Latest Interviews
Showing 886–900 of 1,595 transcripts.
Clear all filtersMaggie Hott: 3 Questions You Must Ask When Interviewing Sales Reps | 20VC #960
Maggie Brown, who scaled Slack from $12 million to over $1 billion ARR as its first sales rep, now leads Webflow's sales organization from the ground up. She emphasizes that successful hyper-growth requires early investment in enterprise-grade tools, immediate outbound strategies, and cross-functional partnership to differentiate self-serve products for the enterprise market. Brown further advises founders to hire seasoned account executives, cluster hiring for efficiency, and utilize coaching-intensive interview processes to build high-performing sales teams capable of navigating complex negotiation landscapes.
- The Diary Of A CEO1h 16m
Richard Branson: How A Dyslexic Drop-out Build A Billion Dollar Empire!
Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson
Richard Branson outlines his entrepreneurial philosophy of diversification and delegation, crediting these strategies alongside his dyslexia for sustaining the Virgin Group through crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. He details the history of Virgin Atlantic's resilience against British Airways' legal and competitive challenges while describing the high-stakes risks and ultimate success of his personal spaceflight missions. Branson concludes by attributing his leadership style to early family influences and the strategic power of personal branding, which allowed him to transform individual ventures into a global empire defined by innovation and customer service.
Marty Cagan: Product Lessons from Steve Jobs and Elon Musk; Why do we idolize engineers? | 20VC #957
Marty Cagan, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Harry Stebbings
Marty Cagan, a former executive at HP, Netscape, and eBay, defines product management as a team-facilitation role focused on solving the primary risk of product-market fit rather than secondary business mechanics. He outlines a discovery framework built on four pillars—value, usability, feasibility, and viability—that requires 50 to 100 rapid iterations to validate whether a solution significantly outperforms alternatives. Cagan advises that organizations should hire dedicated product leaders when engineering teams reach 25 to 30 members, emphasizing that success depends on outcome-driven autonomy and deep customer immersion over process-heavy management.
a16z GP Martin Casado: How I Went from Engineer to VC; Lessons from Chris Dixon | 20VC #956
Martin Casado, Chris Dixon, Harry Stebbings, Marc Andreessen
Former VMware executive and current a16z partner Martin Casado critiques the fragmented venture capital model while advocating for a unified, multi-stage approach that supports companies from seed to public markets. Drawing on his decade of operating experience, he urges investors to act as empathetic partners who avoid the "operator trap" of imposing past solutions, instead leveraging specialized teams to guide founders through complex market annealing. Casado predicts that by 2032, pro-innovation capital will displace traditional finance as the primary driver of early-stage growth, fundamentally reshaping the industry away from generalist strategies toward deep, specialized stewardship.
William Hockey: How I Founded Plaid; The Ultimate Cold Email Tip; Hiring Lessons | 20VC #955
William Hockey, Will Hockey, Harry Stebbings, Kyle Harrison
Will Chen, the co-founder of Plaid, founded the OCC-regulated bank Column to build financial infrastructure directly on top of the Federal Reserve's protocols rather than through legacy intermediaries. Operating on a fully self-funded and employee-owned model, Chen prioritizes long-term structural efficiency over rapid venture-backed growth to bypass the inefficiencies of the current money supply chain. By acquiring a banking charter early, Chen aims to dissolve traditional "cradle-to-grave" banks into invisible infrastructure providers while enabling specialized vertical software companies to offer native financial services.
Jason Lemkin: Cold Email Tips; Why Only 15% of Founders Listen to their VCs | 20VC #954
Jason Lemkin outlines an exclusive inbound investment strategy for his SaaStr fund, which now targets minimum 10% ownership stakes while emphasizing founder communication quality as the primary deal filter. He details the strategic evolution of his Algolia investment, noting how an initial focus on valuation sensitivity limited his equity position despite the startup's hyper-growth validation against open-source competitors. Beyond specific deals, Lemkin critiques current VC practices, warning of "zombie" companies fueled by excessive pre-product-market fit capital and predicting significant fund churn as limited partners demand outperformance.
Miki Kuusi: How I Scaled Wolt to $8B; Why I Sold to DoorDash | 20VC #953
Miki Kuusi, Harry Stebbings, Kyle Harrison, Tony Xu, Ilkka
Wolt founder Mickey Bergman transformed his food ordering startup by pivoting from a pickup model to rapid delivery, subsequently rejecting a lucrative acquisition to prioritize long-term growth before the company was eventually acquired by DoorDash. This strategic expansion included cutting non-core verticals and implementing a high-performance culture where stock options were granted to all employees to align incentives. The resulting market leader now operates in over 20 countries with a vision to redefine local commerce by reducing delivery times from hours to mere minutes.
- Dwarkesh Patel57 min
Edward Glaeser - Cities, Terrorism, Housing, & Remote Work
Experts warn that Silicon Valley risks becoming an industrial monolith akin to 1950s Detroit due to sector concentration, while noting that housing market stickiness and restrictive zoning in high-opportunity areas are permanently anchoring populations in declining regions. The discussion highlights how polarized urban demographics, ineffective public K-12 monopolies, and rising progressive taxes threaten to trigger capital flight, prompting a strategic shift toward Sunbelt cities with pro-business policies. Ultimately, the analysis emphasizes that adapting low-lying developing-world cities to climate change remains the most critical unresolved challenge in urban economics, despite advancements in local infrastructure and surveillance security.
Jeffrey Katzenberg & Sujay Jaswa: Takeaways from Dreamworks; What happened with Quibi? | 20VC #952
Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sujay Jaswa, Harry Stebbings
Sujay Mehta and Jeffrey Katzenberg discuss leadership strategies, hiring philosophies, and risk management drawn from their respective successes in scaling Dropbox and navigating the media and entertainment industries. The dialogue highlights critical takeaways such as embracing cultural agility, prioritizing potential over pedigree in recruitment, and the necessity of rapidly exiting ventures that lack product-market fit to preserve capital. Together, they address the evolving dynamics of remote work, generational attitudes toward ambition, and their cautious outlook on the current venture landscape and generative AI applications.
- a16z1h 29m
Neal Stephenson on the Future of the Metaverse
Neal Stephenson argues that the true metaverse will evolve from isolated 2D platforms into a singular, interoperable digital space where users seamlessly traverse diverse experiences without requiring VR or AR hardware. To support this vision, his company Lamina One is developing a carbon-neutral blockchain that integrates financial infrastructure into major game engines, enabling automated micro-payments and IP rights management for creators. This framework aims to replace traditional business planning with science fiction as a strategic roadmap while addressing critical challenges regarding AI provenance and the long-term need for carbon removal technologies.
- Goldman Sachs1h 21m
2022 Analyst Impact Fund
Asahi Pompei, Jim Kramer, Nikonj, Kee, Angela, Simon, Amber, Amy, Eduardo, Gabriella, Sandra, Eric, Anna Gipikoulos, Olivia, Lisa, Joseph, David Solomon
The seventh annual Goldman Sachs Analyst Impact Fund Finals brought four finalist teams from Singapore, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, and London to New York to pitch social impact projects before a panel including Jim Cramer. Team IntelliHealth secured the $250,000 first-place award for its telehealth platform, while Upwardly Global, Climate Science, and Witness received additional funding to scale their initiatives in workforce integration, climate education, and human rights verification. This in-person event marked a strategic shift for the competition, reinforcing Goldman Sachs' commitment to inclusive growth by deploying $550,000 in grants to support projects aligning with the firm's 2021 sustainability goals.
- All-In Podcast1h 25m
E104: FTX collapse with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong + election results, macro update & more
Brian Armstrong, Sam Bankman-Fried, David Sacks
Sacks, General Milley, and other officials discuss a strategic pivot toward negotiating an end to the Ukraine war to prevent nuclear escalation while analyzing recent US election failures caused by Trump's unpopularity and the GOP's reliance on extreme platforms. The conversation further details the systemic fraud within the FTX collapse, which has accelerated offshore crypto migration and spurred calls for stricter regulatory clarity on digital assets. Simultaneously, the macroeconomic outlook warns of a prolonged recession driven by potential inflation double-dips and tight liquidity, forcing startups and tech firms to prioritize survival and profitability over growth.
Martin Escobari: How to Invest During a Recession; Negotiation Tips; Developing Markets | 20VC #948
Martin Escobari, Seba Kanovich, Harry Stebbings
Martin Escobar, Harvard alumnus and Chair of General Atlantic's global investment committee, leverages his background emerging from Bolivia to Latin America to guide the firm's $80 billion portfolio toward companies with large markets and defensible business models. He champions a disciplined investment philosophy that rejects "growth at any cost" in favor of fair valuations and rigorous due diligence, explicitly citing Nubank and the missed opportunity of Uber as pivotal lessons in market sizing and bias mitigation. Through GA's culture of extreme transparency and selectivity, Escobar aims to empower emerging market entrepreneurs to scale globally while ensuring capital efficiency during volatile economic cycles.
- a16z1h 26m
Privateer’s Steve Wozniak, Alex Fielding, and Dr. Moriba Jah on the Data Highway Above
Steve Wozniak, Alex Fielding, Dr. Moriba Jah
As low Earth Orbit approaches saturation with over 26,000 tracked debris objects and compliance failures affecting 40% of registered space assets, Privateer has launched the Wayfinder platform and Pono constellation to democratize space situational awareness and enforce a circular economy framework. The organization replaces the legacy data monopoly with a mutual benefit model that incentivizes global telemetry sharing to prevent catastrophic Kessler events and restore regulatory order. This initiative aims to transform space traffic management from an unregulated free-for-all into a public utility, ensuring orbital capacity remains viable for future terrestrial and interplanetary civilization.
Michael Mauboussin: The Single Biggest Mistake Investors Make In Decision-Making | 20VC #945
Michael Mauboussin, Bill Gurley, Harry Stebbings
Michael Mauboussin, Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, outlines how distinguishing between luck and randomness, combined with preferential attachment dynamics, drives persistent success in venture capital. He advocates for specific decision-making protocols, such as three-person committees, premortems, and junior-first dissent, to mitigate bias and ensure investment processes align with an entity's competitive edge. Mauboussin concludes that while market volatility and interest rates fluctuate, long-term success relies on focusing on free cash flow fundamentals and maintaining psychological equilibrium through a disciplined adherence to process over macro forecasting.