The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:26:24 · Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
[00:26:24] S0: Look, no question, and we can move on. But it's interesting that Elon had to cap it. It is. They have resources. They had a pretty good IPO. He has reached. He's going long. He has bet his company on AI and subsidizing this thing. He subsidizes everything round trip, right? And even with his personal fortune, he subsidizes everything. This is a man that would not want to cap Grok bot if he did not have to. [00:26:45] S1: He's also the man who's getting so many dollars per unit of compute from Anthropic that he's like, yeah, I could do some free Grok bots and these people could make cute cartoons and send pictures of sexy anime girls to each other. On the other hand, I could get like $50 an hour from Anthropic. Screw it. I'll do that. [00:27:01] S0: Well, they're not doing that. They're building applications. They're building code. Grok is fairly technical, unlike the Instacart and Muses. Right? [00:27:07] S2: Okay, boys. We had another pretty big transaction which went down that in a normal world would have dominated news. In today's news, it kind of lasts for a couple of hours, but DoorDash buys Instacart for $17,000,000,000 under half its 2021 private price. D1 still owns 9.7%. Sequoia owns 8.1%. Before we talk about agents, which was a disclosure, and the thing of note here, an inevitable ending to a clear second place provider to DoorDash. [00:27:37] S1: I mean, inevitable is a bit strong, but, yes, they clearly tried to do it before. It clearly makes sense. There's also probably an element of do it now while you can if you do DoorDash. All makes sense.
00:27:37 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin
[00:27:37] S1: I mean, inevitable is a bit strong, but, yes, they clearly tried to do it before. It clearly makes sense. There's also probably an element of do it now while you can if you do DoorDash. All makes sense. [00:27:45] S0: Listen, some of this is not my strength, but the fact that the Postmates acquisition worked was a surprise for me. I assume you buy... When Uber Eats bought Postmate, I assume you get a little bit of a brand and a list and you basically shut the thing down and that I didn't really believe these deals would be accretive, right? But they appear to be, right? So if Instacart's got 20% of the market and DoorDash has 60 of the delivery market and you can get through antitrust, which you probably shouldn't if you think about the numbers that I just said. [00:28:11] S1: Of course.
00:28:11 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[00:28:11] S1: Of course. [00:28:11] S0: And you can get to 80% market share. This is how you dominate networks. You dominate every part of it by having 80% market share. And I'm surprised that you can combine these networks and one plus one doesn't end up equaling 1.1 a couple of years later. That's my experience, but it doesn't appear to be true. These deals, if well architected, appear to work. And so it should be accretive. It should make sense. And I think also, you noted it's half its 21 private price or whatever, right? I think like the Braze deal at Salesforce, you may say, what's the similarity? A lot of times folks have been circling each other for years. Tony said they've been talking for years, right? So there are deals that don't make sense even if they're cheaper. And then there are deals where like Salesforce was losing to Braze in marketing for years. And that when it got super cheap, when it got to 3x AR, now they had to pay a big premium, they just buy the assets they want when they become cheap. And it may be that simple. And so if they're accretive, buy them. This may be just simple things that the corp dev's supposed to do. [00:29:09] S2: One that I found fascinating was actually relating to a conversation we've had before, and it was agenda usage of these platforms and DoorDash saying that AI agents have sent only several 100 orders against 3,000,000 deliveries a day. Were you shocked by how surprisingly low that was, or do you think it's symbolic of the fact that people will always want to choose food and have that discovery process?
00:29:09 · Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin
[00:29:09] S2: One that I found fascinating was actually relating to a conversation we've had before, and it was agenda usage of these platforms and DoorDash saying that AI agents have sent only several 100 orders against 3,000,000 deliveries a day. Were you shocked by how surprisingly low that was, or do you think it's symbolic of the fact that people will always want to choose food and have that discovery process? [00:29:34] S0: I think in a sense, it was a dumb comment for what it's worth. Reminds me a little bit when Brian Chesky, like a year and a half ago said there was no need for AI for rentals and housing, or when Parker Conrad, another generational CEO said there's no need for AI and B2B eighteen months ago. Yet today, today only several 100 orders, but these platforms, like all these app platforms have a risk of slight disruption from agents. They all have a risk of slight disruption. [00:29:58] S2: Which is why I think it's so self serving. I would be pushing this. Whether you're Uber, and when I had Mac, the president of Uber on, he very clearly was most worried about agentic usage of these platforms because it would disintermediate Uber. And you could get a free now. You could get a Lyft. You get price optimized, time optimized, and who gives a shit about the platform provider? You have it for Vintage. You have it for Uber. You have it for DoorDash. I think it's, like, very specifically well done because it made headlines and news in a way that actually he wants. No. Humans are here, and we will continue to be here.
00:29:58 · Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:29:58] S2: Which is why I think it's so self serving. I would be pushing this. Whether you're Uber, and when I had Mac, the president of Uber on, he very clearly was most worried about agentic usage of these platforms because it would disintermediate Uber. And you could get a free now. You could get a Lyft. You get price optimized, time optimized, and who gives a shit about the platform provider? You have it for Vintage. You have it for Uber. You have it for DoorDash. I think it's, like, very specifically well done because it made headlines and news in a way that actually he wants. No. Humans are here, and we will continue to be here. [00:30:29] S1: Maybe the better way to say it is let's assume they're telling the truth. That's the objective fact about what's going on now. And the million dollar question is, do you see that behavior happen more and more? And then how does DoorDash respond to it? You know, they're all doing versions of the same thing, which... I mean, I could totally see for some of your standard food orders, just it's not that much easier for the record. I mean, telling your your agent to order your dinner, it's just as easy as to just go click on the DoorDash app.
00:30:29 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[00:30:29] S1: Maybe the better way to say it is let's assume they're telling the truth. That's the objective fact about what's going on now. And the million dollar question is, do you see that behavior happen more and more? And then how does DoorDash respond to it? You know, they're all doing versions of the same thing, which... I mean, I could totally see for some of your standard food orders, just it's not that much easier for the record. I mean, telling your your agent to order your dinner, it's just as easy as to just go click on the DoorDash app. [00:30:52] S0: Well, but there's a thing. DoorDash has two competitor, big competitors. It has Uber Eats, right? And it has the restaurant. The restaurants don't want to use DoorDash or Uber. So most restaurants have self pickup. At least they have to go pick up or they can avoid most of the fees, right? Or self delivery. An agent can figure that out for you. Hey Harry, did you know that Lemkin's Curry down the street, actually it will deliver for $2 and you don't need to go through DoorDash or whatever they have in London? I did not know. Thank you, Musk. Thank you, Instacart. I'll take that. That'll save me $14 on my order. What's the pub right behind your office that I really like Harry? [00:31:24] S2: The Grazing Goat.