Episodes
March 26, 2018
20VC: How Great VCs Handle Themselves In An M&A Process, Why M&A Has Become The Primary Method of Exit & How The Best M&A Teams Operationalise Their Process with James Loftus, Corporate Development Lead @ Square
is Corporate Development Lead @ where he has made multiple acquisitions and investments including the likes of acquiring OrderAhead and investing in Eventbrite. Prior to Square, James was responsible for strategy, business development...
March 23, 2018
20VC: How To Strategically Build The Right Investor Base, Why Startup Timing is Like Surfing & How To Determine Whether Someone is Scaling with the Organisation or Not with Daniel Lewis, Founder & CEO @ Convoy
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that really is the future of freight with trucking services powered by technology to drive reliability, efficiency and insights. To date they have raised over $80m in funding from...
March 19, 2018
20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
is a General Partner @ , one of Silicon Valley's leading seed funds with the most incredible portfolio including many previous 20VC guests Ryan @ Flexport, Florian @ Mesosphere, Alex @ Clearbit and Dan @ Convoy (episode...
March 16, 2018
20VC: Why Virtually All Companies Hire The Wrong Way, Why EdTech Is The Most Brutal Market & How To Scale Your Sales Team for Engineering Founders with Mike Sliagadze, Founder & CEO @ Top Hat
is the Founder & CEO @ , the market leader in student engagement software, and is used by millions of students at three-quarters of the top 1,000 colleges and universities in North America. To date, they have raised over $47m in VC...
March 12, 2018
20VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
is a Partner @ , one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin’s Affirm, The Honest Company and many more incredible companies. As for Alex, at Lightspeed, he has...
March 9, 2018
20VC: 2 Levers To Fundraising: FOMO & Leverage and How To Use Them, How To Implement "A Sustainable Growth Mindset" & How To Put VCs To Work For You with Leore Avidar @ Lob
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that provides a powerful suite of API's to deliver robust automation and scale for anything with a stamp. To date, Lob has raised close to $30m in funding from some of the greats of the investing...
March 5, 2018
20VC: Why, How and When To Think About Growth Teams, The Right Way To Think About Network Effects & Scaling from Phase 1 To Phase 2 of Startup Life with Anu Hariharan, Partner @ YC Continuity Fund
is a Partner @ , the growth stage investing arm of Y Combinator that has made investments in the likes of Segment, Lob (coming on Friday), Convoy, where Anu is a board member and RazorPay. Prior to YC, Anu was an investment...
March 2, 2018
20VC: The Right Way For Founders To Think About Capital Efficiency, How To Create A Culture of Continuous Learning & The Secret To Talent Assessment and Optimisation with Mariam Naficy, Founder & CEO @ Minted
has pioneered consumer Internet models since 1998, when she co-founded the first online cosmetics retailer, Eve.com, which was sold for over $100 million. Today, Mariam is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that uses crowdsourcing and...
Feb. 26, 2018
20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital
is a General Partner @ where he sits or has sat on the boards of Pocket (acquired by Mozilla), PrivateCore (acquired by Facebook), Sunrun [RUN], Sentient Energy and many more. Prior to Foundation, Steve was Senior Vice...
Feb. 23, 2018
20VC: The Fundamentals Of Optimising The Fundraising Process, SAFE's vs Priced Equity Rounds & Why Hiring Is Really A Big Data Problem with Chris Hutchins, Founder @ Grove & Former Partner @ Google Ventures
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup reinventing financial planning allowing you to reach your goals with personalized financial advice. Just last week they announced their seed round from some of the best in the business including...
Feb. 19, 2018
20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Being The First Investor in Snapchat, Why The Pessimism Around Consumer Is Wrong & Why Silicon Valley Is An Isolated Bubble and What Can Be Done To Change This
is a Partner @ , one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin's Affirm, The Honest Company and many more incredible companies. As for Jeremy, he is best known for being...
Feb. 16, 2018
20VC: How To Think About Founder-Category Fit, Why The Biggest Opportunities Are In Category Re-Architecture & What Can Be Done To Increase The Amount of Women In VC with Nadia Boujarwah, Founder & CEO @ Dia & Co
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that provides premier plus size clothing and styling for women. To date they have raised over $20m in funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Alfred Lin @ Sequoia and the...
Feb. 12, 2018
20VC: Dick Costolo on The Balance of Vision and Realism in Startups, The Biggest Challenge in Scaling Twitter & How To Optimise Decision Making Internally
is the Chief Executive and co-founder of , a startup that is reimagining the path to personal fitness. Dick is also a Mentor @ , one of the world's leading venture funds, which he joined in 2016. Costolo was most recently Chief...
Feb. 4, 2018
20VC: Why Vulnerability Is A Strength In VC, 3 Core Components That Make The Most Successful VCs & How VCs and Entrepreneurs Can Build Meaningful Relationships Pre-Investment with Brian Garrett, Founding Partner @ Crosscut Ventures
is the Founding Partner @ , one of LA's leading venture funds today with a portfolio including Super Evil Mega Corp, The Black Tux and Mobcrush just to name a few. Incredibly during the early days of Crosscut, Brian went back into a...
Feb. 2, 2018
20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that brings email, calendar, and an AI-powered assistant together to help you focus on what’s most important. They have raised over $10m from leading West Coast investors such as Satish @...
Jan. 28, 2018
20VC: Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham @ USV, How CEO's Can Operationally Utilise Their Board & The Single Most Important Quality of A CEO with Andrew Parker, General Partner @ Spark Capital
is a General Partner @ , one of the best performing funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Slack, Oculus, Medium, PostMates, Cruise (acq $1Bn) the list goes on. As for Andrew, he has led Spark’s...
Jan. 26, 2018
20VC: How To Analyse Platform Shifts Effectively, The Effects Of Not Having Free and Open Distribution & The Right Way To Think About Board Composition with Neil Young, Founder & CEO @ N3twork
is the Founder & CEO @ , the next generation mobile games maker and publisher with their services already touching millions of customers. They have raised over $17m in VC funding from some of the very best in the business including Mike...
Jan. 22, 2018
20VC: Why Brands Can Have The Same Revenue Multiples As Enterprise Companies & The Right Way To Think About Amazon In Today's World of Commerce with Eurie Kim, General Partner @ Forerunner Ventures
is a General Partner @ , the early stage firm dedicated to investing in entrepreneurs defining the next generation of commerce. Fun fact, they are the only firm to have investments in both Jet.com and Dollar Shave Club, two of the biggest...
Jan. 19, 2018
20VC: Why You Should Not Always Listen To Your Investors, The Pros and Cons of Strategic Investors & How To Approach Operational Efficiency with Scaling with Florian Leibert, Founder & CEO @ Mesosphere
is the Founder & CEO @ , the most flexible platform for containerized, data-intensive applications. They are trusted by some of the world's leading companies from Yelp to Yammer to Verizon and have raised over $120m in VC funding from...
Jan. 17, 2018
20VC: Sam Altman, Y Combinator President on What Makes Truly Great Leaders, Why We Will See A Compression of Seed Funding & The Future Scaling of YC
is the president of , the world’s most successful accelerator with alumni that includes the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Flexport and many more incredible companies. Sam is also the co-chair of OpenAI, thenon-profit AI...
Jan. 14, 2018
20VC: LinkedIn's Head of Corp Dev on Why and When Startups Should Start Relationship Building With Corp Dev, What The Structure of M&A Traditionally Looks Like & How To Mitigate The Biggest Risk of M&A, Integration Risk
is Head of Corporate Development @ Linkedin where she has led 40+ acquisitions, acquihires or investments. In terms of acquisitions, Emilie led the acquisitions of Lynda, Bizo, Newsle, Bright, Pulse, SlideShare, and...
Jan. 12, 2018
20VC: Why Risk Is Misunderstood In Entrepreneurship, Why Acquisitions Are Cheap For Incumbents Today & 3 Strategies To Improve Diversity In Your Team with Henry Davis, President & COO @ Glossier
is the President and COO @ , a New York brand that has taken the beauty world by storm. To date they have raised close to $35m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including past guests on the show Kirsten Green @ Forerunner,...
Jan. 10, 2018
20VC: 3 Key Differences Between US and Asian Tech Markets & With Such Large Incumbents Chasing Early Acquisitions, Is There A Market For Later Stage VC with Crystal Huang, Investor @ GGV Capital
is a Principal @ , one of the world's leading venture firms partnering with entrepreneurs in the world's largest markets, the US and China. At GGV Crystal led the firm's investment in Wigo (acquired by Cinemagram) and attends board...
Jan. 7, 2018
20VC: Why This Is Just The Start for Consumer Mobile, 3 Lessons China Taught About How To Invest Better In The US & How To Think About The Opportunity Cost of Capital Deployment with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
is a Managing Partner @ , one of the world's leading venture firms partnering with entrepreneurs in the world's largest markets, the US and China. Evident when looking at Han's incredible investments in the likes of Wish, Poshmark,...