20VC with Harry Stebbings
Showing 376–390 of 691 transcripts.
- 1h 25m
Tooey Courtemanche: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO | E1090
Tooey Courtemanche, Brian, Will, Hilary, Tobi, Harry Stebbings
Founded in 2002 by carpenter-turned-CEO Tim Ryan and Steve Zahn, Procore overcame a decade of market resistance and a 2008 financial crisis to become a $9 billion enterprise software leader serving over 16,000 customers. The company's trajectory shifted dramatically in 2015 following mobile technology adoption, securing a critical $30 million institutional round from Bessemer Venture Partners that validated their vision to transform the construction industry from manual tools to a comprehensive digital platform. Today, Procore operates with a global workforce of approximately 4,000 employees and a suite of 12 products, having successfully pivoted from a struggling startup to a dominant force through a strategy focused on long-term vision, cultural fit, and rapid, reversible decision-making.
- 1h 4m
Dominik Richter: You Only Have Two Options With VC Funding | E1089
Dominik Richter, Harry Stebbings
HelloFresh CEO Dominic leads a detailed discussion on navigating the high-intensity US market, strategic capital allocation that fueled $1.5 billion in operational cash flow, and the critical acquisition of Factor to secure supply chain dominance. The presentation outlines a specific IPO philosophy prioritizing market timing over immediate valuation while detailing how heavy automation and phased vertical integration create durable competitive moats against new entrants. Additionally, the CEO shares contrarian insights on early-stage talent acquisition, the resilience of high-frequency consumer models during recessions, and the necessity of returning to in-office collaboration for complex strategic execution.
- 8 min
"There Are Two Ways to Do Cold Emails" with HyperGrowth Partners Founder Guillaume Cabane
Guillaume Cabane, Harry Stebbings
The initiative introduces a dual-strategy framework for high-response cold outreach by combining automated negative comment detection with hyper-personalized social wagering. This approach targets unaddressed customer complaints to deliver zero-cost value, achieving 10–12% response rates, while simultaneously engaging hard-to-reach CFOs through specific college sports betting propositions to secure 12–15% engagement. By replacing self-promotion with genuine human connection and actionable insights, the method establishes a scalable competitive moat with negligible acquisition costs.
- 7 min
Why You Should Hire a Former Founder -- HyperGrowth Partners Founder Guillaume Cabane
Guillaume Cabane, Harry Stebbings
The event outlines a rigorous hiring strategy for senior growth leaders, prioritizing former founders or Big Five consultants to build resilient, data-precision-driven teams once product and marketing foundations are established. Candidate evaluation relies on take-home assignments with embedded data anomalies to test integrity, alongside gaming scenarios that assess risk-adjusted decision-making and creative problem-solving. Success in these roles is defined by a synthesis of scientific experimentation and aggressive creativity, distinguishing high performers from traditional marketers who lack the necessary experimental rigor.
- 1h 13m
Guillaume Cabane: Why Your First Growth Hire Should Be a Former Founder | E1088
Guillaume Cabane, Harry Stebbings
This expert-led session defines high-velocity growth as a risk-adjusted mechanism requiring startups to run dozens of simultaneous experiments where single successes offset multiple failures. The discussion details critical operational frameworks, including the "3-3-2-2" revenue trajectory, optimal CAC payback periods, and the dangers of attempting concurrent Product-Led and Enterprise sales motions. Finally, the analysis contrasts tactical execution strategies, such as using AI for hyper-personalized outreach and rigorous channel depth testing, against the long-term organizational necessity of maintaining an independent, humble growth function.
- 1h 7m
Keith Rabois & Mike Shebat: Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic| E1087
Keith Rabois, Mike Shebat, Harry Stebbings
Trava CEO Mike Kessler and Founders Fund GP Keith Rabois champion an "Olympian work ethic" characterized by strict in-office hours, equity-focused compensation, and a sports-team performance model that rigorously excludes underperformers. Their shared investment philosophy rejects remote-first structures for most ventures, arguing instead that distributed teams rarely build generational companies, while prioritizing first-time founders with untested ambition over experienced repeat founders. Targeting a trillion-dollar valuation within a decade, the pair aims to eliminate global labor constraints by scaling a demand-constrained marketplace driven by high-intensity recruitment and disciplined cultural preservation.
- 33 min
The Ultimate AI Roundtable: What Happens Now in AI, Why Google are Vulnerable | E1085
Des Traynor, Yann LeCun, Emad Mostaque, Jeff Seibert, Tomasz Tunguz, Douwe Kiela, Cris Valenzuela, Richard Socher, Harry Stebbings, Myles Grimshaw, Christian Lang
A diverse panel of AI industry leaders predicts a market consolidation around five to six dominant providers while debating the trajectory from proprietary scale to commoditized, open-source efficiency. Experts contrast conflicting views on model defensibility, with some arguing that data quality and iteration speed matter more than parameter counts, while others maintain that massive size remains essential for handling complex tasks. The discussion further outlines a structural shift in value accrual from cloud infrastructure to differentiated applications, forecasting a pivot in business models toward outcome-based pricing and predicting existential challenges for search incumbents like Google alongside opportunities for hardware-integrated strategies from Apple.
- 1h 1m
Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085
The event analyzes critical market shifts in AI infrastructure, highlighting Google's existential vulnerability, OpenAI's pivot to hosting models, and Apple's potential to disrupt the sector via on-device silicon. It juxtaposes these technical forecasts with strategic guidance for founders on execution, the necessity of disciplined pivoting, and the importance of data quality in building specialized financial AI platforms like Digits. Concluding with investor insights, the discussion critiques current VC valuations while emphasizing founder adaptability and predicting a future where AI enhances productivity rather than reducing employment.
- 1h 53m
Matteo Franceschetti: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | E1084
Matteo Franceschetti, Harry Stebbings
8 Sleep executed a strategic pivot from selling mattresses to establishing a premium preventative health platform, securing a Series A round from investors like Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures after overcoming a last-minute investor withdrawal. The company enforces strict operational standards through "8 Sleep Speed," a radical candor feedback culture, and rigorous hiring protocols that prioritize long-term vision over immediate growth metrics. By leveraging longitudinal biometric data from its temperature-regulating Pod cover, 8 Sleep aims to become a global public company capable of saving one million lives through early health intervention.
- 42 min
Roundtable #6 with Rebecca Kaden, Nicole Quinn, Eurie Kim, Harry Stebbings | E1083
Rebecca Kaden, Nicole Quinn, Eurie Kim, Harry Stebbings, Yuri
Market dynamics analysis reveals a bifurcated seed and Series A landscape where stable valuations coexist with falling later-stage deal sizes, forcing a strategic shift from "growth at all costs" to sustainable unit economics. Lightspeed Venture Partners and other institutional investors are redefining their structures and AI investment thesis, focusing on application-layer efficiency gains and specialized stage funds while rejecting multi-stage dominance in early checks. Industry leaders anticipate a future driven by non-consensus opportunities and collaborative models that solve tangible problems, signaling a return to fundamentals as the sector navigates rising startup mortality rates and underwater employee equity.
- 1h 33m
Des Traynor: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI | E1082
Intercom is transitioning from a legacy customer communication platform to an "AI First" enterprise by leveraging its proprietary messaging infrastructure to deploy Finn, an LLM-based agent that resolves a significant volume of support inquiries. While the speaker dismisses superficial AI integrations as mere "salt and pepper" features, the company distinguishes itself through a "thick wrapper" strategy that reimagines entire workflows and prioritizes model trustworthiness over cost optimization. The event further analyzes the broader "AI First" landscape, predicting high startup mortality for "thin wrapper" competitors and highlighting how incumbents like Google and Apple face existential choices regarding their core revenue models versus new AI-driven paradigms.
- 1h 3m
Ryan Petersen: Why Velocity not Speed is Most Important in Company Building | E1081
Ryan Petersen, Harry Stebbings
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen discusses a strategic reset following a period of over-capitalization, detailing a 27% cost reduction and a significant engineering restructuring to rebuild organizational discipline. He outlines a future vision where artificial intelligence automates complex freight coordination to slash shipping costs, while emphasizing that end-to-end logistics success relies on in-person collaboration and the integration of its financing arm. The conversation concludes with a forecast for continued global trade growth driven by China's manufacturing efficiency and a commitment to retaining a CEO-led structure through 2033.
- 58 min
Chris Degnan: Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Sooner Than You Think | E1080
In a detailed analysis of Snowflake's sales evolution, former executive Chris Dagnon outlines a rigorous discipline centered on weekly reporting, mandatory prospecting quotas, and the immediate termination of underperforming staff. He details strategic pivots such as targeting digital-native cloud users to avoid long procurement cycles, enforcing marketing accountability for qualified meetings over lead generation, and integrating customer success directly into the sales organization to maximize revenue ownership. Dagnon further emphasizes that leaders must lead from the front while maintaining a competitive, enemy-focused mindset to navigate macroeconomic uncertainty by prioritizing high-ROI "pain killer" solutions over nice-to-have products.
- 1h 4m
Danny Cohen: From Leading the BBC to Leading Venture Capitalist |E1079
Danny Cohen, Len Blavatnik, David Hockney, Harry Stebbings
Access Entertainment, backed by Len Blavatnik, rejects vertical-specific investing to target "attention and eyeballs" across a diverse portfolio ranging from gaming startups like Triple Dot to immersive theater projects featuring David Hockney. The firm navigates a fragmented media landscape where legacy broadcasters struggle against digital platforms and generative AI by prioritizing long-form content and applying strict selectivity criteria to founders who demonstrate extreme drive and emotional intelligence. Looking ahead, the strategy anticipates market consolidation and emphasizes physical shared experiences as a counter to the "loneliness pandemic," while maintaining a disciplined approach to talent management and cultural preservation.
- 52 min
Joey Zwillinger: From $4.1BN to $142M Market Cap;Why Public Markets Have Written Allbirds Off |E1078
Joey Zwillinger, Harry Stebbings
CEO Joe Zietz is steering Allbirds through a strategic pivot from a DTC-focused model to a product-first omnichannel approach, aiming to restore profitability and brand awareness amid a market capitalization drop from $3.75 billion to roughly $127 million. The company is deliberately reducing inventory, marketing, and store expansion costs to correct balance sheet inefficiencies and generate positive EBITDA by 2025, while leveraging sustainable materials to capitalize on the emerging "quiet luxury" trend. Although sales have temporarily declined due to these corrective measures, Zietz maintains that this transitional period is necessary to align the brand with its long-term vision of sustainable scale and to rebuild investor confidence in the face of a fragile consumer environment.