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

AGENDA:
00:00:00 — Private Markets Are "F***ing Done" & The Shift to Heavy CapEx
00:00:46 — Anthropic Files to Go Public 
00:04:59 — Will the Anthropic IPO Break the Startup Ecosystem?
00:06:22 — The "Billion-Dollar Position" Era: VCs Reset Their Expectations
00:18:11 — The Trillion-Dollar Cash Grab: Google, SpaceX, and OpenAI Rush the Queue
00:23:15 — Is the SaaS Apocalypse Over? Bouncing Off the Bottom
00:25:34 — The Death of Human Per-Seat Licenses as Multiples Shift
00:27:18 — Winners vs. Losers: How Agentic Focused Products Captured the Market
00:30:26 — Cognition Raises $1 Billion at a $26 Billion Valuation
00:33:04 — Token Budgeting Panic Hits Corporate America
00:35:46 — Multi-Model Workflows and the Future of Cost Containment
00:41:20 — Choosing Tokens Over Humans: The 2027 Engineering Reality Check
00:46:42 — Can Large Companies Survive Slashing One-Third of Their Engineering Talent?
00:57:40 — Big Law Flex: Kirkland & Ellis Pledges $500 Million to Build In-House AI
01:01:21 — Giving Away the Crown Jewels: Will Firms Trust Claude?
01:08:44 — Robinhood's AI Move: Automating Financial Planning vs. Beating the Market
01:16:15 — Apollo Warns PE Software Returns Are About to Be Disastrous
01:19:15 — $10 Billion Carry Pools: Will VC Winners Quit the Game?
01:24:10 — The 9-9-6 Work Ethic: Performative Theatre or Startup Reality?
01:30:10 — The Great Valley Contradiction: Working 24/7 to Automate White-Collar Work

Brendan Foody is the Founder and CEO @ Mercor, one of the leading data providers to the largest labs on the planet including OpenAI. In the last two years, Brendan has scaled the company to $1.5BN in ARR and a valuation of $10BN. 
AGENDA: 
True or False:
Mercor lost Meta and OpenAI as a customer with the hack?

Mercor has been poaching competitor talent, paying them millions? 

Mercor revenue is not real revenue and is only GMV?

12:56 Would Brendan sell Mercor for $30 billion? 
14:23 Why everyone is wrong that AI will lead to labor displacement?
15:59 We will create many new jobs that do not exist with AI. 
16:59 Why training agents will be a massive labor category that does not exist today 
19:51 Will we see the data provider market unbundle and specialize into verticals? 
22:24 Is the stated revenue really revenue or is it really GMV? 
27:55 How a 1 million ARR company secured one of the best investors in the world with a helicopter ride 
29:41 How Felicis secured the deal of the decade with a race track and a set of Ferraris 
32:59 Which investment round felt like the highest price to grow into? 
34:49 Why will value accrue to the infrastructure layer, not the application layer, in the next 12 months? 
35:46 Why the model is the product and why application layer companies should be scared as a result 
37:22 Why network effects will be the determinant of value creation 
38:46 Why the forward-deployed motion, not the GTM motion, will determine true value creation. 
41:59 Why token spend within organizations is going to continue to increase 
43:54 Why agent evaluation to commoditize the model layer will be a massive business for enterprises? 
51:13 Why we should have increased capital gains tax 
01:01:31 How to compete with $20 million a year from Meta? 
01:08:49 Will Mercor go public and when?

Nico Laqua is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgi Insurance, an AI-native insurance carrier built for startups. Corgi is the most intense workplace culture in America. The team works 7 days per week. The founder sleeps in the office. ⅔ of the first 30 team members have a Corgi tattoo. This week, Corgi raised $106M, valuing the company at a whopping $2.6BN. 
AGENDA: 
06:35 Why going to university was a massive waste of time 
09:42 Why we work seven days a week 
11:58 Why we do work trials and how that is a test of people's stamina 
18:41 Why we created a cafe in the biggest annoyance with San Francisco 
22:00 Why I am so bullish on London 
23:49 Why I haven't sold a single secondary 
24:19 Why people who found companies in New York prioritise dating over their company 
30:46 Biggest lessons on cash comp and equity 
31:13 Team members can be split into three separate groups 
34:59 Biggest lesson from Brian Chesky on price 
35:44 What is the right amount of time to be fundraising for? 
36:47 Good companies get deals done and what makes the best venture investors? 
40:34 Why AI makes sales and marketing more valuable 
43:12 Why I don't like boards and I don't think they're effective 
46:19 What I would like to see more of from venture funds 
48:05 Who was Corgi's first believer?

AGENDA: 
05:16 Nvidia Blowout Quarter: $81BN Revenues and Stock… Flat! 
10:39 Uber and Microsoft Declare Productivity Gains Questionable from AI
25:26 The Layoffs Continue: ClickUp and Cloudflare
34:39 OpenAI S1: Is it a Race? How Will it be Received?
38:28 Do Anthropic Rush Out Their IPO Also?
45:49 SpaceX S-1: "Why I Would Never Invest"
48:06 Why Colossus is a Stroke of Genius By Elon
51:31 Data Centers In Space is BS and Will Not Be Core to SpaceX
58:04 Polsia Raises $30M at $250M Price: Is this the Peak? 
01:06:08 Exa Raises at $2.2BN to Build Search for Agents
01:14:34 Is Replacing Your CRM with Vibe Coding Always Ragebait

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a monumental, multi-year $20 billion compute agreement from OpenAI.
AGENDA: 
05:58 - Why we are not in an infrastructure bubble and it is just the start
08:00 - Sam Altman's superpower is his ability to forecast capex spend.
08:58 - Anthropic did not get a good deal with Elon. They got a deal that was available. 
10:39 - What is going on with the price of memory and why is it a problem?
16:40 - Are Google best positioned to produce tokens and what challenges do they face?
19:23 - Is Coreweave dramatically undervalued or overvalued?
24:34 - My biggest advice to entrepreneurs scaling their business 
30:13 - Why most of the layoffs are AI-washed and
33:41 - What will we spend on tokens for software engineers in five years?
34:48 - Why does the role of HR change so significantly in the world of AI?
35:36 - Why lawyers are the biggest inhibitor of enterprise AI adoption
39:20 - Why Jensen and Nvidia are wrong to sell chips to China
42:49 - What needs to change in the U.S. to build a strategic asset in chips?
51:00 - Should Cerebras invest in companies building on top of their platform; as Nvidia is?
53:28 - Nothing changed when Cerebras IPO'd but I did make 800 millionaires.