20VC Newsletter - 13th April 2025
Here are the transcripts and top takeaways from 20VC episodes released this last week.
Monday’s episode with Ernie Garcia, Founder & CEO @ Carvana:
Download the full transcript:
My 6 key takeaways:
Risk Is Less Risky Than Most People Believe
When you have to, you will.
You need to take risks to do something meaningful.
Risk is less risky than most people believe.
Leading From the Ground and Fighting Abstraction
The pressure of scale pushes everyone up the pyramid.
As people get more successful in their career, they want to influence more, manage more people & do more 1-on-1s…
If you want to make the biggest difference, get in the game, stay close to the ground.
Do Not Be a Reaction of What Other People Think You Are
As things change, like your title or financial situation, the way you feel inside changes a lot less than people think.
That is the healthiest way to approach it.
Advice to Someone Going Public: You Cannot Be Successful and Private
You need to ask yourself: Is it more important for you to succeed or to have the best possible personal life?
If success is more important to you, go public.
It creates a pressure that you can't create otherwise.
Why Being Public Gives You Better Feedback Than Private
When you are public, the stock does not care about who you are.
The feedback is cold and ruthless, and I think that is extremely valuable.
Two Biggest Parental Lessons From a Billionaire
Two things:
Make sure your kids know they are unconditionally loved.
Give them a chance to explore the world.
Thursday’s episode with Tom Hulme, MP @ GV & Stan Boland, Founder & CEO @ Icera:
Download the full transcript:
My 7 key takeaways:
The US Created $20TRN and UK Created $170BN
The US created $20TRN of value in the last 50 years building decacorns.
The UK has created $170BN.
Four Things the UK Needs to Do to Compete With the US
Four things:
Talent Retention: We need to keep more people in the UK.
Mentoring: We need better quality mentoring for early-stage companies.
Eliminate 'Props’: Stop supporting failing companies that carry on forever.
Infuse Capital: We need to flood the UK with VC funding.
The Biggest Challenge the UK Faces
For every one good founder, you need 5-10 world-class operators.
The 3 best universities here (Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial) are only graduating 500 computer scientists/roboticists per year.
We should increase that number by 5x.
All Engineering Grads Should Get This
If you graduated with an engineering or computer science degree in the UK, you should have a Tier 2 visa attached to it.
You should have the right to stay in the UK and bring your family.
We need to create more incentives for people to come & stay in the UK.
Flood the UK With Cash and More Companies Are Built
UK entrepreneurs are moving to the US because there is not enough capital.
China poured huge amounts of capital & now they are a clear global number two.
It is a chicken & egg problem – If we have the capital the supply of companies will come.
Why the Government Has to Put 10x More Money Into a Fund of Funds
No large fund-of-funds has ever lost money from an investment perspective.
The BBB spends around £424M a year on FoF investments, that number should be 10x.
If we have enough capital we could also attract US talent & develop our own through new funds.
Three Reasons Why Defence Is the Most Interesting Space for the UK
Three things:
Talent: More smart people are moving into defence.
Buyers: We do not have a single buyer; there are multiple services & regiments in the UK who are all potential customers & they’re being forced to innovate.
Geopolitical: The UK is close & involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Behind the Scenes:
Friday’s episode with Aatish Nayak, Head of Product @ Harvey:
My 4 key takeaways:
PMs have Main Character Syndrome
PMs think they have to be the CEO of their product.
Their job is to make the product & the company succeed.
They need to give others the opportunity to shine for the skillsets that they have.
How the Best AI Company in the Valley Tests New Products?
Whenever we build something, we test it with an expanding circle:
In-house lawyers
Design partners.
Beta testers (customers)
General public
How AI Will Change Product Teams
Prototyping & execution will be much cheaper.
We will see more domain experts (lawyers, doctors, etc) driving more product decisions.
They will bridge the gap between the models & how it is applied.
Claude 3.7 is Outperforming OpenAI Models at Legal Reasoning
We’ve built custom model solutions with OpenAI for a very long time.
We benchmarked every model released.
Sonnet 3.7 is better at long form legal reasoning & extraction.
Behind the scenes:
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Let us know what your big takeaways from this week’s shows were in the comments below!
Thank you for reading, and don’t miss the great guests we have next week:
Monday episode: Victor Lazarte, GP @ Benchmark
Thursday episode: Jason Lemkin
Friday episode: Richard Socher, CEO @ You.com
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