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

Venky Ganesan is a Partner at Menlo Ventures, whose portfolio includes Anthropic, Lovable, Legora and Higgsfield, alongside earlier hits Uber and Roku. Venky's own investment track record includes Palo Alto Networks, Upwork, Poshmark and Rover. He is a three-time Forbes Midas List investor and former Chair of the National Venture Capital Association.
AGENDA:
07:00 Can You Still Do Seed Without a $1 Billion Fund?
11:00 How Much of AI's Revenue Growth Is Actually Real?
19:00 When Is "Overpaying" the Smartest Investment You Can Make?
25:00 Does Ownership Still Matter in a World of Trillion-Dollar Outcomes?
31:00 Is "Big Tech Will Buy Us" a Dangerous Investment Thesis?
36:00 Why Invest in Venture When You Can Just Buy the Magnificent Seven?
45:00 When Should You Sell a 40x Winner—and When Should You Double Down?
54:00 Can a $50 Million Fund Still Compete With the Venture Giants?
58:00 Quickfire: Is Benchmark Harder to Beat Than Sequoia?

Chase Lochmiller is the Co-founder and CEO of Crusoe. Crusoe builds and powers the data centres that companies use to train and run AI. It has raised approximately $6.4 billion in equity, including its latest $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation. Its backers include NVIDIA, Founders Fund, Gavin Baker's Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners.
AGENDA:
04:40 What Does Climbing Everest Teach You About Building a Company?
17:40 What's Really Stopping Us From Building Enough AI Data Centres?
25:50 Are Data Centres Really Driving Up Your Energy Bills?
28:05 Will Half of Planned AI Data Centres Never Get Built?
32:10 How Quickly Can a GPU Pay for Itself?
38:35 Will Your GPUs Become Obsolete Before You've Paid Them Off?
44:20 What Does It Take to Produce the Cheapest Intelligence?
49:50 Will Companies Building Their Own Models Eat Into OpenAI's Business?
51:55 Can You Build a $30B Company and Still Be a Great Dad?

AGENDA: 
00:00 Highlights: Jack Altman Joins The Trio
05:00 Anthropic's S-1 Leaks: $8B Operating Loss and $518B in Compute Commitments
10:00 Instinct Raises $1B at a $10B Valuation to Take On Meta
25:00 AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B
39:00 Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO as Shares Plunge 20%
43:00 AI Startup Seeks $10B Valuation Just One Week After Seed
47:00 Modal Hits $15B Valuation as Baseten Eyes $26B
54:00 OpenAI Reopens Its $200 Plan—and Halves What You Get
57:00 Oura Pulls IPO After Targeting a $16B Valuation
01:03:00 Nubank Eyes $8–12B Monzo Takeover
01:08:00 Bessemer Raises $5.75B as NFX Switches to Its Own Capital
01:14:00 Anthropic Founders Move to Lock In 50.1% Voting Control

Alex Mashrabov is the Founder and CEO of Higgsfield, the third fastest scaling company to $1BN in ARR behind OpenAI and Anthropic. Reports suggest their latest funding round could place an $8BN valuation on the company. Prior to Higgsfield, Alex sold his prior company to Snap Inc for $166M. Alex was a competitive programmer as a kid, reaching third best in the world.
AGENDA: 
00:00 The Programming Prodigy Who Sold to Snap for $166M
09:00 Burning $10M: The Pivot That Saved Higgsfield
12:00 A $1B Revenue Run Rate in 18 Months; How Real Is It?
16:00 Will OpenAI and Google Wipe Out $20 AI Subscriptions?
21:00 Are AI Labs Gaming the Benchmarks?
28:00 Spending $4M a Month on AI; Genius or Insanity?
36:00 Are AI Moats Bullshit? The Great "Wrapper" Debate
43:00 One Full Day With His Son in Three Months: The Cost of Ambition
54:00 Quickfire: Is Snap Broken—and Will HubSpot Survive AI?
01:02:00 $10B in the Next 12 Months? Alex's Audacious Growth Bet

Parag Agrawal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Parallel, building web search infrastructure for AI agents.
Parallel has announced $230M in funding from Sequoia, Khosla, and First Round Capital. Previously, he was CEO of Twitter, succeeding Jack Dorsey after serving as CTO and becoming the company's first Distinguished Engineer.
AGENDA:
03:00 What Breaks When Agents Search the Web 1,000x More?
07:00 Speed, Cost or Accuracy: What Do Agents Really Need?
13:00 Will Tiny Models Catch Today's Most Powerful AI?
16:00 Is Model Routing a Commodity?
21:00 Is Amazon Making a Mistake by Blocking AI Agents?
23:00 Does the Ads Business Model Die in a World of Agents?
27:00 Can You Pay Publishers Without Killing Your Margins?
33:00 Why Parag Wants a Race to the Bottom on Price
43:00 What Stops Your AI Agent Breaking the Rules to Get Results?
45:00 Why AI Hacks Should Embarrass the Labs
52:00 What Parag Saw Working With Elon Musk