The Twenty Minute VC

Stebbings distills 10 lessons from interviewing 4,000+ founders, VCs, and operators over 9 years. Themes: speed beats perfection, relationships matter more than deals, and the best investors are perpetual students.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis fresh from winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold's protein structure predictions. Discusses the path from games (AlphaGo) to science (AlphaFold) to AGI.

OpenAI CEO returns to discuss whether scaling laws will continue, the semiconductor supply chain, and which startup categories OpenAI will steamroll versus leave alone.

Demis Hassabis — fresh from winning the Nobel Prize for AlphaFold's protein structure predictions — discusses AI's potential to solve humanity's hardest scientific problems. From chess prodigy to DeepMind founder to Nobel laureate.

Stebbings argues that the AI startup landscape is repeating the 2021 SaaS bubble: too much capital chasing too few defensible businesses. He estimates 90% of current AI startups will fail — not because AI doesn't work, but because they have no moat.

Lisa Edgar of Top Tier Capital Partners on how limited partners evaluate venture fund managers. What LPs look for in first meetings, portfolio construction, fees, carry, and why most emerging managers fail.

Stebbings delivers a personal episode on founder mental health after several founders in his portfolio experienced burnout, depression, and substance abuse. He argues the VC industry's celebration of hustle culture is directly contributing to a mental health crisis.

Box CEO Aaron Levie on how enterprise companies are actually adopting AI — beyond the hype. Why most enterprise AI deployments fail, and how Box is rebuilding around AI-native workflows.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski explains how Klarna replaced 700 customer service agents with AI in one month — reducing resolution time from 11 minutes to 2 minutes while improving customer satisfaction. The first major public company to quantify AI-driven workforce reduction.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and COO Brad Lightcap discuss whether foundation models will be commoditized, the compute problem, and which companies will be steamrolled by OpenAI. A rare joint interview.

Harry Stebbings delivers his annual state-of-venture-capital analysis. Key themes: the IPO window is reopening, AI is consuming all available capital, and the venture industry itself is consolidating — fewer funds, larger sizes, less diversity.

Vinod Khosla makes his provocative case that AI will replace 80% of current jobs within 25 years — and that this is good news. Discusses energy constraints, nuclear power, and the future of work.

Shore Capital Partners founder Justin Ishbia on building a top-performing PE firm, acquiring sports teams, and why the best companies are talent systems. A rare deep-dive into private equity from a practitioner's perspective.

Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga on building Europe's largest secondhand fashion marketplace. How to create trust in peer-to-peer transactions, why Rule of 40 is misleading, and the unique dynamics of marketplace businesses.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on why government defense procurement is broken, how AI is changing warfare, and why Silicon Valley needs to engage with national security rather than avoid it.

Spotify's CTO Gustav Söderström explains how Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mix use machine learning to predict musical taste better than users themselves. The algorithmic curation model that transformed how 600M+ people find music.

Keith Rabois discusses his move from Founders Fund to Khosla Ventures, the current state of venture capital, and why he believes the best companies are built during downturns. Deep dive into operator-to-investor transitions.

Marc Andreessen discusses his Techno-Optimist Manifesto — a provocative defense of technological progress against what he calls the 'decel' movement. Stebbings pushes on whether optimism can coexist with acknowledging tech's genuine harms.

Patrick Collison discusses Stripe's evolution from '7 lines of code' to processing $1T+ in payments annually. He explains why Stripe stayed private, his reading habits, and why he thinks the pace of scientific progress has slowed.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke explains why the company deleted 12,000 recurring meetings from calendars — and why meetings are organizational debt that compounds silently. His programmer-CEO approach treats management systems like code: if it's not working, refactor it.

Benchmark's Bill Gurley — who led the investment in Uber, OpenTable, and Zillow — explains his framework for evaluating marketplace businesses. His core thesis: not all revenue is created equal. Revenue quality (recurring, high-margin, defensible) matters more than revenue quantity.

Frank Slootman — who took Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake from struggling to dominant — explains his 'Amp It Up' philosophy: most companies operate at a fraction of their potential. The solution: raise the tempo, sharpen the focus, and raise the bar on talent.