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

Erik Bernhardsson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Modal, the AI infrastructure platform for training models, running inference and powering AI agents. Modal has raised over $1.2 billion, including a recent $750 million Series D led by Accel at a $15.75BN valuation. The company has surpassed $1BN in ARR, growing more than 15x year-on-year. Previously, Erik built Spotify's original music recommendation system.
AGENDA: 
05:30 - Why wait until your mid-30s to start a company?
06:40 - Is founding a startup really like "eating glass"?
08:00 - How to Raise $1BN with No Pitch Deck
08:45 - The danger of raising too much venture capital
09:40 - How much cash is Modal burning on GPUs?
10:30 - Do early-stage startups actually have moats?
13:30 - Who wins the inference market in the next 5 years?
15:30 - Are 90% software gross margins dead in AI?
17:45 - The "open-air drug market" for GPUs
21:30 - Will GPU hardware prices ever collapse?
22:15 - Are we about to overbuild data centers?
23:45 - Can custom silicon dethrone NVIDIA's monopoly?
24:30 - Is CUDA really the moat everyone claims it is?
25:20 - Are Neo Cloud providers partners or mortal enemies?
26:35 - Nebius vs. CoreWeave: who built the better business?
27:25 - Open-source vs. frontier models: which takes the lead?
28:20 - Can Europe ever build a competitive frontier model?
30:20 - The bull case for a $100B verticalized model company
37:15 - Modal's biggest resource allocation mistake
38:00 - Has open-source LLM inference already peaked?
41:30 - The real limits of post-training and RL
44:20 - How much does Modal spend every month on coding agents?
45:50 - The massive gold rush in selling data environments to labs
47:20 - Should enterprises own their own intelligence?
49:50 - Is model routing a defensible standalone business?
53:20 - $20M+ compensation packages for exceptional new grads
54:20 - The #1 portfolio company Erik would bet on
55:10 - What Erik changed his mind on most this year

David Tisch is the Founder of Box Group, one of the best seed funds of the last decade with early investments in Cursor, Baseten and Clay to name a few. Today the fund invests from two funds, a $275M seed fund and a $275M opportunity fund.
AGENDA: 
10:40 Why we have less dilution now than ever before
12:50 Why I don't want to compete with the best VCs, and why it's a trap
16:15 What concentrated funds know but do not admit to
17:25 Why multiple tranched rounds can be good for founders
18:45 Why the Lean Startup was a total fake
28:55 Why LPs are frustrated by a market that we can't change
31:50 What is the single best-returning investment in the history of BoxGroup?
33:15 Why fund returners are not always obvious in the early years
40:05 Why funding consumer brands at seed no longer makes sense for venture
42:00 Rogo, the now $2B company, got passed on by 39 out of 40 investors
45:40 Why the marketing message that pro rata is not a right is BS
1:01:50 Why we do not allow negativity in the investment decision-making process
1:03:00 The true magic of early-stage venture capital
1:04:35 Why YC has the best business model in all of venture

AGENDA: 
04:00 Anthropic Files S-1 Ahead of $2TRN IPO
14:50 Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees
20:45 Zuckerberg Taps Equity Markets for $95 Billion AI Spending Spree
23:00 DeepSeek Raises $15 Billion as Chinese AI Faces US Backlash
34:45 OpenAI and Wiz Uncover Decade-Old Security Flaws
37:05 Instinct's Rumoured $30 Billion Valuation Divides the Panel
45:30 Invest Committee: Put 20% of the Fund Into OpenAI at $1.25 Trillion
49:40 Palmer Luckey's War Dog Startup Hits $1.5 Billion Valuation
55:00 Zuckerberg Threatens California Exit Over Billionaire Tax

Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft and one of the greatest CEOs of our time. Satya has been at the company for an astonishing 34 years. When he joined, Microsoft had a market cap of $23.5BN. 22 years later, the company was worth $300BN. At this point, Satya took the reins as CEO. Under his leadership, he has taken it from $300BN to $3.9TRN. 
AGENDA: 
03:08 Should We Assume Every AI Model Is Compromised?
04:13 How Do We Stop AI Agents From Causing Harm?
06:15 Can We Trust an AI Model's Chain of Thought?
07:05 Is China's Lead in Open-Source AI a Safety Risk?
08:28 Will Open or Closed Models Win the Next Two Years?
10:08 Why Should Every Company Own Its Intelligence?
12:12 Will Every Company Become AI Native?
13:22 Are We Entering an AI Implementation Economy?
15:10 Do You Need to Own the Entire AI Stack to Win?
16:49 Can the World Support $100 Billion AI Training Runs?
18:34 Can AI Radically Accelerate Global Economic Growth?
19:39 Will AI Transform Sales, Finance and Marketing Like Coding?
Quickfire round 
What have you changed your mind on most in the last 12 months?

What looks crazy today but will be incredibly common in 5 years?

What's the exercise routine given the travel schedule?

Favorite cheat meal on a rest day?

What are you most excited for in the next 10 years?

AGENDA:
05:00 Will we run out of energy?
19:00 Will specialised chips threaten NVIDIA's dominance?
26:00 Can we trust AI agents more than humans?
31:00 Will data companies become commodities?
36:00 What comes after transformers?
41:00 Are software investors f****** in a world of infra and compute?
52:00 How big will the inference market be in 10 years?
53:00 Could robotics be 100x bigger than coding agents?
59:00 Why are coding agents the most overrated AI investment?