The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:52:32 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:52:32] S1: I never like to knock people, so I find it like helpful to like praise them instead in some respects. If you were to write a memo joining the firm for why we should invest in $9,000,000,000 JEV round, what would your bull case be for JEV? [00:52:45] S0: Bull case for JEV is that there's a new type of inference and new type of model, and the model category is literally named after them. And so there's... They're gonna ride that wave, and they're a very talented team that can execute on that. I don't know the team super well. I think that would have to be the assumption for for a round at that value. From everything that I've seen, I I... That seems to be the case, but but that would be the bull case. They basically invented a new model category, are associated with it, and have a talented team that can execute on that. [00:53:11] S1: Does taking money from Benchmark change the trajectory of a company?
00:53:11 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:53:11] S1: Does taking money from Benchmark change the trajectory of a company? [00:53:15] S0: A 100%. I I think Benchmark... When Miles and really the whole Benchmark partnership invested in us, it was me and Ankush. We were two people. We really thought of them as kind of like a third cofounder. You know, when when I think about company building from from two people to where we are now today, which is like 400 people, they have been kind of like our our most consistent kind of like partner in that in that journey for sure. You know, I am I am not a VC. I've never done VC. There's probably also other market dynamics where great, Benchmark's involved and that signals thing. And we're very lucky to have Sequoia join us after, like, two months, three months after the Benchmark round, and they've been a tremendous partner as well. [00:53:52] S1: Who was it from Sequoia? [00:53:53] S0: Sonya from Sequoia, who is one of the [00:53:55] S1: most plugged in people in the spaces. How do their styles differ?
00:53:55 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:53:55] S1: most plugged in people in the spaces. How do their styles differ? [00:53:58] S0: Benchmark is maybe a little bit more what's the core nucleus of the company, and, like, that's... Like, we're we're gonna be a sounding board for that, and we're we're gonna kind of like, help with that. So so what I mean by that is I feel like, yeah, a lot of the company building things, positioning things, would go to them for, and they would spend time there. Sequoia's style, I think, is they help with, like, everything. Like, they are just a machine. So they help with recruiting of ICs, of executives. They help with marketing and launches, and they all really Is it pretty work? I think so. Yeah. I mean, we've gotten a lot of our candidates from from Sequoia references. [00:54:34] S1: Really? [00:54:34] S0: Yeah. They they have a talent network, and we've gotten in a bunch of really, really strong candidates from there. [00:54:38] S1: Would you say to founders it's worth taking a discount for Sequoia? [00:54:42] S0: I think absolutely it's worth taking a discount for Sequoia and Benchmark and and probably other of these top one tier or tier one VC firms, but those are the ones that we work with. [00:54:49] S1: What do you know now about fundraising that you wish you could tell yourself when it was just the two of you?
00:54:49 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:54:49] S1: What do you know now about fundraising that you wish you could tell yourself when it was just the two of you? [00:54:53] S0: I think there is, like, this game to fundraising almost, and I I I definitely didn't know that going in. I'm a first time founder. Like, where I spend all my time is on product, basically, so I'm very focused on that. I do think there is this game to fundraising where you wanna fundraise without fundraising. You wanna, like... Once you get one term... You wanna get one term sheet and then, you know, tell others you have a term sheet and [00:55:16] S1: Post a revenue graph on Twitter, and then it leads to all these inbound. [00:55:20] S0: Yeah. Do you fucking like this? [00:55:21] S1: I fucking hate it. Maybe I'm too old for this game now. It's just posturing. It's like, Harrison, do you really like me and wanna build a business with me? I'll give you the same price and the same money than whatever. Let's just do this. Stop fucking posturing.
00:55:21 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:55:21] S1: I fucking hate it. Maybe I'm too old for this game now. It's just posturing. It's like, Harrison, do you really like me and wanna build a business with me? I'll give you the same price and the same money than whatever. Let's just do this. Stop fucking posturing. [00:55:35] S0: I don't like fundraising at all. Think, I mean, kind of what you were saying. I want to build something great with people I enjoy working with. I think, yeah, especially for the scale of ambitions that we have, we need to fundraise to get that done. I think that that was the approach that Benchmark kind of took when we were fundraising from them as well. Like, hey. Let's figure out, like, you know, if if we like each other and wanna work together. By the way, that was very good negotiating by them, and so I think they, you know, they're very good negotiators as well. But when we... When I look at, like, our most recent rounds that we've done, like, we raised from Tom at at IVP, our series B. I'd been chatting with Tom from, like, I think right around the Sequoia round for, like, over, like, two and a half years. And so that was, a relationship that we just built up over over time. And I got to know him and he got to know me. And so when it came time to to fundraising, I feel like there was, like, less games in in... Involved there, and I really appreciated that. [00:56:23] S1: I would love to do a quick fire round. So I say a short statement, and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Let's do it. What was your single favorite VC meeting?
00:56:23 · Harry Stebbings, Harrison Chase
[00:56:23] S1: I would love to do a quick fire round. So I say a short statement, and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Let's do it. What was your single favorite VC meeting? [00:56:32] S0: First pitch with Benchmark. So many legends in the room. [00:56:35] S1: Who is the coolest to hang with? [00:56:37] S0: Bill Gurley. [00:56:41] S1: Were you intimidated? I think I [00:56:43] S0: was too naive to be intimidated. [00:56:46] S1: He's also just like a big man. Like, it's it's an intimidating figure looming over you. What is the single most important thing you believe about agents that most of the ecosystem would disagree with? [00:56:57] S0: It's still really hard to build them, like really, really hard. Maybe people would agree with that, but I think it's just underrated how hard it is. [00:57:03] S1: What have you changed your mind on most in the last twelve months? [00:57:07] S0: Market for inference is massive. I remember talking with the board about whether we should do a gateway a year and a half ago, and we didn't see what value we could add over something like Open Router. And I think that was a 100% the wrong decision. [00:57:20] S1: What's been the hardest technical thing for you and the team to build? [00:57:24] S0: We built our own database for storing agent traces, SmithDB. [00:57:27] S1: How do you think about competing with ClickHouse and being a customer? Kind of weird or normal? [00:57:33] S0: I think there are 500 different companies that we are frenemies with. And so I think I've personally gotten very used to it.