20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous

20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous

Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he leads the firms fintech investments and serves on the boards of Branch, PeerStreet, Point, and Quantopian. Prior to joining a16z, he was the CEO and co-founder of TrialPay, a leading transactional advertising and payments company with 100 employees and over $300M in revenue. TrialPay was acquired by Visa in 2015. Previously, Alex cofounded FraudEliminator, the first consumer anti-phishing company, which merged into SiteAdvisor and was acquired by McAfee for $75M in 2006. Prior to joining the firm, Alex had been an active angel investor with the likes of Pinterest, Bloomreach, SiftScience among many others in his portfolio and served as an advisor to the SV Angel fund. He also co-founded three other companies: TXN, Point, and Affirm, with Max Levchin.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Alex make the move from serial entrepreneur with numerous successful exits to General Partner @ a16z?

2.) Question from Chris Dixon: What were the key takeaways for Alex from his time in operations? Having been both entrepreneur and VC, how does Alex view the continuous struggle between innovation and distribution? Can you succeed with only one?

3.) How does Alex believe the new generation of large incumbents are acting in the market? Why does he believe that a counter-revolutionary strike from them would not be atypical?

4.) How does Alex really define "data network effects"? How does Alex look to analyse them effectively? How does Alex believe that startups can use inflection points in the sales process to enter an incumbent heavy market?

5.) How does Alex view the rise of ICOs? Does Alex share Charlie Lee's concerns that they are the most concerning element of the crypto world? What framework does Alex use to determine whether an applications is optimised through centralised or decentralised databases? Why does Alex believe that most ICOs are ridiculous?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Alex's Fave Book: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Alex's Fave Blog: Chris Dixon

Alex's Most Recent Investment: Propel

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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Episoder(1410)

20Sales: Why the Best Sales People are F***** in the Head | Why Remote Work is BS | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting Sales Teams | How to Build a Sales Machine | What Everyone Gets Wrong Today in Sales with Chad Peets

20Sales: Why the Best Sales People are F***** in the Head | Why Remote Work is BS | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting Sales Teams | How to Build a Sales Machine | What Everyone Gets Wrong Today in Sales with Chad Peets

Chad Peets is one of the great sales leaders of our time. Previously, he was the sales saviour at Snowflake and was an advisor to the CEO there. He was also an MD at Sutter Hill where he sat on the board of companies like Sigma Computing and Augment Code.  AGENDA: 04:53 How to Recruit the Best Sales Talent Today  06:27 Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruitment in Sales 11:29 How to Evaluate Sales Talent: Green and Red Flags 21:58 Why Remote Work is BS and You Have to be in Office 23:43 How to Improve Sales Team Performance in Just 24 Hours 27:45 When to Fire vs When to Give More Time 32:10 How to Set Sales Quotas Effectively 34:39 Adjusting Compensation Plans for Better Performance 37:50 Why Work Life Balance is Total BS 41:08 Biggest Lessons on Leading Sales Teams 50:37 What is The Future of Enterprise Sales with AI 58:40 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts

9 Jan 1h 9min

20VC: Groq's $20BN NVIDIA Acquisition | Manus Acquired by Meta for $2BN | Why Sam Altman Does Not Care About Dilution | Navan Trading at 4x ARR & Why Going Public Does Not Make Sense Anymore | The Rise of Invisible Unemployment and Labour Markets in 2026

20VC: Groq's $20BN NVIDIA Acquisition | Manus Acquired by Meta for $2BN | Why Sam Altman Does Not Care About Dilution | Navan Trading at 4x ARR & Why Going Public Does Not Make Sense Anymore | The Rise of Invisible Unemployment and Labour Markets in 2026

AGENDA: 04:30 Groq Acquired by NVIDIA for $20BN: The Breakdown 17:13 Meta's $2BN Acquisition of Manus: Did They Sell Too Early 36:04 OpenAI's Stock-Based Compensation Strategy 47:42 Will AI Replace Venture Capitalists 56:13 Navan Trading at 4x ARR: Who is Good Enough to Go Public? 01:09:46 The Rise of Invisible Unemployment 01:14:21 The Future of Work and Education in an AI-Driven World

8 Jan 1h 23min

20VC: $0-$260M in Revenue in Three Years: How We Did It | You Need to Work Weekends to Win — Most Founders Aren't Ambitious Enough | The Revolut Playbook: Speed, Urgency, Extreme Ownership, and Zero Excuses with Alan Chang @ Fuse Energy

20VC: $0-$260M in Revenue in Three Years: How We Did It | You Need to Work Weekends to Win — Most Founders Aren't Ambitious Enough | The Revolut Playbook: Speed, Urgency, Extreme Ownership, and Zero Excuses with Alan Chang @ Fuse Energy

I have interviewed 1,000 entrepreneurs over 10 years. Nik Storonsky and our guest today are the two best that I have interviewed.  Joining the show today; Alan Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Fuse Energy. Alan has scaled Fuse Energy from $2M in revenue in the first year, to $20M the second year to now $400M in the third year. Like Netflix beat incumbents to own media, Revolut beat incumbents to own banking, Fuse will beat incumbents to own energy. Prior to founding Fuse, Alan was one of the first three hires at Revolut where he played a crucial role alongside Nik (Founder) in scaling the company to over $75BN valuation.  AGENDA: 00:04:00 — The interview process that led to the $150M pay packet 00:05:05 — The moment I knew Revolut was going to be a $TRN company 00:06:10 — How Revolut drove speed and urgency in their teams 00:07:35 — Biggest lesson from Nik Storonsky @ Revolut 00:09:40 — If you want to build a generational company, you cannot have work-life balance 00:11:40 — What I disagreed with Nik @ Revolut on most 00:13:35 — Is Nik right that Revolut should have got a banking licence earlier? 00:15:05 — The green movement and the idea of "using less" is BS 00:22:55 — Why China is the shining light for regulation to follow 00:33:00 — What Nik at Revolut taught me about ownership and excuses 00:34:50 — The signs of truly top performing people in a team 00:36:55 — We do not have enough ambitious founders — we need to do more, not focus 00:39:55 — You need to work weekends to win 00:43:50 — Every single year we 10x revenue — now at ~$400M 00:44:35 — Why Eastern European engineers are the best Items Mentioned in Today's Show: Try NEXOS.AI for yourself with a 14-day free trial: https://nexos.ai/20vc

5 Jan 56min

20VC: Enterprises Will Not Adopt AI without Forward-Deployed Engineers | Who Wins the Data Labelling Race: How Does it Shake Out? | How Synthetic Data Threatens the Future of Human-Generated Data with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

20VC: Enterprises Will Not Adopt AI without Forward-Deployed Engineers | Who Wins the Data Labelling Race: How Does it Shake Out? | How Synthetic Data Threatens the Future of Human-Generated Data with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

Matt Fitzpatrick is the CEO of Invisible Technologies, leading the company's mission to make AI work. Since joining as CEO in January 2025, he has raised $100M and accelerated AI adoption across industries from sports to consumer and government. Previously, Matt was a Senior Partner at McKinsey, where he led QuantumBlack Labs, the firm's AI R&D and software development arm. AGENDA: 04:40 Interview with Matt Fitzpatrick: Career Journey and Leadership 09:35 The Single Biggest Barriers to Enterprises Adopting AI 15:26 It is BS That Enterprises Can Adopt AI Without Forward-Deployed Engineers 28:05 Are AI Talent Marketplaces Dead? What is the best model? 46:33 How Does the Data Labelling Market Shake Out: Who Wins/ Who Loses 48:27 Are Revenue Numbers for Data Labelling Real Revenue? Or GMV? 51:20 Best Capital Allocation Decision? What did Matt Learn from it? 53:19 How Important is Brand for AI Companies Selling Into Enterprise? 01:05:59 Remote Work vs. In-Person Collaboration 01:17:06 What Does No-One Know About the Future of AI That Everyone Should Know

31 Des 20251h 23min

20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face

20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face

AGENDA: 03:48 Founder of the Year 2025 06:58 Product of the Year 10:05 Fund of the Year 20:52 Breakout Companies of 2025: Who Made the Biggest Impact? 26:57 Biggest Surprises of 2025 32:57 Predictions for 2026: Top Performing Tech Stocks of the Year 35:25 B2B Stocks to Watch 38:31 Why Salesforce Could Be the Buy of 2026 47:11 Google, Meta, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft: Buy One, Short One 55:38 IPO Speculations: Who Will Go Public in 2026 01:00:57 The Impact of AI on Employment

22 Des 20251h 9min

20Product: On Running's CPO on How to Create Emotion Through Product | Why 99% of Products Fail and How to Create Cults Around Products | The Biggest Product Mistakes On Have Made & Lessons Learned with Gérald Marolf

20Product: On Running's CPO on How to Create Emotion Through Product | Why 99% of Products Fail and How to Create Cults Around Products | The Biggest Product Mistakes On Have Made & Lessons Learned with Gérald Marolf

Gérald Marolf is the Chief Product Officer at On Running. Gérald oversees the full range of On's shoes, apparel and accessories to make sure each delivers performance, comfort and style. Before On, Gérald spent over a decade building consumer brands with collaborators such as Microsoft and Ferrari. AGENDA: 00:00 – Why Most "Great Products" Fail to Create Emotion 03:00 – How Perfume Taught Me Everything About Desire & Product 06:10 – The Brutal Reality of Building Physical vs Digital Products 16:00 – Why "Simple Design" Is Overrated and Dangerous 23:00 – Why Vuori is the Brand to Short in Consumer  28:30 – The Biggest Product Mistake: Listening to Customers Too Much 32:10 – On Only Do Tennis Because of Roger Federer 38:30 – Were We Too Late to Marathon Running? A Painful Admission 43:40 – The Most Controversial Product On Has Ever Launched 49:00 – Are Counterfeits Good or Bad in Fashion?

19 Des 202556min

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

AGENDA: 03:32 Lightspeed's $9 Billion Fundraise 05:20 The Impact of Mega Funds on Seed VCs 10:09 The Supercycle of Growth and Late-Stage Investments 13:06 Disney Invests $1BN into OpenAI and What It Means 23:19 Oracle Hit Hard: Is Now the Time to Buy 28:34 Broadcom's Market Cap Drop and Anthropic's AI Chip Orders 35:04 Cursor Competes with Figma: The Convergence of Design and Coding Tools 46:20 The Biggest Danger for Incumbents: Being Maimed by AI 55:28 Boom Supersonic Raising $300M to… Power Data Centres… WTF 01:00:24 Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN and The Elon Option Value

18 Des 20251h 22min

20VC: a16z's David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z

20VC: a16z's David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z

David George is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm's Growth investing team. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril, and OpenAI, and is now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like Cursor, Harvey, and Abridge. AGENDA: 03:05 – Why Everyone is Wrong: Mega Funds Does Not Reduce Returns 10:40 – Is Public Market Capital Actually Cheaper Than Private Capital? 18:55 – The Biggest Advantage of Staying Private for Longer 23:30 – The #1 Investing Rule for a16z: Always Invest in the Founder's Strength of Strengths 31:20 – Why Fear of Theoretical Competition Makes Investors Miss Great Companies 35:10 – Does Revenue Matter as Much in a World of AI? 44:10 – Does Kingmaking Still Exist in Venture Capital Today? 49:20 – Do Margins Matter Less Than Ever in an AI-First World? 53:50 – My Biggest Miss: Anthropic and What I Learn From it?  56:30 – Has OpenAI Won Consumer AI? Will Anthropic Win Enterprise? 59:45 – The Most Controversial Decision in Andreessen Horowitz History 1:01:30 – Why Did You Invest $300M into Adam Neumann and Flow?

15 Des 20251h 6min

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