20VC with Harry Stebbings
Showing 1–15 of 702 transcripts.
- 1h 17m
Valar Atomics Sues Day One Ventures | Meta's Back to the AI Frontier | NVIDIA's $30B Reflection Deal
Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
Valor Atomics initiated a contentious legal dispute with seed investor Day One Ventures over pro-rata rights waivers in its $6 billion Series B, exposing strategic friction between large megafunds and early backers. Simultaneously, the broader tech landscape faces consolidation as NVIDIA pursues open-source acquisitions to lock in ecosystem spend, while Meta's internal "Muse Wonder" model reinforces a leadership dynamic centered on Mark Zuckerberg and Alex Wang. Investors are adjusting to a deflationary AI market driven by Anthropic's price cuts and rising IPO revenue thresholds, prompting capital shifts toward high-utility robotics and drug discovery firms like Isomorphic Labs.
- 59 min
Atlassian CEO: Enterprises Won't Trust Chinese AI | Why The Jury’s Still Out on Specialised Models
Mike Cannon-Brookes, Harry Stebbings
Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brooks rejects the "headless" AI strategy, arguing that design and user experience must remain critical differentiators as the company builds a foundational interface layer and top-tier Model Context Protocol server for its "Teamwork Graph." Instead of replacing humans, Atlassian positions its agents as context enablers that integrate across tools like Figma and Databricks while prioritizing accountability through rigorous management of agent provenance and cost-effective model routing. Looking ahead, the company anticipates a shift from information asymmetry to imagination asymmetry, where enterprises leverage semantic search of live organizational data to foster high-value creative work amidst rapidly declining inference costs.
- 1h 12m
How to Build a Sales Machine | Max Freeman, Ramp
Ramp redefines sales operations by treating talent acquisition and pipeline management as engineering problems, utilizing rigorous vetting simulations and a high-performance compensation model that pays SDRs double the market rate to book 40 to 60 meetings monthly. The company implements a strict performance tiering system where underperformers are immediately terminated, while new hires undergo intensive 60-to-90-day bootcamps to master proprietary automation tools before accessing accounts. By delaying verticalization until capturing significant market share and enforcing a dual-threat leadership model, Ramp achieves forecasting accuracy within a 5% delta while compressing sales cycles through aggressive disqualification of prospects lacking executive commitment.
- 1h 16m
Cognition vs Factory | Anthropic Under Threat | ElevenLabs Doubles Its Valuation to $22B
Dev Ittycheria, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
OpenAI's accelerating revenue growth contrasts with a delayed 2027 IPO, while Anthropic targets a November 2024 public offering and Salesforce executes a $2 billion acquisition of Listen Labs to capitalize on rapid AI application exits. Concurrent market turbulence includes the withdrawal of Aura's IPO filing and the erosion of executive loyalty norms, exemplified by a board observer's swift transition from Factory to competitor Cognition. Additionally, the sector faces emerging legal challenges regarding Grok's acquisition structure and shifting consumer behaviors driven by the Jevons Paradox, which fuels increased AI usage despite falling costs.
- 1h 11m
Can You Still Win in Venture Without a $1BN Fund? Menlo’s Venky Ganesan on the New Rules of VC
Venky Ganesan, Harry Stebbings
Menlo Ventures employs an aggressive "buy everything" strategy to participate in defining AI companies, prioritizing the ability to scale positions in outliers over maintaining high initial ownership stakes. Partner Venky Ramachandran guides this approach by emphasizing data-backed conviction, rapid capital deployment, and the selection of founders capable of communicating complex concepts simply. The firm accepts dilution and lower equity percentages at the seed stage to secure entry into massive opportunities like Anthropic, aiming to maximize returns through asymmetric upside rather than early-stage control.
- 1h 5m
Crusoe CEO: Why Everyone Gets GPU Depreciation & AI Energy Costs Wrong
Chase Lochmiller, Harry Stebbings
Crusoe Energy secured a $3.9 billion Series F round to reach a $30.9 billion valuation while pivoting from Bitcoin mining to a vertically integrated AI infrastructure model. Founder Chase Lockmiller leads the company's strategy to bypass traditional supply chain delays by manufacturing power distribution internally, enabling the rapid deployment of a 1-gigawatt-scale computing facility in Abilene that promises to deliver capacity significantly faster than the industry standard. This approach addresses critical constraints in skilled labor and physical connectivity through modular construction and closed-loop cooling, aiming to generate substantial local tax revenue while managing GPU asset lifecycles through diverse revenue streams.
- 1h 20m
AMD Buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B | Meta Poaches MongoDB's CEO | Bessemer Raises $5.75B
Fei-Fei Li, Jack Altman, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
Tyler Cowen and other market participants analyze a volatile AI landscape defined by skewed investment variance, massive M&A activity including AMD's acquisition of World Labs, and a strategic shift toward inference companies as open-source market share stagnates. While high-profile ventures like Instinct raise billions to capitalize on the transition from chat to agents, public market signals remain mixed as Aura withdraws its IPO and new banking consolidations proceed. The discussion further highlights structural changes in venture fund sizing, the risks of existential disclosures in filings, and the fragility of founder governance in an environment where large tech acquirers dominate talent and capital.
- 1h 16m
The Untold Story of Higgsfield | Burning $4M a Month on AI Models | CEO, Alex Mashrabov
Alex Mashrabov, Harry Stebbings
Hicksfield achieved $1 billion in annualized revenue within 18 months by pivoting from proprietary foundational models to a cost-efficient strategy leveraging open-weights models and advanced model routing. Operating with a globally distributed workforce of 400 primarily based in Central Asia, the company drives growth through AI-native distribution for consumer entertainment and B2B workflows, recording a 300% net revenue retention rate and operating margins exceeding 80% on open-source solutions. Founder Alex now aims to scale the organization to $10 billion in revenue over the next 12 months, positioning Hicksfield as critical infrastructure for AI-generated content while rejecting traditional management theories in favor of a high-impact, meritocratic culture.
- 1h 9m
The Ads Business Model Will Die & Lessons from Working with Elon at Twitter | Parag Agrawal
Elon, Parag Agrawal, Harry Stebbings
Parallel is redefining web infrastructure as a specialized search layer optimized for agents, which the company predicts will utilize the internet 1,000 times more frequently than humans. By compressing compute costs and dynamically routing queries between low-latency voice modes and deep-reasoning background agents, the platform addresses the technical constraints of agentic workflows while disrupting traditional advertising models through data monetization at inference time. This strategic pivot positions Parallel to capture a projected $10 billion to $50 billion market as the industry shifts from human-centric browsing to event-driven, high-volume agent interactions.
- 1h 21m
Meta's Muse Hits #1 | Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm | Keith Rabois vs Airwallex: Who is Right?
Keith Rabois, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
Anthropic's strategic IPO postponement to November allows for audited financial transparency, contrasting with OpenAI's massive projected capital requirements and Meta's rapid $100 billion market gain from its "Muse" agent launch. Meanwhile, new developments like Vercel's cost-efficient "Jeff" model and Meta's entry into agentic commerce are reshaping market dynamics by challenging legacy infrastructure and forcing retailers like Amazon to choose between blocking or integrating autonomous shopping agents. These technological shifts occur alongside a venture capital environment characterized by larger check sizes and selective investment decisions that prioritize data sovereignty and margin of safety over speculative valuations.
- 1h 19m
Daniel Dines on Why Work Processes Not Models Will Be The Most Valuable Asset in AI
UiPath CEO Daniel Dines argues that enterprise AI success depends on creating detailed "maps of work" to document proprietary workflows, as AI lacks the human capacity for on-the-job transformation and real-time reasoning. He outlines a strategy where organizations deploy deterministic automation generated by AI coding agents rather than relying on probabilistic models for direct execution, while simultaneously retraining employees to fill roles requiring cultural nuance and initiative. Dines projects UiPath will grow from $1.6 billion to a $50 billion valuation by evolving into a comprehensive orchestration platform, though he warns that a future with autonomous "Einstein" agents could render current approaches obsolete.
- 1h 20m
How Many Will Actually Get Built & Is Energy AI's BIGGEST Bottleneck? | Positron AI Co-founder
Thomas Sohmers, Harry Stebbings
Positron AI secured $875 million in Series C funding at a $5 billion valuation to address the critical memory bandwidth bottleneck hindering current AI inference infrastructure. Co-founder Thomas Somers details the company's strategy to deploy full-stack semiconductor solutions that overcome the "memory wall," while simultaneously challenging regulatory caps and geopolitical narratives that he argues threaten technological freedom and accelerate centralization. The event outlines a future where vertical integration and flat-rate pricing models drive autonomous agent adoption, positioning hardware scaling and energy infrastructure as the primary drivers of the next growth phase in the data economy.
- 1h 19m
Instinct Raising $1B at $10B & Meta Launches Muse | Miro Sells for $1.36B After a $17.5B Valuation
Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
The discourse on AI safety centers on Dario Amodei's controversial "Pace the Frontier" proposal, which sparked intense debate among industry leaders regarding regulatory intervention versus voluntary self-regulation while markets largely dismissed existential risks in favor of tangible cyber-vulnerability concerns. In the competitive landscape, Meta aggressively deployed its Muse assistant leveraging massive engineering resources and proprietary infrastructure, whereas European players secured a record $3 billion funding round from Samsung and ASML to establish AI sovereignty against US dominance. Simultaneously, the broader market underwent a significant correction illustrated by Bending Spoons acquiring Miro at a steep discount and the strategic struggles of legacy firms like Adobe to pivot toward AI-driven growth amid tightening liquidity conditions.
- 1h 16m
How LPs Allocate to Venture in 2026: What They Want, What They Don’t | Baylor University CIO
David Morehead, Harry Stebbings
Baylor University's $2.6 billion endowment office, led by Moorhead, is restructuring its 55% private and 45% public portfolio to prioritize capital velocity and upside capture amidst declining enrollment and rising tuition pressures. The team distinguishes itself through a mechanistic deployment strategy, conservative valuation discipline, and direct GP negotiations that favor annualized growth equity returns of 30% over traditional fund duration models. While maintaining a neutral stance on private credit, the fund actively bets on the resilience of legacy SaaS, permitted data center infrastructure, and biotech, aiming to navigate its expansion into the single-digit billion scale by maximizing the absolute dollar impact of its $2.5 million core positions.
- 1h 22m
Labour, Engineering, Social Media, GrokBots, Cybercabs: 7 Predictions for How AI Changes the World
Matteo Franceschetti, Harry Stebbings
Eight Sleep Co-founder Matteo Franceschetti details how the company replaces traditional engineering and marketing teams with AI agents to operate as a 160-person entity generating revenue per employee exceeding Apple's. The presentation outlines the firm's aggressive global expansion into markets like China via super-apps and its strategic pivot from a hardware manufacturer to a medical platform while navigating intense talent retention wars and rising AI infrastructure costs. Franceschetti concludes with predictions on the future of work, suggesting that Universal Basic Income will eventually become necessary as AI-driven efficiency drastically reduces the demand for human labor.