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

AGENDA:
03:47 Sequoia exits London and ends its scout program
14:46 Nvidia board opens inquiry into Jensen Huang
21:51 Nasdaq 100 sheds $2.5T in one day
24:13 Anthropic targets $1T IPO valuation at $70–$78 a share
34:16 Revolut hits $115B, Zipline triples to $21.5B, fal doubles to $16B
40:47 Fireworks AI suffers two breaches in 30 days
45:41 Dialpad buys Ada for $400M in stock
50:35 Cloudflare revenue jumps 39% after a 20% staff cut
1:00:05 California voters reject billionaire wealth tax

Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Mistral, the last remaining hope for frontier intelligence in Europe. Mistral has raised approximately $7.5BN, including debt, and reached a valuation above $24BN. Previously a researcher at Google DeepMind, Arthur co-authored the landmark Chinchilla research, showing how smaller, better-trained AI models could outperform much larger rivals.
AGENDA: 
00:00 Is Mistral Europe's Last Hope in AI?
08:45 Are Chinese Open Models Actually Safe?
13:00 Will OpenAI & Anthropic Replace Their Own Customers?
14:40 Why Energy Isn't Europe's Biggest AI Bottleneck
24:05 Why Mistral Won't Follow OpenAI Into Chips
30:40 Who Gets Rich From the Inference Boom?
31:45 102 New AI Labs: Who Actually Survives?
35:30 Are $100 Billion Training Runs a Fantasy?
36:20 If Everyone Needs Compute, Why Are AI Stocks Crashing?
44:05 Will Mistral Choose Europe for Its IPO?

Scott Wilson is the CIO of WashU, one of the best-performing endowment funds in the world. Under his leadership, Scott has grown the endowment from $8BN to $19BN today. At one point, SpaceX was over 20% of the entire value of the endowment. 
AGENDA: 
00:00 – How WashU Built One of the Best-Performing Endowment Portfolios in the World
04:00 – Scott Wilson's Investment Playbook: Concentration, Conviction and Compounding
05:20 – Why Scott Sold Over 75% of WashU's Portfolio When He Joined
07:15 – How Should You Allocate a $20 Billion Endowment Between Publics and Privates?
10:00 – How WashU Finds Direct Investments That Other LPs Miss
12:15 – How WashU Made Billions From SpaceX and Kept Holding
13:25 – Why Concentration Limits Are Killing Venture Returns
16:15 – Scott's Biggest Investing Mistake 
17:10 – How Much Diversification Does a $20 Billion Endowment Really Need?
19:40 – Why Mega Funds Don't Work for WashU's Investment Strategy
23:15 – How WashU Gets Into the Best Companies Before Everyone Else
25:35 – Are Private Market Valuations Now Completely Detached From Reality?
28:10 – Why Half of Today's AI Companies Could Disappear in 10 Years
30:10 – When Should LPs Sell Their Biggest Winners After an IPO?
32:00 – Why Scott Wilson Walked Away From Sequoia Capital
34:15 – The Number One Reason WashU Fires Venture Managers
35:45 – Should LPs Forgive VCs for Deploying Their Funds in Just 18 Months?
38:30 – Is the AI Boom Heading for a Massive Shakeout?
45:15 – Why European Companies Are So Much Cheaper Than US Companies
47:30 – Why WashU Still Believes China Is a Great Place to Invest
48:30 – Is Government Overreach Actually Worse in the UK Than China?
50:10 – Quickfire: The Venture Funds Scott Wishes He Had Backed
53:00 – The Best Career Advice From a $20 Billion Endowment CIO

AGENDA: 
04:00 OpenAI Cuts Valuation to $1.25 Trillion as Fundraise Shrinks
08:00 Google Loses $500 Billion as AI Stocks Sell Off
10:00 Anthropic's Growth Slows as AI Price War Intensifies
27:00 DoorDash Buys Instacart for $17 Billion
33:00 Kalshi Raises $1 Billion at $40 Billion Despite Legal Threats
41:00 Cognition Eyes $80 Billion as Baseten Hits $30 Billion and Serval $3 Billion
51:00 AI Law Firm Crosby Bids for Collapsed Legal Giant Weil
57:00 Physical Intelligence Targets $20 Billion Valuation
01:00:00 Hugging Face Deal Faces Scrutiny as Salesforce Buys Cresta for $2.7 Billion

Erik Bernhardsson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Modal, the AI infrastructure platform for training models, running inference and powering AI agents. Modal has raised over $1.2 billion, including a recent $750 million Series D led by Accel at a $15.75BN valuation. The company has surpassed $1BN in ARR, growing more than 15x year-on-year. Previously, Erik built Spotify's original music recommendation system.
AGENDA: 
05:30 - Why wait until your mid-30s to start a company?
06:40 - Is founding a startup really like "eating glass"?
08:00 - How to Raise $1BN with No Pitch Deck
08:45 - The danger of raising too much venture capital
09:40 - How much cash is Modal burning on GPUs?
10:30 - Do early-stage startups actually have moats?
13:30 - Who wins the inference market in the next 5 years?
15:30 - Are 90% software gross margins dead in AI?
17:45 - The "open-air drug market" for GPUs
21:30 - Will GPU hardware prices ever collapse?
22:15 - Are we about to overbuild data centers?
23:45 - Can custom silicon dethrone NVIDIA's monopoly?
24:30 - Is CUDA really the moat everyone claims it is?
25:20 - Are Neo Cloud providers partners or mortal enemies?
26:35 - Nebius vs. CoreWeave: who built the better business?
27:25 - Open-source vs. frontier models: which takes the lead?
28:20 - Can Europe ever build a competitive frontier model?
30:20 - The bull case for a $100B verticalized model company
37:15 - Modal's biggest resource allocation mistake
38:00 - Has open-source LLM inference already peaked?
41:30 - The real limits of post-training and RL
44:20 - How much does Modal spend every month on coding agents?
45:50 - The massive gold rush in selling data environments to labs
47:20 - Should enterprises own their own intelligence?
49:50 - Is model routing a defensible standalone business?
53:20 - $20M+ compensation packages for exceptional new grads
54:20 - The #1 portfolio company Erik would bet on
55:10 - What Erik changed his mind on most this year