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 22 I was offered £18M (all cash) for 20VC media company.

With any tough decision, I went for a walk with my mother, she asked me one question:

“What would you do tomorrow if you did sell the company today?”

Without a seconds thought I responded:

“I would start The Nineteen Minute VC and use that as leverage to win in investing.

When the alternative to selling is doing what you would already do, never sell.

Bet on yourself. Go long.

It was the single best decision I ever made.

Thanks Mama!

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

The best young people want to work in person, in office.

They want to optimise for personal growth and development.

Speed and quality of learning is 100% optimised in person.

The best young talent and CEOs all know this.

P.S. fully expect whining in the comments. Don’t worry, this wasn’t intended for you.

I started 20VC with $0 from my bedroom in my family home; with my mother downstairs in the kitchen.

She hasn’t seen me speak at an event in 6 years.

To have her come and see me speak at SXSW with Tara Keeney is a memory I will remember forever.

To all the proud mamas who sit in the front row and are always our #1 fan.

We appreciate you more than you know.

Call your mama today and tell her you are grateful for all the sacrifices she has made for you. ❤️

#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

Series A is the worst place to be investing today.

Company progression from seed is minimal.

Pricing is 4-5x the seed round.

So the price to progress ratio is f******. Paying 150x ARR for little sign of PMF, at best.

Plus, the competition is mega both domestic and US.

Go early or go late.

The reality of venture in 2026.

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

I am worried by the constraining exit options for venture backed companies:

1. IPOs: You can’t IPO with less than $500M in revenue and even then, it’s not a slam dunk. Everyone that has so far has been a s*** IPO.

2. Acquisition by Incumbent: Yes but they are so specific. Very specialised in what they want. Not nearly big enough demand side for the supply of venture backed companies.

3. Private Equity: More closed than ever. Thoma, Francisco, Clearlake are on a portfolio of zombies that will likely follow the same fate as Medallia. Will cause them to pull back significantly from SaaS M&A.

This is not good.

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

This is the big f**king deal.

Cursor acquired for $60BN by xAI

I sat down with Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll to discuss the deal, along with the biggest news in tech this week:

- Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets
- Anthropic Launches Claude Design
- Rippling Hits $1BN in ARR
- Cerebras Files for IPO

My notes below:

1. This $60B deal actually makes sense
The potential $60 billion acquisition of Cursor by xAI/SpaceX is an industrial "marriage made in heaven". Cursor has an exploding business with billions in ARR but "shitty" gross margins because they lack their own compute and models. Elon Musk has the massive Colossus GPU data center and a model (Grok) but effectively no revenue, making the vertical integration of these two companies a strategic fix for both.

2. How Claude Design Will Hurt Figma
Anthropic’s Claude Design is a full design application, not just a set of prompts or skills. It poses an existential threat because it allows product and engineering teams to bypass the traditional 30-day designer turnaround. By enabling "normal people" to design and move into production immediately, it will "maim and nibble" at Figma’s growth over the coming quarters.

3. I used to think MAUs and WAUs were the dumbest metric. Now I think it's the most important.
In the B2B world, usage metrics like MAUs, WAUs, and DAUs are now more critical than revenue. If usage isn't growing faster than revenue, it's a sign of a struggling startup or "stealth churn," where users have stopped active engagement despite the company still collecting fees. In the AI age, the ultimate test of a product's value is whether people are actually using its AI features daily.

4. Why the biggest fintech players are in for a shock.
Existing moats for fintech giants like Brex and Ramp are weakening as the selection criteria for vendors shifts. Customers are no longer prioritizing a dashboard's UI; they care which API works best with their autonomous AI agents. If a new vendor offers a superior API that allows an "AI VP of Finance" to automate tasks like collections, companies will switch vendors in a single week.

5. Agent fabric is the layer that manages all your agents
The defining 2027 challenge is the "agent fabric". The infrastructure needed to manage and secure hundreds of autonomous agents. This gives a massive advantage to incumbents like Salesforce. They are positioning themselves as the trusted governance layer to guardrail agents and prevent them from going rogue.

(links in comments)

Getting a job in venture capital is incredibly simple.

1. Choose three VC partners that you like and would want to work for.

2. Study the type and stage of company they like.

3. Send them one company every other day that fits their stage and thesis. Provide one line on why it is interesting.

4. Do this for 60 days and 100% guarantee you will have a job offer.

Show the freemium version of yourself.

#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

The idea that you have to be in SF to build a world-class AI company is absolute BS.

One of the best companies I have ever invested in is Solve Intelligence, AI for patents.

$1M-$12M (ARR graph below) with some of the biggest blue-chip law firms in the world, all in 12 months.

The team is one of the best, most cracked teams in tech. No chest pumping on social, no BS, just execution machines.

Europe and London can build mega companies. This is our time. LFG. 🚀

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

I really need to find unhinged founders.

I'm not looking for intellectually curious.

I am looking for unwaveringly obsessed, borderline psychotic individuals intent on changing a generation.

When you have that as a bar, it makes investing and founder assessment a lot clearer.

#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

I am going to piss off so many friends by saying this but if I could invest in one emerging manager sub $50M fund, it would be Joshua Browder.

A few things you need to know about Josh:

- He makes the founders he invests in live in his spare room at the Four Seasons until they raise their seed
- He turned his $100K Thiel Fellowship grant into a $10M angel portfolio
- He was one of the first cheques into Micro1, Yuzu and many more
- When he found out his father had been taken by the Russians, he was playing poker… (legend!)

I have never had founder references like the ones I got on Josh. I spoke to 12 founders. He averaged 9.2/10 across all 12.

This is one of the best episodes we have done in a long time and my notes below:

1. Why I Believe Young Founders Make the Best Founders
Young founders have no safety net and no option but to win. Corporate engineers often default to hiring big teams, while young founders stay focused on building the product. Their grit is much higher. Without that level of dedication, most people quit at the first real obstacle.

2. How I Test Founder Commitment Before Investing
To filter out tourist founders, schedule a pitch meeting at 11:00 PM. Elite founders accept immediately. Mediocre ones push it out by weeks.
During the interview, ask rapid-fire questions. If they claim a specific revenue number, have them pull up their live Stripe account on the spot. Look for tactical customer acquisition goals, not vague partnership promises.

3. Why I Make Founders Live With Me After Investing
The best early investments come from deep day-one relationships. Living together creates a focused, one-person accelerator where founders get a three-week crash course and avoid years of mistakes.
The rule is simple: co-founders share one room near the Four Seasons and cannot check out until they raise an institutional seed round.

4. Why Pre-Seed Companies Fail
Startups usually fail for three reasons: they run out of money, they run out of hope, or the co-founders break up.
Money problems usually come from weak pitching, which is why founders should drop the deck and show the product live. To maintain hope, ignore Silicon Valley vanity signals and focus on customer progress. To avoid team blowups, handle mechanics like vesting early.

5. What Founders Need to Know About Signing With a VC
VCs will say almost anything to get you to sign on the spot. They reverse-engineer your desires and claim they know every customer you want to meet.
Impressionable founders fall for it, but the promised intros often never happen. Never sign in the room. Take the night to think clearly.

6. My Biggest Lesson on Reserve Investing
Holding back reserves for later rounds has a huge opportunity cost. The biggest value creation happens at pre-seed, so saving capital for a Series A follow-on can limit your upside.
Deploying upfront into 20 to 30 pre-seed companies can produce far better long-term returns. Go all-in early.

(links in comments)

The best, most obsessed founders do not angel invest.

I asked a Founder/CEO the other day:

"Do you angel invest?"

They responded:

"Are you kidding me. To have the cash to angel invest I would have to sell stock in my own company to fund it.

Do you really think I believe any other business is a better investment than the dollars in my own?

So no, I do not and will not angel invest. Long my company."

That is a CEO I want to back up the truck on.

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

For the last 10 years, I have committed to being unwaveringly unbalanced.

I have not prioritised my mental health, I have missed birthdays, weddings, had heart palpitations, psoriasis and more come.

There is no way I would have achieved the success I have without such commitment and focus.

To build something truly special, you have to sacrifice what so few are willing to. That is why it is hard.

Do not listen to the BS that says you can have it all. You cannot.

Lock in, focus, be prepared for what is to come.

Mr Beast says it well below.

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

I just interviewed a CEO who said three things that blew my mind:

1. We replaced our $600K Salesforce contract with a vibe-coded CRM, built within 3 weeks.

2. We will get rid of 80% of the SaaS we use internally.

3. If Anthropic doubled pricing, we would not change usage in any way.

#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

"Attention is the currency of the future".

If you have a mega platform and are willing to write collaborative checks, you will crush the next decade of venture capital.

Jake Paul and Geoffrey Woo will outperform 99% of VCs in the coming years.

- Invested in Ramp Seed round, now valued at $32B.

- Invested in Chronosphere seed round, acquired for $3.35B in November.

- Invested in Anduril $8.48B series E, now valued at $40BN.

- Invested in Olipop $200M series B, now valued at $1.85B.

- Invested in Cognition.ai $2B series B, now valued at $10.2B.

For those who can effectively leverage distribution, the next decade will be extremely lucrative. 🔥

🔥 episode to come shortly. Stay tuned....

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

Seed investing is really very simple.

1. You have to invest in unwaveringly obsessed, unhinged founders. Very good does not cut it. Super smart, that is not it either. They need to be compelled beyond anything. Machines. Great examples; Jack Zhang, Alan Chang. Two of the greatest of our time.

2. They have to be in mega markets. Funds are larger than ever, outcomes need to be larger than ever also. $1BN exits do not return most funds. Size of market and speed of market growth matters massively.

If you have a beyond obsessed founder in a mega market that is growing, write the check, say thank you and help where possible.

It is that simple.

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

Founders, I am sorry but press/media do not care about your $3M seed round.

Don’t bother trying to convince them. They don’t care.

Focus on finding PMF, making customers love your product, building a personal brand (which you own and control) and creating value.

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

My team always tells me off for these types of posts, but age or arrogance, I do not care anymore.

I have interviewed 1,000 of the best founders over the past 10 years. None has impressed me as much as Nik Storonsky at Revolut. He scaled Revolut from nothing to $9.3BN in revenue this year.

I have gone over my episode with Nik to condense my biggest lessons from the discussion.

🚀 6 Lessons on Building a $75BN Company:

1.⁠ ⁠Build a "Self-Guided Missile" Team
Nik classifies talent into four tiers: Excellent, Strong, Average, and Below Average.

The Goal: Hire "Excellent" people who act like self-guided missiles—they select the goal themselves and reach it without intervention.

The Filter: Strong people need to be shown the goal but reach it alone; average people require weekly iteration.

The Rule: If someone isn't delivering within the first three months, they likely never will. "When there's doubt, there's no doubt".

2.⁠ ⁠Radical KPI-Led Leadership
Revolut is one of the most KPI-driven companies in the world.

Cascading Goals: They set 5–6 company-level goals per year, then quantify and cascade them down to the department, team, and individual levels.

Quantifiable Success: Every person and team is judged quarterly based on hard metrics, skills, and cultural values.

3.⁠ ⁠High-Velocity Product Betting
Revolut manages innovation like a venture portfolio.

Parallel Bets: They often run 20+ product bets in parallel with small, independent teams of ~10 people.

The 20% Rule: Out of 27 recent bets, roughly 5–6 became massive hits, 5–6 failed, and the rest fell in the middle.

Scaling: They only add resources to products that show immediate "up and to the right" growth in the first few months.

4.⁠ ⁠Embrace the Work-Life "Imbalance"
Nik challenges the conventional wisdom of a balanced life.

The Secret to Success: He argues that a disbalanced life is what actually allows you to achieve audacious goals.

Focused Sacrifice: The more imbalanced and focused you are on your objectives—sacrificing other areas—the higher your probability of success.

5.⁠ ⁠CEOs as Resource Allocators
The best CEOs "squeeze a lot of IRR out of very little resource".

Brainpower > Capital: Throwing money at a problem is a sign of the "wrong people." Real power comes from forcing yourself to find the most cost-effective and efficient solution.

Efficiency: Despite their scale, Nik remains highly cost-conscious, viewing people and marketing as the only significant overheads worth investing in.

6.⁠ ⁠The "Bar Raiser" Hiring Strategy
Nik admits he was "terrible" at hiring for roles he hadn't worked in before (e.g., Compliance, HR).

Market Intelligence: Before hiring for a new function, he now interviews the entire market to learn how the job is done.

Competency First: You cannot assess who is "good" until you have first acquired enough knowledge to evaluate their specific skills.

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

Jude Law generated $50M in sales pipeline.

Legora is onboarding 50 people every 14 days. 3.6 per day!

$100M in ARR in 18 months. $275M by EOY 2026. Wow.                                                         

Paul Graham described them as “ the most impressive startup I've been to visit in years.”

I sat down with Legora’s CRO, I took some notes and have added them below.

1. Implementation Change Management
Success is defined by change management, not just software. Legora focuses on helping customers adopt AI into workflows, which is fundamentally difficult. You must lead the customer through the “hard yards” of organizational change.

2. Why FTEs are Required in Enterprise
High-end AI needs human experts. Legora uses Forward Deploy engineers and former attorneys, known as Legal Engineers, to bridge the gap. They solve the “blank page” problem by showing exactly how a workflow looks with agents.

3. Throwing out the Traditional Sales Playbook
Old SaaS held demos back. Now you must demo early to show the future. Reps must be audible ready, asking deep questions and building agentic workflows off the cuff during the meeting. AI literacy is low, so the product must lead the way.

4. Brand Awareness as a Performance Driver
Brand awareness is a powerful driver of business, not “fluffy bullshit.” A campaign with Jude Law generated over $50M of qualified pipeline in one month. In category creation, if you are not “in the room,” you lose.

5. Price Integrity over Free
Legora does not give software away. If a customer is not spending money, they will not commit the resources needed for change. Price integrity ensures both parties have skin in the game and value the partnership.

6. Scaling Talent at Unhinged Speed
Legora hires 40 to 50 people every two weeks. Immersive training in Stockholm gets reps ready to sit on calls by week two. They use AI to score demo quality, identifying within 45 days whether a rep will make it.

7. The Lulucast vs. The Bet Your Life Forecast
Effective forecasting requires two perspectives: the rep and manager commit, or the bet your life number, and the Lulucast, which is the weighted math version. Accuracy depends on tight entry and exit criteria for every sales stage.

8. Momentum and Pressing the Advantage
Product-market fit is unwavering. When you have it, you know it. When you find something that works competitively, document it and press the advantage. In an unhinged market, you must play defense and offense simultaneously.

(links in comments)

Companies will spend more on tokens than they do salaries very soon.

Application layer companies have no defensibility, the model is the product.

Hiring researchers will cost you tens of millions of dollars today.

Everything you think you know about defensibility, token spend, labour displacement, will be changed following this discussion.

I condensed the core ideas which changed my thinking in my conversation with Brendan Foody @ Mercor below.

1. Why Frontier AI Labs Could Become $10TN Companies

Critics once questioned whether frontier labs could keep pricing power in a competitive market. Their revenue velocity now suggests the opposite. The opportunity around leading frontier models is so large that it could absorb a major share of macro demand. At least one AI lab may become a $10TN company within 5 years.

2. The Capacity Bottleneck: Demand Doubling Overnight

For top infrastructure and data providers, growth is no longer limited by customer acquisition. It is limited by execution. Demand is scaling so fast that leading companies could double revenue overnight if they had enough capacity. The challenge now is how quickly they can mobilize specialized human networks and build high-fidelity environments for enterprise demand.

3. Is the Stated Revenue Really Revenue or GMV?

The stated revenue is not GMV because the talent network is only one part of a vertically integrated value chain. Customers buy complete tasks for model improvement, not simple marketplace listings. With 30% to 40% gross margins, the business owns the full lifecycle, from sourcing experts to deploying AI project managers and running quality checks.

4. The Inversion of Corporate Opex: Token Spend vs. Salaries

In high-growth AI companies, token spend for internal agents has already surpassed employee headcount costs. As operations, interviewing, accounting, and fraud detection move to agents, capital allocation shifts from salaries to inference compute.

5. Why Token Spend Inside Companies Will Keep Increasing

Driven by Jevons Paradox, enterprise token consumption will keep rising as models improve and costs fall. Companies will use more compute to unlock higher-order reasoning, not less. F500s are responding by building evaluation systems that let them hot-swap models and optimize inference budgets.

6. The Tens of Millions Talent War for AI Researchers

The market for top AI researchers is severely supply constrained, with demand far above available talent. Companies are offering compensation packages worth tens of millions in stock per year to secure elite researchers. This wage spike shows that world-class research talent remains the core bottleneck in AI.

(links in comments)

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

This sounds harsh but it is true, very few of the guests we have on 20VC will be remembered in history for truly progressing humanity.

Our guest today will be thought of alongside Turing, Newton, Einstein and I feel immensely privileged and fortunate to have had the chance to sit down with Demis Hassabis.

For anyone who feels their dream is out of reach, just keep going. The 18 year old kid starting 20VC from a bedroom with no money, 11 years ago, would not believe that I get to press publish on this.

Chase your dreams. You never know what room you will end up in!

(Links in comments)

The story of Legora is absolutely nuts.

A couple of kids from Sweden decide to upend the AI legal market.

Raise $50K in angel funding and the journey begins.

Y Combinator beckons and with the advice of Gustaf Alströmer they raise a stellar “seed” round from Chetan Puttagunta @ Benchmark

In a matter of weeks, they raise a Series A from Logan Bartlett @ Redpoint

Then, the first board meeting comes and they tell their VCs, one thing, we will not be selling anything for the next 6 months. NOTHING.

Today, less than two years later:

- $2BN valuation
- $200M+ raised from top VCs
- $50M+ ARR (latest reported)
- 300 employees in US and Europe

The best shows are art (storytelling) and science (frameworks). This has both off the charts.

Spotify 👉 https://lnkd.in/eDpfYa3M
Youtube 👉 https://lnkd.in/eeVPNe9b
Apple Podcasts 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZQ5xycq

My 6 takeaways with Max Junestrand 👇

1. It Absolutely Is a Winner-Take-All Market

- The winner will grab 90% market share, #2-10 will grab the remaining 10%.
- You got to run like hell.
- There is no second place.

2. Ranking the Model Landscape in 24 Months

- Based on what I’ve seen in the last 3-6 months, the top model will be Claude or Gemini.
- It will depend on whether the context window is an important factor.
- OpenAI is going down the “let users fine-tune models” path, which I don’t have a lot of reason to believe in.

3. Every Large Enterprise Is Dipping Their Toe in AI, Treating It as an Option

- Law firms are still treating AI as a call option.
- They are only signing 1-3 year contracts.
- That is an extremely short amount of time for law firms.

4. The Transition From Seat to Consumption-Based Models: When Will It Happen?

- The timing depends on when the clients are ready.
- You need to make it easy for the buyer.
- If they don’t know how to manage a consumption-based pricing model, you can’t have it.

5. It Is Important to Play Competition at a Micro Level as Well as a Macro Level

- Macro level: Us vs. them
- Micro level: Our team vs. their team
- Marketing is competing for high conversion, engineering is competing for faster uploads…
- Have each team compete on a micro level, and celebrate wins like crazy.

6. There Will Be Less Junior Lawyers and Trainees

- Law firms won’t need as many people anymore.
- We are already seeing this pattern in law firms we work with.
- They are doing more revenue vs. last year, but they are no longer filling vacancies.

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

The amount of hype and BS going around about enterprise AI adoption is insane.

Aaron Levie is the most AI forward-thinking CEO in public markets today.

But even Aaron at $1BN+ in ARR is valued at $3.3BN and getting smashed by Wall St.

I sat down with Aaron to understand WTF is happening, what is real and what is fake in enterprise, WTF to do with token budgets and wrote up my notes below. 

(Link to full episode in comments)

1. Why Dwarkash Was Wrong and Jensen Was Right on Upgrading Systems
Upgrading software is a multi-year effort, not a "magical moment" where everything can be secured overnight. The reality of enterprise security is an ongoing, endless cycle of "leapfrogging" between defensive and offensive capabilities. Founders must realize that even with access to frontier models, the implementation cycle in the real world remains the primary bottleneck.

2. Why We Will Have More Lawyers in Five Years Not Less
The industry is myopic about job elimination; AI makes it easy to generate content, but it hasn’t made it easier to get that content approved by a court or a patent office. As clients inundate lawyers with AI-generated contracts and memos, the "ultimate constraint" becomes the number of qualified humans available to review and approve the output.

3. What Role Does Not Exist Today That Will Be Incredibly Common in Five Years?
We are about to see the creation of 500,000 to 1 million "Agent Operators". These technical-yet-business-savvy individuals will be responsible for "care and feeding" of agents—writing skills, understanding MD files, and redesigning workflows for agents rather than people.

4. Will Massive Software Providers Simply Be Turned Into a Database That Agents Crawl Over?
While the user interface may shift to chat, the value is moving to the API layer and the "business logic" embedded above the database. Systems like ERPs are more than databases; they contain decades of complex logic for supply chains and accounting that agents must interact with, not replace.

5. What Everyone Thinks About Enterprise AI Adoption That They Get Wrong
The assumption that the massive gains seen in AI coding will immediately translate to all other knowledge work is a "misread". Coding has specific idiosyncrasies that don't always exist in broader knowledge work, where human collaboration and regulatory loops are more complex.

6. The Budget of Tokens Will Have to Move Out of IT Spend and Into Opex
Enterprise AI shouldn't be treated as a tradeoff between software licenses. Instead, token budgets will move into regular operational expenditure (OPEX), where businesses trade off a marketing campaign for a more productive, automated marketing engine. This allows AI companies to tap into a massive pool of capital beyond the traditional, capped IT budget.

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

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

Today, she walks a marathon with me every Sunday (see today’s below), is the world’s best grandmother and is a professional Pilates instructor.

So two reminders for you today:

1. You are so much more capable than even you think. Do not give up. You got this.

2. Call your parents, today. One day, you won’t have the luxury and at that moment there is nothing you wouldn’t do to have the chance to speak to them again.

To all the mothers out there. Not all heroes wear capes but you are our heroes!

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

Sales teams today are way too cushy. Everyone wants to have their hand held and told they are doing great. Well, s*** is about to get real.

I have interviewed 100 of the best sales leaders over the past 5 years. Chad Peets is the most no BS sales leader I have ever met.

Today, I released our episode with him and have gone over it to condense my biggest lessons from the discussion.

🚀 8 Lessons on Building a $BN Sales Machine

1. Hire for "Obsessed" Grit
You need people who are "a little f**ked in the head"; those who wake up at 3:00AM thinking about work because they are genuinely obsessed with the mission. Chad prioritizes "grit" by asking candidates about the hardest challenges they've faced in life. He looks for military veterans or people who have navigated "serious shit" because startups are essentially life and death.

2. Hire for Today, Not Tomorrow
A fatal mistake founders make is hiring a leader for the company they hope to be in 3 years, rather than the one they are today. Someone who managed a $500M business often knows nothing about building from 0 to $50M. If you hire for "tomorrow" before you have a foundation, you will never actually get there.

3. Prioritize Net New Logos
At a startup, upselling inherited accounts is of little value. #1 priority must be pipeline generation and landing new accounts. When interviewing, if a candidate cannot detail every specific logo they brought in and exactly how they closed it, the interview is over.

4. Implement High-Accountability Attrition
Scaling companies should model for 25% total attrition and intentionally "shoot the bottom 10%" of the sales organization every year. If you don’t hold underperformers accountable, your "A players" will eventually quit because they refuse to be surrounded by mediocrity.

5. Error on the Side of Lower Quotas
If you have to choose, it is always better to set quotas slightly too low than too high. Setting impossible quotas leads to your best talent making no money and quitting, which is the most expensive mistake you can make. It is far easier to fix a "happy" sales force that is blowing out their numbers than to replace an entire team.

6. The In-Office Mandate
Inside sales is an in-office business. The sales leader needs to be there five days a week, sitting with the reps to maintain intensity and immediate feedback loops. Inside sales efficiency dies in a distributed model.

7. Respect Over Popularity
If a sales leader is beloved by everyone, they are likely the wrong person for the job. Winning requires conflict, and a great leader calls people on their shit to make them better.

8. AI will Replace Tasks, Not Sellers
SDR and BDR roles will likely be gone within five years as AI drives massive efficiencies in early-stage prospecting. However, high-ticket enterprise sales will remain human.

(Links in comments)

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

The secret that no one is talking about.

The world's best founders are angel investing in London's best founders more than ever.

In the latest round of Solve Intelligence, Patrick Collison, Aravind Srinivas, Justin Mateen, Cliff Obrecht, Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang all joined us.

In Fyxer AI, we had Marc Benioff, Marcelo Claure, Henry Schuck and David Singleton join us in the latest round.

In Rivan Industries, we had Patrick Collison, John Collison, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross.

The best founders in the world want London companies more than ever before.

Long London. Long UK.

This is our time. LFG. 🚀

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

It is BS to think we are in an AI infrastructure bubble.

Dario did not get a good deal for compute with Elon.

We, the US and Jensen should not be selling chips to China.

This is the best podcast you will listen to this week on AI.

My notes from my conversation with Andrew Feldman, CEO @ Cerebras:

1. Why We Are Not in an Infrastructure Bubble and It Is Just the Start

Unlike past tech bubbles that overbuilt ahead of demand, the AI infrastructure rollout is running significantly behind immediate market needs . Major chip makers face massive multi-billion-dollar backlogs because data centers cannot be built fast enough to keep pace with the exploding, real-world user demand happening today.

2. Anthropic Did Not Get a Good Deal With Elon. They Got a Deal That Was Available.

Founders are often forced to take action on what is available in the market rather than what is ideal. Anthropic’s deal with Elon Musk required them to buy "down rev gear", older H100 chips rather than cutting-edge B200s, leaving them a generation and a half to two generations behind the absolute leading edge.

3. Why Jensen and NVIDIA Are Wrong to Sell Chips to China

Widespread security consensus confirms that selling leading-edge tech to China means their military and government will inevitably leverage it to compete with Western industry . As an industrial adversary driving down global costs in vital sectors like solar and automotive, American chip companies should be completely comfortable selling fewer chips to protect strategic boundaries.

4. What the F**k Is Going on With the Price of Memory and Why Is It a Problem?

Exploding AI demand makes High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) the most critical bottleneck right after fab space. Because only three manufacturers produce this specialized memory and cannot keep up, prices have skyrocketed, allowing suppliers to command software-like 80-85% gross margins on hardware fabrication.

5. Are Google Best Positioned to Produce the Lowest Cost Tokens and What Challenges Do They Face?

Owning the full stack from data centers to chips gives hyperscalers an immense cost advantage over standard clouds paying high hardware margins. However, the historical downside is that your market is constrained strictly by your own internal demand, meaning hardware innovators must sell externally to maximize volume and lower unit costs.

6. My Biggest Advice to Entrepreneurs Scaling Their Business

Your initial focus must be entirely on winning just one customer. Landing that first anchor client forces your company to build the necessary operational muscle, adjust your supply chain, and learn how to properly service a massive organization so you have the capability to keep the next ones happy.

(links in comments)

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

Monday.com was once valued at $15BN.

Today with $1.3BN in ARR and $1.5BN in cash, Monday is valued at just $3.8BN. A 70% decline.

One of the hardest hit public SaaS companies.

Today I sat down with monday.com CEO, Eran Zinman, to ask the really hard questions that no one is asking.

Spotify 👉 https://lnkd.in/eWdHaRyn
Youtube 👉 https://lnkd.in/eKw_HHbs
Apple Podcasts 👉 https://shorturl.at/TNpmA

I condensed my takeaways from the conversation below. 👇

1. There Is a Big Difference Between Vibe Coding and Building Software.
Vibe coding is impressive, but a massive gap exists between generating a UI and building deep, functional software for an organization . Creating an interface is easy, yet the engineering required for enterprise-grade tools is far more difficult. This initial simplicity often masks the true complexity of software development.

2. Why Vibe Coding Will Not Disrupt Software Companies
Maintaining and adapting software over time is significantly harder than most realize . Because software is a minor expense for businesses, dedicating teams to custom "vibe coding" creates high costs that distract from core operations . These long-term maintenance and financial hurdles prevent vibe coding from disrupting established software companies.

3. Will OpenAI and Anthropic Capture Much of the Value in the Application Layer
Model companies may capture some value, but their total dominance is likely overestimated. History shows that AWS sparked a software boom rather than monopolizing it; LLMs will likely remain the infrastructure for a wave of new apps . Enterprise sales demand high-touch "hand-holding" that is not the primary focus of LLM providers.

4.The TAM of Software is Exploding
The total addressable market for software is expected to grow 100x as it shifts from simple tracking to actually performing work. This evolution will make software exponentially more valuable as companies capture this value during their AI transitions. This represents a software market opportunity unlike anything seen before.

5. We Will Spend Much More on Software and Much Less on Headcount: Is Jack Dorsey Correct?
Organizations typically spend 60-70% of their budget on headcount and only 7-8% on software. As AI dominates, CEOs will flip this ratio, scaling through marginal technology costs instead of expensive hiring. This shift drives massive efficiency by prioritizing high-value software over traditional headcount growth.

6. How Monday Is Using AI to Become More Efficient
Monday replaced 100 SDRs with AI agents, cutting callback times from 24 hours to three minutes while boosting conversion. Customer support is now AI-driven, and the R&D team utilizes tools like Cursor and Claude to accelerate output. By pushing AI across every cylinder, they are maximizing operational efficiency to stay at the industry’s forefront.

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

This week my mother had to change her MS medication for the third time. Sadly it had very painful and difficult side effects for her (managing it now).

This is her four days later, at her grandchild’s first birthday party. As always, the life and soul of the party.

As she always taught me, “you are so much more capable than even you think” and everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about; be kind.

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