The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:02:51 · Harry Stebbings, Erik Bernhardsson
When you're building a company, you learn that trust is what closes deals. You may have the best product, but no buyers will sign these days without proof of your security. Here's what happens if you're not prepared. A prospect asks for proof of compliance. The deal stalls when you scramble. Your engineer gets pulled off the road map to audit prep. Every enterprise conversation turns into this horrible fire drill. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta is the leading agentic trust platform that not only gets you compliant fast with frameworks like SOC two, ISO 27,001, HIPAA, and GDPR, but keeps you compliant by continuously monitoring your controls. So your deals keep moving and your engineers really keep building. Now access the Vanta agent everywhere you work even if your team lives in Claude or Cursor. And that's why Vanta's trusted by more than 16,000 companies like Ramp, Harvey, and Reiter. So prove you're ready for business and get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/20vc. That's vanta.com/20vc. You have now arrived at your destination. Erik, listen, dude. It is so great to have you on the show. You know, I was sitting downstairs with you chatting before, and I was just like, you can feel when it's gonna be a good show because people are themselves. And that was an amazing conversation, and we're gonna have a lot of fun. So thank you for joining me. [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.
00:04:17 · 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.
00:06:15 · Erik Bernhardsson, Harry Stebbings
[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. [00:06:37] S1: Before we get into the market and everything beneath that, we were chatting downstairs, we often hear that founding companies is like eating glass. It's hard. It's painful. How do you feel about those?
00:06:37 · Harry Stebbings, Erik Bernhardsson
[00:06:37] S1: Before we get into the market and everything beneath that, we were chatting downstairs, we often hear that founding companies is like eating glass. It's hard. It's painful. How do you feel about those? [00:06:47] S0: Dude, hate that stuff. It's like, I don't get it. Like, you're eating glass, like, every day. Like, why are you doing it then? Like, I don't know. You expect some, like, magic reward, like some big cookie in the end? Like, I never understood that mindset. I I think it's like this mindset that a lot of people have. I'm gonna suffer pain, and then there's gonna be this big reward in the end. I don't know. I don't think about it that way. I enjoy every day I go to work. Of course, there's, like, hard times. Like, there's, you know, you have to have hard conversations, maybe fire people, maybe, like, do hard things. But, like, in the grand scheme of things, like, I mean, such is life, and I enjoy life. I I enjoy building a company. And I don't I don't think of it as like one day we're gonna flip this company and be... I I hope to work on this for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. I'm having so much fun. I don't wanna sell this company because I would just go and start model two. You really wouldn't. Yeah. [00:07:29] S1: I [00:07:29] S0: don't I think money necessarily makes you happy. I mean, little bit. Like, it's good to have some money, but, you know, be on a point. Like, what... You know? I like building stuff. I love technology. I love coding. So much fun. [00:07:39] S1: You're such a sweet...