The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Harry Stebbings
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. On...
20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation
Nik Storonsky is the Co-Founder and CEO of Revolut, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world with a $45BN valuation and 50M customers around the world. In July 2024, Revolut posted a whopping $2.2BN in revenue with $545M in pre-tax profit in 2023. To date, Nik has raised $1.8BN for the company from the likes of Index, Balderton, Ribbit, DST and TCV. In Today’s Show with Nik Storonsky We Discuss: 1. When & Where Will Revolut IPO: What does Revolut need to do or change before they are ready to go public? When would Nik like for Revolut to go public? When they do go public, where would Nik list? Would it be in London? How does Nik respond to claims that he has moved to Dubai for tax reasons? 2. What Revolut Needs to Achieve to Hit $100BN: Why has no challenger bank won the US market yet? What will Revolut do differently to allow them to win the US market? What market share will Revolut have in Europe in 3 years time? What line of the business that does not exist today, will be the biggest in 5 years time? 3. How to Build an Execution Machine: Why does Nik believe the biggest mistake he made was hiring senior managers? What have been Nik’s biggest lessons on how to hire for roles you have never hired for before? What works? What does not? How does Nik retain insane velocity of execution at scale? How does Nik bucket people into three different buckets? What does each bucket mean for the type of work they do and the expectations placed on them? 4. How Revolut Tests New Products: How does Revolut use a portfolio approach to test new product ideas? How are teams for new ideas structured? What roles do they have? How much time and resources are they given? What is the tracking process to determine the success of new products? What % of new products do succeed and progress to the core app? Which product did Nik think would be massive but turned out to be a flop? What did Nik not expect to be massive and turned out to be mega hit? 5. The UK and Europe: Are We F******: The Chancellor has said we will have no growth in the UK for the next 3 years. How does it feel for Nik to grow Revolut in this environment? If Nik could advise Keir Starmer on how to turn the UK around, what would he say? Why does Nik believe the US has created so many more $100BN companies? Why does Nik believe that work/life imbalance is the secret to success and happiness?
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45:53
20VC: Grindr: The Most Insane Story in Startups | How the Chinese Bought and Lost Grindr | The Successful IPO with $300M Revenues and 40% EBITDA Margins | How Grindr Built a Free Cash Flow Machine
George Arison is the CEO of Grindr. The app that results in 40% of lesbian and gay marriages, the average user uses the app for 1 hour per day and sends more messages on Grindr than they do Whatsapp. The company will do over $300M in revenue in 2024 with a 40% EBITDA margin. One of the insane public company success stories. Prior to Grindr, George was the Founder and CEO of Shift, which he took public in 2020. In Today’s Episode with George Arison We Discuss: 1. Wild Story of How the Chinese Bought and Lost Grindr: How did the Chinese come to buy Grindr and then fire the founder? Why did the US government force the sale of the company from the Chinese? What happened when the whole development team was in Taiwan and then resigned overnight? George got the CEO role in Sept and the company went public in Oct. How did that all happen so fast? 2. How Grindr is a Free Cash Flow Machine: What are the three core ways that Grindr is able to print money with a 40% EBITDA margin? Why does Grindr not spend any money on marketing or customer acquisition? Why does George think that most companies have way too many people? Why does George believe that most startups are very badly managed? What will Grindr do with the insane amount of free cash flow the company is producing? 3. Lessons Building Grindr to $300M in Revenue: What has George done with Grindr that he wishes he had not done? What has he not done that he wishes he had done? Why does George not make political statements today? Does George think we have freedom of speech when CEOs face such repercussions for political views? What does Wall St not understand about Grindr that it really should understand?
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56:36
20Product: Is an AI Winter Approaching | The Future of AI Software Development: What is Real & What is BS | OpenAI: WTF is Going on & How Far Into Application Layer Do They Go | The Future Role of Software Engineers with Guy Podjarny
Guy Podjarny founded Tessl, Snyk and Blaze. Tessl is reimagining software development for the AI era and shaping AI Native Development. Snyk created and leads the Developer Security category, and is now a multi-billion dollar company with over 1,000 employees. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai (following its acquisition of Blaze), is an active angel investor, and co-hosts of the AI Native Dev podcast. In Today’s Episode with Guy Podjarny We Discuss: 03:02 Discussion on NVIDIA's Market Position 04:14 Will We See a Trough of Disillusionment in AI 07:36 The Future of AI Development and Specialized Models 10:17 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Dev Tools 17:41 Concerns About Closed vs. Open Development Platforms 21:27 Speculations on AI's Role in Application Layers 24:40 Google's Competitive Edge 25:28 IPO and M&A in the Trump Era 26:45 The Future Role of Software Developers 32:20 Security Challenges in AI Development 33:41 Spicy Questions and Charity Donations 36:05 Quickfire Round: Insights and Advice
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46:10
20VC: Why Price Sensitivity is BS | Why "Portfolios" are Merely a Construct to Make LPs Happy | Why the Best Investment Never Happen in "Fundraising Rounds" | What Europe Needs to do to Become a Superpower Again | Klaus Hommels, Lakestar
Klaus Hommels is one of Europe’s leading start investors of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Spotify, Airbnb, Facebook, Coinbase, Revolut and more. Among his many responsibilities, Klaus is the Founder of Lakestar, his own venture fund and chairs the board of directors of the NATO Innovation Fund. In Today’s Episode with Klaus Hommels We Discuss: 1. The Investing Rules that are BS: Why does Klaus totally reject the idea of price sensitivity? Why does Klaus hate the idea of “building portfolios”? Why does Klaus believe the best investments are made when there is not a fundraising round in motion? Why does Klaus believe that capital concentration limits on a per company basis are BS? How concentrated is Klaus happy to be? 2. Europe: What The F*** is Going On: Why is Europe underfinancing innovation by a factor of eight? Why is Europe unable to send satellites into space for six years? What should Europe do to become a global superpower once again? What needs to change? Why should European pension funds be forced to invest in venture capital? 3. The Stories Behind the $BN Returns: How did a dinner with Klaus’ son lead to his investing in Revolut? How did Klaus analysis of Friendster and MySpace lead to his buying Matt Cohler @ Benchmark’s Facebook shares? How did a small investment in a Swedish company, Stardoll, lead to Klaus investing in the seed round of Spotify? How did a conversation with Madonna’s manager lead to Klaus investing in Airbnb?
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1:09:51
20VC: Discord's Jason Citron on Why Everything We are Taught About Hiring & Management is BS | Do Richer Founders & Gamer Founders Make Better Founders? | Never Before Told Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users
Jason Citron is the Co-Founder and CEO of Discord, a voice, video and text platform for friends playing games. Jason has raised $1BN for the company and was able to scale to 200M users. Prior to co-founding Discord, Jason founded OpenFeint, the biggest social mobile gaming platform, which sold to GREE in 2011 for $104 million. In Today’s Episode with Jason Citron We Discuss: 1. Leadership Lessons That are Total BS: Hiring: Why does Jason believe hiring experienced executives is the worst thing you can do for your company? What did he learn by doing it? Culture: Why does Jason believe that empowerment and alignment are total BS? How does Jason empower people when they are told what to do vs choose what to do? Strategy: What does Jason believe is the most effective way to drive and implement the strategy? 2. The Untold Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users: Why did Jason offer to give investors their money back at one point? What was the hardest round to raise and why? Why did Jason turn down the chance to sell to Microsoft for $12BN? What one single change in how Jason communicated with the first 100 users changed the trajectory of the entire company? What do most founders think they know about product market fit that they do not? 3. The Makings of a Unicorn Founder: Does Jason believe that richer founders make better founders? Why does Jason believe that entrepreneurs who play video games have a higher chance of being successful in the future? What single trait does Jason believe he has that has made him such a successful founder? Does Jason ever have imposter syndrome? When?
Acerca de The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman.
If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.
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