The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:57:28 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:57:28] S0: Back to what... No one leaves the office. No one leaves the... Don't let Matti see this email. Don't let Matti see this email. What do you actually think happens there? Does Lovable become a $10,000,000,000 company and change the way that we create websites? Does it do Squarespace, Wix, you know, adopt similar process? What happens? [00:57:47] S1: I think there's a few ways they could go. Overall, though, I'm just very bullish. I don't see a reason that the level of intelligence in these AI models will slow down. And so given that it will keep rising, I think you're going to see more and more engineering. We're already at, say, 60% of all our code being AI generated. Then you have, like, the broader life cycle of all the testing, deployment infrastructure. There's no reason why any of that couldn't be all done by AI as well. And so I think Lovable's in a fantastic place to own that core stack. The tricky bit, I think, at the start is how do you make it super secure? How do you get enterprises to build it? How do you do full apps? And I think Replit is kind of dead at the wheel at the moment. I don't hear the recent things they've been launching, and so I could imagine that Lovable going in that direction. You're cringing. [00:58:35] S0: No. I... I'm with you totally. I remember when they were the hottest company. [00:58:38] S1: Yes. Yeah. [00:58:39] S0: Actually, I haven't I haven't heard anything.
00:58:39 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:58:39] S0: Actually, I haven't I haven't heard anything. [00:58:41] S1: Yeah. It's tricky. It's tricky. But I could imagine that, you know, Lovable, you sell to a large enterprise, you get behind their firewall, and you just keep as an internal app, then you can, like, massively expand within that with far less risk. Maybe make it read only seats as the primary use case, but Anton's super smart. I'm sure he'll work out. [00:58:58] S0: I totally agree. I love Lovable, and I think they're fantastic. Do you enjoy angel investing? [00:59:03] S1: It's fun. I missed ElevenLabs, so I'm not sure how good I am. We had Runna, the running app, and they just did fantastically well. That's my first exit. They just sold to Strava. Yeah. It's a Incredible team. So I just find it as a really fun way to partner with people who I really back. [00:59:20] S0: Dude, I wanna dive into a quick fire. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Great. Number one, what's the most common or expensive mistake that you see early founders making?
00:59:20 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:59:20] S0: Dude, I wanna dive into a quick fire. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? Great. Number one, what's the most common or expensive mistake that you see early founders making? [00:59:31] S1: The biggest mistake I see early founders making, particularly for b to b, is doing paid marketing too early. Because if you don't have PMF yet, you're not going to get paid marketing working, and you're gonna spend all your time and all your engineering time optimizing funnels and conversion and creating these different creative and ads and caring about your rankings and your your meta metrics. None of that actually matters apart from just build an incredible product. And I think the core loop of do incredible launches and build an incredible product is enough for any b to b or prosumer product to get that initial product market fit, and then you can start testing out different paid channels. The caveat though I'd say is if you are a consumer, distribution... With b to b, you basically know if you build an exceptional product, you can staff the sales team to it, and they'd be able to scale it. So distribution is not as much of a risk. With consumer, it's very different where distribution is a key part. You could create an incredible product, but if no one hears about it, then you can't scale it. And so instead, you may want to consider performance marketing earlier, but, I would try and lead to other channels which also increase brand.
00:59:31 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:59:31] S1: The biggest mistake I see early founders making, particularly for b to b, is doing paid marketing too early. Because if you don't have PMF yet, you're not going to get paid marketing working, and you're gonna spend all your time and all your engineering time optimizing funnels and conversion and creating these different creative and ads and caring about your rankings and your your meta metrics. None of that actually matters apart from just build an incredible product. And I think the core loop of do incredible launches and build an incredible product is enough for any b to b or prosumer product to get that initial product market fit, and then you can start testing out different paid channels. The caveat though I'd say is if you are a consumer, distribution... With b to b, you basically know if you build an exceptional product, you can staff the sales team to it, and they'd be able to scale it. So distribution is not as much of a risk. With consumer, it's very different where distribution is a key part. You could create an incredible product, but if no one hears about it, then you can't scale it. And so instead, you may want to consider performance marketing earlier, but, I would try and lead to other channels which also increase brand. [01:00:38] S0: I totally agree with you. The one thing I find paid really helpful for is if you're strategic around how you use it for testing. And so if you use it for testing on different messaging. [01:00:46] S1: I've never seen that work. [01:00:49] S0: Have you? I mean, it...
01:00:49 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:00:49] S0: Have you? I mean, it... [01:00:50] S1: I've seen people waste a lot of time. [01:00:52] S0: It runs on immediate business on, like, different title optimization True. And different color optimization, different font optimization. [01:01:00] S1: Yes. But when you were making your first episodes Yeah. Should you have spent more time AB testing different podcasts and maybe Harry instead of 20 VC could have lent more into product or growth earlier? [01:01:11] S0: No. It's just like No. Brute force more shows. Yeah. [01:01:14] S1: Exactly. Build a better product first Yeah. And then lean into paid. [01:01:18] S0: Totally. That was a shitty suggestion, Harry. What's the most underappreciated growth channel today? What do people not do that you like? [01:01:25] S1: The most underappreciated growth channel I see is organic LinkedIn. On Twitter, you're competing against the best writers in the world. You're competing against Harry Stebbings running [01:01:36] S0: Ackman. Yeah. [01:01:37] S1: Bill Bill Ackman. Like, it's really tough. On LinkedIn, you're competing against Freddie from Deloitte who got a promotion. And so the bar to creating great content and standing out and being authentic is so much lower. [01:01:50] S0: That is so true. LinkedIn is unbelievable as a content engine today. [01:01:54] S1: Think 100%. [01:01:55] S0: Really. What's the most polluted channel that you're like, ugh, stay away?
01:01:55 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:01:55] S0: Really. What's the most polluted channel that you're like, ugh, stay away? [01:01:59] S1: Actually, LinkedIn ads. So LinkedIn organic is The bar's so low, you can get stuff super viral. LinkedIn ads, the CPMs are so high. Yes. You can do great targeting, but, actually, I would argue invest a lot more time into creating excellent content that you distribute organically. Maybe you want to layer on ads on top, but particularly the kind of people that have been running LinkedIn ads. You're doing enterprise. You're doing heavy products with long sales cycle. It's really tough to get that working, and instead, I would just focus on the organic side. [01:02:30] S0: What's your advice to someone starting a new role in growth tomorrow? [01:02:34] S1: The biggest advice I would give is get great at copywriting. When you think, like, the actual writing copy, writing words, how do you make something engaging, how do you get your message across is so fundamental to any bit of growth you do. So whether you're running LinkedIn ads, if you're doing organic LinkedIn, if you're doing a blog post, a tweet thread, if you're doing copy for your landing pages, get great at copy as that's the foundation for all other growth.