Blog•Dec 5, 2025
Coming Soon: Harry Stebbings on the State of Venture
In this episode, Harry Stebbings examines the rapid transformation of venture capital, focusing on shifting valuation dynamics, the impact of AI hype on startup success, and the emergence of a new capital stack that founders and investors must navigate. He explains how AI-driven excitement is redefining which companies attract funding and which are left behind, while also detailing practical strategies for adapting to these market changes. Stebbings, a seasoned venture investor and host of 20VC, offers insider perspective on what the evolving landscape means for future investment decisions.
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Dec 5, 2025
How to Build an Investor CRM (With Template) | The Four Product Discovery Models: Where Your Company Really Operates.
In this episode, Sahil S explains that successful fundraising is 80% organization and introduces a simple investor CRM built in Google Sheets, complete with a downloadable template. He walks listeners through essential columns—contact info, investor type, referrer, and stage—showing how...
By Sahil S
Blog•Dec 3, 2025
Top 10 Posts of 2025
The 2025 "Top 10 Posts" roundup highlights a paradox in AI: OpenAI pledged $1.15 trillion in compute contracts through 2035 while DeepSeek demonstrated a 90%+ drop in training costs with its V3 and R1 models. Nvidia’s $110 billion vendor‑financing scheme dwarfs the...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Dec 1, 2025
The Metric that Predicts AI Product Success. | Why AI Coding Assistants May Slow You Down. | How to Actually...
The episode examines three core themes: the productivity paradox of AI coding assistants, which often slow developers despite a perceived speed boost and introduce security risks; the concentrated nature of AI venture funding, where massive capital flows into a few...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 30, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 30th November 2025
In this 20VC newsletter episode, Harry Stebbings interviews Base44 founder Maor Shlomo, who argues that traditional SaaS will fade as "vibe coding" enables companies to own their tools and data, and highlights Google as the real competitive threat while emphasizing...
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Nov 25, 2025
How to Do User Research without Users: The Synthetic User Guide. | The Truth About ChatGPT Enterprise Adoption.
Unicorns are back: what founders must understand right now & VC Jobs
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 25, 2025
Private Equity : The New Distribution Channel for AI Startups
The post argues that private equity (PE) firms have become the primary distribution channel for AI startups, thanks to the rapid growth of PE‑owned companies—now outnumbering public firms 4:1 in the US. Because PE portfolios consist mainly of mid‑market firms...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Nov 20, 2025
The Scaling Wall Was A Mirage
The post argues that the supposed "scaling wall" in AI pre‑training has been disproven by recent developments: Gemini 3 achieved dramatic performance gains without increasing parameters, showing that algorithmic and compute improvements still drive scaling laws, and Nvidia's record earnings and...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Nov 16, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 16th November 2025
The episode features three separate interviews: Everett Randle of Benchmark explains why mega‑funds prioritize capital velocity, proposes new AI‑company valuation metrics, and shares lessons from Mary Meeker; Rory O’Driscoll and Jason Lemkin discuss a looming Palantir valuation correction, the accelerating...
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Nov 14, 2025
Y-Combinator Pitch Deck Framework: Access 50+ Decks That Raised Over $450M.
In this episode, Sahil S breaks down Y Combinator’s proven pitch‑deck framework for seed‑stage startups, outlining a clear slide structure—from title and problem to traction, market size, and the ask—while emphasizing narrative simplicity and investor memorability. He highlights why a...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 13, 2025
How Big Is AI Spend, Really? | What 180M Job Postings Reveal About AI’s Impact. | VC's Turning Into a...
The episode breaks down the massive scale of AI infrastructure spending, now at 1.6% of U.S. GDP and projected to approach $1 trillion annually by 2030, dwarfing historic economic mobilisations. It also highlights Europe’s narrowing valuation gap with the U.S. at...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 11, 2025
The Growth Strategy Most Startups Overlook: Engineering-as-Marketing. | The Smartest Startup Pivot in Recent AI History.
The episode introduces Engineering-as-Marketing, a growth tactic where startups build free, useful tools that double as product experiences and marketing assets, allowing them to acquire users organically without heavy ad spend. It explains why the approach works—low competition, upfront value,...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 10, 2025
It’s Not Just You. Everyone Is Paying a Lot More for AI Engineers. Especially Equity.
In this SaaStr AI episode, Jason Lemkin highlights Carta’s data showing AI engineers’ equity grants soaring up to 40% while salary growth remains modest, driven by an "AI or Die" mindset, big‑tech poaching, and perceived massive upside. He warns founders...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Nov 7, 2025
The only AI Prompt Guide You Need for Idea Validation & Competitor Research. | Why VCs Pull Back From China...
The episode breaks down three major trends: AI deal activity is slowing in volume but concentrating in massive mega‑rounds, while VC and PE bonuses stay flat and secondaries see double‑digit bonus growth; venture capital is sharply retreating from China’s AI...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 7, 2025
If You Ever Think "Should I Fire This Person?" Even Once ... Well, Then It's Time
In this episode, Jason Lemkin argues that the moment a leader questions whether to fire an employee, the answer should be an immediate, compassionate termination. He explains how gut instincts synthesize performance data, and why retaining "pretty good" or mediocre...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Nov 6, 2025
Are We Being Railroaded by AI?
The post compares AI infrastructure spending to historic U.S. investment projects, showing AI at 1.6% of GDP in 2024—far below World War II, the New Deal, and the railroad boom. It highlights current corporate outlays (Microsoft, Google, Meta) and projects OpenAI’s...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Nov 4, 2025
The Three Sales Frameworks Every Early-Stage Founder Needs. | Template-Tips: Everything You Need to Raise a Successful Seed Round
The article presents three story‑centric sales frameworks that early‑stage founders should adopt – crafting a compelling founder narrative, leveraging concrete customer success stories, and structuring sales calls around those stories – each backed by simple templates and real examples. Sahil...
By Sahil S
Blog•Nov 3, 2025
The Top 10 Mistakes I See In The VP of Sales Hiring Process
The post lists the ten most common errors founders make when hiring a VP of Sales, emphasizing that a successful hire must deeply understand the product, be willing to sell and close deals themselves, and bring a ready pipeline of...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Nov 2, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 2nd November 2025
The newsletter recaps three recent 20VC episodes, highlighting AI’s shift from dollars to gigawatts, the commoditization of compute, and the rapid scaling of AI startups to $100 M revenue, while questioning high AI talent pay and the relevance of gross margins....
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Oct 31, 2025
Y-Combinator’s New Batch Doubles Down on Production-Ready AI, Unconventional Tactics for Validating Your Startup Ideas & Measuring True Efficiency in...
Paid AI adoption in the United States slipped 0.7% in September, but enterprise contract values surged from $143 K in 2024 to $530 K in 2025, showing a move from experimentation to deep integration. Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 batch of 165+ startups mirrors this...
By Sahil S
Blog•Oct 30, 2025
It only Took 20 Years, but the Strategic Management Society Now Believes the Lean Startup Is a Strategy
After two decades, the Strategic Management Society has formally recognized the Lean Startup approach as a legitimate strategy, marking a symbolic shift in how iterative, customer-driven methods are viewed by mainstream strategy scholars. The movement originated from the author’s post-retirement...
By Steve Blank
Blog•Oct 28, 2025
From Zero to Eight Figures in 18 Months: Decagon CEO’s Playbook for AI-Native SaaS Growth. And Why They Partnered With...
Decagon, founded in late 2023, scaled to eight‑figure ARR in roughly 18 months by selling AI customer‑service agents to major enterprises including Hertz and Chime, claiming roughly $800K in annual savings for every $250K spent. Backed by Accel at Series...
By Jason Lemkin
Blog•Oct 28, 2025
40+ Investor Databases for Easier VC Outreach (Free Access) | How to Execute Your Own Offline Outbound.
A curated collection of 40+ free investor databases has been published to simplify startup fundraising and offline outbound outreach, pooling lists vetted by The Venture Curator team. The compilation includes large, searchable rolls such as 2,000 US VCs, 900 climate...
By Sahil S
Blog•Oct 28, 2025
Mazama Energy Unveils the World’s Hottest Enhanced Geothermal System: A 629 °F (331 °C)…
Mazama Energy announced it has created the world’s hottest enhanced geothermal system at its Newberry, Oregon pilot, achieving a bottomhole temperature of 629°F (331°C) and targeting 750°F (400°C) by 2026. The company says the superhot EGS can yield up to...
By Vinod Khosla
Blog•Oct 26, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 26th October 2025
20VC’s latest newsletter synthesizes three interviews with practical takeaways for founders and investors: Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz laid out a repeatable M&A playbook that rebuilds frontends in months and full backends to hit product scale in about nine months (vs....
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Oct 23, 2025
Product-Market Fit Is No Longer Static
Venture investor Tomasz Tunguz argues product-market fit (PMF) is no longer a one-time milestone but a continuous condition because rapid advances in AI are constantly reshaping customer needs and technical possibilities. He points to firms that lost PMF between 2021–2024,...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Oct 21, 2025
The Bear Roars: Dan and Brad
On The Bear Roars podcast, Dan Caruso and guest explored how advances in AI, quantum computing and robotics are reshaping not just technology but learning, leadership and collaboration, with a central claim that equitable access — broadband, curiosity and freedom...
By Brad Feld
Blog•Oct 21, 2025
The Forecast Model Every Startup Needs (with Free Template). | VC & Startup Jobs.
A simple, reusable financial forecast model — with a free Google Sheets template — is presented as essential for startups to project cash flow, prioritize spending, and guide fundraising and hiring decisions. The model focuses on five core sections: customer...
By Sahil S
Blog•Oct 19, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 19th October 2025
The 20VC newsletter (Oct. 19, 2025) distills three podcast episodes featuring Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon‑Brookes, investors Rory O’Driscoll, Jason Lemkin and Roger Ehrenberg, and Warp CEO Zach Lloyd, highlighting how AI will expand software development, reshape pricing models, and leave...
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Oct 14, 2025
How Founders Should Think About Runway: A Guide From Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital published guidance urging founders to treat runway as a dynamic strategic metric, not just cash divided by burn, recommending use of net cash (cash minus drawn debt) and monthly cash burn (cash in minus cash out) to get...
By Sahil S
Blog•Oct 14, 2025
The Data Pendulum Swings to Consolidation
Fivetran and dbt Labs have announced a merger in an all-stock deal, creating a combined entity with an anticipated annual recurring revenue (ARR) nearing $600 million, signaling a strategic shift towards consolidation in the data infrastructure market. This merger reflects...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Oct 12, 2025
20VC Newsletter - 12th October 2025
Here are the transcripts and top takeaways from 20VC episodes released this last week.
By Harry Stebbings
Blog•Oct 10, 2025
Is Token Consumption Growth Slowing Down?
Philip Schmid dropped an astounding figure1 yesterday about Google’s AI scale : 1,300 trillion tokens per month (1.3 quadrillion - first time I’ve ever used that unit!). Now that we have three data points on Google’s token processing, we can chart...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Blog•Oct 8, 2024
How Saboteurs Threaten Innovation–And What to Do About It
The article warns that incumbents—from Fortune 500 companies to entrenched government contractors—routinely sabotage startups and internal innovators through tactics ranging from patent lawsuits and procurement protests to budget strangulation, pre‑announcements and strategic acquisitions. AStartup founder cited faces roughly $500,000 in...
By Steve Blank