The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:11:40 · Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
[00:11:40] S0: But they'll have like 200,000,000 of total cash on the balance sheet or something like that after Anthropic will. So that's a lot of cash. [00:11:48] S2: I mean, let's be precise. I think it is out of the first or second largest pile of cash in all corporate America, [00:11:52] S0: which is first. Read it was the second, but it doesn't matter which one it is. [00:11:55] S2: Going public. I mean, this is a company going public where it already has more money than every other company in America, bar one, at a 110,000,000,000 on the balance sheet today. They've done a masterful job of raising a 130 and only spending 10 or 11. Masterful. Do [00:12:09] S1: we think it's gonna have an amazing reception? [00:12:11] S2: I do. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, hell, I don't know. You know? I mean [00:12:15] S1: Oh, we're in the predictions game, Rory. Go for it. [00:12:17] S2: I I know. Think I I think it should. I mean, I think it's an amazing company. You just can't argue with [00:12:23] S0: I mean, doesn't it, like, a SpaceX almost instantly have to go into the S and P 500? [00:12:28] S2: Not the S and P 500. If it's... If you're listing on Nasdaq, which I think it is, I didn't check, you go into the QQQ index, but the S and P index takes... There's a profitability metric or something like that. So it takes some time. But, yes, they will be in some index funds pretty immediately. But I don't think this is going to need that lift in the same way arguably SpaceX did. I think this is going to be just a stock people want to own.
00:12:28 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[00:12:28] S2: Not the S and P 500. If it's... If you're listing on Nasdaq, which I think it is, I didn't check, you go into the QQQ index, but the S and P index takes... There's a profitability metric or something like that. So it takes some time. But, yes, they will be in some index funds pretty immediately. But I don't think this is going to need that lift in the same way arguably SpaceX did. I think this is going to be just a stock people want to own. [00:12:48] S0: But even just getting indexed into everything in the net, it's just a retail boost, right? They're not going to miss a quarter, whether it's 900 I mean, within a range, it's not that I don't think they could disappoint, right? But within the next two quarters, and I think we have to be careful to use NRR as a metric here, but still true. Right? With 900% NRR, even if in reality it's more like 300 to 400% because it includes like pilots and trials. I just think that plus the brand plus being in the Nasdaq 100, it'll probably have a good retail run plus SpaceX. I I... Yeah. Why would you bet against it? [00:13:25] S2: If for Sam [00:13:25] S1: Altman reading this, thinking about q one going out himself, do you think he takes away anything from it, changes anything as a result of it?
00:13:25 · Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:13:25] S1: Altman reading this, thinking about q one going out himself, do you think he takes away anything from it, changes anything as a result of it? [00:13:33] S2: You can't change the past. I probably think if you were the CEO of OpenAI, you would look at this and go, Decisions that you made, you now regret because you've let these guys get away from you and do better. If there's any self reflection, there should be a ton of that going on. Nothing you can do about it. You just got to get your business together and converge and get out yourself. And in the meantime, obviously compete aggressively on price to try and screw up their Q3.
00:13:33 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin
[00:13:33] S2: You can't change the past. I probably think if you were the CEO of OpenAI, you would look at this and go, Decisions that you made, you now regret because you've let these guys get away from you and do better. If there's any self reflection, there should be a ton of that going on. Nothing you can do about it. You just got to get your business together and converge and get out yourself. And in the meantime, obviously compete aggressively on price to try and screw up their Q3. [00:13:59] S0: Never has such a successful startup named itself so poorly that I can think of as OpenAI. I mean, it would have killed almost any other startup what they went through, right? With the CEO drama, all the other nonprofit to profit drama, despite Startup doing better than them, they basically let Anthropic control part of the market for almost a which is like five years or ten years in AI time, right? There is a certain amount of parity with Astra and the open weights models today, best, but Anthropic own the fucking own the playbook for the chessboard for almost twelve months. There's no point in using any other coding solution and coding is the killer app as we already said 100 times. The math is true. They literally letting Dario walk out the door rather than build it in house and then firing the CEO and bringing them back over the night of long knives. I mean, my God, I mean, it's all going to be okay. But talk about own goals, I mean, every start up's full of them. This is just... These are some epic ones.
00:13:59 · Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[00:13:59] S0: Never has such a successful startup named itself so poorly that I can think of as OpenAI. I mean, it would have killed almost any other startup what they went through, right? With the CEO drama, all the other nonprofit to profit drama, despite Startup doing better than them, they basically let Anthropic control part of the market for almost a which is like five years or ten years in AI time, right? There is a certain amount of parity with Astra and the open weights models today, best, but Anthropic own the fucking own the playbook for the chessboard for almost twelve months. There's no point in using any other coding solution and coding is the killer app as we already said 100 times. The math is true. They literally letting Dario walk out the door rather than build it in house and then firing the CEO and bringing them back over the night of long knives. I mean, my God, I mean, it's all going to be okay. But talk about own goals, I mean, every start up's full of them. This is just... These are some epic ones. [00:14:50] S1: I had the joy of having Satya Nadella on TwentyVC earlier this week. Wow. Great show. It was a fantastic guest to have on. What an honor. Microsoft had some pretty big news that they were offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 of its 223,000 employee base. It's an enormous amount of the employee base to get this offer, roughly 27%. Jason, you've spoken before quite vociferously about this topic. What are your thoughts?
00:14:50 · Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:14:50] S1: I had the joy of having Satya Nadella on TwentyVC earlier this week. Wow. Great show. It was a fantastic guest to have on. What an honor. Microsoft had some pretty big news that they were offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 of its 223,000 employee base. It's an enormous amount of the employee base to get this offer, roughly 27%. Jason, you've spoken before quite vociferously about this topic. What are your thoughts? [00:15:16] S0: First of all, Rory may have observed more more of these than I have. Maybe he hasn't. Hope he hasn't. But it's not like all 27% are gonna take it. Right. And they've already been through... I think they already went through a 10% layoff round. Right? So they've done... It's it's it's some sort of interesting game theory here where you want to offer it to everybody you don't want to have. Right? And then you've got to figure out what the yield's going to be. Right? But it's brutal because it says one thing no matter what people are going to say on LinkedIn. These 27%, we don't want them. [00:15:44] S2: Yes. I could... [00:15:45] S0: That's Whether not 7% take it or two point... We don't... And you... It is... This is a worse Scarlet letter than a lay... Than a pure layoff. At least a layoff, you can kinda wave your hands. This is 27% of the country they said did not meet our minimum, we we don't want you. [00:15:58] S2: And I bet it could have [00:15:59] S0: been higher, but but I bet they got this done in a week. It's it's so damning that Microsoft doesn't want 27% of its people. That that is the age of AI. They don't want them.