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

Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and CEO of Atlassian, the company behind Jira, Confluence, Trello and Loom. Atlassian generated $6.5BN in ARR in 2026, and serves more than 350,000 customers, including over 85% of the Fortune 500. Today, Mike is leading its expansion into enterprise AI through Rovo and the Teamwork Graph, connecting company knowledge with AI agents. AGENDA: 03:00 Do AI Agents Turn Traditional Software Into Just Databases? 16:00 Will Enterprises Ever Trust Chinese AI Models? 20:00 Is Building Your Own AI Model a Losing Bet? 24:00 Can AI Startups Survive When They Finally Have to Care About Costs? 30:00 What Happens When AI Gets Cheaper Than Anyone Expects? 35:00 Is Company Context the Real Moat in Enterprise AI? 41:00 What Happens When OpenAI and Anthropic Come for Your Customers? 44:00 Why Are Young Founders Cashing Out More Than Ever? 49:00 What Does Nobody Tell You About Getting Rich?

Max Freeman is SVP of Sales at Ramp. He joined the company as its first sales hire. By 2025, he was leading more than 300 salespeople, helping build Ramp's sales organisation from the ground up. Ramp's latest reported revenue exceeds $1.7BN, with a valuation of over $40BN. AGENDA: 00:00 Inside Ramp's Sales Playbook 05:00 How Do You Find Exceptional Sellers—and Why Bankers Make the Best? 18:00 How Do You Build an Outbound Machine That Scales Beyond Your SDR Team? 24:00 How Do You Shorten Sales Cycles Without Slashing Your Price? 27:00 How Should You Pay Your First Reps—and Incentivise New Products? 34:00 How Do You Onboard Reps Who Can Actually Sell? 40:00 How High Should Quotas Be—and How Long Should Reps Get to Ramp? 44:00 How Do You Drive Customer Expansion and Forecast Revenue Accurately? 54:00 How Do You Grow as a Sales Leader Without Taking Over Every Important Deal?

Joinin the trio today we have Dev Ittycheria, CEO @ MongoDB. AGENDA: 04:00 OpenAI Nears $70B Run Rate—Anthropic's Lead Under Threat 12:00 Factory vs Cognition: Silicon Valley's Talent War Turns Ugly 23:00 Vinod Khosla Blasts His Own Portfolio Company 25:00 Reflection Launches Beam: America Strikes Back in Open-Source AI 34:00 ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuation to $22B 37:00 Salesforce Buys Listen Labs for $2B—Sequoia Cashes In 46:00 Vercel Hits $600M ARR as Agents Drive Half Its New Business 55:00 Former Groq Engineers Sue Over Nvidia's $17B Deal 01:01:00 Meta's Muse Steals the Show as OpenAI's Dots Underwhelms 01:05:00 Oura Pulls Its IPO Despite 74% Growth—A Warning for VC

Venky Ganesan is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, whose portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora and Higgsfield, alongside earlier hits Uber and Roku. Venky's own investment track record includes Palo Alto Networks, Upwork, Poshmark and Rover. He is a three-time Forbes Midas List investor and former Chair of the National Venture Capital Association. AGENDA: 07:00 Can You Still Do Seed Without a $1 Billion Fund? 11:00 How Much of AI's Revenue Growth Is Actually Real? 19:00 When Is "Overpaying" the Smartest Investment You Can Make? 25:00 Does Ownership Still Matter in a World of Trillion-Dollar Outcomes? 31:00 Is "Big Tech Will Buy Us" a Dangerous Investment Thesis? 36:00 Why Invest in Venture When You Can Just Buy the Magnificent Seven? 45:00 When Should You Sell a 40x Winner—and When Should You Double Down? 54:00 Can a $50 Million Fund Still Compete With the Venture Giants? 58:00 Quickfire: Is Benchmark Harder to Beat Than Sequoia?

Chase Lochmiller is the Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. Crusoe builds and powers the data centres that companies use to train and run AI. It has raised approximately $6.4 billion in equity, including its latest $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation. Its backers include NVIDIA, Founders Fund, Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners. AGENDA: 04:40 What Does Climbing Everest Teach You About Building a Company? 17:40 What's Really Stopping Us From Building Enough AI Data Centres? 25:50 Are Data Centres Really Driving Up Your Energy Bills? 28:05 Will Half of Planned AI Data Centres Never Get Built? 32:10 How Quickly Can a GPU Pay for Itself? 38:35 Will Your GPUs Become Obsolete Before You've Paid Them Off? 44:20 What Does It Take to Produce the Cheapest Intelligence? 49:50 Will Companies Building Their Own Models Eat Into OpenAI's Business? 51:55 Can You Build a $30B Company and Still Be a Great Dad?

AGENDA: 00:00 Highlights: Jack Altman Joins The Trio 05:00 Anthropic's S-1 Leaks: $8B Operating Loss and $518B in Compute Commitments 10:00 Instinct Raises $1B at a $10B Valuation to Take On Meta 25:00 AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B 39:00 Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO as Shares Plunge 20% 43:00 AI Startup Seeks $10B Valuation Just One Week After Seed 47:00 Modal Hits $15B Valuation as Baseten Eyes $26B 54:00 OpenAI Reopens Its $200 Plan—and Halves What You Get 57:00 Oura Pulls IPO After Targeting a $16B Valuation 01:03:00 Nubank Eyes $8–12B Monzo Takeover 01:08:00 Bessemer Raises $5.75B as NFX Switches to Its Own Capital 01:14:00 Anthropic Founders Move to Lock In 50.1% Voting Control

Alex Mashrabov is the Founder and CEO of Higgsfield, the third fastest scaling company to $1BN in ARR behind OpenAI and Anthropic. Reports suggest their latest funding round could place an $8BN valuation on the company. Prior to Higgsfield, Alex sold his prior company to Snap Inc for $166M. Alex was a competitive programmer as a kid, reaching third best in the world. AGENDA: 00:00 The Programming Prodigy Who Sold to Snap for $166M 09:00 Burning $10M: The Pivot That Saved Higgsfield 12:00 A $1B Revenue Run Rate in 18 Months; How Real Is It? 16:00 Will OpenAI and Google Wipe Out $20 AI Subscriptions? 21:00 Are AI Labs Gaming the Benchmarks? 28:00 Spending $4M a Month on AI; Genius or Insanity? 36:00 Are AI Moats Bullshit? The Great "Wrapper" Debate 43:00 One Full Day With His Son in Three Months: The Cost of Ambition 54:00 Quickfire: Is Snap Broken—and Will HubSpot Survive AI? 01:02:00 $10B in the Next 12 Months? Alex's Audacious Growth Bet

Parag Agrawal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Parallel, building web search infrastructure for AI agents. Parallel has announced $230M in funding from Sequoia, Khosla, and First Round Capital. Previously, he was CEO of Twitter, succeeding Jack Dorsey after serving as CTO and becoming the company's first Distinguished Engineer. AGENDA: 03:00 What Breaks When Agents Search the Web 1,000x More? 07:00 Speed, Cost or Accuracy: What Do Agents Really Need? 13:00 Will Tiny Models Catch Today's Most Powerful AI? 16:00 Is Model Routing a Commodity? 21:00 Is Amazon Making a Mistake by Blocking AI Agents? 23:00 Does the Ads Business Model Die in a World of Agents? 27:00 Can You Pay Publishers Without Killing Your Margins? 33:00 Why Parag Wants a Race to the Bottom on Price 43:00 What Stops Your AI Agent Breaking the Rules to Get Results? 45:00 Why AI Hacks Should Embarrass the Labs 52:00 What Parag Saw Working With Elon Musk

AGENDA: 04:35 Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Delayed. Cracks in the AI Boom? 10:30 OpenAI Faces $278 Billion Cash Burn. Out of Money by 2028? 12:55 Meta's Muse Hits No. 1. ChatGPT Finally Has a Rival? 17:05 Amazon Blocks AI Shopping Agents. Shopify Welcomes Them. 24:10 ChatGPT Inventor Launches Jev. Vercel's Fastest Launch Ever. 34:15 A $40 Million Seed Round. Is Traditional Seed Investing Dead? 39:00 Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm. Harry Calls BS. 54:00 Factory Triples Its Valuation to $5 Billion. Coding Is the Mother Lode. 1:00:20 Legora Hits $200 Million ARR. Is $11 Billion Too Rich? 1:03:50 Crusoe's $3.9 Billion Round. Is the Data Centre Trade Overheating? 1:08:55 Keith Rabois vs Airwallex. Fintech's Feud Escalates. 1:16:40 Sydney Sweeney for Airwallex? Lemkin's Wild PR Plan.

Daniel Dines is one of the greatest European founders of the last decade. As the Co-Founder of UiPath, he has scaled the business to a market cap high of $ 44BN in 2021, with the company now generating $1.72BN in revenue, growing 15% year-on-year. The company raised $2BN before its IPO, backed by Sequoia, Accel, CapitalG, Coatue and Kleiner Perkins. AGENDA: 05:00 Why Dario is Wrong About Millions of AI Einsteins? 13:00 Is AI Safety Becoming an Excuse to Kill Open Source? 21:00 Does UiPath Really Need 4,000 Employees? 28:00 Would You Help Train the AI That Could Replace You? 32:00 What Percent of Salary Spend Does Daniel Spend on Inference? 34:00 Can You Really Vibe Code Your Way Out of Paying for Software? 37:00 Why Would Anyone Take Their Company Public Today? 39:00 Could an OpenAI–Anthropic Duopoly Break Nvidia's Business? 45:00 Will AI Models Capture the Value—or Will the Apps? 49:00 Is Fireworks Still Undervalued at $15 Billion? 56:00 Has Europe Already Lost—and Should Founders Leave? 1:03:00 What Could…

Thomas Sohmers is the co-founder and chairman of Positron AI, building chips to make running AI dramatically cheaper and more energy-efficient. The company recently announced an $875 million Series C at a $5 billion valuation, backed by investors including Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, NEA, Valor Equity Partners and Netscape co-founder Jim Clark. AGENDA: 04:30 Why Does AI Inference Need Different Hardware from Training? 10:25 What Is Nobody Telling You About AI's Token Economics? 13:10 Should We Really Slow Down the AI Frontier? 16:55 What Happens If America Slows Down—and China Doesn't? 19:30 Should We Restrict China's Access to AI Chips? 20:15 Why Aren't Zuckerberg and Jensen Backing an AI Slowdown? 21:25 Are We Being Misled About Data Centers? 23:25 Can the West Beat China While Drowning in Regulation? 26:20 How Many Planned Data Centers Will Actually Get Built? 27:15 Data Centers in Space: Real Opportunity or Elon Hype? 28:10 Is Energy AI's Biggest Bottleneck? 29:55 Could the Debt Boom Derail AI?…

AGENDA: 03:40 Dario Calls to "Pace the Frontier" 11:30 Why the Fed Will Raid Anthropic if Needed 21:50 Meta Launches Muse to Take On Instinct 28:30 Instinct Raising $1BN at $10BN—Would You Invest? 39:55 Miro Sells for $1.35BN After a $17.5BN Valuation 47:45 Could Sam Bankman-Fried Win His Freedom? 51:25 WordPress Power Struggle: Matt Mullenweg Ousted, Then Returns 1:01:20 Mistral Raises €3BN in Europe's Biggest-Ever Tech Round 1:05:00 Adobe's New CEO & Canva's Slowing Growth: SaaS Giants Under Pressure

David Morehead is one of the most respected CIOs in the endowment fund world as Chief Investment Officer at Baylor University, overseeing its $2.6BN endowment. Before joining Baylor in 2011, he was a senior portfolio manager at several Chicago hedge funds, investing across corporate securities, distressed debt and public and private energy. AGENDA: 04:00 The Portfolio Construction of a $2.6 Billion University Endowment? 09:00 Why We Spend More Time on Porfolio Construction Than Manager Selection? 14:00 Should LPs Back VC's Biggest Names or Find the Next Breakout Manager? 21:00 How Baylor Made Millions in the SaaSpocalypse? 26:00 Are Public Markets a Casino or Are Private Valuations the Real Fiction? 34:00 How Do You Buy a Market Crash Without Catching a Falling Knife? 49:00 Would You Fire a Fund Manager Who's Making You Money? 57:00 Could the Backlash Against Data Centres Derail the AI Boom? 01:02:00 Which Asset Class Is Overhyped—and Where Is the Next Big Opportunity?

AGENDA: 04:30 How Do You Hire Exceptional People in the AI Era? 08:00 What Actually Works in Growth—and Why Can't You Trust Meta's Numbers? 17:00 How to Run Hundreds of Millions in Marketing with Zero Employees 19:30 "Our Engineers Stopped Coding": What Stack Does Eight Sleep Use? 24:00 Is China Leaving the Rest of the World Behind? 35:00 How Do You Turn Superstar Athletes into Investors and Brand Ambassadors? 43:00 What Happens When Your Co-Founder Is Also Your Wife? 51:30 Should You Match Anthropic's Salaries—or Let Your Best People Leave? 59:30 Will Children Born Today Ever Need to Work? 01:05:00 What Drives You to Succeed—and Why Can't You Ever Switch Off?

AGENDA: 00:00 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived 04:05 Instinct and GrokBot Ignite the AI Assistant War 13:32 OpenAI's GPT Astra Redefines What AGI Means 26:00 GPT Astra and Fable 5.1 Accelerate the Model Race 30:38 OpenAI's Chief Scientist Calls for Enforced AI Safety Limits 40:50 Tesla Launches Cybercabs as Travis Kalanick Returns to Robotaxis 45:55 Index Pulls Out of Town Deal Following Instinct Conflict 49:45 Anthropic Abandons $6BN Descartes Acquisition After Due Diligence 56:18 Robinhood Earns First Underwriting Role in Oura IPO 01:00:28 Wonderful Doubles to $5BN and Approves $170M in Secondaries 01:09:02 Thinking Machines Targets $40BN Valuation in $6BN Funding Round

Jean-Denis "JD" Grèze is the Co-Founder and CEO of Town, the AI work assistant reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $1BN valuation. Before founding Town, JD spent seven years as CTO of Plaid. Before Plaid, he was Director of Engineering at Dropbox. He is also a prolific angel investor backing companies including Modal, BaseTen, Merge and NexHealth. AGENDA: 00:00 Why AI Assistants Are Silicon Valley's Hottest Market 07:00 How Does Town Compete With Grokbot, Instinct and Big Tech? 11:00 Will We Have One AI Agent or Different Agents for Every Part of Our Lives? 17:00 How Many Mistakes Can AI Agents Make Before We Stop Trusting Them? 20:00 How Does Town Choose the Best Models Without Destroying Its Margins? 29:00 Is the AI Assistant Market Already Too Crowded? 37:00 Can Apple Win the Agent Race—and Are We Entering a Cybersecurity Nightmare? 41:00 What Does a Successful Town User Look Like—and Which Pricing Tier Makes Money? 47:00 What Will AI Agents Be Able to Do in Three Years That They Cannot Do Today?…

Cliff Weitzman is the co-founder and CEO of Speechify, the world's leading AI voice and text-to-speech platform, used by more than 60 million people globally. Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, Cliff first built Speechify at Brown University to help him consume written material through audio. AGENDA: 00:00 Cliff Weitzman Reveals His Biggest-Ever Strategic Mistake 03:08 Why Speechify Is Paying Millions to Build Their Own Data Centres 09:59 What No One Knows About Buying Chips That Everyone Should Know? 20:19 The AI Data Gold Rush Has a Brutal Business-Model Problem 23:42 How ElevenLabs Leapfrogged Speechify—and Why It Was Cliff's Fault 31:00 The $15M AI Talent War: Can Startups Still Compete for the Best Talent? 36:57 The New 10X Engineer: Ten Killer Decisions Every Day 46:12 The Voice-AI Bloodbath: Who Survives Commoditisation? 53:21 The Screen Is Dying—and Voice Will Replace It 57:58 How Cliff Plans to Use AI to Cure His Brother's Disease

AGENDA: 00:00 Nvidia crushes $96.2B quarter and nears $12.9B Hugging Face deal 13:52 OpenAI cuts off Cursor as the Altman–Musk feud escalates 17:40 OpenAI's 1,000-agent cyberattack triggers an industry wake-up call 22:58 Instinct hits $2.5B valuation as AI assistants gain spending power 36:39 Cognition targets $1.6B ARR as the coding-agent market explodes 40:31 AI forces every startup to become a compound company—or get left behind 52:42 Salesforce embraces Claude and outcome-based pricing in major AI reset 1:00:52 Stripe–PayPal deal collapses as both sides clash over price 1:02:31 Clay hits $7B and Linear reaches $100M ARR as agents choose their tools 1:11:52 Texas pauses Flock cameras as police-surveillance backlash grows

Aaron Katz is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickHouse, the real-time analytics database powering companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla and Microsoft. ClickHouse just surpassed $350M in ARR and raised over $1B from investors including Dragoneer, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, 20VC and Benchmark. Previously, Aaron was CRO at Elastic, where he helped scale revenue from approximately $5M to $500M and led the company through its IPO. Before Elastic, he spent 12 years at Salesforce, working alongside Marc Benioff and helping transform it from a 200-person startup into a global software giant. AGENDA: 4:05 Are we in an AI bubble? 13:40 How does software change when agents—not humans—make buying decisions? 22:28 Will 90% of tokens flow through open models; can enterprises trust them? 31:09 Why did ClickHouse sponsor Fulham; and could sports teams become $20B assets? 35:49 When will ClickHouse hit $1B ARR? 38:31 Can startups still win elite talent from OpenAI? Biggest remote work mistake? 44:54 Is zero-to-$100M ARR now…

Eno Reyes is the co-founder and CTO of Factory, the agent-native software development platform building autonomous "Droids" for enterprise engineering teams. Factory has raised $220 million, most recently a $150 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, from investors including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, 20VC, NEA, Blackstone, Insight Partners and Nvidia. Before founding Factory, Eno worked as a machine-learning engineer at Hugging Face, training, optimizing and deploying large language models for enterprise customers. AGENDA: 00:00 Are We Underestimating AI by an Order of Magnitude? 06:35 Why Can the Smartest AI Model Be the Cheapest? 18:51 Is Anthropic's Coding Business Really Worth $2 Trillion? 33:41 Will Continuous-Learning Models Help or Hurt Factory? 40:43 Will 80–90% of Neo-Labs Die in the Next 18 Months? 44:33 Should American Enterprises Work With Open-Source Chinese Models? 55:42 Must AI Founders Radically Rethink What a Great Outcome Looks Like? 1:04:30 Do Pedigree and Credentials Still…

AGENDA: 00:00 NVIDIA Launches a Three-Deal Blitz Across the AI Stack 04:31 NVIDIA's $12BN Poolside Deal Exposes Frontier AI's Capital Wall 15:39 NVIDIA Moves to Back Mercor at $20BN and Perplexity at $30BN 26:55 OpenAI Confirms 2027 IPO as Anthropic Seizes the Lead 40:42 Hugging Face Draws $13BN Takeover Interest as Open Models Boom 44:56 Citadel Cashes Out 80% of Its Leopold Aschenbrenner AI Trade 51:51 AI Boom Is "Less Than One-Third Over"—But Token Addiction Has a Price 01:04:07 Stripe Reaccelerates to 41% as AI Reshapes Software's Leaderboard 01:07:45 Instinct Security Scare Exposes Why AI Agents Still Cannot Be Trusted 01:23:55 VCs Name AI's Biggest Bubbles: Support, Defense, Humanoids and Roll-Ups

Julien Bek is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world. At Sequoia, he has partnered with companies including Rillet, Tacto, and Auctor. Before joining Sequoia, Julien spent five years at Accel, where he worked with companies including Miro, Melio, and BeReal. He is also an angel investor in Revolut and Attio. AGENDA: 06:35 – What did Julien only discover about Sequoia after joining the firm? 08:05 – What does everyone get wrong about Sequoia? 13:00 – Is Series A the hardest stage at which to invest today? 14:00 – Is Sequoia less focused on ownership as outcomes become larger? 19:20 – Does Sequoia simply pay more than everyone else to win deals? 22:00 – Is the "triple, triple, double, double" growth model dead? 25:00 – What is Sequoia's investment process really like behind the scenes? 27:15 – Can a partner still invest when the rest of Sequoia votes against them? 30:00 – Why can a flawless founder pitch actually be a warning sign? 31:00 – How do you judge whether a…

Jerry Murdock is the Co-Founder of Insight Partners, which manages over $90 billion in assets. Jerry personally backed companies including Twitter, Nest and Docker, while Insight's portfolio includes giants such as Shopify, Wiz and monday.com. Across three decades, Insight has helped produce 55+ IPOs and become one of the most powerful technology investment firms in the world. AGENDA: 00:00 — Is the AI Bubble About to Burst? 11:00 — Will Half of All Neoclouds Disappear Within 36 Months? 13:00 — Can Open Source Models Actually Beat OpenAI and Anthropic? 22:00 — Are We Entering the Golden Age of Cybersecurity Attacks? 32:00 — Have AI Valuations Completely Lost Touch With Reality? 42:00 — Is AI About to Wipe Out an Entire Generation of SaaS & Private Equity? 47:00 — Should We Ban U.S. Chips From Being Exported to China? 48:00 — Should We Be Fearful of Open-Source Chinese Models? 49:00 — Will Continuous Learning Kill Every AI Model We Use Today? 53:00 — Why Microsoft Remains a Mega Buy 56:00 — Which Mag 7 Giant…

AGENDA: 04:20 Elon's Deal of the Decade: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60BN 06:10 Why Cursor Was Surprisingly Cheap at $60BN 07:00 Why Zuckerberg Failed to Buy the AI Prize Elon Secured 12:00 Elon vs Zuck: Who Would You Rather Work For? 14:00 Will Microsoft or Amazon Now Race to Buy Cognition? 17:05 Stripe's $7BN OpenRouter Deal Creates Huge VC Winners 25:00 OpenRouter's Fatal Risk: Enterprises Don't Want 10 Models 28:15 Anthropic Turns Its First Profit on $11.5BN of Quarterly Revenue 32:15 Can Anthropic Really Reach $600BN in Revenue? 37:00 Why Every Elite Engineer Could Soon Get $100K in AI Tokens 39:30 Would Rory Buy Anthropic at a $2.5TN Valuation? 44:50 Silver Lake's $43BN Workday Bet: SaaS Isn't Dead, It's Mature 53:00 How Silver Lake Could Make $30BN From Workday 57:00 Lovable vs Higgsfield: Similar Revenue, Radically Different Valuations 58:00 Is Lovable's $13.3BN Price Actually Cheap? 63:30 Why the DOJ Is Coming After Andreessen Horowitz 69:00 Why A16Z Has "50 Legal Battles" Happening at Once

Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine. AGENDA: 05:39 – How was Mac the only survivor from the Travis era? 10:39 – How does Uber decide what to include in Uber One membership? 11:45 – How does Uber decide which new products to pursue? 16:08 – What does Uber need to do to reach 500 million users? 20:37 – Why Uber was right to focus on its core business and divest autonomy? 24:08 – Why India and Brazil will delay Uber's autonomous future? 28:34 – The craziest story from Uber's battle in China 29:27 – Why Travis Kalanick believed money was the moat? 31:17 – Was Uber structurally disadvantaged in China from day one? 35:48 – Inside Uber's SWAT team of its 30 best AI engineers 37:55 –…

Matt Swulinski is one of the best growth leaders in AI. He is currently Head of Growth at Viktor, the Accel-backed AI coworker. Previously, he was Head of Growth at Wispr Flow, where he was marketing hire #1 and built the growth function from pre-launch to millions of users. Matt also built the AI-powered marketing OS that automated 100 newsletter sponsorships a month and enabled a lean team to scale dramatically faster. Before Wispr Flow, Matt worked in growth at Superhuman. AGENDA: 00:00 Why SaaS Founders Should Steal the E-Commerce Growth Playbook 04:47 How Does PLG Change When AI Agents Become the Customer? 07:46 When Should an Early-Stage Founder Start Spending on Paid Growth? 10:36 How Do You Build the Tracking Stack to Know Whether Paid Is Working? 17:38 How Much Should You Spend on Creative—and How Do You Produce 500 Ads a Month? 23:10 How Long Should You Test Paid—and How Do You Scale Meta, Google and YouTube? 39:38 How Do You Build Referral, Paywall and AEO Loops That Compound? 49:46 How Do You…

AGENDA: 05:00 Canva's Growth Gets Slashed as AI Costs Explode 20:00 The Great Software Reset: Why 2026 Will Punish AI Hesitancy 29:00 Canva's Valuation Reality Check—and the LP Liquidity Trap 35:00 Google's AI Brain Drain: Jeff Dean Leaves, Demis Steps Back 43:00 Why Google Can't Afford to Cure Alzheimer's 50:00 The Data-Centre Revolt: Can AI Survive the Political Backlash? 55:00 Elon Musk's $55BN Terrafab Bet to Break Free from TSMC 57:00 Revolut's $50BN CEO Pay Package—and the Return of Founder Control 01:13 AI Shopping, Atlassian's Revival, and Airtable's Brutal Sale Reality

Alex Atallah is the Founder and CEO @ OpenRouter, the unified interface for LLMs. The company has raised over $153M in funding, with the latest valuation pricing the company at $1.3BN. OpenRouter is reportedly in an acquisition process with Stripe for $10BN. AGENDA: 00:00 Is OpenRouter Selling to Stripe for $10 Billion? 04:05 What Did Alex Learn From Scaling OpenSea? 06:38 What Did OpenRouter's Founding Thesis Get Wrong? 14:47 Is AI Model Routing Already Being Commoditized? 19:12 Do Falling Token Prices Help or Hurt OpenRouter? 27:16 Should America Be Alarmed by Chinese Open Models? 32:43 Will US Open-Source Models Compete With Chinese Models in the Next 12 Months? 39:26 Will the Router Be Swallowed by the Agent Framework? 48:56 Is Distillation Wrong—and How Should We Look at It? 50:01 Is the Reported $10 Billion Stripe Deal Actually Happening?

David Frankel is one of the great seed investors of our time. As the Co-Founder of Founder Collective he has backed the likes of Uber, Coupang, Suno, PillPack, Airtable, Whoop, Shield AI and many more. In a world of expanding fund sizes, David and Founder Collective are one of the only successful franchises to truly stick to small, boutique funds. AGENDA: 00:00 The Bubbles Are Getting Bigger—and There Will Be a Lot of Roadkill 05:21 The Worst-Performing Funds Will Be the $50M–$100M Seed Funds 25:06 "We're Greedy for Returns, Not Management Fees" 30:10 "Pro Rata Is the Original Sin" 32:59 "A $1BN Valuation Is the New Series A" 46:39 "I Have Never Seen Secondary Markets This Liquid" 58:03 Microsoft Has Done a Crappy Job of AI—and Another Dot-Com Crash Is Inevitable 01:08:25 OpenAI and Anthropic Will Be Disrupted—and China Could Do It 01:16:12 "Anyone Who Claims They Knew Is Full of Shit" 01:19:56 Our Children Won't Need to Drive—and Chemotherapy Will Look Prehistoric

Special Guest: Nikesh Arora, CEO @ Palo Alto Networks. AGENDA: 04:50 Airtable Sold to Bending Spoons for $1.285B 17:00 Leo Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Blows Up as Citadel Buys His $16BN Book 22:30 Anthropic's AI Models Breach Three Companies as Cyber Threat Accelerates 33:35 Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B as Chinese Models Crush AI Prices 38:05 Valar Atomics Triples to $6B as Sequoia Bets on Nuclear Power for AI 42:50 OpenAI and Anthropic Could Trigger a Massive Public-Market Dislocation 52:55 Big Tech and Palantir Earnings Ignite the Next Phase of the AI Gold Rush 1:04:30 Procore Buys DroneDeploy for $900M in a High-Stakes 12x Revenue Bet 1:10:55 Scale AI Hits $1.5B ARR After the Meta Deal Left It for Dead

Anastasios Angelopoulos is the co-founder and CEO of Arena, the real-world evaluation platform that has become a leading referee of the global AI model race. Arena has raised $250 million, with the latest round valuing the company at $1.7BN. Arena recently surpassed $100M ARR just eight months after launching its enterprise offering, powered by more than 30 million monthly users. AGENDA: 00:00 – Intro: "Kimi beat every American model": What Nobody Wants to Admit… 05:20 – Is this the true commoditization of models? Are they just a utility layer now? 07:30 – Do Chinese open source models cannibalize the closed frontier labs? 10:30 – Why has America's open source community lagged so badly behind China? 17:20 – Will Chinese models be banned in the US — and does hosting locally really kill the backdoor risk? 23:20 – Are enterprises really terrified of working with the frontier labs? 27:20 – Why hasn't inference got cheaper — and what happens when Anthropic's "disgustingly high" margins go public? 30:20 – Who…

Joon Sung Park is the Founder and CEO of Simile, the AI simulation company building foundation models of human behaviour; allowing companies to test how real people may think, decide and act before making a decision in the real world. Simile has now raised $300 million in total, including a $200 million Series B announced last week at a $2 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Index Ventures. AGENDA: 00:00 We Will Pay $100M for a Single Query on Some Models 10:00 Why Stock Markets May Not Exist in 5 Years Time 15:00 The Best Companies All Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies 19:00 The Best AI Companies Have Clear and Fast Reward Functions 24:00 How We Sign Fortune 500 Companies for $10M Contracts in Weeks 32:00 Does Similie Kill Kalshi and Polymarket? Prediction vs Changing the Future 42:00 Inside Similie's $300M Raise; What Every Founder Needs to Know

AGENDA: 05:00 Jensen's Open-Weights Letter Puts Anthropic on an Island 10:00 OpenAI's Model Targets Hugging Face in a Cyber-Security Scare 18:00 America's Open-Model Push Accelerates as China Looms Large 30:00 Etched Raises $300M to Take on Nvidia 34:00 Google Cloud Grows 82%—So Why Did the Market Panic? 41:00 Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7B for Atoms and Physical AI 51:00 Francisco Partners Raises $21B: Can Private Equity Still Save SaaS? 1:00:00 Mark Pincus Says Quit When It's Too Hard—Jason Lemkin Erupts 1:07:00 Stripe vs Revolut: Which $100B+ Fintech Would You Own?

Matt Murphy is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, who just raised $3 billion in fresh capital, its largest pool ever. Matt's portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora, OpenRouter, Chai Discovery, Axiom, OpenEvidence and more. AGENDA: 00:00 Why Menlo Broke All Its Investing Rules to Back Anthropic 09:00 Why Ownership Matters Less in an Outlier-Driven Venture Market 13:00 Do We Have an SPV Problem in Venture Today? 20:00 Do Margins Still Matter in AI? 23:00 Why Open Source Won't Derail Anthropic's Growth 26:00 Does Every Model Provider Need to Build Its Own Chips? 29:00 Why Anthropic Is Not a Threat to Legora 32:00 Why Series A Is the Hardest Place to Invest Today 36:00 Why Signalling Is B.S. and Every Fund Is Going Full Stack 42:00 Why Building a Company in Europe Is Hard Mode 47:00 Why Triple-Triple-Double-Double Is No Longer Venture-Scale Growth

Osvald Nitski is the Chief Product Officer at Mercor, the AI-training and expert-data marketplace powering frontier-model development. Mercor last raised a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, and is reportedly in discussions for a new round at a $20 billion valuation. Mercor crossed $2BN in ARR in June; doubling from $1 billion in only four months. AGENDA: 00:04:00 Will open-source models kill the data-provider business? 00:07:00 Are enterprises still terrified of working with frontier model companies? 00:09:00 Does every company end up with its own specialised AI model? 00:10:00 Do enterprises actually have an AI ROI problem? 00:11:00 How should founders balance AI performance against exploding token bills? 00:14:00 Does AI mean product teams build 10x more—or ruthlessly simplify? 00:15:00 What does it now take to be a great product manager in an AI-native world? 00:20:00 Is the boom in AI services and forward-deployed engineers here to stay? 00:37:00 Can Mercor escape its dependence on a…

AGENDA: 00:04 China's Kimi and Qwen Put Frontier AI on Notice00:08 Washington Debates Whether Chinese AI Models Should Be Banned 00:17 Can America Build a Profitable Open-Weight AI Champion? 00:21 OpenRouter's Moment: Is This the Perfect Time to Sell? 00:31 Fireworks' $1.5B Raise Signals the Real AI Money Is in Infrastructure 00:39 Why Every Great AI App May Need to Build Its Own Model 00:50 Stripe's Bold Play to Buy PayPal 01:01 The AI Funding Frenzy: Why Late-Stage Venture Is Winning 01:12 Nuclear Startups Go Wild While Databricks and Stripe Stay Private 01:15 The AI Supply Chain War: TSMC, ASML, DRAM—and Nvidia's Next Move

Lin Qiao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireworks AI, the leading specialized intelligence and AI inference platform that last week raised $1.5BN at a whopping $17BN valuation. With just 200 people, the company has hit $1BN in ARR and expects to hit $2BN before the end of the year. Prior to Fireworks, Lin spent several years at Meta including on the founding team of PyTorch. AGENDA: 00:07 — Why Did Fireworks Bet on Inference When Everyone Else Was Chasing Training? 00:13 — Can Open-Source Models Turn AI Infrastructure into a Commodity? 00:19 — Should Enterprises Trust Chinese Open Models With Their Most Sensitive Data? 00:25 — Will Model Progress Keep Moving This Fast—or Are We Nearing a Plateau? 00:28 — Will the Multi-Model World Create a $100BN Routing Layer? 00:37 — How Much Will AI Token Usage Explode Over the Next Two Years? 00:43 — Will Token Costs Fall 10x—and Unleash 100x More Demand? 00:49 — Does Fireworks Eventually Have to Build Its Own Data Centres? 01:02 — What Is the Real Bottleneck Holding Back…

Fred Turner is the Founder and CEO @ Curative, one of the wildest stories in tech. Fred scaled a COVID testing business from $0 to $5BN in revenue and took the team from 7 to 7,000 employees in just 9 months. They did over 206,000 COVID tests in a single day and signed contracts in the 100s of $Ms with several of the largest states. Today, Curative is a unicorn health insurance business taking on the incumbents for one of the largest markets in healthcare. AGENDA: 00:00 How Did a Spare-Time COVID Test Become a $5BN Business? 07:00 How Do You Go From Testing Cows to STDs, Sepsis and COVID? 21:00 When Did Fred Realise COVID Was Massive—and How Did Curative Scale to $5BN? 36:00 Why Pivot Into Health Insurance—and What Is Broken About US Healthcare? 40:00 How Is AI Rebuilding Curative—and Which Departments Go to Zero? 45:00 Is SaaS Dead? Why Is Curative Cutting 80% of Its Software Spend? 48:00 Are Legacy Insurers Screwed? What Will Anthropic Be Worth in Three Years? 59:00 Will AI Make Companies Smaller? Which…

AGENDA: 00:00 – Apple SUES OpenAI: Did They Steal Apple's Biggest Secrets? 05:10 – Is OpenAI's $6BN Hardware Bet Already Dead? 12:50 – Zuckerberg Is Back: Meta Finally Takes On OpenAI 18:05 – The AI Spending Bubble Nobody Is Talking About 23:45 – Claude Is Coming for Designers, Product Managers & Figma 27:15 – Anthropic's $50BN Explosion: Have We Already Hit AI's TAM? 36:00 – The $26BN AI IPO Powering the Entire Industry 40:00 – Seed Investing Is Dead? Jason Calacanis Changes Strategy 57:00 – SaaS Is in Trouble: AI Is Accelerating Terminal Decay 01:15:00 – Why Greylock Said No to Billions of Extra Dollars

Avishai Abrahami is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wix, the NASDAQ-listed website creation platform serving millions of businesses worldwide. Today, Wix generates more than $2BN in ARR and has a market capitalization of approximately $2.1BN, after reaching a peak valuation of $17BN over the past two years. The company also acquired Base44, one of the fastest-growing AI application-building platforms, scaling it to $150M in ARR in record time. AGENDA: 00:00 The SaaS Apocalypse: What Does Wall Street Still Not Understand About Wix? 07:00 Is the Market Valuing Wix's Core Business at Less Than Zero? 12:55 Will AI Kill Wix... or Make Base44 Bigger Than the Entire Company? 19:15 "You Are NOT Going to Vibe Code Shopify" — Why Everyone Is Getting AI Wrong 23:00 Would You Really Pay $80M for a One-Person Startup? 24:15 The Buyback Disaster: Would Avishai Do It All Again? 31:00 Why Every AI Customer Support Startup Keeps Failing (According to Wix) 37:00 Should a 22-Year-Old Still Learn to Code in the Age of AI? 42:20 Has…

Arvind Jain is the Founder & CEO of Glean, the enterprise AI leader valued at $7.2 billion after raising more than $770 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, DST Global, and more. Before Glean, Arvind co-founded Rubrik, helping build it into one of the world's leading cloud infrastructure companies before its successful IPO. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, working across Search, Maps, and YouTube. AGENDA: 00:00 – The Shocking Truth About Frontier AI: 90% Is Already a Commodity 02:04 – Can OpenAI & Anthropic Own Enterprise AI? The Battle for the Workplace Begins 10:18 – Will OpenAI and Anthropic Win the App Layer 18:03 – Microsoft Is the Real Enemy… Not OpenAI? 20:53 – "Where's the ROI?" Why Enterprises Are Starting to Question the AI Hype 26:00 – Will AI Replace Your Job? Harry & Arvind's Heated Clash Over the Future of Work 33:43 – The Billion-Dollar Mistake Every AI Company Is Making on Token Spend 39:20 – The AI Land Grab Is On: Why Founders Must…

AGENDA: 05:00 Washington Just Put Frontier AI on a Leash 06:30 Sam Altman's Wild 5% Government Stake Idea 19:00 The AI Funding Bubble: Why Founders No Longer Fear Dilution 28:00 Alex Karp's Brutal Warning: Enterprises Don't Trust Frontier AI 33:00 Meta's Shock Pivot: Has Zuck Accidentally Built the Next CoreWeave? 41:00 Nvidia's Dangerous New Game: "Compute Now, Pay Later" 45:00 Anthropic & DeepSeek Go After Nvidia's Crown 48:00 Kling vs Sora: Did China Just Win AI Video? 52:00 Is China Secretly Winning the Open Source AI War? 01:02:00 Microsoft & Amazon's $6B Bet: AI Still Needs Humans 01:11:00 Ashton Kutcher Walks Away From Sound Ventures 01:16:00 The New Startup Talent War: No Liquidity, No Chance 01:20:00 Final Thoughts: Who Wins the AI Endgame?

Mike Mignano is a General Partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the most iconic venture firms in the world, whose investments include Coinbase, Stripe, Etsy, Twilio, Cloudflare. Before joining USV, Mike was a Partner at Lightspeed, where he backed breakout AI companies including Granola and Suno. Prior to investing, he co-founded Anchor, acquired by Spotify. AGENDA: 00:00 Is Fear of Failure the Secret Weapon Behind Great Founders? 07:20 Why Leave Lightspeed for USV — and Is Thesis-Driven Venture Still Alive? 09:50 Is the Real AI Money Still in Infrastructure, or Are Apps Finally About to Explode? 13:00 Who Wins the AI Model War: OpenAI, Anthropic, Open Source, or the "Rebel Alliance"? 19:00 Are We About to Hand Our Entire Lives Over to AI Agents? 21:00 Can Anthropic Keep Growing Like This — or Will Token Spend Break the Model? 26:00 Can AI Routing Become a $50BN Company, or Is It Just a Commodity Pipe? 30:00 Will the AI Energy Crisis Create the Next Monster Venture Outcomes? 36:00 Can Startups Survive…

Clay Bavor is the Co-Founder of Sierra, one of the world's fastest-growing enterprise AI companies. Sierra is valued at approximately $15.8 billion, has raised more than $1.5BN from leading investors including Sequoia, Benchmark, Greenoaks, GV and Tiger Global, and today serves more than 40% of the Fortune 50. The company recently surpassed $150 ARR, making it one of the fastest-growing enterprise software businesses in history. AGENDA: 00:00 – Why Frontier AI Demand Will Be Unlimited 08:00 – Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? 17:00 – China's AI Advantage & The Distillation Debate 20:30 – Inside Sierra: The AI Agents Running the Entire Company 24:00 – The $100,000 Token Budget Every Engineer Will Soon Need 29:00 – Building AI for 40% of the Fortune 50 37:00 – Why Forward-Deployed Engineers Are the Future of Enterprise AI 43:00 – Sierra's Unusual Board Meetings & Billion-Dollar Company Playbook 48:00 – The Four Values Behind a $16B Startup: Craftsmanship, Intensity & Family 56:00 – Clay…

AGENDA: 00:00 Coinbase Slashes AI Spend 50%—Is the AI Token Bubble Bursting? 12:55 Anthropic Warns Open Source Could Destroy the AI Business Model 18:10 Dario Escalates the AI War with China & Open-Source 22:00 Should the US Ban Chinese AI Models? 33:15 Microsoft's AI Strategy Is Breaking Down 38:00 Kalshi's $40B Valuation Signals a New Consumer Gold Rush 41:15 Has SpaceX Frozen the AI IPO Market? 43:20 Why Bending Spoons May Be the Smartest IPO of the Year 46:00 The $100B Opportunity to Buy Broken SaaS Companies 53:30 Which Software Companies Would Jason Buy Tomorrow? 1:04:30 The Great AI Talent War Is About to Get Worse 1:11:20 Every Company Is Becoming an AI Company—or Dying

KR Sridhar is the Founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, the distributed power company powering the AI revolution. Under his leadership, Bloom has grown to a market cap of approximately $93 billion, with revenue surpassing $2 billion as demand from AI data centres has surged. Over the last 12–18 months, Bloom has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure boom. It's also the largest position in Leo Aschenbrenner's investment portfolio, making up around 16% of his fund. AGENDA: 00:00 Why Failure Is Never an Option: The Mindset That Built a $90B Company 05:20 The 25-Year Bet: Why Bloom Never Doubted AI Would Need Its Technology 12:10 Andy Grove's Brutal Leadership Lesson That Changed Everything 18:40 AI Isn't a Bubble—It's a "Hockey Stick on a Hockey Stick" 25:30 Why Electricity, Not AI Models, Will Decide the Winners of the AI Race 34:20 The Radical Vision: Why Power Must Move to the Edge of the Grid 40:40 How Bloom Beat Everyone to Power Oracle's AI Data Centres in Just 55 Days 50:00 The…

Paul Erlanger is the Co-Founder and CEO of FOMO, the social-first trading platform building the future of on-chain investing. Since founding the company in 2025, Paul has raised approximately $94 million, including a $17 million Series A led by Benchmark and a $75 million Series B led by Index Ventures with participation from USV, valuing the company at $550 million. Today, FOMO has grown to 600,000 users, processed over $4 billion in trading volume, and is adding thousands of new users every day—all with a team of just 17 people. AGENDA: 00:00 – Building a $550M Company with No Salaries, No Managers & No 1:1s 03:58 – Why Traditional Brokerages Will Lose in the Next 10 Years 09:30 – Why Robinhood's Strategy Is Wrong; The End of the Financial Super App? 13:05 – "Markets Aren't a Casino" — The Case for Retail Investors Fighting Wall Street 16:45 – The Radical Hiring Bet: Giving Employees Founder-Level Equity 23:40 – AI Kills Org Charts: Why FOMO Will Stay Under 25 Employees 29:30 – Why Taste Beats AI & The…

AGENDA: 00:00 – Google Loses Two AI Legends as Anthropic Wins the Talent War 14:45 – China's $50B DeepSeek Bet Changes the AI Power Balance 27:15 – AI's Memory Crisis Has Begun — Apple Warns of a '100-Year Flood' 30:00 – Wall Street Finally Asks the $725 Billion Question: Who Pays for AI? 41:00 – We Built an AI Finance VP... and It's Better Than Humans 46:30 – The Death of Moats? Why Founders Should Stop Talking About Defensibility 58:30 – Databricks, ServiceNow & the New AI Software Winners 01:07:00 – The Seat-Based SaaS Model Is Dying 01:12:00 – OpenAI's Custom Models Could Rewrite Enterprise Software 01:17:00 – OpenAI's Biggest Threat Isn't Anthropic Anymore

Nikesh Arora is the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader. Since taking over in 2018, he has transformed the company from an $18 billion market cap business into one worth more than $225BN with more than 21,000 employees globally. Previously, Nikesh was President and COO of SoftBank, where he worked alongside Masayoshi Son and helped shape the firm's technology investment strategy. AGENDA: 00:00 Why AI Token Prices Will Fall 90% — And Why That's Bullish for AI 07:40 The Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth in AI 11:30 Most Enterprises Are Using AI Completely Wrong 13:10 Why AI Could Cut Marketing, HR & Finance Teams in Half 16:00 AI Applications Will Have Opinions — SaaS Never Did 20:00 OpenAI, Anthropic & The Most Important Valuation Question in Tech 24:00 The Real Business Model of AI: Transaction Revenue Beats Advertising 25:10 Why Token Prices Must Collapse 28:20 Where Value Actually Accrues in AI: Models, Memory or Apps? 29:00 Why Memory Becomes the Biggest Moat in…

Ryan Peterson is the Founder & CEO @ Flexport, the logistics darling of the venture capital world that has raised $900M+ with the last round valuing the company at $8BN. Today, the company does $450M in revenue growing 30% YoY. AGENDA: 00:00 — Why Does Ryan Petersen Call Remote Work "White Collar Fraud"? 08:30 — Does Having More Money Actually Make You a Better Founder? 11:40 — When Will Flexport IPO? What Price Would It Go Out At? 19:00 — Can AI Actually Automate Entire Companies or Is the Productivity Boom Overhyped? 22:00 — Which Jobs Will Exist in 5 Years That Don't Exist Today? 26:00 — OpenAI vs Anthropic: If Ryan Could Only Own One, Which Would He Buy? 27:45 — Are Chinese Open-Source Models a National Security Threat—or Is Silicon Valley Overreacting? 30:15 — The $500M Fundraising Mistake Ryan Wishes He Never Made 35:00 — Why Flexport Abandoned San Francisco & Remote Work Damaged Flexport's Culture 41:00 — Why Marketing Is the Hardest Executive Hire in Startups 43:00 — Do Great CEOs Hate HR? 46:00 —…