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20VC: How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong | Why 1-1s are BS and What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Equity | Why Taste Beats AI But How AI Kills Org Charts with Paul Erlanger, CEO @ fomo

20VC: How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong | Why 1-1s are BS and What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Equity | Why Taste Beats AI But How AI Kills Org Charts with Paul Erlanger, CEO @ fomo

Author: Harry Stebbings June 27, 2026 Duration: 57:12
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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Paul Erlanger is the Co-Founder and CEO of FOMO, the social-first trading platform building the future of on-chain investing. Since founding the company in 2025, Paul has raised approximately $94 million, including a $17 million Series A led by Benchmark and a $75 million Series B led by Index Ventures with participation from USV, valuing the company at $550 million. Today, FOMO has grown to 600,000 users, processed over $4 billion in trading volume, and is adding thousands of new users every day—all with a team of just 17 people.

AGENDA: 

00:00 – Building a $550M Company with No Salaries, No Managers & No 1:1s

03:58 – Why Traditional Brokerages Will Lose in the Next 10 Years

09:30 – Why Robinhood's Strategy Is Wrong; The End of the Financial Super App? 

13:05 – "Markets Aren't a Casino" — The Case for Retail Investors Fighting Wall Street

16:45 – The Radical Hiring Bet: Giving Employees Founder-Level Equity

23:40 – AI Kills Org Charts: Why FOMO Will Stay Under 25 Employees

29:30 – Why Taste Beats AI & The Biggest Mistake Most Consumer Startups Make

33:10 – The Social Media Playbook That Every Startup Gets Wrong

39:20 – How Benchmark, Index & USV Won the Deal—and the VC Advice Founders Need to Hear

46:10 – The Future of Investing: Social Trading, Creator Economies & Financial Networks

 


Hosted by Harry Stebbings, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) pulls back the curtain on the high-stakes worlds of venture capital and startup building. Each episode is a compact, twenty-minute dive into the minds shaping the future of technology. You’ll hear candid conversations with legendary investors, the very individuals who fund and guide the next generation of companies, featuring voices like Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Beyond the capital, this podcast dedicates time to the founders themselves. Weekly, Stebbings sits down with transformative entrepreneurs such as Spotify's Daniel Ek, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman, unpacking the real journeys behind their iconic companies. The format is direct and focused, cutting straight to the core insights on funding strategies, pitch dynamics, and the personal philosophies that drive success. Tuning into this podcast means gaining an unfiltered perspective from both sides of the table, all delivered in a concise and accessible style that fits into your day.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Podcast Episodes
20VC: Corgi Insurance: The Most Intense Workplace Culture in America: 7 Days Per Week, Founder Sleeps in Office, Corgi Cafe Open 24 Hours a Day, 60% of First 30 Employees Have Corgi Tattoos | The Journey from $0 to $2.6BN Valuation in Just 2 Years [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:18
Nico Laqua is the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgi Insurance, an AI-native insurance carrier built for startups. Corgi is the most intense workplace culture in America. The team works 7 days per week. The founder sleeps in th…
20VC: OpenAI & SpaceX S1 Drops | NVIDIA's $81BN Revenue Quarter | Cloudflare and ClickUp Do Controversial Layoffs | Exa, OpenRouter and Polsia Raise Mega Rounds | Uber and Microsoft Declare AI ROI for Developers is Questionable [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:25:19
AGENDA: 05:16 Nvidia Blowout Quarter: $81BN Revenues and Stock… Flat! 10:39 Uber and Microsoft Declare Productivity Gains Questionable from AI 25:26 The Layoffs Continue: ClickUp and Cloudflare 34:39 OpenAI S1: Is it a R…
20VC: Cerebras CEO on the Future of Data Centres, Token Costs and Memory | We are Not in an Infra Bubble & Dario Got a Bad Deal with Elon for Compute | Should US Companies Sell to China & Why Most Layoffs are AI Washed with Andrew Feldman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:38
Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. This month, Cerebras went public achieving a market cap of $70BN, the largest semiconductor IPO in history. Cerebras has a massive commercial backlog with a m…
20Sales: The $100M CRO Bubble: Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis | Why You Should Never Hire From Salesforce or Service Now | How to Hire, Train and Forecase in a World of AI with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:42
Chad Peets is one of the most straight-talking, no BS sales leaders of our time. Today, he partners with founders of the fastest growing companies in the world, like Harvey, Factory to build the best sales teams in a wor…
20VC: Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic & Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1: What it Means for IPOs | Why Mass Layoffs Are More Worrying Than Anyone Sees [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:53
AGENDA: 00:00 – Anthropic Eyes $900B Valuation & Andre Karpathy's Shock Move 04:46 – Unpacking Anthropic's $30 Billion War Chest 10:52 – The True Cost of AI Tokens: Is Salesforce Spending Too Much? 15:59 – The Bear Case…
20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:01
Josh Browder is my favourite emerging manager. As the Founder of Browder Capital he has been the first check into unicorns like Micro1, Owner.com and Yuzu Health to name a few. He turned his Thiel Fellowship Grant of $10…
20VC: Lessons from Jensen Huang on "Founder Mode" | How to Know if OpenAI or Anthropic Will Kill your Company | How USV Liking Music Made Them $1BN on an Investment | The Five Year Desert to Product Market Fit & a $5.3BN Valuation with Shiv Rao @ Abridge [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:46
Shiv Rao is the CEO and Co-Founder of Abridge, a leader in generative AI for healthcare. The company reached a $5.3 billion valuation following a $300 million funding round with investors including Jensen Huang, Henry Kr…
20VC: Inside Legora: $100M ARR in 18 Months | Jude Law Generated $50M in Sales Pipeline: The Economics Broken Down | Competing Against Harvey, the 800 Pound Gorilla | Why Legora is Undervalued at $5.5BN with Patrick Forquer, CRO @ Legora [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:14:17
Patrick Forquer is the Chief Revenue Officer at Legora, the fastest growing enterprise business to ever hit $100M in ARR and now on track to hit over $250M in ARR by the end of the year. They recently raised a $550 milli…

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