The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:55:34 · Sameer Dholakia, Harry Stebbings
[00:55:34] S0: Yeah. Maybe. I I don't know. I just... When I talk to our companies that we're invested in [00:55:38] S1: They still wanna go public. [00:55:39] S0: Yeah. They still... It is... And by the way, in certain in certain markets, it's a badge of credibility. Right? Like those companies, their customers care. They're like, okay. These guys are legit. They're real. They're at scale. They're public. Like, you know, it connotes something. [00:55:52] S1: Ironically, for things like Aura, I think it also totally makes sense of consumer brand, one where retail wants to be part of it. Do you think retail should be a much larger part of the LP base of venture funds? If we have so much more gains now in private markets, do you think retail should play a large part in the LP base of venture? [00:56:10] S0: Harry, I I think it's hard to argue in terms of the, you know, what we would call kind of the democratization of access to that. I think it's hard to argue against. I do. [00:56:19] S1: What what do you... Because I I... Okay. Because I could argue against it. Sorry. I mean, really, I... I'm going for it. Because I do... You... Honestly, Bessemer is a very overfunded product. There's so many people that want access to it. If you just had a random people's fund, I don't know if it would beat out the hospitals and pension funds. And so then you have adverse selection, and then retail just goes into shit funds would be an argument.
00:56:19 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[00:56:19] S1: What what do you... Because I I... Okay. Because I could argue against it. Sorry. I mean, really, I... I'm going for it. Because I do... You... Honestly, Bessemer is a very overfunded product. There's so many people that want access to it. If you just had a random people's fund, I don't know if it would beat out the hospitals and pension funds. And so then you have adverse selection, and then retail just goes into shit funds would be an argument. [00:56:43] S0: By the way, I... Retail should only go into, back to our earlier part of the conversation, either giant global platforms with brand and leverage and and power or super, super specialized folks, and you know you're taking risk. And if that doesn't feel comfortable for the retail investor, they shouldn't play because it is a high risk game. And, you know, there's a lot of argument in this day, especially when the public markets have been ripping like they are. If you're a retail investor, just put it in the public market and don't take the liquidity hit and just let it compound in the public markets. But but, yeah, obviously, I believe when I look at our portfolio of companies, I'm like, these things are gonna continue to grow and compound and deliver gains that are not accessible in the public markets. And so that's where I would go. [00:57:23] S1: Can you paint... And one of my favorite companies, period, is Fireworks. I think Lynn is generational. Can you paint the bull case for how this is a $250,000,000,000 business?
00:57:23 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[00:57:23] S1: Can you paint... And one of my favorite companies, period, is Fireworks. I think Lynn is generational. Can you paint the bull case for how this is a $250,000,000,000 business? [00:57:33] S0: Look. I think, and by the way, I couldn't agree more. Lynn is extraordinary, and so is George Hu that just joined her team as president. [00:57:41] S1: On the first call with me, I get on. I've never met him before. K? First call, Lynn gives me to him, and and this is before. It's like to determine whether I'll be able to invest. I go, George, I've heard so much from Mark, and I'm trying to be charming. He goes, yeah. Yeah. Cool. So tell me, how are you gonna increase the value of this business? [00:58:00] S0: That is my man. That is my man, George. I'm like, okay. To it. [00:58:06] S1: No talk about the weather. Sure, George. Let's go straight into it. Sorry. I I I interrupted. You you were saying about you working with George. [00:58:14] S0: We worked together at Twilio. He was deeply involved in the diligence to... When we were doing the Twilio SendGrid acquisition, we were in the same exec leadership team room with Jeff Lawson, who's extraordinary and a bunch of great people in in those trenches together for eighteen months. And I'll just tell you, I've been in doing this for thirty one years. He is absolutely one of the very best software executives in the industry, period, full stop. [00:58:36] S1: Why? What makes him so good?
00:58:36 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[00:58:36] S1: Why? What makes him so good? [00:58:38] S0: First off, George, he's an exceptional thinker. He's super strategic. He's very analytical. He has been doing this for decades, and he knows how to run. He knows how to build a go to market engine. Harry, like, very few people in technology in the market today know how to build. And so when he... His joining Lynn and Fireworks, I'll just say, preceded our investment by about a month or two because George joined, and I'm like, dude, these guys are gonna crush because you have the brilliance of Lin, strategic thinker, deep technologist, unbelievable techno... Technical team for Meta, and now George building the go to market engine. That that is the pitch right there. You asked me for the bull case. Those two together at the top of that company leading, they're gonna build an enormous business. So I'll leave it there. I will say, though, in terms of the TAM and the market and what they're doing, think I their general pitch of enterprises are not gonna wanna rent intelligence from somebody else. They're gonna wanna own their own. I just think it's, the simplest and really compelling tagline for any enterprise CIO buyer. And and, personally, I think there'll be a healthy healthy amount of both. But, man, they're gonna... I I I can't... It's it's hard to imagine a business saying, yeah. No. I I I don't wanna own any of my intelligence. Every business is gonna wanna own some of their intelligence for sure. [00:59:52] S1: Do you buy the sovereign model argument?
00:59:52 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[00:59:52] S1: Do you buy the sovereign model argument? [00:59:54] S0: I do. We... We're invested in two. We're invested in Sarvam in India, and we are invested in... Or investing in Mistral right now. [01:00:04] S1: And so you think that, hey. Countries in geopolitical regions will, for obvious geopolitical concerns, need to have access to their own. Is that it? And to what extent then do we just go down the stack of we we need our own energy providing? We need our own
01:00:04 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[01:00:04] S1: And so you think that, hey. Countries in geopolitical regions will, for obvious geopolitical concerns, need to have access to their own. Is that it? And to what extent then do we just go down the stack of we we need our own energy providing? We need our own [01:00:17] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say in in certain markets and for certain use cases. Right? So, like... And they're different. Like, in India, I think, you know, one of the things that makes India such a ripe opportunity for intelligence local to their market is the Indic languages. There are so many different languages and training the models on their own content, and so... And that's multimodal. It's it's voice. It's text. It's all the things. There's a very particular argument there, and not to mention, of course, they have some of the best technologists at scale in India who can work on the problem. In in the case of of a Mastral, look, at the end of the day, like, if you're trying to determine whatever my military strategy for fill in the blank, there are certain use cases where if it's a government use case or a regulated industry or whatever, that having it be a sovereign model is probably gonna feel more comfortable to that buyer. And, when you got a market as big as intelligence, it doesn't have to be all the buyers. Some of the buyers decide that they wanna use that sovereign model for some of the use cases in some of the industries, and you're gonna build a very large business.