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

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  

David Tisch is the Founder of Box Group, one of the best seed funds of the last decade with early investments in Cursor, Baseten and Clay to name a few. Today the fund invests from two funds, a $275M seed fund and a $275M opportunity fund. AGENDA:  10:40 Why we have less dilution now than ever before 12:50 Why I don't want to compete with the best VCs, and why it's a trap 16:15 What concentrated funds know but do not admit to 17:25 Why multiple tranched rounds can be good for founders 18:45 Why the Lean Startup was a total fake 28:55 Why LPs are frustrated by a market that we can't change 31:50 What is the single best-returning investment in the history of BoxGroup? 33:15 Why fund returners are not always obvious in the early years 40:05 Why funding consumer brands at seed no longer makes sense for venture 42:00 Rogo, the now $2B company, got passed on by 39 out of 40 investors 45:40 Why the marketing message that pro rata is not a right is BS 1:01:50 Why we do not allow negativity in the investment decision-making process 1:03:00 The true magic of early-stage venture capital 1:04:35 Why YC has the best business model in all of venture  

AGENDA:  04:00 Anthropic Files S-1 Ahead of $2TRN IPO 14:50 Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees 20:45 Zuckerberg Taps Equity Markets for $95 Billion AI Spending Spree 23:00 DeepSeek Raises $15 Billion as Chinese AI Faces US Backlash 34:45 OpenAI and Wiz Uncover Decade-Old Security Flaws 37:05 Instinct's Rumoured $30 Billion Valuation Divides the Panel 45:30 Invest Committee: Put 20% of the Fund Into OpenAI at $1.25 Trillion 49:40 Palmer Luckey's War Dog Startup Hits $1.5 Billion Valuation 55:00 Zuckerberg Threatens California Exit Over Billionaire Tax