Harry Stebbings
@HarryStebbings • 447,866 subscribers
🎤 @twentyminutevc, 🏦 @20vcfund, @projecteurope_😇 @fuseenergy @linear @fyxerai @cognition @lovable @airwallex @mercor_ai @workos
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"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose". Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups. - The company works 7 days per week. - Founder (nico laqua) lives and sleeps in the office. - He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7. - 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo. Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years. My condensed notes below: 1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose: Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it. 2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre: Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers. 3. Lead from the Front Lines You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them. 4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning. 5. Lifespan vs. Victories Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories." 6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting." If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility. Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point.
Harry Stebbings3,022,802 views • 4 days ago
DeepMind stayed in London because it is better for talent than Silicon Valley. "I saw London and the UK as having incredible talent from top universities like Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and UCL. There is a deep heritage of scientific breakthroughs and world-class thinkers. There was less competition for that talent, which made it a huge structural advantage for building DeepMind." Demis Hassabis What is the single biggest advantage of building in Europe for you T. Anton Osika Max Junestrand @matiii Chris Parsonson Chris Pedregal Matt Clifford T.reil Alan Chang
Harry Stebbings719,036 views • 1 month ago
What Role Does Not Exist Today But Will Be So Common in Five Years Time: "500K-1M jobs will be created for agent operators. This person will be somewhat technical. They will be deep in the AI world. They're gonna have to understand MCPs and CLIs and they are going to have to know how to write skills. It's going be this group of people that will know how to go into your marketing team or your legal team, or your operations team, or your life sciences research team and this is the person that is basically going to enable that function to get leverage from agents." Aaron Levie Where is this right? Where is this wrong? Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin GREG ISENBERG Amjad Masad Anjney Midha
Harry Stebbings355,832 views • 1 month ago
"Triple, triple, double, double is dead. Going from $1M to $3M to $9M is not interesting. You have to go $1M to $15M to $100M." Chetan Puttagunta Ho Nam Keith Rabois Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin Byron Deeter Tomasz Tunguz is triple triple double double dead? Have our growth expectations changed forever?
Harry Stebbings2,065,930 views • 8 months ago
was once valued at $15BN. Today with $1.3BN in ARR and $1.5BN in cash, Monday is valued at just $3.8BN. A 70% decline. One of the hardest hit public SaaS companies. Today I sat down with Monday CEO, Eran Zinman, to ask the really hard questions that no one is asking. Spotify 👉 Youtube 👉 Apple Podcasts 👉 Eran Zinman
Harry Stebbings446,181 views • 3 months ago
Why a16z Invested $300M into Adam Neumann: "At the height of the WeWork meltdown, I talked to a friend of mine who is one of the legends of the real estate world. He said, "Whatever people say about this whole thing, he said, there are only two people in the history of the world who have built compelling brands where people care about the name on the building for commercial real estate and the history of the entire world. And he said one of them is the President of the United States, and the other is Adam Neumman. This guy is a generational talent in that industry... we got to know him after that. I became thoroughly convinced that he was a generational talent. We're very happy with that investment." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
Harry Stebbings301,521 views • 2 months ago
Why investors need to give CEOs better comp packages: "We went public in 21. First year, the stock went up to about 40BN market cap. In 2022, we fell 92% to a little under $4 billion market cap. For the life of the company, I had only taken equity. I had taken no compensation. At the bottom in 22, I made a decision and that was for the first time to ask for compensation. I felt like I'm public. Turning this company around is a big task, and I'd like to align myself with investors to say, I'm gonna get paid, but I'm only gonna get paid if the stock recovers. In order for me to get paid anything, the stock had to clear a certain price. CEOs who are founders originally started a business taking really big risk. If the belief is that the CEO should then never get compensation ever again, it's completely flawed logic." Adam Foroughi, AppLovin What are your single biggest lessons/advice on this Vinod Khosla Brian Halligan Roger Ehrenberg taavet hinrikus Elon Musk?
Harry Stebbings164,165 views • 1 month ago
Why Palantir is a mega-buy right now? "Palantir is a mega-buy because it sells directly to the CEO’s top priority, AI transformation. It can deliver enterprise-wide solutions in $10M–$100M deals, not just point tools. There are very few companies that can execute at that scale with credibility. So when companies need to “do AI” in a real way, Palantir is one of the only options." Love to hear your thoughts Christian Garrett delian Shaun Maguire
Harry Stebbings111,193 views • 25 days ago
Why OpenAI and Anthropic doing consulting businesses is such an obvious and right move "When you see OpenAI and Anthropic deploying engineers into enterprises, it’s a sign of a huge opportunity for vertical AI. It’s not easy to go into these companies, access the data, clean it, organize it, and integrate into workflows in a compliant way. There’s so much complexity, from high trust to different types of sensitive data, and it takes a lot of effort to build something scalable." Shiv Rao, MD Love to hear your thoughts on this and the opportunity here Rory O'Driscoll Bryan Kim James da Costa
Harry Stebbings62,412 views • 17 days ago
How does Lovable Hack Social Algorithms to Have Viral Posts: "We have a channel called bee swarming where employees post their content and everyone goes to amplify it. We try to turn every engineer into a marketer and get the whole team posting about things they are excited about. Then marketing puts its full firepower behind the biggest launches to tell the story." elena verna Biggest lessons on how to make posts go viral Anton Osika Luke Harries Eric Glyman David Senra?
Harry Stebbings258,030 views • 2 months ago
"I have not looked at the ticker in April. The ticker has nothing to do with the company. I work on the fair market value of the company. The ticker is just other people's game to make trades based on their few assumptions of a future compounding fair market value." tobi lutke What do you know now that you wish you had known when you went public about your relationship as CEO to the "the ticker"? Daniel Ek Sebastian Siemiatkowski Aaron Levie Mike Cannon-Brookes 👨🏼💻🧢🇦🇺 Jeff Lawson Ariel sridhar Eric Lefkofsky
Harry Stebbings83,336 views • 29 days ago
The story of Harvey is absolutely fricking wild. Two friends, a lawyer and an engineer realise the power of OpenAI and legal and cold email Sam Altman and co. They have calls which lead to OpenAI leading their Seed Round as the sole investor. (baller) Sequoia (Pat Grady), Elad Gil sarah guo go on to lead their Series A. The company today does: - $190M in ARR - 500+ employees - 1,000+ mega customers The best shows are art (storytelling) and science (frameworks). This has both off the charts. Spotify 👉 Youtube 👉 Apple Podcasts 👉 My 7 takeaways with Winston Weinberg and special thanks to Mamoon Hamid for making this show happen 👇 Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 04:16 #1 Thing Every Founder Needs to Do Everyday 13:35 Why VCs Suck at Helping Companies Hire? 15:26 How to Get Sequoia and a16z Term Sheets 25:49 What No One Understands About Enterprise AI Adoption 38:21 AI's Impact on Professional Services 39:14 Future of Law Firms: Do They D*e? 43:17 What Everyone Should Know That No One Tells You About Hiring in Europe 48:54 I Have Massive Trust Issues… 55:55 Biggest Lessons on Effective Deal-Making 01:01:30 Cold Emailing OpenAI and It Leading to a Term Sheet 01:05:10 Quick Fire Round
Harry Stebbings344,830 views • 4 months ago
VCs Focus Way Too Much on Credentials When Assessing Founders: "If you back someone who's above average IQ, very smart, and never give up, of course they'll succeed. This is a mistake a lot of VCs are making. They are focusing too much on these credentials. There's a race right now to back the math Olympiads. VCs are going to spelling bees and math competitions in high school. And I think IQ is very important; you need someone smart. But much more important is they'll never give up." Joshua Browder Do you agree that too many VCs focus on credentials and how do you assess "never give up"? Andy Weissman Jeff Morris Jr. delian Alan Chang Matt Clifford Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin
Harry Stebbings38,378 views • 14 days ago
I think most public company CEOs are not telling the truth on the impact AI will have on business and jobs. Seb is 0 BS, 100% truthtelling. This man is not afraid to ruffle some feathers. Full show below with Sebastian Siemiatkowski 👇 Spotify 👉 Youtube 👉 Apple Podcasts 👉 Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:16 The real Threat to SaaS 05:58 What revenue multiple will software companies trade at in the future? 10:31 Why you need to build your own customer service AI to win 22:12 Klarna has two times the customer base of Revolut. They will beat Revolut 24:17 How I lost a billion dollars not investing in Nubank 25:54 Why Nubank are more likely to win the US than Revolut? 33:59 We used to be 6,000 people. Now we are just 3,000 40:14 When is a high valuation too high and can be dangerous? 41:27 How we got Sequoia to invest & Michael Moritz to join the board 53:19 Investors who don’t build will lose 01:07:56 What CEOs really think about AI 01:13:34 I have changed my mind on the adoption cycle
Harry Stebbings269,540 views • 3 months ago
I am so fricking bored of guests that go on 10 podcasts and say the same frameworks again and again. Coatue manages $30BN on the private side. Their growth fund is $7BN. They have investments in Revolut, Anthropic, OpenEvidence, Canva and more. And yet, the Co-Head of Coatue, Lucas Swisher, never does podcasts. That changes today. Lucas Swisher👇 Spotify 👉 Youtube 👉 Apple Podcasts 👉 Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:04 Why Public SaaS Is Getting Crushed in the AI Wave 07:35 Durability of Revenue in AI 15:28 Market Size vs Founder Quality: What Wins? 16:52 Why Price is the Last Thing to Matter 23:32 Mega-Funds Math: Can $5B+ Funds Still Generate Venture Returns? 27:01 What Returns Are 'Enough'? Why 3x Isn't Exciting at Growth 29:54 When Double-Downs Go Wrong: Overestimating TAM and Multi-Product Expansion 32:37 Margin Matters… But at Scale: AI Gross Margins, Cost Curves & Efficiency 37:11 Why it has never been harder to be a seed investor 40:11 Is 'Kingmaking' a Myth: When Capital Helps (and When It Hurts) 45:23 Is Canva Really a Platform Company? Multi S-Curves and Leaning into AI Early 46:52 Lessons from Mary Meeker 50:08 Lessons from Mamoon Hamid 51:34 LP 'Pick One' Games: Mamoon Hamid, Mary Meeker, Insight Partners 53:40 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins? 59:17 Most Memorable Founder Meeting 01:01:35 Career Decisions & Misses
Harry Stebbings246,622 views • 3 months ago
"We will have more lawyers in five years, not less. Lawyers are being inundated by all of these AI responses that they're now getting from their clients. When everybody thinks that they're a lawyer; do you know what the ultimate constraint is? The actual number of lawyers that are able to go and review all of this stuff being produced." Aaron Levie Do you agree with this Winston Weinberg Keith Rabois Pat Grady Max Junestrand dick costolo Ryan Daniels Bardia Scott Stevenson
Harry Stebbings109,058 views • 1 month ago
What founders have to understand is that to win you have to mentally be changed forever. "Building a company changes you permanently. It is not something you reset with rest or balance, you become a different person. If you want to win, you have to accept that transformation. You cannot go back to who you were before." Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin Love to hear your thoughts on this Alan Chang Jack Zhang Max Junestrand Marc Randolph TJ Parker⚡️
Harry Stebbings50,522 views • 20 days ago
My Biggest Lesson on Reserves Four Funds In: "My first three funds. I did do reserves and I did some great reserve investments. I put 15% of my third fund into Owner Adam Guild their series A. So that was a good investment, but I realised the opportunity cost of that investment given where I come in, it could be 20 to 30 pre-seed investments and the value creation at the pre-seed is so high that I decided for my fourth fund, no reserves, just everything up front." Joshua Browder What do you know now about reserves that you wish you had known when you started Chad Byers Nichole Wischoff Ho Nam Roger Ehrenberg Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin?
Harry Stebbings37,982 views • 15 days ago
"$400M ARR growing 30% used to be great. It is not anymore. In today’s market, the bar is much higher, you need to be on a path to $1B+ growing 40% to generate real outcomes. Anything below that risks becoming a “good company” with a bad IPO." Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin Do you agree with this and how do you do think about it Parker Conrad Jack Zhang Chetan Puttagunta Pat Grady
Harry Stebbings76,359 views • 1 month ago