Episodes
Oct. 30, 2017
20VC: YC's Ali Rowghani on Leadership Lessons From Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and Jack Dorsey & The 3 Traits All Truly Successful Leaders Share
is a Partner @ Y Combinator, the world’s most successful accelerator with portfolio companies including the likes of AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits, Twitch, the list goes on. At YC, Ali leads the Continuity Fund where has made...
Oct. 26, 2017
20VC: Why Decentralisation is Key For Digital Media Distribution, Why Gradual Decentralisation Is The Most Practical Approach and Why Incumbents Are The Biggest Barrier To The Rise of Crypto with Adi Sideman, Founder & CEO @ YouNow
is the Founder & CEO @ . Since founding the company in 2011, Adi has grown YouNow to be a global social network with more than 100 million user sessions a month, and creators now producing more than 50,000 hours of original live...
Oct. 25, 2017
20VC: Lightspeed's Nicole Quinn on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, Why M&A Has Not Been This Exciting For A Long Time & Why Amazon Is Never Your Friend
is a Partner @ , one of the world's leading venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Nest, StitchFix, AppDynamics and Max Levchin's Affirm, just to name a few from their incredible portfolio. At Lightspeed, Nicole...
Oct. 22, 2017
20VC: Semil Shah on How To Raise An Institutional Venture Fund, Why LPs Mostly Have Reserve Allocation Theory Wrong & Why IPOs and Acquisitions Are Severely Constrained
is the founder of , an early stage investment firm now investing out of it’s fourth fund, with previous investments in the likes of Instacart, DoorDash, Giphy, OpenDoor & Managed by Q. Semil is also a Venture...
Oct. 20, 2017
20VC: Eventbrite Founder, Julia Hartz on The Lessons Learned Scaling Eventbrite to Unicorn Valuation & $3Bn in Gross Ticket Sales
is the Co-Founder & CEO @ , the unicorn startup that is the world's largest event technology platform, powering over 2 million events around the world each year. They have raised over $330m from some of the greats of industry including...
Oct. 18, 2017
20VC: Lux Capital's Scientist-In-Residence on Why We Cannot Just Be Specialists Today, The Benefits of Interdisciplinary Thinking & Computational Creativity That Makes Man and Machine Partners with Sam Arbesman
is the Scientist-In-Residence @ , the fund that supports scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time, the more ambitious the project, the better. Sam works with...
Oct. 16, 2017
20VC: Founders Fund's Chief Scientist on Why AI Is Mostly A Scam, Why The Value of Large Datasets Is Mostly Overplayed & The Societal Effects of 4m Truck Drivers Being Unemployed with Aaron Vandevender
is the Chief Scientist at , one of the world's leading fund with investments in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Spotify and many more incredible companies. At Founders Fund, Aaron monitors the scientific impact of the portfolio,...
Oct. 13, 2017
20VC: Duolingo's Luis von Ahn on How CEO's Can Scale With The Company, How VC Herd Mentality In The Valley Really Works and How Chatbots & AI Play A Role In The Future of EdTech
is the Founder & CEO @ Duolingo, the leading language learning platform with over 100m users. They have backing from some of the best in the investing world with over $100m in funding from the likes of USV, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Google...
Oct. 11, 2017
20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
is what one might call, a master of all things seed stage and micro VC financing. Over his 18 years in venture capital, Samir has assisted or advised over 700 companies and 300 VC firms and has completed tech financing transactions totaling...
Oct. 9, 2017
20VC: Michael Dearing on 5 Key Principles He Uses To Assess Startup Founders, Why Benevolent Dictatorship Is A Beautiful Thing & Why Markets Are Better Capital Allocators Than CEOs
has established himself as an icon of early-stage venture over the last decade. With his founding of in 2006, he has backed the likes of Twitter, MoPub, Birchbox, 99Designs and PagerDuty just to name a few of his incredible...
Oct. 6, 2017
20VC: Why CEOs Must Read Less & Listen Less, What VC Funding, Shelf Space & Time Have In Common & Why CEOs Must Look After Themselves Like Athletes with Sami Inkinen, Founder @ Virta Health & Trulia
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup on a mission to reverse type 2 diabetes for 100m people by 2025. They have raised over $35m in funding from the likes of Max Levchin, Ev William's Obvious Ventures, Paypal, Ray Tonsing @...
Oct. 4, 2017
20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify
is the Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at , the e-commerce titan that has over 500 merchants in 150 countries on their platform. Prior to joining Shopify, Bram was a venture capitalist with OMERS Ventures, the...
Oct. 1, 2017
20VC: 3 Things Acquirers Look For In Startup M&A's, How To Price A Startup Acquisition & The Biggest Risk of M&A with Matt Switzer, SVP of Corporate Development @ Hootsuite
is the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development @ , the social media management platform that has raised venture funding from some of the best in the world including Accel, Insight Venture Partners and Fidelity. At...
Sept. 28, 2017
20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Rog
is the Founder & CEO @ , the smart development service combining top developers and designers with artificial intelligence. They have raised over $30m in funding from the likes of a16z, Redpoint, Marc Benioff, Ashton...
Sept. 27, 2017
20VC: Why VCs Have Forgotten Their Job To Invest In Entrepreneurs not Technologists, How To Know When Growth Creates Value and When It Destroys It & How To Bootstrap Learning Most People Acquire Over Decades with 8VC Founding Partner, Drew
Drew Oetting is a Founding Partner @ , one of Silicon Valley's youngest and most exciting new entrants to the VC market with $425m for their debut fund. In just a few years they have built a portfolio including the likes of Oculus, RelateIQ,...
Sept. 24, 2017
20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Why Career VCs Have Advantages Most Under Appreciate, Why We Are In An Infrastructure Renaissance & What Makes The Best VC Partnership
is a General Partner @ , one of the world’s leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. At Benchmark, Eric has led deals...
Sept. 21, 2017
20VC: Raising Over $700m From The World's Best Investors, How To Innovate In Highly Regulated Markets & The 3 Superpowers of Insurance Companies with Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO @ Oscar
is the Founder & CEO @ , the startup that makes health insurance easy. They have raised over $700m in funding from some of the world's best investors including the likes of Founders Fund, Google Capital, Thrive Capital, Lakestar, Khosla...
Sept. 20, 2017
20VC: Why Core AI Is Largely A Bunch of Nifty Tricks, Why Consumer Electronics Is The Hardest Thing To Do In Venture & Why Silicon Valley Will Dominate The Future of Robotics with Jeremy Conrad, Partner @ Lemnos Labs
is a Partner @ , the fund that believes in the earliest stages of building hardware, every dollar counts, every hour matters and every decision is crucial to success or failure. Consequently, Lemnos invests in pre-seed and seed...
Sept. 17, 2017
20VC: Index's Mike Volpi on Making The Move From Player To Coach, What It Takes To Build Generation Defining Brands & How Europe Really Stacks Up To The US Venture Market
is a General Partner @ , one of the world's leading venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Supercell and Deliveroo just to name a few. Mike currently sits on the boards of prior guests,...
Sept. 14, 2017
20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale
is the creator of Litecoin, the most popular alternative currency to Bitcoin, which Charlie created as a side project in 2011 while working at Google. Today Litecoin has a market cap of $3.29Bn. As well as creating Litecoin, Charlie is also...
Sept. 13, 2017
20VC: Why VC Is A Lifestyle Not A Job, Why You Must Do Post-mortems On Good and Bad Deals & Why Society Is On A Downgrade with Kathleen Utecht, Managing Partner @ Core Innovation Capital
is a General Partner @ , I would say one of the most under the radar but immensely exciting funds in market and they are looking to revolutionize financial services with their portfolio. With their portfolio are the likes of NerdWallet,...
Sept. 11, 2017
20VC: USV's Andy Weissman on The Future of The VC Industry, Why USV Does Not Vote On Investment Decisions & Why VCs Should Be Invisible
is a Partner @ , one of the world’s leading VC firms with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Zynga, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Lending Club and many more. At USV, Andy sits on the boards of YouNow, ScienceExchange, Figure 1 and previous guest,...
Sept. 8, 2017
20VC: How To Run The Perfect Fundraising Process, Why Time Kills All Deals & Why You Have To Get VCs Out Of The Board Room with Wayne Chang, Serial Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. His latest company, Crashlytics, was in a 9-figure acquisition, its largest acquisition at the time. 5 years later, Crashlytics was , this time by Google. Wayne is also...
Sept. 6, 2017
20VC: Why Investors Have The Biggest Problem with Bias, Why Our Job Is To Maximise Risk & Why It Is Essential To Get Good at Losing with True Ventures Founder, Jon Callaghan
is a founder of , one of the West Coast's leading early stage funds with a portfolio including the likes of Fitbit, recent unicorn Peloton, Automattic (makers of Wordpress) and more amazing companies. Jon also led the deals and sits on the...