The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:00:00 · Erik Bernhardsson
[00:00:00] S0: I think there is an opportunity to create a $100,000,000,000 company with a lot of specialized models in inference. There's gonna be a pullback. I'm okay with that because I think the long term opportunity is so fucking big. There's just so much demand for it. It's like so large. I don't wanna sell this company because I would just go and start Modal two. We've lost new grads going to, you know, some of the labs for, like, in sit... Like, talking, you know, 20 plus million. I mean, these are exceptional people. Exceptional.
00:00:25 · Harry Stebbings
[00:00:25] S1: This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And do you know what I wish I knew twelve months ago that I now know? The demand for inference, it's infinite, and we're seeing some of the biggest companies in the world be built in this space. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome one of those founders to the hot seat in the form of Erik, cofounder and CEO of Modal. Now Modal just hit a billion in ARR. They just raised $750,000,000 led by Accel, and they're priced at $15,750,000,000 today. I actually think it's a steal, by the way. But today, we dig into the inference market, what to come, what no one sees that everyone should see, and so much more. This was a phenomenal discussion with Erik. But before we dive into the show today, Blitzy, the autonomous software development platform that's built for enterprise scale, is proud to sponsor today's show. Enterprise code bases have grown beyond human comprehension. Tens of millions of lines, decades of tech debt, complexity existing tools cannot fathom. Blitzy starts by understanding. Thousands of agents reverse engineer your code base into a proprietary knowledge graph that maps architecture, dependencies, and business logic. That graph surfaces every CVE and zero day hiding in your code before anyone hands you a ticket. Grounded in that context, Blitzy then executes entire epics autonomously, modernize off legacy systems, ship new features five x faster, or batch remediate CVEs at scale surfaced by the platform. Blitzy not only generates code, it validates an end to end test every single line. And that's why Fortune 500 enterprises are shipping enterprise grade code five times faster. Go to blitzy.com/20vc to learn more. While Blitzy helps you build faster, Flex helps you run your finances smarter. Business owners run their whole financial life on Flex. One platform from business revenue to their personal spend. Float every purchase for sixty days. Tap capital that grows with your revenue and pay vendors in a 170 countries across across 32 currencies, plus the whole back office, bills, expenses, accounting, all in one place. So you spend less time reconciling and more time growing. That's why thousands of owners use Flex, named one of Fast Company's most innovative companies of 2026. Visit flex.one, that's flex,.one, and use the code 20 v c. While Flex runs your finances, keeps your compliance covered.
00:02:51 · Harry Stebbings, Erik Bernhardsson
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00:04:17 · Erik Bernhardsson, Harry Stebbings
[00:04:17] S0: It's so exciting to be here. I mean, I've listened to so many episodes. It's it's kind of surreal to be inside of it right now. [00:04:22] S1: That's really awesome. As I said to you, you you could have text me when you started the company, and maybe I would have been a little bit richer. [00:04:29] S0: Yeah. But you probably didn't know about me then. [00:04:30] S1: No. I didn't, but I would have welcomed Demesti in another suite. I wanted to start with... I was talking to Zach Frankel last night, and he said about your childhood and, like, early indicators of success and, like, exceptional ability. How did you fall in love with technology? And for me as an investor, what would have made me excited in seeing your childhood?
00:04:30 · Harry Stebbings, Erik Bernhardsson
[00:04:30] S1: No. I didn't, but I would have welcomed Demesti in another suite. I wanted to start with... I was talking to Zach Frankel last night, and he said about your childhood and, like, early indicators of success and, like, exceptional ability. How did you fall in love with technology? And for me as an investor, what would have made me excited in seeing your childhood? [00:04:50] S0: I started coding 1992 or something like that. I was eight. I just loved it. You know? It's like one of those things. I realized you can control computers. I had a Mac Plus, you know, one megabyte of RAM or whatever. And, yeah, I started making games and, like... I mean, they were terrible. But, you know, it's just... I think back at, like... In a way, I'm, like, so grateful. I look back at, like, my childhood. My friends, they were, like, collecting hockey cards or whatever. That was, like, their hobby. My hobby was programming, and and now I make a lot of money from it. Isn't that kinda create... Like, you know you know when you think about it? Like, the fact that I can make a lot of money, like, doing what what was my hobby since I was eight? Kinda nuts. So I I... I'm just so grateful about, you know, the fact that I fell in love with technology and coding, and then I started doing programming competitions when I was 16, 17, and so much fun. [00:05:35] S1: Modal was your first company, or is your first company. Why did it take so long?
00:05:35 · Harry Stebbings, Erik Bernhardsson
[00:05:35] S1: Modal was your first company, or is your first company. Why did it take so long? [00:05:40] S0: I think the consistent pattern in my life is like I never had quite enough confidence in myself. And a lot of it that was missing was just the confidence, a little bit the money too. So it wasn't until I was like 'thirty six, 'thirty seven I started Modal. And I think, I don't think I've ever wanted to necessarily start a company. It was like one of those things where like, I just saw this big opportunity in the market. I almost thought to myself, like, why is no one else doing this? Such an obvious idea. And that led me to think, like, maybe I should start a company. And then, you know, five years later, here we are. It's gone pretty well. I think in hindsight, maybe I should have started much earlier. [00:06:14] S1: Do you wish you had? [00:06:15] S0: I look at some of these, like, Stanford kids, and they're, like, 21, and, like, I kinda feel they maybe have too much confidence. You know what I mean? Like, they're, like, you know, think they're gonna take over the world, and they're 21. I think the ideal age is maybe, like, I don't know, 32 or something like that. You have a little bit more experience. You know how to navigate people. You know how to hire people. You know how to fire people, like all these things. I don't know if I would have been a good founder, like, in my twenties.