The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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.
00:31:24 · Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:31:24] S2: The Grazing Goat. [00:31:25] S0: Love that place. Five out of five. Okay. Maybe they could just drop it off at the next time we do the pod for free. I don't have to pay 20% and plus tip, plus this, plus... You think I'm kidding. I think agents are an existential risk to DoorDash because their number three competitor is nobody. [00:31:40] S2: Can I put out a cultural difference between us? You guys pay $15 a burger, and it gets delivered at fifty. And there's, like, federal charge, state charge, delivery charge, service charge. It's ridiculous. In London, it's kind of, like, £15 is £15. It's fascinating to see the difference in, like, what you pay and what you get. [00:31:58] S1: Yes. And that's why these businesses are widely profitable. They figured out exactly how to extract every dollar of rent from the person who wants to sit on their couch, press a button, and get the meal an hour later. It works. [00:32:07] S0: It's been a brutal business since the old Grubhub days. It's just evolved with the internet, and agents will evolve it again. It's been brutal. It's been brutal. The idea is take as much margin out of the customers or the restaurants as humanly possible. [00:32:17] S2: I'm with Bill Ackman. I think Uber's a banger of a buy right now, though. I mean, it's so cheap. [00:32:22] S1: I broadly agree, and I haven't spent a lot of time on this, but the two worries you have are way more disruption and agentic disruption. And what you're implicitly saying is border fine.
00:32:22 · Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
[00:32:22] S1: I broadly agree, and I haven't spent a lot of time on this, but the two worries you have are way more disruption and agentic disruption. And what you're implicitly saying is border fine. [00:32:30] S2: Yeah, agentic disruption is bizarre in taxi hailing. You're gonna go to your WhatsApp and say, I would like to get an- agree. [00:32:37] S1: I don't think [00:32:37] S2: that's It's it's it's a worse user experience. I would like to get an Uber. I am at this position on the map. Yep. [00:32:43] S1: Agreed. [00:32:44] S2: And and then the other issue is people love food. They love looking at it. They love pictures. They love scrolling. They love discovery. The only thing that makes sense for is, like, automation and scheduling. Like, every day drop it off at scale's office in San Francisco. That's it. Okay, boys. We have two big rounds in Kalshi and Cohere. Kalshi, a billion and 40,000,000,000, one of Jason's favorites. A low dilution round there with a two and a half percent dilution, but still raising a billion dollars and a 40,000,000,000 price a day after Utah charges founders of Kalshi. And then we have Cohere. I think it's the largest private raise for a Canadian company at this point with actually the Canadian government, I believe, or Canada itself investing up to 1,140,000,000. Which one's more interesting?
00:33:28 · Rory O'Driscoll
[00:33:28] S1: Kalshi is a money deal. Let's be really clear here. The thing is working. It's growing like a weed. Deep in their heart, everyone knows that we started off thinking we were doing prediction markets, which had some social utility, and we've long since converted into sports gambling markets to feed people's addiction for gambling. Right? So we're all over the doing good. We're all over the higher purpose. You know, we're pushing through a whole bunch of local regulation, which is why Utah is suing them because sports betting is regulated on a state by state basis, And these guys are plowing through on a national basis. So there's nothing to see in this other than VCs will put a lot of money into shit that's working. That's the takeaway, right? And if it's at 40,000,000,000, it's had momentum, it raised like three or four months ago at 22,000,000,000. So this is one of those classic momentum plays, right? I mean, that, clearly it's very different. I mean, it's almost not a momentum play. It's a, we need our sovereign AI play in Canada because you are nasty people and you've threatened to invade us multiple times. And we've got this product and it's one of the original four or five LLMs to be fair. Mean, back in 2023, you had Cohere, obviously OpenAI and Anthropic, and then all the other ones like the one that Microsoft bought, Adept and Amazon bought, all the others folded. So give Cohere a huge credit. They are one of the survivors of that first group of LLMs before NeoLabs was even a thing. And now they didn't release revenue numbers, but you can see how you can make a sovereign AI story. It's almost the exact opposite. In the case of Kalshi, the government is saying, I want to stop you now and put you in prison. In the case of cohere, the government's saying, I'm going to make this work no matter what, even if the economics don't work. So they're almost like the yin and yang of investments in terms of their relationship with the government.