The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:46:24 · Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin
[00:46:24] S0: Who's next then? [00:46:25] S2: Look. There... Of course, there will be more deals, but I think we've entered the era of capitulation. And if there is a seat left in duck duck goose, grab it, grab it. But otherwise, the game's just ended. And these companies are gonna go into zero percenter mode. They're gonna go into zero to five percent growth mode and no one no one may buy them because if this is the best Miro and Airtable can do what if you're not Miro these are not bad companies Miro 600,000,000 in ARR still growing high single digits and cash flow positive like it's a pretty good asset. Right? So anyone worse than Miro or Airtable is not gonna get one of the last one or two chairs. Just no one wants to buy these things. And I I don't mean to be grouchy. Just mean I just give it... Like, kids, go go do whatever you want. Here's the keys to the house. I've moved to another city. Have parties. You know, crash the cars. Do whatever you want because Boys, moving swiftly on. [00:47:15] S0: What what would we like to do next? Jeff Dean's company hitting $50,000,000,000 after just raising it 10. We've got Citrini selling his company to Dylan Patel and Sammy Analysis for a 100. We've got OpenAI pausing pro sign ups. [00:47:32] S2: Is SPF getting out? [00:47:34] S0: I mean, he's got to accept his Midas list, doesn't he? [00:47:36] S2: He might have even been on the under 30 under 30 or something when he got it too, when he did the Anthropic deal. I think it was under 30.
00:47:36 · Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
[00:47:36] S2: He might have even been on the under 30 under 30 or something when he got it too, when he did the Anthropic deal. I think it was under 30. [00:47:42] S1: I'm gonna be the voice of humanity. I mean, yeah, he he is doing significant time, which really sucks, and that's a life waste. So I'm not gonna pile on on the guy yet. [00:47:51] S2: I think the Supreme Court's gonna take the case and overturn it narrowly. Because I watched his lawyer on YouTube. He was pretty good. He's done 50 cases in the Supreme Court. He's like a badass, like, Supreme Court lawyer. Basically, he's... And listen, I'm not the total argument. His point was this is an eighth amendment issue. You can't find somebody $12,000,000,000. This is unconstitutional. That can't repay it when at least according to the terms of the bankruptcy court everyone was repaid in whole with interest. We could argue whether they would have made much more money, right? But there are some constitutionality issues. I think he's gonna get his... I think the Supreme Court's gonna take it. They don't have to take any case. Think he's gonna get it. And, you know, whatever he's in jail for, thirty years and 11,000,000,000, I think it's... I think, you know, Sam may be freed eventually. This... Get... The Supreme Court hearing the case is a far cry from being freed, but I think he may [00:48:36] S0: have Jay, [00:48:36] S1: day did you [00:48:37] S0: think he should be freed?
00:48:37 · Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:48:37] S0: think he should be freed? [00:48:38] S2: I mean, he seemed like the biggest scammer of all mankind when the... What was this all way back in 2023? It is weird he didn't enrich himself as far as we know materially, right? It is weird that... This is very arguably, very arguably. It's of course terrible that he moved assets between Alameda Research and... It's terrible, but the argument that it was allowed by terms of use is an interesting argument. It is an interesting argument. He did not self enrich. The reality is if you use a generous version of made whole, folks were made whole, should he go to jail for most of the rest of his life and have to pay 11,000,000,000 when he get out? It seems like a lot in the era of sentient AI that could kill us all. It does seem like a lot today. But at the time, you know, Silicon Valley Bank failed. I lost 10,000,000 over the weekend. I don't know about you guys. It seemed like it was just desserts at the time. Right? [00:49:26] S1: For what it's... One, hadn't prepped on this because it wasn't on the list. And I don't like a part... My wife, who is a lawyer, gets mad when I practice law without a license. But I will say it was so low down, Harry, I didn't think we'd get to it. You never do. [00:49:38] S0: Oh, that we get. Well, very honest.
00:49:40 · Rory O'Driscoll
[00:49:40] S1: Very honest. Genuine comment here. Separating the fine, which there might be issues, doesn't matter, but there was misallocation of funds. It was white collar crime. It should be punished. I actually think thirty years was probably disproportionate with... I mean, think... What was it? I'm trying to remember the ex Goldman Sachs guy who misallocated brokered funds and MG Brokerage about ten or fifteen years ago. I I think he walked entirely, I can't from memory think. I think white collar crime should be punished, and it's a shitty world where someone steals $20 and they go to prison and someone else steals $10,000,000,000 and they don't because they're white and upper middle class. But I'm also not sure if thirty years is the commensurate thing. Now the interesting thing is that's not the issue at hand in the Supreme Court. I don't think they're appealing the sentencing... On the sentencing guidelines issue, they're appealing the facts and circumstance of the case. So we'll see. Yeah. And I don't think it matters that fact the that he took the money and was a brilliant investor doesn't excuse him for taking the money. Because by definition, if it worked, then anyone could take money provided it worked. Hey. I stole your money, Harry, but I bought put call options and the stock went up, so we made money. Here's your money back. You shouldn't mind. Well, of course you're going to freaking mind because when you took the money from you, you didn't know what the outcome would be, and there was a 50% chance it would go down. So you're going want that guy punished because you're going to want that behavior stopped because you're not going to want the next guy to think they can do it. So it doesn't matter that he was the most brilliant, genuine... The most brilliant equity investor of our generation between Entropic and Cursor. It just matters if he took money and if that was against the rules, and I haven't heard the terms of service argument, Jason, that will be interesting. If he took money, was against the rules, then he should be punished. If he took money, it wasn't against the rules, then he probably should walk, and the process will take place. Not my problem.
00:51:20 · Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[00:51:20] S2: What happened to Matt Mullenweg? He was he was out for a day and back. What happened to poor Matt? Did someone not read the bylaws, Rory? What happened? Did someone forget to pull the certificate of incorporation from Delaware? [00:51:29] S0: So so Matt Mullenweg is the founder and CEO of WordPress, and he was ousted by the board, and then he came back and overrode them, it would seem. And now he is back as the CEO, and the power to the founder has reigned true here. He is back as CEO.
00:51:44 · Rory O'Driscoll
[00:51:44] S1: Correct. And this is a company, Automa, that has been the steward of the open source project WordPress, which is one of the most commonly used blogging and website platforms out there. Very successful product. Matt's the CEO of the company that manages the product. I think it's fair to say that the stewardship in the last few years have been troubled. He's been in a big argument with WP Engines about... The argument is WP Engine is a hosting company that is hosting WordPress sites, and I think Automattic wants some of that revenue, so they've been pushing WP Engines. But the way in which he's behaved has been unhelpful to the open source project because it's kind of like, I will use the leverage of my company to try and frankly prevent other people from benefiting from the open source ecosystem, which seems to be antithetical to the idea of it. So I think it's been a troubled situation for a while. I think the truth is the real issue is the world is passing that product. It's kind of a sad little thing because the world is passing that product by and Jason will be able to tell you that you can build most of what you have in WordPress with Lovable or Replit or any one of 10 things. And increasingly, they are, as I've quoted before, the Henry Kissinger thing about academic arguments, the fights are so vicious because the prize is so small. The truth is automatic doesn't matter a damn anymore. It should try and build something new, but it's it's kind of on the tail end of... I mean, to Jason's point about me, it's on the tail end of the tech trends. They should be doing things totally differently to try and survive in the brave new world. Instead, they're arguing internally. So that's kind of the zoom out comment. Within that context, that's kind of the big picture. And the funny thing is, like all litigations, when you get caught up in the detail of the day to day, you forget the big picture. The big picture is this company needs to point WordPress in a forward direction to think about how you take advantage of what's going on in AI and become a relevant player in the next five years, otherwise you won't be. That's the corporate imperative. Instead, the corporate imperative has turned into a pissing match between the board and the CEO, when now it looks like the CEO has won. Congratulations. You've won the poison chalice.