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

Carles Reina is VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, where he was the first investor and fourth employee. Carles has scaled the revenue org from Day 1 to over $350M in just 3 years. Carles is also an active investor with investments in ElevenLabs, Revolut, Happy Robot and more.  
AGENDA:
00:00 - Is the Traditional CRO Dead in the Age of AI?
01:01 - Building the AI Sales Machine: Agents that Actually Generate Revenue
08:35 - Will AI Shrink the Sales Teams of the Future?
09:51 - The ElevenLabs Masterclass: Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota
11:00 - How to Structure Explosive Sales Accelerators
12:15 - Why You Should Stop Paying Commission on Pilots
14:00 - Customer Success: Is it 'Total Bullshit' or a Growth Engine?
16:15 - The 'Global-First' Fallacy: Why You Need to Open Every Market Now
17:23 - Why Startups Are Wrong to Ignore 20-Year Sales Veterans
19:15 - The Pipeline Construction Secret: Liquidity vs. Whales
24:30 - Forecasting the Unpredictable: How to Hit a $1B Revenue Target
31:55 - The Substitution Threat: Is AI Voice Just a Commodity?
34:10 - Verticalization Mistakes: Lessons from Scaling India
38:40 - The 'IBM Effect': Does Brand Actually Shorten Sales Cycles?
40:15 - Extreme Expectations: Why ElevenLabs is a Hard Company to Work For
42:15 - Internal Leaderboards: How to Use Public Competition to Drive Results
44:20 - Hunting the Obsessed: Identifying the 'Inner Psychopath' in Hires
46:40 - The SaaS Apocalypse: Will Companies Build Their Own CRM?
48:30 - Formula 1 Branding: The Mindset Behind the Audi-Revolut Deal
50:15 - Dinner vs. Conferences: Which Marketing Channels Actually Scale?
52:45 - Designing Un-Salesy Content: How to Run a Legendary Summit
54:20 - CVC Strategy: Turning Corporate Investors into Distribution Channels
01:01:45 - The Globalization Nightmare: Why You Can't Sell in English Everywhere
01:06:45 - Operator-Investors: Can You Be a High-Performer and a VC Simultaneously?
01:11:30 - Unit Economics in AI: Why Good Early Numbers Might Mean Failure
01:18:25 - The Next Wave: Why Foundational Model Consolidation is Inevitable

AGENDA:
03:59 — Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI in Revenue
12:43 — OpenAI Management Reboot
18:24 — OpenAI Buys TBPN
29:00 — SpaceX Files for IPO Targeting $2 Trillion Valuation
37:21 — Doug Leone Returns to Sequoia Capital
41:14 — YC Kicks Out Delve
45:21 — The Rise of Open Router
57:59 — Supabase Targeting $10B Valuation
01:08:18 — The Mercor Hack and AI Cyber Threats Moving Forward
01:17:25 — The $1.8B Two-Person Company

Demis Hassabis is the Co-Founder & CEO of Google DeepMind - working on AGI, responsible for AI breakthroughs such as AlphaGo, the first program to beat the world champion at the game of Go; and AlphaFold, which cracked the 50-year grand challenge of protein structure prediction and was recognised with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Demis is revolutionising drug discovery at Isomorphic Labs. Ultimately, trying to understand the fundamental nature of reality.
AGENDA:
00:04:00 — What Actually Counts as AGI; and Where Are We Today?
00:05:00 — What Are the Biggest Bottlenecks Holding AI Back Today?
00:06:00 — Have We Hit the Limits of Scaling Laws?
00:07:00 — Where Is AI Ahead of Expectations; and What's Still Missing?
00:07:30 — Why Can't AI Systems Learn Continuously Like Humans?
00:08:30 — How Did DeepMind Go from Behind to Leading the Pack?
00:11:00 — Are We Heading Toward Model Commoditization; or Winner-Takes-All?
00:12:00 — What Does the Future of Open Source Really Look Like?
00:13:00 — What Does a Post LLM World Look Like?
00:14:45 — Can AI Really Fix Drug Discovery—and Cut the 10-Year Timeline?
00:17:00 — What Does "Good" AI Regulation Actually Look Like?
00:18:00 — Who Should Be the Ultimate Arbiter of Truth in an AI World?
00:19:30 — If Demis Had One Shot to Fix AI Safety, What Would He Do?
00:21:00 — Is This Time Different for Jobs; or Will History Repeat Itself?
00:22:00 — Is AGI Bigger Than the Industrial Revolution; and Faster?
00:23:00 — Are We Underestimating AI Despite All the Hype?
00:23:30 — Does AI Lead to Massive Inequality; or Universal Prosperity?
00:24:30 — How Do We Solve the Energy Crisis Created by AI?
00:26:00 — Why Stay in the UK Instead of Moving to Silicon Valley?
00:28:00 — Will Europe Ever Build a Trillion-Dollar Tech Giant?
00:29:30 — Meeting Elon Musk for the First Time?
00:31:00 — What Big Questions About AI Is No One Talking About?
00:31:30 — What Does Demis Want His Legacy to Be?

Andrew Dudum is the Founder and CEO of Hims, the company reshaping consumers relationship to healthcare. It has been a rocky ride over the last 6 months, the company is down 66%, their market cap today is $4.3BN on $2.3BN of revenue. They just bought their largest international competitor, Eucalyptus for $1.5BN. 
AGENDA:
00:00 — Why Being Public Is Better Than Private 
02:50 — My Advice to The Collisons on Taking Stripe Public
07:15 — How to Hire for the Most Gritty People: The Test 
10:55 — How AI Will Reshape All of Customer Acquisition 
15:30 — What Did Hims Do That Andrew Wishes They Had Not Done 
20:15 — What is the Least Profitable but Most Important Hims Product
27:10 — The $1.5BN Acquisition: Why Hims Bought Their Biggest Global Competitor 
33:45 — Why Brand Marketing Beats Performance Marketing 
39:40 — The Future of Prevention: Why Your Next Blood Test Should Be Free 
46:50 — Disrupting the PBMs: How We Are Breaking the Corrupt US Healthcare System

AGENDA:
00:00 — Anthropic's Monster Month: 6 Billion in February Revenue
04:30 — The "Claude Mythos" Leak: 10 Trillion Parameters
11:50 — OpenAI Kills "Sora": A Massive Strategic Own Goal?
14:30 — OpenAI Hits $100M in Ads: Why OpenAI Must Make Ads Work
20:50 — Masa Son's $40BN Bridge Loan: Investing More Into OpenAI
21:50 — Cybersecurity Stocks Tank: Is the Anthropic Panic Justified?
27:10 — The Golden Age of Cyber: Why AI Agents are a "Golden Goose" for Security
31:30 — Gross vs. Net: The Truth Behind AI Revenue Accounting
34:50 — The "Vibe Coding" Era: Reselling Tokens and Triple-Counting ARR
41:00 — Oura Going Public & Whoop Raises $500M at $10BN Valuation
49:50 — Epic Games Layoffs: The Reality of the Attention Economy
52:40 — The Manus Scandal: Founders Trapped in China After Meta Deal
59:00 — The Billionaire Tax: Why the Golden Geese are Leaving California
01:03:20 — Do VCs Actually Add Value? The Ron Conway vs. Matthew Prince Spat