20Growth: Meta CMO Alex Schultz on How All Founders Have to Change Their Marketing Playbook in a World of AI | Is AI Plateauing, What it Means if China Wins the AI Race and Why Zuck is a Generational Leader

Antoine Le Nel is the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut, one of the fastest growing fintechs on the planet. Prior to Revolut, Antoine spent an incredible 7 years at King (Makers of Candy Crush) overseeing continuous expansion of the world's most famous mobile game as VP of Growth.  10 Questions with Revolut’s Chief Growth Officer:  Why does Antoine believe that the best product and growth teams do not need to do A/B tests? Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams do not believe in anything? What growth tactics have worked best for Revolut? What did they learn? What have been the biggest growth flops? How did that change their approach?  Why does Antoine believe localisation in product is BS and overrated?  Why does CAC never come up at Revolut? Why do they not believe it is a metric to focus on? What metrics do they focus on instead? What does Antoine mean when he says “growth is a bidding war”? How does one win the “bidding war” today? Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams focus on optimisations and 1% gains not moving the needle for a company? What are the single biggest mistakes growth teams make today? What used to work that no longer works? What growth tactic is most effective but also most under-utilised? How can startups take advantage of this?

18 Okt 202456min

Zach Perret is the CEO and Co-Founder of Plaid, a technology platform reshaping financial services. To date, Zach has raised over $734M for Plaid from the likes of NEA, Spark, GV, Coatue and a16z, to name a few. Today, thousands of companies including the largest fintechs, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks use Plaid. In addition, Zach is also a Co-Founder of Mischief, an early-stage venture fund in San Francisco.  In Today’s Episode with Zach Perret We Discuss: 1. Founder Mode: Why “Founder Mode” will be the most dangerous blog post written in the last decade for founders? What is most misleading about it? What are “grinder problems”? Why does Zach believe that grinder problems are the best problems for startups to try and solve? Why does Zach believe that OKRs are BS and should be removed? What should be used instead? 2. Lessons from Raising $734M for Plaid: What is the worst advice that VCs give that most founders take? Why does Zach believe that angel investing is more distracting than helpful for founders to do? What are the pros of investing alongside running a company? Why does Zach encourage founders to raise money as infrequently as possible? What does this mean for the size and price of rounds Zach thinks we should see occur? 3. The $5BN Exit and the $13.4BN Round: Why did Zach turn down the $5BN exit to Visa? Was it the right choice? Does Zach regret raising at such a high price of $13.4BN when the exit did not happen? Would Zach sell the company today for $13.4BN if offered it? What did Zach not do that he wish he had done? What did he do that he wishes he had not done?

16 Okt 202450min

David Frankel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, one of the best seed firms of the last decade. David has led rounds in companies such as Suno, Coupang, SeatGeek and PillPack (sold to Amazon for ~$1B). Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT Japan. David has been named to the Midas List six times. In 2023, he was #11 and in 2024, he appeared at #15 on the Midas List of the world's best venture capital investors and at #2 on the Midas list of seed investors.  10 Questions With One of the World’s Best Seed Investors: 1. Reserves: Why are reserves the hardest part of venture? What have been David’s biggest lessons in how to do them well? 2. Why does David believe that pro-rata is the original sin of VC?  3. Has DPI died in 2024? Is PE the salvation for the VC exit market and liquidity? 4. Why does David believe LPs are so pissed of with VCs right now? What will change that? 5. When will IPO markets open? Are M&A markets shut? What would cause them to open? 6. How does David reflect on price today? When will he pay up and break his rules? 7. Biggest lessons for David on knowing when is the right time to sell? Why does David believe you should never sell your winners? What has David sold that he regrets most? 8. What companies returned the most to Founder Collective Funds? Uber? Coupang? Airtable? The Trade Desk? What did he learn from those mega hits? 9. What have been David’s biggest losses? How did losing the company change his mindset and approach to investing? 10. What does David believe is the future of venture capital? How can seed funds play in a world of mega multi-stage funds? Who wins? Who loses?

14 Okt 20241h 27min

Eoghan McCabe is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Intercom, one of the largest private software companies in the valley with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of customers. To date, Eoghan has raised over $238M from Index, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, GV, Bessemer and more incredible firms. Intercom’s goal is to reinvent customer service with AI agents replacing human agents over the next 10 years. 10 Questions with One of the Largest Private Company CEO’s: AI Investing: Why will most AI investments not do better than the S&P 500? Building SaaS Tools with AI: Why is it crazy for companies to follow Klarna and use AI to build their own tools? Going Public: Why is Bill Gurley wrong that more later stage companies should go public? Why did Intercom shelve plans to go public in 2022? Early-Stage is F*******: Why is the early-stage venture ecosystem as an asset class f******? Founder Mode: Why does Eoghan believe all of the best founders are unbalanced? What is the difference between Founder vs Manager mode?  Political Voice: Why did Eoghan decide he had to voice his political opinions now? The Danger of Harris: Why does Eoghan believe a Harris administration would rob the US of immense freedom, democracy and civil liberty? Why Vote Trump: Why does Eoghan believe that Trump will regain immense freedom for the sovereign individual? Freedom of Speech: How does Eoghan determine right vs wrong when freedom of speech leads to harm and injustice?  Middle East and Nuclear War: Why does Eoghan believe that nuclear war is much closer than we think? Will we see the Middle East descend into war?

11 Okt 202446min

Jeff Wang is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Global Equities (SCGE), a public/private crossover investment firm with investments spanning from late-stage private companies to public companies. As Managing Partner, Jeff has primarily focused on public growth technology companies but has also invested $3 billion in private companies including Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe. Prior SCGE private investments that have since gone public include Airbnb, Doordash, MongoDB, Nubank, and Snowflake. Before joining SCGE in 2010, Jeff also worked at TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners where he focused on investments in technology buyouts. 10 Questions with the Leader of Sequoia’s $9BN Global Equities Fund: 1. Crossover Fund Opportunity: Why are crossover funds more attractive today than ever? Have the tourists gone? 2. Public Market Opportunity: Why is the opportunity in the public markets, not the private markets today? 3. IPO Markets: When will IPO markets open? What will cause them to open? 4. Breaking Hedge Fund Rules: What are the biggest ways that Sequoia break the traditional rules of hedge funds? 5. Google: Why does Jeff believe that Google’s cash cow of search is under threat? 6. Meta: Why does Jeff believe Meta will be the biggest competitor to Google? 7. NVIDIA: Why is NVIDIA’s price today reasonable? What is the bull and bear case? 8. China: Is there a recovery for China? How do Sequoia play China in this market? 9. AI in Public Markets: How are Sequoia playing the AI game in the public markets? 10. Investing Lessons: What have been Jeff’s biggest investing lessons from Mike Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha?

9 Okt 20241h 12min

Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside.ai, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world’s first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software. 1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race: What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs? How much of Poolside’s latest raise will be spent on compute? How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider’s funding rounds?  Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia? Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs? 2. The Big Questions in AI: Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs? What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute? To what extent will Nvidia’s Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance? What will OpenAI’s GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again? 3. Compute, Chips and Cash: Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; “you need $100BN to play the foundation model game”? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price? Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve? Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing?  Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, “you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice”?  Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development? 4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic… Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised? What would Eiso do if he were Sam Altman today? Is $6.6BN really enough for OpenAI to compete against Google, Meta etc…? OpenAI at $150BN, Anthropic at $40BN and X.ai at $24BN. Which would Eiso choose to buy and why?

7 Okt 20241h 10min

Maria Angelidou is a seasoned product leader, having spent close to a decade at Meta where she was VP of Product and General Manager for some of the largest products such as Facebook Groups (2B+ users), Events, Profile, and Search. Before that, Maria led the Facebook App Monetization team, driving billions of dollars in revenue. Today, Maria is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Personio, an HR tech company with an ambitious mission to unlock the power of people for SMEs. In Today's Episode with Maria Angelidou 1. How to Hire the Best Product Teams: What are the three different archetypes for PMs today? What non-obvious traits does Maria look for in new product hires? How does Maria structure the hiring process? What works? What does not? Does Maria do take home assignments? How has her approach changed here? What is Maria's biggest advice to candidates on both compensation and title? 2. How the Best Product Teams Do Product Reviews: What does every team get wrong in how they do product reviews? What are the four different type of product reviews? How often does Maria do a product review? Who is invited? Who sets the agenda? How is it structured? What makes good vs great product reviews? 3. Europe vs US: How Product Teams Differ: What is the single biggest difference when comparing product teams in the US vs EU? Does Maria agree that the work ethic is less in the EU? Which class of employee would Maria say is more entitled? What could Europe do to be more competitive with the US? What was the biggest surprise to Maria on returning to Europe from the US?

4 Okt 202450min

Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI. In Today's Discussion with Bret Taylor: 1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today: Does Bret believe we are in an AI bubble or not? Why does Bret believe it is BS that companies will all use AI to build their own software? What does no one realise about the cost of compute today in a world of AI? 2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History? As a board member of OpenAI, does Bret agree that foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history? Will every application be subsumed by foundation models? What will be standalone? How does Bret think about the price dumping we are seeing in the foundation model landscape? Does Bret believe we will continue to see small foundation model companies (Character, Adept, Inflection) be acquired by larger incumbents? 3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website: What does Bret believe are the biggest opportunities in the application layer of AI today? Why does Bret put forward the case that we will continue to see the role of the phone reduce in consumer lives? How does AI make that happen? What does Bret mean when he says we are moving from a world of software rules to guardrails? What does AI mean for the future of websites? How does Bret expect consumers to interact with their favourite brands in 10 years? 4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising: Bret has worked with Zuck, Tobi @ Shopify, Marc Benioff and more, what are his biggest lessons from each of them on great leadership? How did Bret come to choose Peter @ Benchmark to lead his first round? What advice does Bret have to other VCs on how to be a great VC? Bret is on the board of OpenAI, what have been his biggest lessons from OpenAI on what it takes to be a great board member?

2 Okt 20241h 10min