20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!

Peter Singlehurst is the Head of Private Companies at Baillie Gifford. He has led research on a wide range of private investments including Epic Games, Bending Spoons, Anduril, Solugen, Scopely, and Grammarly, as well as a number of private holdings that have since transitioned to the public markets such as Airbnb, Affirm, Warby Parker, Wise and Tempus AI.  In Today’s Episode with Peter We Discuss: 04:24 How I Accidentally Came to Manage One of the Largest Private Investment Firms in the World 07:29 What I Learned Losing 100s of $Ms  10:22 The 10 Questions Baillie Gifford Needs to Answer to Make an Investment 15:53 Why We Did Not Double Down in Stripe and Turned Down Coinbase 33:10 The ByteDance Investment Case 36:33 Why Would Any Good Company Go Public Today 39:19 Growth Stage Investing Trends 40:46 How Anduril Becomes a $200BN Company 45:39 Is 2024 Different to the Madness of 2021 and 2022 47:18 The Decision-Making Process Inside a $217BN Firm 49:00 How Does Re-Investment Decision-Making Differ from Original Investments 55:56 Future of Growth Equity Investing 58:12 Quick Fire Questions

19 Mars 1h 11min

Yamini Rangan is the CEO at HubSpot. The $32BN juggernaut that has revenues of $2.6BN, over 247,000 customers and 8,200 employees. Prior to Hubspot, Yamini served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, and before Dropbox, she was VP of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:16 Taking Over the CEO Role from the Founders 07:58 Wartime vs Peacetime CEOship 11:18 How to Scale Into Enterprise: What Everyone Gets Wrong 22:20 Why is B2B Not Winner Take All 29:33 How Does HubSpot Compete Against Salesforce 33:26 Where Does Value Accrue in a World of AI 37:40 How Does Yamini Use AI Everyday 41:17 What Does HubSpot Do When It’s Core SEO Channel Dies 44:10 Quickfire Round: Satya Nadella, Parenting Advice, Biggest Concern 51:35 Closing Thoughts and Reflections

18 Mars 55min

Matt Biilmann is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify. Under his leadership, Netlify has become one of the fastest-growing platforms for modern web development. Matt recently introduced agent experience (AX), a new way of thinking about how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Matt is also known for coining Jamstack, a concept that redefined how developers build for the web.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss:  03:43 How Does the Design Process Change When Designing For Agents 06:27 How Does the Product Building Process Change When Building for Agents 12:52 Will AI Kill SaaS Tools 16:12 If Prototyping Becomes Phase 1: Does Figma Survive? 17:35 Is Chat the Best Interface for a World of AI 21:52 Why AI Services Will Be One of the Biggest Economies 27:24 Open vs. Closed Platforms in an Agent-First World 31:09 Specialization of Large Language Models 35:13 Shifting Labor Costs to Agent Spend 36:28 The Future of Stripe and What Happens with 100M Developers in the World 38:39 Quickfire Round: Insights and Predictions

14 Mars 49min

Jake Saper is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last 20 years. Their many wins include being early investors in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and more. In total, the firm has invested $2BN and returned an astonishing $8BN in cash with much more to come.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:45 The Zoom Investment Story 10:21 Founder, Market, Traction: Rank Them 26:37 Why Market Pull is the Most Important Thing and How to Know 27:23 Are the Best Deals Always Expensive? 28:25 What is the One Framework Emergence Use for Every Investment 29:08 Lessons from the 16x DPI Zoom Fund 30:44 Why Does Every Partner Do Reference Calls on Every Deal? 35:16 We Have Lied to SaaS Founders: The Revenue Rules Changed 37:53 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI?  41:37 Three Reasons Why AI Will Not Replace Vertical SaaS 46:38 Who Wins in AI: Startups or Incumbents? 50:09 Why Should Every Company Aim to Be a “Board Discussion” 55:12 Why is Jake Worried About AI’s FTX Moment? 56:00 What Losing Billions on Salesforce Taught Us About Selling 01:00:07 Why Most VC Partnerships are Broken 01:03:07 Grok vs Anthropic vs OpenAI: Buy and Sell? 01:14:25 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities. DealMaker Securities LLC, a registered broker-dealer, and member of FINRA | SIPC, located at 105 Maxess Road, Suite 124, Melville, NY 11747, is the Intermediary for this offering and is not an affiliate of or connected with the Issuer. Please check our background on FINRA's BrokerCheck.

10 Mars 1h 28min

Julian Teixeira is the Chief Revenue Officer at 1Password, where he has grown B2B revenue over 8x and scaled a team of more than 450 in go-to-market. 1Password set the record for the largest raise in Canadian history at the start of 2022 and has raised nearly $1B in capital throughout his time with the company. Prior to 1Password, Julian served as the head of global sales at Lightspeed Commerce, a company he helped scale from startup to IPO and through over 10 acquisitions throughout his decade-long tenure.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:27 Sales Lessons from Scaling to $1BN in ARR 05:20 How to Create and Master a Sales Playbook 07:53 Lessons on First Sales Hires 09:41 Setting Goals and Targets for Sales Teams 13:22 The Reality of Tech Sales Today 16:19 Evaluating and Managing Sales Reps 19:07 Outbound Prospecting and Pipeline Generation 22:22 Hunter vs. Farmer Sales Models 24:15 Compensation and Specialization in Sales Teams 28:56 Outbound vs Inbound Sales 32:47 Pipeline and Deal Reviews 37:37 Sales Tech Stack and Tools 38:40 Maintaining Sales Morale 44:55 Are Remote Sales Teams Less Effective 46:44 Final Thoughts and Advice This episode is brought to you by: Gong, the revenue AI platform centralising all your revenue workflows in a single unified platform.  Capchase, helping SaaS companies grow without dilution. Learn more at capchase.com/20vc

7 Mars 51min

Anton Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable, the fastest growing startup in Europe. With Lovable, you can turn your idea into an app in seconds with just a prompt. After just 3 months, the company has scaled to $17.5M in ARR. They are adding $2M in net new revenue every single week. Even better, Lovable has 85% Day 30 retention rate, making it more retentive than ChatGPT.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 03:41 How a Side Project Turned into a $200M Company  05:39 Why Talent is 10x More Valuable Than Experience 08:57 How to Use a Waitlist Pre-Launch to 10x Growth 12:29 How to Master a Public Launch: $0 - $1M ARR in a Week 18:02 Why Raise a Large Seed Round 22:22 How Sustainable is Lovable and AI Revenue 25:22 What are Lovable’s Biggest Threats: Incumbents or Open Source 27:00 Raising Series A: Should You Always Take the Money 27:46 How to Compete in the US from Europe  28:25 Is Europe as F****** as the World Thinks 29:02 Building in Europe vs. Silicon Valley 31:20 The Future of Foundation Models: Who Wins 33:47 Grok vs OpenAI vs Anthropic: Buy and Short 41:37 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

5 Mars 50min

Mike Krieger is the Co-Founder of Instagram and now CPO @ Anthropic.  In Today’s Episode with Mike Krieger We Discuss: 03:07 Where Will Value Be Created and Sustained in a World of AI? 04:59 Are Foundation Models Commoditised Today? 08:36 Should Founders Build for the Models of Today or Build for Models of the Future 12:19: Why Will Models Become More Different Than More Similar 16:38: Will Human or Synthetic Data Be More Prominent in the Future  19:28 Model Quality vs. Product UX 23:36 The Competitive Landscape of AI 32:27 Do We Underestimate China's AI Capabilities 33:59 What Did Anthropic Learn from Deepseek 34:07 Is Deepseek a Sustaining and Credible Threat? 37:04 Transitioning from Model Provider to Application Provider 38:26 Where Has Anthropic Chronically Under-Invested 39:08 Why Has Anthropic Been Slow On Consumer Product Development 43:50 What is the Role of a Software Developer in the Future 48:29 Balancing API and Consumer Products 51:09 Is Europe Stronger or Weaker in a World of AI 52:40 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections

3 Mars 1h 6min

George Bonaci is the VP of Growth at Ramp, where he’s helping one of the fastest-growing fintech companies scale even further. Prior to Ramp, George was VP of Growth at Gong. Before Gong, George was at Samsara where he helped grow revenue from $650M ARR, and played a pivotal role in the company’s successful IPO. In Today’s Growth Masterclass We Discuss: 03:57 How the Best Growth Teams Experiment 05:10 How to Allocate Bets and Resources for Growth 07:09 Velocity vs. Quality in Growth 15:05 The Role of Postmortems and How to Do Them 19:16 Growth Team Structure and Standalone or Not?  20:01 The Three Ways to Find Alpha in Growth 30:01 How to Hire for the Best Growth Hires 31:30 How to do Take-Home Assignments When Hiring for Growth 32:51 Common Pitfalls in Hiring Growth Talent 34:16 Investing in Management and Learning 42:43 How AI Changes Growth Products and Strategies 46:43 Quick Fire Round: Common Mistakes and Growth Channels

28 Feb 55min