3. Cribl, Flock Safety, Notion falls off due to buyer demand.

Fun fact: AI now makes up 20 of 30 spots on the list.

👇
Visit SetterVC.com for the full list

#investing #business #startup #investment #founder #entrepreneur #vc #secondary