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

Shaunt Voskanian is the CRO @ Figma, where he has scaled the sales machine to over $1BN in ARR and over 400 people. Prior to Figma, Shaunt was Senior VP of Global Sales at Datadog where he scaled the revenue org to $1BN in ARR. 
AGENDA: 
04:33 - Are Great Sales Leaders Born or Trained?
06:55 - In a world of PLG, is sales less important than ever?
11:51 - Why does Shaunt not believe in traditional customer success teams?
14:31 - Does the role of the SDR survive in two years' time?
19:19 - When is the right time for sales to intercept in a PLG motion?
21:43 - How to Set Sales Quotas in a PLG AI Sales World?
31:19 - How has what you look for in sales hires changed over time?
42:54 - How do you judge sales performance if not on quota?
54:49 - Quick fire: Outdated sales tactic, What Role Dies, Best Sales AI Tool

AGENDA:
04:02 NVIDIA's GTC: What You Need to Know
11:39 Meta's 20% Layoffs & Atlassian Lets Go of 1,600
21:42 How to Test AI Fluency in Employees
30:59 Anduril Lands $20BN Army Contract
46:46 Travis Kalanick Returns With Atoms
49:55 If Travis Kalanick Ran Uber Today, Would it be $1TRN Company?
56:03 When is it Right to Replace Founders
01:04:24 Adobe CEO Exit Shock

Gokul Rajaram is one of the greatest operators turned investors of the last 2 decades. He is trusted as the go to advisor for the greatest founders in the world. Today he serves as a Board Director at three public companies: Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Prior to Marathon (his firm), Gokul served on the executive team at DoorDash and Block. Before Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense. Gokul is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in 700+ companies, including Airtable, Figma, Groq, Runway, Supabase, and Vercel. 
AGENDA:
03:53 — Investing Lessons from Google, Doordash and Facebook
05:32 — Why Mark Zuckerberg is the Greatest Distribution Genius Alive
07:23 — Why Every Company Today Needs to be Multi-Product
09:16 — Negative Gross Margins: Are the Best Companies Actually Built on "Shit" Economics?
10:50 — The SaaS Apocalypse: Is the Entire Sector Going to Zero?
12:15 — The 8 Moats of Enduring Software Companies: How to Analyse Companies
14:50 — Why Brand is No Longer a Strong Moat (And What Replaced It)
16:13 — Salesforce vs. Atlassian: Which Systems of Record are Dying?
18:13 — Outcome-Based Pricing: Is This the Total Death of Seat Pricing?
20:16 — The Bolt-On AI Trap: Why Rebuilding Your Entire UX is Non-Negotiable
23:44 — Are the Outcome Sizes of Vertical SaaS Large Enough for VC Today?
28:16 — The Zombie Cohort: What Happens to Private Companies with High Valuations?
32:44 — Is "King Making" Complete Bullshit?
34:21 — Durability Over Margins: What Really Matters in a 100x Growth World
35:36 — The Non-Consumption Miracle: Why Granola and Gamma are Crushing It
38:50 — The PayPal Rule: Can You Raise Prices 5 Times in 3 Years?
42:47 — My Biggest Miss: How I Misread the Shopify Billion-Dollar Mark
45:18 — The Courage to Bet: Why Instacart is the Best VC Deal Ever
46:33 — Seed vs. Growth Pricing: When Does Price Actually Destroy Returns?
50:53 — Does "Proprietary Founder Access" Even Exist?
54:33 — Double Down or Diversify? The Truth About Fund Reserves
59:44 — The Vanta Anti-Portfolio: A Mistake I'll Never Forget
01:01:21 — When to Sell: The "Sell a Third, Hold a Third, Trade a Third" Rule
01:04:12 — Why Remote Early-Stage Companies are Dying
01:07:33 — Why Mid-Level Partners are Fleeing Mega Funds
01:09:47 — The Best CEO Superpowers: Larry, Mark, Jack, and Tony
01:12:33 — The Next 10 Years: Why Dropouts are "AI Maxing" the World

Elena Verna is the Head of Growth at Lovable, one of the fastest growing companies in the world having hit $400M in ARR in just 18 months. Prior to Lovable, Elena was Head of Growth at both Dropbox and Miro. 
AGENDA:
00:00 – Why "Growth Is Now a Trust Problem" (Not a Marketing Problem)
06:10 – Is SEO Dying Because of AI Search?
07:00 – Did Lovable's Growth Come From the Founder's Personal Brand?
08:30 – Why Every Founder Should Push Employees to Be Marketers?
13:10 – Why Every Employee at Lovable Ships Code (Even Marketing)
21:20 – Why Paid Marketing in Year One Is a "Death Trap"
31:50 – Why Annual Subscriptions Are the Wrong Monetization Model for AI
37:00 – If Elena Had an Unlimited Marketing Budget, What Would She Do?
48:00 – How Lovable Does Product Launches

AGENDA:
00:00 - ANTHROPIC VS. THE PENTAGON: The Billion Dollar Supply Chain War
07:11 - B2B PANIC: Why Leading Companies Are Losing Deals to OpenAI
12:19 - THE ANTHROPIC ENDGAME: Will Claude Eclipse ChatGPT?
17:39 - THE DATA CENTER ARMS RACE: Is the AI Hype Cycle Finally Dead?
24:43 - 24/7 PERSISTENT AI: Why You'll Soon Need Data Centers in Space
30:37 - THE DEATH OF THE JUNIOR: Why Entry-Level Jobs are Vanishing
41:55 - AGENT-LED GROWTH: The Secret Reason Startups are Exploding in 2026
46:58 - THE ERA OF GENTLE DECELERATION IS DEAD: Public Markets Turn Brutal
55:54 - FIGMA MAKE IS TERRIBLE? The Failure of Quarterly Software Releases
01:00:54 - THE ULTIMATE STOCK PICKS: What to Buy and Sell Right Now