20 VC 063: What It Takes To Standout In A Crowded Market with Ezra Galston @ Chicago Ventures

Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake's go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team from to more than 6,000 globally. Under his leadership, Snowflake became one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in history, achieving a record-breaking IPO in 2020. AGENDA: 04:34 How to Build a Sales Team from Scratch 07:49 How to Hire and Evaluate Sales Leaders 15:23 Four Big Lessons Scaling Snowflake to $3BN ARR 31:30 Comparing Snowflake and Databricks: What Databricks Did Better? 35:26 How to Manage Sales Team Morale in Competitive Markets 43:53 Why Customer Success is BS and What To Do With It 48:31 How Every Sales Leader Needs to Change in An AI World 49:37 Biggest Reflections on Sales Leadership 54:38 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan

10 Loka 20251h 2min

AGENDA: 03:29 OpenAI and AMD's Major Partnership 07:35 Microsoft Have F***** Up the OpenAI Partnership 17:08 OpenAI's Developer Day Announcements 20:45 Why VC is the Most Forgiving Asset Class on Price and Valuation 29:10 What Does it Take to IPO in 2025: Why Snyk Will Not IPO 42:30 Four Strategies Companies Need to Take to Own Their Own Destiny 49:31 Vercel Raises $300M at $9BN: Suicide Round or Strategic 55:39 Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Legora vs Harvey 01:08:11 Chamath Raises Latest SPAC: SPACs are Back 01:10:56 Polymarket Raises $2BN at a $9BN Valuation 01:14:53 Quick Fire Questions and Wrap-Up

9 Loka 20251h 24min

Andrew Feldman is Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebras, building the world's fastest AI inference and training. Cerebras recently closed a $1.1BN Series G round at an $8.1 billion valuation, backed by top names including Fidelity, Atreides, Tiger Global, Valor Equity and 1789 Capital. Under his leadership, they've leapfrogged GPU limits in inference, operate at trillions of tokens per month, and are filing to go public soon. AGENDA: 02:43 Why We Did Not IPO and Raised $1BN From Fidelity 05:03 Analysis of Chip and Compute Landscape Today 07:14 NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Running Out of Ideas 13:57 The Real Questions to Ask on Chip Depreciation 24:54 Energy Requirements for AI: Is it Feasible? 29:25 Mag7 Value Concentration: Feature or a Bug 31:57 Talent is the Bottleneck and Trump Makes it Worse 32:55 The War for Talent: Secrets No One Sees 34:22 Evaluating the Data Centre Economy: Many Will Lose Money 38:01 Three Changes the US Could Make to Beat China in AI 42:30 Why 80% of our Revenues are in the UAE 47:26 Quick Fire Questions 58:59 Why Work Life Balance is Total BS

6 Loka 20251h 4min

Ketty Slonimsky is Chief Growth Officer at Palta, the platform behind apps like Flo (the #1 female health app with 77M+ MAU), Simple, and Zing AI, where she leads a centralized growth function across the portfolio. She was previously first VP Product & Growth at HeliosX (£900M+ ARR, bootstrapped D2C healthtech), has advised companies like SonderMind, Runna, Guardio, Cheddar, P&G Digital Ventures, and is a board advisor at HeliosX. AGENDA: 02:33 What is Growth and When to Hire For It 06:04 Three Profiles of Successful Growth Leaders 10:07 Challenges and Learnings from Failed Ventures 21:17 How to Optimise User Onboarding for Growth 26:14 Biggest Lessons on Retention 30:25 How to Artificially Create Organic Growth and Community Building 32:10 Why LTV Models are BS 37:35 How to Use Influencers to Grow Insanely Fast 47:07 The Metrics that Matter in Growth 49:48 Push Notifications and Engagement: What To Do vs What Not to Do? 51:57 Quick Fire Round

3 Loka 20251h

AGENDA: 03:58 Understanding Burn Multiples and Capital Efficiency in an AI World 11:54 What Metrics Founders Need to Focus on in a World of AI 19:31 The Role of Kingmakers in Venture Capital: Harvey, Abridge, Profound 33:42 Klarna, Figma, Stubhub, all Down: Are Public Markets Turning? 36:35 OpenAI Needs the Same Energy as Japan… WTF! 41:09 How Can We Fund the $1TRN Sam Altman Needs for Energy 52:39 FiveTran and DBT: Is the Wave of Consolidation About to Begin? 59:44 Does Private Equity Need to Change in a World of AI 01:06:23 Political Expression and Corporate Responsibility

2 Loka 20251h 16min

Jonathan Ross is the Founder & CEO of Groq, the AI chip company redefining inference at scale. Under his leadership, Groq has raised over $3B from top investors. The company has reached a valuation of nearly $7B, positioning itself as one of NVIDIA's most formidable challengers. Previously at Google, Jonathan led the team that built the first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), making him one of the leading architects of modern AI hardware. AGENDA: 00:00 The Future of AI and Compute 05:07 Why the Hyperscalers Have to Keep Spending Recklessly on AI 12:49 Why OpenAI and Anthropic Will Have to Build Their Own Chips 19:47 OpenAI and Anthropic Will be $5BN Companies: The Bull Case 29:50 Why China is Behind the US in AI and Deepseek is More Expensive to Run 33:55 How Europe Could Compete in AI and Why the US is More Risk Averse Than Europe 42:51 Why AI Will Lead to Too Many Not Too Few Jobs 43:19 Deflationary Pressures and New Job Markets 45:51 The Future of Vibe Coding 47:14 Why AI Companies Should Strive to Have Low Margins 49:31 Why We Have to Have Nuclear Energy and How to Bring it Back 56:55 How Permits are Ruining the Potential of AI 01:03:58 Why OpenAI and Anthropic are so Undervalued 01:16:53 Quickfire: Biggest Fear, Nvidia: $10TRN, Zuck Buying AI: Work or Not

29 Syys 20251h 21min

James Gibson is Head of Revolut Business. Under his leadership, Revolut Business now processes over $33 billion in monthly transaction volume and generates more than $1BN in annualised revenue. AGENDA: 04:10 Is Consulting the Worst Background for Aspiring PMs 07:09 How Revolut Hires for it's Product Team 17:21 How Revolut Sets Goals: What Works, What Does Not 19:37 How Revolut Structures Their Product Teams 22:13 How Revolut Structures Product Review Sessions 27:23 New Bets Process at Revolut 29:11 How Revolut Balances Super Users and General Customers 36:55 How Revolut Drives Product Velocity and Efficiency 39:26 Future of Product with AI 44:56 Quick Fire Questions and Reflections

26 Syys 202554min

AGENDA: 00:00 Why I am 100% Equities and 0% Cash 04:35 Nvidia's Massive $100BN Investment in OpenAI 08:39 Is Anthropic Negatively Positioned by OpenAI Gaining NVIDIA Investment 27:30 Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead 44:00 Navan Files to Go Public at $8BN 49:31 Lockup Periods and Liquidity 50:35 Impact of H-1B Visa Changes on Startups 01:02:42: Notion Hits $500M ARR Re-Accelerating 01:09:42 Why Founder Friendly is Total BS Today

25 Syys 20251h 19min