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

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?    

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? 

Dan Fougere is one of the most successful sales leaders of the last decade. Most recently, Dan was Chief Revenue Officer for Datadog, growing revenues from $60 million to $1BN ARR. Before Datadog, Dan was Head of Global Sales at Medallia where he created the Mediallia sales playbook. In addition, Dan is also a minority owner of the New York Yankees.  In Today’s Episode with Dan Fougere:  1. Lessons Scaling Sales to $1BN in ARR at Datadog: What did Datadog not do that Dan wishes they had of done? What did they not do that Dan wishes they had done? What does Dan know about scaling sales to $1BN in ARR that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What stage of the scaling process was hardest? Why? 2. How to Hire the Best Sales Team: What are the top signals of the best sales candidates? How does Dan structure the interview process for new candidates? How does Dan use tasks and take-home assignments to test candidates? What does Dan think of hiring panels? What are the biggest hiring mistakes Dan has made? What did he learn? 3. Discounting, Logos and Deal Reviews: Is discounting always wrong? How should sales leaders use it? How important is the quality of logo in the early days vs revenue in the door? What is the right way to structure deal reviews? What makes good vs great? Is outbound dead in 2024? Advice to founders on outbound?  

Cem Sertoglu is one of the great venture investors of the last decade. Cem is famed for writing the first check into UiPath and over several rounds turning $16.5M into $2.1BN. Cem recently started Bek Ventures, a $250M fund that was 3x oversubscribed.  In Today’s Show with Cem Sertoglu We Discuss: 1. Has Venture Capital Been Commoditised: Why does Cem believe that VC has not been commoditised? Why does Cem believe many VCs today are not even VCs anymore? How does Cem advise founders who have offers from large multi-stage firms? What questions should they ask them pre-working with them?  How do the best founders select the VC they choose to work with? 2. Price, Reserves, Loss Ratios: Why does Cem believe that price does not matter? How does Cem approach reserves and reserves management? What does Cem know now about reserves that he wishes he had known when he started investing? Does Cem care about loss ratio? Does he do scenario planning when making investments? 3. Making $2.1BN on UiPath:  How did Cem meet Daniel for the first time? Was it obvious he was incredible? Why did they only write a $1M check and not take the whole round with $1.5M? Why did 40 of the best investors in Europe all turn down UiPath for the Series A? What did doing the bridge round for UiPath teach Cem about reserves? When was it obvious UiPath was going to be a mega hit? How did they continue to concentrate capital with each round? When did they first start to sell shares in UiPath? What was their approach to the selldown of their position? When the company IPO’d, how much of it did they have?  4. AMA with One of Europe’s Best: Does signalling exist? How does Cem advise founders on this? What has been his biggest loss? How did that change his mindset? What has been Cem’s biggest miss? What did he not see? Why does Cem always believe you should manufacture arguments with founders before investing? Why does Cem believe a high GP commit can actually misalign the GP and the LP?