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Google

also referred to as: alphabet · googles

includes Google Ventures, Google Cloud, Google Search, Google DeepMind, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google TPU, Google Chrome, Google Ads, Google Photos, Google Workspace, Google Maps and 70 more

470 statements across 322 episodes · 151 bullish · 145 bearish · 260 people on the record · first statement Jan 13, 2015 by Guy Kawasaki · said 4,051 times in 847 episodes since 2015 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (1100), Jason Lemkin (128), Rory O'Driscoll (123), Wesley Chan (58), Aravind Srinivas (35), Richard Socher (34), David Lieb (34), Jonathan Ross (33)

tap a year for its mentions
0040075800150201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
075150201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
004758150201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 665 mentions in 94 episodes 7 per episode
2025 800 mentions in 122 episodes 7 per episode
2024 439 mentions in 91 episodes 5 per episode
2023 511 mentions in 95 episodes 5 per episode
2022 402 mentions in 84 episodes 5 per episode
2021 114 mentions in 47 episodes 2 per episode
2020 189 mentions in 52 episodes 4 per episode
2019 150 mentions in 48 episodes 3 per episode
2018 168 mentions in 53 episodes 3 per episode
2017 283 mentions in 67 episodes 4 per episode
2016 262 mentions in 58 episodes 5 per episode
2015 68 mentions in 36 episodes 2 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Google, oldest first

Jan 13, 2015 bullish
Opinion
Kawasaki: Apple changed more major industries than Google
“Yeah, no, I, I'm leaning towards Apple, and it's because Apple has made multiple changes, right? So they changed the face of computing, and they changed the face of phones, and then they invented the face of tablets, and you can't, you know, Google has definit…”
Guy Kawasaki Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 2:46 20 VC 001: Guy Kawasaki of Apple, Motorola and AllTop.com
Jan 13, 2015
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ghoorah: Monopolies ultimately win in tech and Google is effectively a monopoly
“Monopolies are what, you know, ultimately win and you know, Google's a monopoly, so effectively”
Bob Ghoorah Jan 13, 2015 ▶ 15:56 20 VC 003: Bob Ghoorah on Startups, The Pitch and Uber
Jan 18, 2015 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
David Hornik: Google is best positioned to become the first $1T company
“I think that I think that Google is in the best position to do it today.”
David Hornik Jan 18, 2015 ▶ 21:48 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups
Jan 18, 2015 neutral
Insight
Hornik: Big tech giants are slowly morphing into the same company
“I think that if you look at what Amazon is doing, what Google is doing, what Facebook is doing, they all are slowly but surely, and in many ways Apple, they're all slowly but surely morphing into the same company.”
David Hornik Jan 18, 2015 ▶ 21:15 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups
Feb 2, 2015 positive
Insight
Floyd: Grads should work in banking, consulting, or big tech before VC
“Taking a job like investment banking, or strategic consulting, or working for a big tech company like Google, will provide you the foundational skills, as well as give you that first toehold of a network.”
Joe Floyd Feb 2, 2015 ▶ 4:39 20 VC 009: Red Flags, Saas and becoming a VC with Joe Floyd
Feb 2, 2015 neutral
Disclosure
Floyd: Emergence Capital primarily backs founders from Salesforce, Facebook, Google, Oracle
“If you look at the entrepreneurs that we fund here at Emergence, you know, primarily a lot of them come out of the same few companies. Salesforce, Facebook, Google, Oracle.”
Joe Floyd Feb 2, 2015 ▶ 4:56 20 VC 009: Red Flags, Saas and becoming a VC with Joe Floyd
Feb 20, 2015
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Meehan: Only tech giants can afford proper two-factor authentication
“Only the very big guys, the Googles and Facebooks, et cetera, can afford to implement, like, proper two-stage authentication, which I didn't know, but is very, very expensive, so, which is why the only big guys do it”
Frank Meehan Feb 20, 2015 ▶ 13:34 20 VC 013: Frank Meehan Series A, Spark Labs and The Future of The Asian Tech Market
Jun 4, 2015
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Altucher secured meetings at Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn through personal writing
“I visited Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you know, with high up people at each company just because of my people knew me for my writing.”
James Altucher Jun 4, 2015 ▶ 4:06 James Altucher: Ideas, Investing and Entrepreneurs
Jun 22, 2015 neutral
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Google doubled its London headcount from 250 to 500 in 2006
“So when I interviewed in 2006, they had 250 people in London. And when I joined three months later, it was more like 500.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 2:38 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Jun 22, 2015
Disclosure
VCs in 2009 sought candidates with Bain consulting and tech backgrounds
“Yeah, so I was lucky enough that in 2009 I sort of started looking elsewhere and for some reason that combination of Bain, so the consulting plus a big internet company was a profile that a few VCs were looking for.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 3:51 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Jul 15, 2015 bearish
Insight
Independent Music Streaming Services Are Unviable Because Digital Music Is Commoditized
“I think, unfortunately, it's not a good time To be a independent provider of digital music, you know, to be a music service, because as I said, they're largely commoditized. Almost no one can make money in them. None of them are profitable. So the, you know, t…”
David Pakman Jul 15, 2015 ▶ 16:26 20 VC 055: David Pakman @ Venrock on The Future Of The Music Industry
Jul 29, 2015 positive
Opinion
New York's rational financial mindset limits growth compared to Bay Area ambition
“One of the big differences between the financial mindset of New York is and in the Bay Area, New York starts off with, well, you know, this is as big as you possibly can get, and this is what's rational for, you know, what could happen in the Bay Area is still…”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 7:01 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Aug 12, 2015
Disclosure
Playfair Capital provides portfolio startups with a free in-house technical recruiter
“We've taken on a head of talent who was formerly at Facebook and Google before that, who's a technical recruiter. And we are deploying them amongst portfolio companies to hire CTOs, front-end, back-end, full-stack devs entirely engineering-focused at our cost …”
Fede Pirzio-Biroli Aug 12, 2015 ▶ 14:23 20 VC 062: Shaking Up London's VC Scene with Fede Pirzio-Biroli, Founder @ Playfair Capital
Aug 17, 2015 bullish
Insight
Galston: B2B marketplaces offer massive transaction frequency from enterprise client hosting
“If you think about, like, Deloitte or BCG or Google, like, they're throwing, you know, they're hosting clients every single night, 365 days of the year, right? So there's actually a huge amount of frequency potential even in B to B marketplaces”
Ezra Galston Aug 17, 2015 ▶ 11:13 20 VC 063: What It Takes To Standout In A Crowded Market with Ezra Galston @ Chicago Ventures
Sep 9, 2015 bullish
Opinion
Ver Ploeg: Uber's growth mirrors early Google, justifying its valuation
“You know, I haven't seen their financials, but, you know, I've talked to their investors who have, and, you know, they say things like, you know, it's financials are like the early days of Google, that, you know, it really is growing that Stratospherically, an…”
Eric Ver Ploeg Sep 9, 2015 ▶ 13:05 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital
Sep 28, 2015 bullish
Insight
Nathoo: VCs hunting power-law returns should invest at almost any valuation
“At the end of the day, the investors want to be investing in the next Google, the next Airbnb, the next Facebook, and if they believe that this company is going to be that, then They should want to put their money in at pretty much any price, because it's a sl…”
Kirsty Nathoo Sep 28, 2015 ▶ 16:37 20 VC 075: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Kirsty Nathoo, CFO @ Y Combinator
Sep 30, 2015 negative
Disclosure
Tutorspree failed after a Google algorithm change destroyed its SEO
“We raised money from Sequoia, among others, and built the business for, I think, two and a half years. Until we ran smack into a, an algorithm change at Google and we were reliant on search engine optimization, and it sort of killed our vision of what the busi…”
Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 4:22 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC
Oct 28, 2015 negative
Insight
Liao: Using M&A as R&D fails for most large tech companies
“I mean M&A is hard in, in general. I think most big companies are not good at M&A. I think like Cisco used to have a good reputation for doing good M&A. Boy, Facebook I think has done a great job. I think in the last week they'll be done. But outside of that, …”
Marvin Liao Oct 28, 2015 ▶ 22:11 20 VC 083: 500 Startups Week: New Funds, Startup Mentoring and Dave's Masterplan with Marvin Liao, Partner @ 500 Startups
Nov 27, 2015 positive
What-if
Workable could not have hired its first 20 engineers in SF
“It, it's more the fact that the kind of people that came to join Workable in the beginning, you know, our first 20 engineers, We're the kind of engineers that would probably be working at Facebook or Google if we were in in San Francisco. We wouldn't be able t…”
Nikos Moraitakis Nov 27, 2015 ▶ 9:48 20 VC FF 024: Raising $33m in VC Funding with Nikos Moraitakis, Founder & CEO @ Workable
Jan 11, 2016 negative
Assertion Supported
NYC tech ecosystem lacks a mega-scale anchor company
“The negative of what's happened here in the past seven years is you haven't seen the true emergence of a destination company, right? We have incredible companies that are building incredible foundations here. Some have went, went public already. Some will go p…”
David Tisch Jan 11, 2016 ▶ 5:03 20 VC: David Tisch @ Box Group on The Future of Consumer Mobile, Developing Pattern Recognition and FOMO
Jan 11, 2016 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
West Coast tech hubs in NYC risk stifling local giants
“All the big companies from the West Coast have set up product offices here over the past five years, and I think that that might on one hand prevent the emergence of a standalone New York A monster, but it also brings more talent here, and so you've seen what …”
David Tisch Jan 11, 2016 ▶ 6:53 20 VC: David Tisch @ Box Group on The Future of Consumer Mobile, Developing Pattern Recognition and FOMO
Mar 7, 2016 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tunguz: Google's Intent Ad Model Failed to Monetize Social Networks
“For Google, they were interesting because they generated huge numbers, huge amounts of traffic, but they didn't actually generate that much revenue. And that's because the intent model that Google was so predicated upon didn't really apply in social networks, …”
Tomasz Tunguz Mar 7, 2016 ▶ 4:05 20VC: Tom Tunguz on Why Now Is The Best Time To Be Investing and The Effect of Late Stage Valuations on Startups
Mar 9, 2016 neutral
Assertion Supported
Google achieved profitability within two or three years of its founding
“Google was actually profitable, I think, by year two or year three.”
Christian Hernandez Mar 9, 2016 ▶ 15:42 20VC: Christian Hernandez on The Importance of Mobile and The Relationship Between Growth vs Revenue
Mar 11, 2016
Insight
De Masi: Venture Capital Cannot Survive Without Power-Law Outlier Winners
“If you study the way venture portfolios are built, they would not be in business if they didn't have the one Uber winner. Without the Googles and Facebooks, they would not be in business at all.”
Niccolo De Masi Mar 11, 2016 ▶ 3:29 20VC: Niccolo De Masi on The Bursting Of The Tech Bubble and What It Takes To Be A Celebrity Partner with Glu Mobile
Mar 16, 2016 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Leary: Great European startups will always be acquired by global capital
“No, because the capital is global, highly mobile. The biggest occurs in Europe are Google, Microsoft, SAP, and I don't care. And now Chinese companies Chinese companies, Japanese companies, I think that that makes it less of a problem. So big companies will be…”
Ciaran O'Leary Mar 16, 2016 ▶ 21:04 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard
Apr 11, 2016 bullish
Assertion Contradicted
Only Google has an AI dataset comparable to Diffbot
“I think the only other company in the world that has that kind of data set is Google.”
Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 28:22 20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
Apr 11, 2016
Assertion Supported
Y Combinator classes were only 10 to 15 companies in 2006
“When I started 10 years ago, Google and Facebook were still buying a lot of small companies. YC classes were only 10, 15 companies.”
Aydin Senkut Apr 11, 2016 ▶ 11:56 20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
Apr 13, 2016 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Proprietary data access is the primary bottleneck in machine intelligence development
“At least today, access to the data is the limiting factor. Which means, by the way, not only do companies like Facebook and Google have an advantage, but pretty much every old industrial incumbent, if it has a way of getting at its data and making use of it, a…”
Roy Bahat Apr 13, 2016 ▶ 10:57 20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta
May 30, 2016 neutral
Prediction Held up
Turck: Google will deploy image processing AI at massive scale
“If you do something like image processing, which is something that deep learning is particularly great at you know, you need to think of a business model and a way of penetrating the markets that somehow does, doesn't put you in a direct collision course with …”
Matt Turck May 30, 2016 ▶ 20:25 20VC: Is Big Data Still A Thing with Matt Turck, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital
Jun 6, 2016 negative
Opinion
Google offers enormous utility but is not a fun product
“Google has enormous utility, but I don't think Google's was, is a fun product.”
Bijan Sabet Jun 6, 2016 ▶ 7:05 20VC: Spark's Bijan Sabet on Investing in Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare & Why First Time Founders Are So Exciting
Jun 6, 2016 negative
Insight
Founder vision and instincts matter more than academic pedigree
“And I also, I've just never bought into this kind of elitist way of thinking about like where you went to school You know, where you work, you know, whether you work at Google or, you know, Apple or something, it's more of, you know, what's your idea? What, wh…”
Bijan Sabet Jun 6, 2016 ▶ 5:54 20VC: Spark's Bijan Sabet on Investing in Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare & Why First Time Founders Are So Exciting
Jun 22, 2016 bullish
Opinion
Kadavy: Facebook and Google hold a massive data advantage in AI bots
“I absolutely believe that. I think that you look, you just look at this sheer scale of Facebook Messenger and Google specifically. And while I think that others may be able to compete, the scale is, is just so vast.”
Annie Kadavy Jun 22, 2016 ▶ 23:53 20VC: Why Bots Are The New Black, Conversational Interface Is The Next of For Consumerisation and The Determinants Of A Successful Marketplace with Annie Kadavy, General Partner @ CRV
Jun 24, 2016 negative
Insight
Mortensen: Tech incumbents have zero usable data for training AI scheduling agents
“There you have no data set, as in zero, nothing, because there is no agent-human negotiation under a given dialogue model that exists in that data set, and you can't label it in the past, as in, what if the agent said this, what would the human then say?”
Dennis Mortensen Jun 24, 2016 ▶ 9:35 20VC: X.ai's Dennis Mortensen on Why There Is No Incumbency Advantage in Artificial Intelligence
Jun 29, 2016 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Google Analytics' launch exhausted server capacity and slowed down Google's infrastructure
“So we had literally crashed Google, and we had slowed Google down and sort of broken Google by launching Google Analytics.”
Wesley Chan Jun 29, 2016 ▶ 19:16 20VC: Felicis' Wesley Chan on The Rise of IoT, Getting Recruited by Larry Page & Creating Google's Biggest Success Disaster
Jul 11, 2016 positive
Opinion
Wenger: Google's re-implementation of the Java API created healthy market competition
“In that regard, it's very positive that in the Oracle versus Google lawsuit about the definition of Java it was made pretty clear that the API wasn't as protectable as Oracle claimed it was. And it's a good thing because as we've seen, you know, Google re-impl…”
Albert Wenger Jul 11, 2016 ▶ 13:53 20VC: USV's Albert Wenger on Automation Replacing Humans, The Universal Basic Income and The Instalment & The Deployment Phase
Jul 13, 2016 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Big Tech Dominance Makes Creating New Consumer Web Unicorns Difficult
“We're now in a world where, you know, we're seeing really dominant market power, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, you know, creating a new set of unicorns in the face of that market power is going to be very difficult, certainly in the consumer-facing web serv…”
Brad Burnham Jul 13, 2016 ▶ 14:04 20VC: USV's Brad Burnham on Co-Founding USV with Fred Wilson, What They Look For In Potential Partners & Whether We Are Entering a Period of Consolidation or Expansion
Aug 24, 2016 bullish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Chad Byers Predicts Facebook or Amazon Will Hit $1 Trillion First
“So I think it's Facebook. You know, my second answer, although this is kind of cheating, would probably be Amazon. So Facebook or Amazon, I don't think it's Apple. I don't think it's Google. I think it's going to be one of those two.”
Chad Byers Aug 24, 2016 ▶ 21:25 20VC: Why Raising A Fund Is Like Raising A $25m Seed Round with No Product & Why Not All LP Money Is Equal with Chad Byers, General Partner @ Susa Ventures
Sep 5, 2016 bullish
Prediction Held up
Ben Lerer: Legacy retail and media will heavily acquire DTC startups
“The last few weeks in retail, I mean, just look at the jet and dollar shave acquisitions. You're seeing, these are the first dominoes in what will be a bunch of dominoes falling. I believe in consolidation where the traditional guys in retail, the traditional …”
Ben Lerer Sep 5, 2016 ▶ 19:22 20VC: Lerer Hippeau's Ben Lerer on 'Investing With Imagination', Strategies To Avoid Fomo & Develop Pattern Recognition As An Investor and Why We Have Seen The Rise of Direct To Consumer Business & Will This Continue With Further M&A
Sep 9, 2016 positive
Insight
Google succeeded because slow early internet speeds forced a text-based web
“Processor speed was also slow, and so again, imagery was hard to move, and that's why the initial web was very textual, and that's why Google was so good at indexing stuff, because it was all filled with words and not with images.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 11:46 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Sep 12, 2016
Assertion Supported
Tunguz: Google AdSense was neck-and-neck with Yahoo in early 2005
“Early 2005, we were neck and neck with Yahoo, which was the big competitor trying to run ads on other people's websites.”
Tomasz Tunguz Sep 12, 2016 ▶ 3:47 20VC: Redpoint's Tom Tunguz on Winning with Data: How To Gain A Competitive Advantage & Dominate Markets with Data and 5 Steps To Create A Data Driven Company
Sep 12, 2016
Disclosure
Tunguz: How Google used its search index to track Yahoo's ad share
“He and I built a tool using the Google search index to figure out exactly where Yahoo ads were running, where Google ads were running, and basically every day we could tell you exactly what the competitive market share would be.”
Tomasz Tunguz Sep 12, 2016 ▶ 4:05 20VC: Redpoint's Tom Tunguz on Winning with Data: How To Gain A Competitive Advantage & Dominate Markets with Data and 5 Steps To Create A Data Driven Company
Sep 12, 2016
Assertion Supported
Tunguz: Google required product manager candidates to score 3.5 out of 4.0
“I remember at Google, when we were interviewing product managers, we would take these packets and we would have all these different, we were doing structured interviews at the time. It was on a four point O scale. You need to score above a 3.5.”
Tomasz Tunguz Sep 12, 2016 ▶ 14:28 20VC: Redpoint's Tom Tunguz on Winning with Data: How To Gain A Competitive Advantage & Dominate Markets with Data and 5 Steps To Create A Data Driven Company
Sep 14, 2016
Assertion Partly supported
Andy Rubin founded Android as an EIR at Redpoint's offices
“Famously, we had Andy Rubin as a IR here, and he actually founded Android out of our Menlo Park offices, and eventually helped them sell that into Google.”
Ryan Sarver Sep 14, 2016 ▶ 12:21 20VC: Do VC's Really Hustle Enough? The Takeaways From Watching Twitter Scale From 30 to 2,500 & Why Chris Sacca Is Like Yoda with Ryan Sarver, Partner @ Redpoint
Oct 19, 2016 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cham: Google's 15-year quiet ML work is yielding major opportunities
“The work that Google has been doing for, you know, kind of quietly for the last 15 years is now yielding an incredible amount of fruit and creates all these opportunities.”
James Cham Oct 19, 2016 ▶ 7:44 20VC: Greenfield Opportunities For Machine Learning, Why Massive Corporates Finally See It's Potential & Why VC's Investment Decision Making Process Needs To Change with James Cham, Partner @ Bloomberg Beta
Oct 28, 2016 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Alphabet's Cellular Structure Allows Google to Effectively Expand in Multiple Directions
“And so that cellular division, I believe, is a very smart one. I think then it allows the leaders to create a more tightly aligned vision for a smaller group of people, and I think that's a very smart move on behalf of Google. I think it's going to allow them …”
Ryan Holmes Oct 28, 2016 ▶ 9:56 20VC: Hootsuite's Ryan Holmes on Optimising Productivity in Meetings, Creating An Ownership Culture & Lessons From Running A Pizzeria!
Oct 31, 2016 positive
What-if
Hamid: VCs Return More by Holding Winners for Decades
“And in many cases, you don't even want to distribute in those eight years because think about how much you would have made if you would have stayed in, in, in Amazon or Facebook or Google over the course of time it probably would have been much better for thos…”
Mamoon Hamid Oct 31, 2016 ▶ 8:14 20VC: Social Capital's Mamoon Hamid on Disrupting The Venture Model & Advancing Humanity By Solving The World's Toughest Problems
Nov 9, 2016
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Future data ownership will be a hybrid favoring consumer control
“I think reality will be that data will remain proprietary to a certain extent. You know, you have entire ecosystems around Google and Uber and Facebook where they're effectively AI companies leveraging the large data sets, but you'll also see this push from co…”
Rudina Seseri Nov 9, 2016 ▶ 7:39 20VC: Who Will Own The Data? Is There An Incumbency Advantage in AI? When Will Artificial Super Intelligence Come To The Forefront with Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Director @ Glasswing Ventures
Nov 28, 2016 positive
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Kleiner and Sequoia paid nearly $100M post-money for pre-revenue Google
“The single most successful venture investment in the last probably 20 years was done in 1999, and it was done at an absurd valuation. That's Google. Kleiner and Sequoia paid almost a hundred posts for a pre-revenue company There was doing a search engine in 19…”
Rory O'Driscoll Nov 28, 2016 ▶ 8:35 20VC: Why Market Is More Important Than Team, The 4 Key Roles of A Board Member & Why Founders Get Market Sizing So Wrong with Rory O'Driscoll, Founding Partner @ Scale Venture Partners
Dec 30, 2016 positive
Insight
Banta: Open-source ML tools let junior engineers perform specialist work
“One of the really nice things is that a lot of these companies are open sourcing and democratizing these services, so things like TensorFlow from Google, and the result is, you know, we, when we recruit engineers, I mean, even an out-of-school engineer can do …”
Nitesh Banta Dec 30, 2016 ▶ 14:04 20VC: How AI Can Enhance Not Replace Humans? What Will Differentiate Between The Winners & The Losers In AI? Why AGI Is Further Away Than We Think with Nitesh Banta, Founder & CEO @ B12
Jan 11, 2017
Disclosure
DFJ made three search engine investments before Google was even funded
“DFJ had already made three investments in search companies prior to Google even being funded. One of those was GoTo, which ended up was Overture, which was acquired by Yahoo, which was, at the time, viewed as an amazing success.”
Emily Melton Jan 11, 2017 ▶ 8:47 20VC: Why You Should Not Invest From Patterns, Why No Good Business Was Built As An Analogy Of Another & Why The Rise Of The 'Celebrity Investor' Is Concerning with Emily Melton, Partner @ DFJ
Jan 16, 2017 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Chang: Data-poor AI startups will be acqui-hired by major tech incumbents
“If startups can't train on massive proprietary data sets, then they'll never get that advantage on their algorithms. And then they're really targeted for, you know, acqui-hire by Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, et cetera.”
Tim Chang Jan 16, 2017 ▶ 13:55 20VC: Why We Will See A Big Series B Crunch? Why Proprietary Data Pools & AI Talent Will Be The New Limited Natural Resources? Why Now Is The Closest Thing To A New Normal with Tim Chang, Managing Director @ Mayfield Fund
Jan 23, 2017 negative
Opinion
John Lilly argues Google Apps succeeded despite being a mediocre product
“I feel like the office, the Google office suite is not a great product, but it's amazing because it's on the web.”
John Lilly Jan 23, 2017 ▶ 16:21 20VC: Greylock's John Lilly on How Greylock Continues To Invest In The Next Big Markets, The Importance Of Building Tribes & Why There will Be Another Boom In Mobile
Jan 25, 2017 negative
Insight
Guo: Startups Using Public Internet Data Face Incumbent Risk From Big Tech
“If your plan as a company is to take internet accessible data sets and do something interesting with them on the machine learning side and productize them, if it's an area that Google and Facebook care deeply about, you're on dangerous ground, right? They, tho…”
Sarah Guo Jan 25, 2017 ▶ 11:41 20VC: Preparing For The Next Big Trend, Why Conversational Will Be The Next Big Thing & How Entrepreneurs Should View Market Size with Sarah Guo @ Greylock Partners
Mar 10, 2017 neutral
Opinion
Rachleff: Netflix, Google, and Apple lack network effects
“There's no network effect to Netflix. There's no network effect to Google. There's no network effect to a lot of the, to Apple products, but you love them, and if you love them, you're going to tell all of your friends about them, and that's what defines viral…”
Andy Rachleff Mar 10, 2017 ▶ 11:02 20VC: Wealthfront and Benchmark's Andy Rachleff on Why Delight Is The Greatest Form Of Virality, Why Competition Does Not Matter & What The Future Holds For Automated Personal Finance
Mar 13, 2017 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Grady: Big Tech will be the biggest beneficiary of the next platform shift
“In the next platform shift, that will also be true. The biggest beneficiary is likely to be Google or Facebook or Apple or Amazon.”
Pat Grady Mar 13, 2017 ▶ 14:16 20VC: Sequoia Partner, Pat Grady on Why Data Is The New Oil, Why We Will See The Return of The Apprenticeship Model in VC & The Defining Characteristics of The Next Generation of Great Software
Mar 22, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Alex Mittal expects APIs to unlock complex compute power and data for developers
“The other is actually fundamentally, we're seeing the exposing complex, like computing capabilities and data that is inaccessible to most people through APIs. And so like by analogy, if you're at CES, like NVIDIA announced this cloud gaming service, which is n…”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 24:59 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Mar 31, 2017
Assertion Supported
McCloskey hired StyleSeat's first engineer via equity-only Craigslist ad
“I found my first engineer by posting an ad on Craigslist and saying, I'm stealth company seeks engineer to build first version of product for equity, only no money. And believe it or not, that actually resulted in a fantastic engineer from Google who had made …”
Melody McCloskey Mar 31, 2017 ▶ 3:32 20VC: Why Every Founder Should Bootstrap Their Startup, How To Solve Information Asymmetry Between Founders and VCs & Living In A Cupboard For Two Years To Fund StyleSeat with Melody McCloskey, Founder & CEO @ StyleSeat
Apr 14, 2017 negative
Opinion
Spencer Kimball: Google's 20% time was a failed policy
“What happened at Google was that nobody really took the 20% time. It was a little bit of a failed policy.”
Spencer Kimball Apr 14, 2017 ▶ 19:38 20VC: How Investors Can Get Into The Best Deals & Why Founders First Point Of Contact Should Be With The Investment Decision-Maker with Spencer Kimball, Founder & CEO @ Cockroach Labs
Apr 14, 2017 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Kimball: Google replaced all sharded MySQL with Spanner and Bigtable
“Spanner is the database technology that Google has used to consolidate all of their various applications on top of. So they no longer use Sharded MySQL. Everything's on Spanner or on Bigtable.”
Spencer Kimball Apr 14, 2017 ▶ 4:22 20VC: How Investors Can Get Into The Best Deals & Why Founders First Point Of Contact Should Be With The Investment Decision-Maker with Spencer Kimball, Founder & CEO @ Cockroach Labs
Apr 14, 2017 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kimball: Google's Bigtable spawned the entire NoSQL movement
“They built first big table, which really spawned the entire NoSQL movement that's with us today.”
Spencer Kimball Apr 14, 2017 ▶ 4:07 20VC: How Investors Can Get Into The Best Deals & Why Founders First Point Of Contact Should Be With The Investment Decision-Maker with Spencer Kimball, Founder & CEO @ Cockroach Labs
Apr 24, 2017 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
CapitalG operates strictly for financial return, not strategic value for Google
“So our only metric for Google capital is financial return. So we're by no means a strategic investor for Google.”
Laela Sturdy Apr 24, 2017 ▶ 7:00 20VC: Inside Google's Growth Fund & The 3 Criteria They Look For With Potential Investments with Laela Sturdy, General Partner @ CapitalG
Apr 24, 2017 positive
Disclosure
CapitalG's single-LP structure with Alphabet allows longer investment hold periods
“Because we have a single LP, who is a very patient LP, that we can have a longer than average hold period compared to maybe some other funds in the market that might be more constrained on this point.”
Laela Sturdy Apr 24, 2017 ▶ 18:41 20VC: Inside Google's Growth Fund & The 3 Criteria They Look For With Potential Investments with Laela Sturdy, General Partner @ CapitalG
Apr 26, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Frantz: Alphabet's patient capital allows CapitalG to avoid IPO timeline pressure
“We have in our LP here at Google, Alphabet, the ultimate and very patient capital. And so, if we can find companies to invest in that we can be in for a very long period of time, That are growing and doing the things that they want to be doing and building val…”
Gene Frantz Apr 26, 2017 ▶ 8:50 20VC: 2 Signs That A Company Is Ready For IPO, Why Fund Cycles Are Too Short & Why Management Teams Do Not Want To Go Public with Gene Frantz, General Partner @ CapitalG
May 1, 2017 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: Augmented reality will integrate into daily life via contact lenses
“AR on the other hand, being super interesting, essentially the ability to make us even more superhuman than the iPhone made us. So that I think is truly groundbreaking. And I expect real innovation in the form of integrated devices in the form of, especially l…”
Harry Stebbings May 1, 2017 ▶ 24:40 20VC: Explosion of First Time Funds, Only 1 Mega Fund Raised: What The Heck Happened in Q1 Venture Markets with Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures
May 10, 2017 bullish
Assertion Supported
Wolfe: Planet operates history's largest Earth-imaging satellite constellation
“They would end up buying Google satellite imagery, which was something Google acquired called Skybox, and they now have the largest constellation of Earth imaging satellites in history up in space.”
Josh Wolfe May 10, 2017 ▶ 12:24 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital
Jun 9, 2017 positive
Insight
Google's success stems from audacious goals and radical transparency
“Hiring great people, setting audacious goals and then really being open with them about what is important and why that's the formula for much of Google success”
Chris O'Neill Jun 9, 2017 ▶ 4:36 20VC: Evernote CEO on Why You Play For The Front of Your Jersey Not The Back, Why Success Is A Team Sport & Why Leadership Should Accept The Negative Consequences In All Situations
Jun 12, 2017 bullish
Disclosure
Kevin Rose is investing in former Google HR head Laszlo Bock's startup
“Laszlo Bach, who was basically ran human resources at Google for 10 years, 10 plus years. He recently left Google about a year ago, and he has a new startup that I'll be investing in as well.”
Kevin Rose Jun 12, 2017 ▶ 32:36 20VC: Kevin Rose on Putting The Entire Fund Into Uber, The Future For Mobile & Whether Angels Should Have Super Pro-Rata Rights?
Jun 26, 2017 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levine: Consumer distribution is controlled entirely by Facebook, Apple, and Google
“And today, virtually all consumer distribution is controlled by only three companies, Facebook, Apple, and Google.”
Jeremy Levine Jun 26, 2017 ▶ 16:22 20VC: Bessemer's Jeremy Levine on Why We Are In A Fallow Period For Consumer, Why It Is Bogus That Operational VCs Can Add More Value & 2 Golden Rules To Always Tell Entrepreneurs Pre-Investment
Jul 3, 2017 bullish
Opinion
Tech Incumbents Are the Most Nimble in History, Says Feng
“They're not afraid to directly compete with companies, copy companies, do whatever it takes because they have grown up in this next wave of innovation, and they are the savviest Strongest, most nimble, fast-moving group of incumbents that I think the world has…”
Eric Feng Jul 3, 2017 ▶ 12:05 20VC: Kleiner Perkins GP, Eric Feng on How The Best Funds Use Tech and Data To Find Companies, Why Entrepreneurs Start The Fire and VCs Add The Rocket Fuel & Why Consumer Is Harder Than Ever Today
Jul 10, 2017 positive
Insight
Lasky: VC Mega-Hits Generate Orders of Magnitude More Value Than Good Outcomes
“The value of hits like Facebook and Google in the venture business or the Star Wars movies or the Marvel franchise in the, in Hollywood create sort of orders of magnitude more gravity in our business than even good or very good results with other companies.”
Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 6:52 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood
Aug 11, 2017 neutral
Insight
Hargreaves: Scalable businesses do not require every operation to scale perfectly
“I think there are some aspects that scale and some aspects that don't, and not Everything has to scale, so property management is just one of those things, for instance, that you hire one person for every X members, and the distribution channels, however, do s…”
Brad Hargreaves Aug 11, 2017 ▶ 25:42 20VC: Why Not Every Element of A Scalable Business Has To Scale, Why You Should Be Bearish on Retail & Why Fewer Businesses Are Getting Started Today Since The Great Depression with Brad Hargreaves, Founder & CEO @ Common
Aug 21, 2017 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gross: AI platform startups face tough competition from TensorFlow and incumbents
“Second is for the platform companies, I do think there's a less obvious but likely business model as well. Less obvious because unlike the database analogy I provided, it's not immediately clear that there'll be An Oracle or a MySQL, that is to say, a company …”
Daniel Gross Aug 21, 2017 ▶ 21:50 20VC: YC's Daniel Gross on How YC Can Democratise AI & Reduce Incumbency Advantages, Why ML Enabled Software Will Eat The Software That Ate The World & Whether AI Will Produce Independent Companies or Be Technology within Incumbents
Aug 30, 2017 bearish
Opinion
Cohen: Machine learning benefits tech giants, not early-stage AI startups
“Machine learning is a leveraged play on data, so So it's the Facebooks, the Apples, the Googles of the world that are getting the most benefit from it. It's not the early stage startups.”
Alina Cohen Aug 30, 2017 ▶ 13:48 20VC: Why AI Is More Artificial Than Intelligent, Why Engineering-centric Founders Are Able To Pivot Best & Why Startups Are Like Games with Alina Cohen, General Partner @ Initialized Capital
Sep 1, 2017
Insight
Harris: Startups beat incumbents by picking new directions and out-accelerating them
“In reality, you can only really win by picking a new direction, and then accelerating towards it faster than anyone else. So everyone else is running in another direction at a very high speed, and what you want to do is pick a new point on the horizon and Acce…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 17:23 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Sep 1, 2017
Assertion Supported
Swift Navigation spun out of airborne wind turbine startup acquired by Google
“That company ultimately merged with another company in the space, sold to Google, and we spun out the technology ahead of the Google acquisition.”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 2:46 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Oct 16, 2017 bullish
Insight
VanDevender: Smaller datasets force self-driving car companies to build better algorithms
“Even if you have a much, much smaller data set than Google, you can still do a really good job of developing a self-driving car, and in fact, it almost forces you into a better position, because if you have complete knowledge of the entire street grid, you can…”
Aaron VanDevender Oct 16, 2017 ▶ 14:39 20VC: Founders Fund's Chief Scientist on Why AI Is Mostly A Scam, Why The Value of Large Datasets Is Mostly Overplayed & The Societal Effects of 4m Truck Drivers Being Unemployed with Aaron Vandevender
Oct 27, 2017 negative
Opinion
Sideman: Apple and Google are the biggest barrier to crypto adoption
“It's the incumbents who control the centralized distribution channels today, like Apple and Google.”
Adi Sideman Oct 27, 2017 ▶ 17:47 20VC: Why Decentralisation is Key For Digital Media Distribution, Why Gradual Decentralisation Is The Most Practical Approach and Why Incumbents Are The Biggest Barrier To The Rise of Crypto with Adi Sideman, Founder & CEO @ YouNow
Nov 1, 2017
Assertion Supported
Buchheit: Gmail launched with a core team of only twelve people
“Even by the time we launched core Gmail team was probably only about a dozen people.”
Paul Buchheit Nov 1, 2017 ▶ 8:28 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige
Nov 1, 2017 neutral
Disclosure
Buchheit: Building early Gmail entirely in JavaScript was highly controversial at Google
“Again, with like Gmail early on, one of the most internally controversial decisions that we had made was to build the whole thing in JavaScript. And I had lots and lots of people tell me that it was never going to work, that it had been tried before, that, you…”
Paul Buchheit Nov 1, 2017 ▶ 12:42 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige
Nov 1, 2017 neutral
Disclosure
Buchheit: Google's internal launch milestone for Gmail was 100 happy users
“That was actually sort of our goal for launch. We just had to get a hundred people who were happy. So that was kind of like the milestone for when the product we thought was good enough to take out to the broader news of the world.”
Paul Buchheit Nov 1, 2017 ▶ 10:54 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige
Nov 13, 2017 positive
Insight
Proprietary Data Gives Big Tech an Unbeatable AI Recruiting Advantage
“It's also an HR advantage, because if you are the smartest person from your PhD program at Stanford, and you like machine learning and AI, where do you want to work? Well, you could go work for some startup, where they also downloaded TensorFlow, but they have…”
Alex Rampell Nov 13, 2017 ▶ 14:28 20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous
Nov 13, 2017
Insight
Point-of-Transaction Ads Outperform Facebook and Google Advertising
“What's the best place to advertise in the world? It's actually not when somebody's driving on the freeway and sees a big ad. It's not on Facebook. It's not on Google. It's often when people are in, they're actually buying something because, you know, the best …”
Alex Rampell Nov 13, 2017 ▶ 20:44 20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous
Nov 13, 2017
Assertion Partly supported
Google Search Ad Clicks for Life Insurance Cost $50 to $100
“If you go to Google and you search life insurance, the click is 50 dollars or a hundred dollars.”
Alex Rampell Nov 13, 2017 ▶ 17:58 20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous
Dec 6, 2017 neutral
Insight
Flomenberg: Google will compete with ad-data startups but unlikely cybersecurity ones
“If you want to use some Google-like or Google-specific dataset for an advertising product, it's a really uncomfortable situation because at any point in time, Google may very well decide to build that same product. Now, for instance, in security, could Google …”
Jake Flomenberg Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 15:41 20VC: The Value Chain of Machine Learning, Is There Really An Incumbency Advantage in ML & Will The Rise In Cyber Remain For the Long Term with Jake Flomenberg, Partner @ Accel
Dec 13, 2017
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Currier: Google was 8th to market and Facebook was 156th
“You know, then you look at your next great success, Google, they were the eighth to market. You look at Facebook, they were the 156th to market with the same five features.”
James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 5:57 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX
Jan 5, 2018
Assertion Supported
Google and Amazon drone efforts focus primarily on internal package delivery
“Thus far, Google and Amazon have mostly been focused on how do we deliver packages with drones?”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 9:16 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Jan 10, 2018
Opinion
Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent exert more market dominance than US giants
“The top three exert An almost disproportionate influence on the market relative to even Amazon or Google in the US.”
Crystal Huang Jan 10, 2018 ▶ 17:56 20VC: 3 Key Differences Between US and Asian Tech Markets & With Such Large Incumbents Chasing Early Acquisitions, Is There A Market For Later Stage VC with Crystal Huang, Investor @ GGV Capital
Jan 10, 2018 negative
Disclosure
Every infrastructure startup pitches something Amazon, Microsoft, or Google could build
“Every pitch that I hear about infrastructure is ostensibly something that Amazon could do one day, right? Or Microsoft or Google”
Crystal Huang Jan 10, 2018 ▶ 20:56 20VC: 3 Key Differences Between US and Asian Tech Markets & With Such Large Incumbents Chasing Early Acquisitions, Is There A Market For Later Stage VC with Crystal Huang, Investor @ GGV Capital
Mar 12, 2018 neutral
Assertion Supported
Taussig: Google and Facebook capture ~90% of recent ad growth
“Something like 89 or 90% of growth in advertising dollars In the last year or so was inside of Google and Facebook.”
Alex Taussig Mar 12, 2018 ▶ 14:34 20VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
Mar 23, 2018 positive
Disclosure
Dan Lewis says Amazon influenced Convoy's culture more than Google
“I think the one that certainly influenced me the most, primarily because I was doing it right before I started Convoy, was Amazon.”
Dan Lewis Mar 23, 2018 ▶ 4:33 20VC: How To Strategically Build The Right Investor Base, Why Startup Timing is Like Surfing & How To Determine Whether Someone is Scaling with the Organisation or Not with Daniel Lewis, Founder & CEO @ Convoy
Mar 26, 2018 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Loftus: Major tech corp dev teams are perpetually overwhelmed by deal flow
“Corporate development teams across the Silicon Valley, including at Facebook and Google, are small compared to the opportunity set that they're evaluating. There's just so many companies out there all the time to evaluate, and if you're even at Square, you kno…”
James Loftus Mar 26, 2018 ▶ 11:17 20VC: How Great VCs Handle Themselves In An M&A Process, Why M&A Has Become The Primary Method of Exit & How The Best M&A Teams Operationalise Their Process with James Loftus, Corporate Development Lead @ Square
Mar 26, 2018
Assertion Supported
Loftus: Big Tech Buyer Softening Has Kept Startup Acquisition Prices Moderate
“So I haven't seen a ton of price increase, but I do think that's because in my view, even though you've seen new entrants into the market, There's been softening at the other end of the market from the Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon end.”
James Loftus Mar 26, 2018 ▶ 10:10 20VC: How Great VCs Handle Themselves In An M&A Process, Why M&A Has Become The Primary Method of Exit & How The Best M&A Teams Operationalise Their Process with James Loftus, Corporate Development Lead @ Square
Mar 26, 2018 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google completed over 120 acquisitions in three years with four lawyers
“We did over a 120 acquisitions in just over three years, and there were only four M&A lawyers.”
James Loftus Mar 26, 2018 ▶ 3:15 20VC: How Great VCs Handle Themselves In An M&A Process, Why M&A Has Become The Primary Method of Exit & How The Best M&A Teams Operationalise Their Process with James Loftus, Corporate Development Lead @ Square
Apr 9, 2018
Insight
Direct online demand marketing wastes capital for early marketplaces
“When generating early demand, one of the more counterintuitive learnings Is that early marketplace demands are dependent on an existing distribution and offline activities. Like for house, for example, you mentioned early health on Tulia was invaluable. And I …”
Paul Hsiao Apr 9, 2018 ▶ 8:35 20VC: Why You Have To Raise $100m+ If You Want To Go Big Today, The 5 Fundamentals To Starting and Scaling A Successful Marketplace & Why Female Founders Under-Promise and Over-Deliver with Paul Hsiao, Founding Partner @ Canvas Ventures
May 11, 2018
Insight
Dudum: Startups must balance micro-optimization with tracking macro platform shifts
“One of the areas that we really got good at with that company was small team iteration and market testing. We were constantly testing our positioning, our marketing, our channels, our price points, the demographics of the audiences. And weighing and balancing …”
Andrew Dudum May 11, 2018 ▶ 4:28 20VC: Hims' Andrew Dudum on The Scaling Playbook of The Fastest Growing Mens Wellness Brand, How To Be Truly Innovative In Today's World of Online Marketing & Raising at a $200m Valuation within Year 1
May 25, 2018
Assertion Supported
Marissa Mayer invested as an angel in Adrian Aoun's startup Wavy
“So one of the angel investors in Wavy was Marissa Mayer. Now, Wavy was a search company, and Marissa at the time ran search at Google.”
Adrian Aoun May 25, 2018 ▶ 22:25 20VC: The Core Lessons From Building a 150 Startup Angel Portfolio, Why Founders Who Angel Invest Have Such Strong Advantages and Why The Lean Startup Makes Less and Less Sense Today with Adrian Aoun, Founder & CEO @ Forward
Jun 4, 2018 positive
Assertion Supported
Vassallo: Women played crucial roles in building Google's early business model
“You know, she talks about company like Google, you know, we only ever think of Larry and Sergey, but there were incredibly important and influential women who helped lead that company in the early days and helped build out the business model that made Google w…”
Trae Vassallo Jun 4, 2018 ▶ 24:45 20VC: What John Doerr Taught Me About Great Investing, Why Not All A Rounds Are Post-Traction and Why Despite Overfunding, There Is Still Gaps In Venture Financing with Trae Vassallo, Founding Partner @ Defy.vc
Jul 6, 2018
Disclosure
Joe Fernandez spends six to eight hours writing each investor update email
“I write really in-depth investor emails, like spend 6:08 hours on one, They're all archived on a Google doc that is like almost 200 pages long.”
Joe Fernandez Jul 6, 2018 ▶ 22:12 20VC: Why Serial Entrepreneurship is Overrated, Why You Will Get Fired If You Listen To Your Board & How To Construct Investor Update Emails The Right Way with Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO @ Joymode
Jul 9, 2018 positive
Insight
Flint: Network effect businesses remain tremendously capital efficient
“Building sort of core, building business on top of core distribution platforms like Facebook and Google is just so much harder these days, but fundamentally, you look back over the sort of course of history and see these network effect businesses are tremendou…”
Pete Flint Jul 9, 2018 ▶ 18:22 20VC: Lessons From 2x $Bn Exits in Trulia and lastminute.com, 3 Leading Indicators That Suggest Potential Marketplace Success & Why We Are Going To See A Fundamental Change To The World of VC with Pete Flint, Managing Partner @ NFX
Jul 17, 2018 positive
Opinion
Gil: Google, Apple, and Amazon prove public companies stay innovative
“The most innovative companies in technology are actually the big public ones, right? I would argue that Google and Apple and, you know, Amazon are the most innovative companies in the world, and they do that as public companies.”
Elad Gil Jul 17, 2018 ▶ 38:44 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
Jul 17, 2018
Assertion Partly supported
Gil: Android had 11 to 12 employees when acquired by Google
“Andy Rubin was acquired when Android was, I think, about 11, 12 people, and then obviously that led to this amazing handset OS and sort of platform for the world.”
Elad Gil Jul 17, 2018 ▶ 35:53 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
Jul 17, 2018
Assertion Supported
Elad Gil: Google Spent Hundreds of Millions Buying Firefox Homepage and Toolbars
“Google was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on To acquire customers via things like toolbar distribution. They bought the homepage of Firefox for many years. They basically did whatever they could to push distribution as hard as possible.”
Elad Gil Jul 17, 2018 ▶ 30:31 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
Jul 17, 2018
Assertion Supported
Gil: Google gave Android independent hiring autonomy post-acquisition
“Android actually had its own hiring practices, which at the time was Anthema at Google, and it was set up so that they could really run their team very independently, hire independently, make decisions independently, and that was a very explicit choice so that…”
Elad Gil Jul 17, 2018 ▶ 36:41 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
Jul 20, 2018
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gates and Ballmer initially saw Linux as a bigger threat than Google
“We had done the early work that got Gates and Bomber focused on Google as a threat to the business, and at the time, back then, they were more focused on the enterprise side and on the threat that Linux kind of represented, and so we had gotten the company pre…”
Fritz Lanman Jul 20, 2018 ▶ 14:07 20VC: ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman on Betting His Career Facebook Would Be A $10Bn Company, Lessons From Travis and Uber on Scaling A Global Marketplace & Whether Growth and Capital Efficiency Are Mutually Exclusive
Jul 23, 2018 negative
Insight
Coding bootcamps suffer from non-repeat purchases and high search acquisition costs
“The problem with coding bootcamps is it's a one-time purchase. It's not repeated. Customers often search for it in Google, and even if you have the best product, it's hard to make that readily apparent in the consumer's minds.”
Jason Stoffer Jul 23, 2018 ▶ 10:37 20VC: The Metrics That Matter In Early-Stage Consumer, Why Moats Matter More Than Brand Today and How VCs Deal with S*** Hit The Fan Moments with Jason Stoffer, Managing Partner @ Maveron
Aug 6, 2018 bearish
Opinion
Brown: The era of building DTC brands purely on paid ads is over
“I think we are in probably the end of the bubble of brands or direct-to-consumer businesses that are purely building their businesses off paid channels. And by paid channels, I mean mainly Facebook and mainly a little bit of Google. I think that era is done. T…”
Nick Brown Aug 6, 2018 ▶ 7:08 20VC: 3 Core Considerations When Investing In Physical Product Co's, Are We In A Direct-To-Consumer Bubble & Why Many Sub $100m Funds Are Moving Earlier and Earlier with Nick Brown, Managing Partner @ Imaginary
Aug 31, 2018 neutral
Disclosure
Facebook and Google Are a Very Small Part of Casper's Marketing
“We were never overly reliant on just Facebook or just Google. In fact, those two channels specifically are a very small part of our mix because we knew the economics were going to get very tough.”
Philip Krim Aug 31, 2018 ▶ 13:33 20VC: Casper Founder Philip Krim on The Right Way To Think About Marketing Channel Diversification, When To Accept Strategic Investors & How To Successfully Build Out Your Exec Team
Sep 17, 2018 negative
Opinion
Frankel: Early-stage startups are ultimately working for Facebook and Google
“Ultimately you could say that all these startups are working for Facebook, Google, and, you know, the programmatic players.”
David Frankel Sep 17, 2018 ▶ 20:20 20VC: Lessons Learned Scaling PillPack from Seed to Amazon Acquisition, Why Investors Should Spend More Time Assessing Human Capital Risk Taken by Founders & The Right Way To Think About Capital Efficiency in Scaling with David Frankel, Managing Partner @
Oct 1, 2018 negative
Insight
Kaden: Paid ads on Google and Facebook enrich platforms, not startups
“I, you know, I think Peter Fenton's also making a comment on the acquisition landscape where most of paid acquisition is coming through these third party platforms like Facebook or Google, where you're actually largely boosting the equity value of the platform…”
Rebecca Kaden Oct 1, 2018 ▶ 7:24 20VC: USV's Rebecca Kaden on Whether Venture Returns Can Be Made At Scale In Consumer Today & How To Navigate Consumer Investing In A World of Amazon
Oct 12, 2018
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morley: Google's 2010 hack announcement triggered a massive shift in cybersecurity demand
“In 2010, there was a market change when Google announced that they had been hacked.”
Patrick Morley Oct 12, 2018 ▶ 15:54 20VC: 7 Key Themes To Building A Great Company To IPO, The Right Way To Assess Market Timing & How To Balance Between Speed and Inspection When It Comes To Decision-Making with Patrick Morley, CEO @ Carbon Black
Nov 5, 2018 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Smartphone wars created the low-cost component supply chain for consumer IoT
“Because of the smartphone wars, the war between Apple and Samsung and Google and Nokia and Blackberry, a lot of the components that you find in a... Everyone was trying to get a low-cost camera, low-cost accelerometers, low-cost Bluetooth chips and Wi-Fi chips…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 8:31 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Dec 3, 2018 positive
What-if
Danny Rimer: Startups Should Have Maximized Spend on Early Google AdWords
“And of course, at that time, all we should have done is plowed as much money as we could against that platform.”
Danny Rimer Dec 3, 2018 ▶ 13:35 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
Feb 8, 2019
Assertion Partly supported
Midha: Kleiner Perkins' highest IRR investment was Juniper Networks, not Google
“When I was actually studying Kleiner Perkins' returns history, when I was at the firm in the year, the nineties and the 2000, I think one of the highest IR investments that Kleiner ended up ever making was not Google. It was not Amazon. It was Juniper networks…”
Anjney Midha Feb 8, 2019 ▶ 14:31 20VC: What Makes The Best Venture Firms Today So Special, The 3 Structural Impediments That Face Venture Today and Why The Debate on AR vs VR is BS with Anjney Midha, Founder & CEO @ Ubiquity6
Apr 1, 2019 negative
Insight
Tan: Google and Facebook alumni lack experience fighting for early users
“A lot of people, especially coming from very hollered halls like Google and Facebook, they've actually never been punched in the face because the overwhelming fire hose of users means that they've never had to fight and scrap for a user.”
Garry Tan Apr 1, 2019 ▶ 17:33 20VC: Initialized's Garry Tan on The Most Important Thing A Seed Investor Can Do For Founders, How Ownership Requirements Change With Evolution of Funds & Why There Is Not Too Much Capital Chasing Too Few Deals
Apr 5, 2019 positive
Insight
Russakow: 200-500 person growth companies are the best early career environment
“When you're in a company that's maybe already gotten to a couple hundred people on its way to 1500, you get this wonderful middle ground where it's big enough that a lot of the systems and infrastructure is in place and mentors may exist within the company, bu…”
Jeff Russakow Apr 5, 2019 ▶ 8:40 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted
Apr 15, 2019 bullish
Assertion Supported
Google paid $1.1 billion for pre-revenue Waze and succeeded
“For example, if you look at a ways where we spent 1.1 billion dollars to buy them, that's been a tremendously successful deal for us. But at the time they had almost no revenue.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 7:52 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Supported
Waze signed an LOI with another acquirer before Google bought them
“Waze had actually signed a letter of intent with another acquirer when we got involved. One of our main competitors was a Waze stockholder and wasn't too keen on us buying them.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 22:24 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google built a custom in-house CRM to track M&A targets
“Wrapping all of this is we have a very bespoke in-house CRM system that we created to track And monitor all of our dealings with companies in the ecosystem.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 13:36 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Insight
Post-acquisition operating alignment matters more than closing the deal
“Although it's important to focus on getting the deal done, it's equally or even more important to jointly agree on how your company's going to operate within Google after closing. So in other words, the wedding itself is important, but more so is the marriage …”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 23:28 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google M&A deals require approval from the CEO and executive sponsor
“Every M&A deal at Google needs to be approved ultimately by our CEO, and it needs an executive sponsor, and an executive sponsor is one of the CEO's direct reports that runs a product area at Google.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 18:13 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019 positive
Insight
Active internal sponsors are crucial for post-merger integration success
“The single most important element we found for a successful integration is that we have an engaged deal sponsor from the Google side stay intimately involved with the company after closing until it's fully integrated.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 20:16 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google almost always requires acquired founders to remain post-acquisition
“We almost always want the founders to stick around and work for Google after the closing.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 16:11 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Partly supported
YouTube faced a $1 billion copyright lawsuit when Google acquired it
“YouTube was facing a billion dollar copyright lawsuit. I mean, it had growing infrastructure costs, and it had very little revenue, all three of which Google was able to help out with quite a bit.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 9:44 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
Apr 15, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google evaluates acquisition success every three to six months
“Typically, we do this every three to six months after the deal closes for a period of two to three years, and then if we're not meeting our goals, we dig in and find out why, and then, of course, try to correct as possible.”
Dave Sobota Apr 15, 2019 ▶ 21:34 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
May 10, 2019 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Romanow: 40% of venture capital goes directly to Google and Facebook ads
“40% of venture capital dollars that are raised today end up going straight to Google and Facebook ads.”
Michele Romanow May 10, 2019 ▶ 8:13 20VC: Clearbanc's Michele Romanow on Why 40% of VC $ Raised Today Goes To Google and Facebook, How To Create A Financing Mechanism For The Repeatable Parts Of Your Business & Why We Need To Stop Celebrating Fundraises
May 13, 2019
Assertion Partly supported
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins invested $10M for 10% in Google's Series A
“I think the Kleiner check was Ten million dollars for like 10% in the Google series A.”
Mamoon Hamid May 13, 2019 ▶ 11:52 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on The Strategy Behind The New $600m "Back To The Future" Fund, The Truth To Price Sensitivity at Series A & Why Venture Team Building Is Like Basketball Team Building
Jun 10, 2019 negative
Insight
Kupor: Reliance on paid acquisition degrades startup unit economics over time
“So if this is a heavy paid marketing business, it's probably the case that those economists are going to degrade over time because, you know, your cost of acquisition, you know, through Google and Facebook and other paid channels may be difficult.”
Scott Kupor Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 6:21 20VC: a16z's Scott Kupor on The Biggest Learnings From Scaling a16z from $300m to $7Bn AUM, The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching VCs & Why VC Is Simply A Customer Service Business
Jun 17, 2019 positive
Insight
Jonathan Hsu: Tech giants dominate by creating superior products, not choking supply
“These companies are dominant, not because they choke off supply, but because they actually provide the best product for customers. That's true of Google. It's true for Facebook.”
Jonathan Hsu Jun 17, 2019 ▶ 22:34 20VC: Why Historical Loss Ratios Are Simply Too High, Why Data Is The #1 Most Important Piece When Evaluating Effective Reserve Allocation & Why Nothing Is Truly Defensible Today with Jonathan Hsu, Co-Founder and General Partner @ Tribe Capital
Jun 24, 2019 negative
What-if
Gurley: Benchmark should have accepted Google's $100M valuation offer
“So I had a meeting or my firm benchmark had a meeting with Larry and Sergey where they said, will you invest at a hundred pre? And we should have said, yes, I would tell myself that.”
Bill Gurley Jun 24, 2019 ▶ 28:42 20VC: Benchmark's Bill Gurley on 5 Traits Benchmark Look For When Adding To The Partnership, Why The Abundance of Capital Is Today's Biggest Challenge in VC & The Right Way To Think About Market Size When Assessing Opportunities
Sep 6, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Wang: Google research shows exponential dataset scaling yields continuous model gains
“Google sort of published a bunch of these papers, which showed that each time you can X the size of your data set, you're going to keep getting bang out of your buck in terms of the Performance of your model. So it's not just that it is true that like for each…”
Alex Wang Sep 6, 2019 ▶ 12:19 20VC: Scale Founder Alex Wang on How To Hire Incredible Talent Before You Are A Hot Company, Why Beating Competition Is Not As Clear Cut As Investors Believe & Why AI Is Under-Hyped Today In Terms of Total Impact
Sep 6, 2019 negative
Insight
Wang: Convincing candidates choosing between Google and startups usually fails
“If you have to convince somebody between joining Google and your startup, you've kind of already lost a big battle, especially if they aren't looking at other small startups or they aren't even really trying to figure that out.”
Alex Wang Sep 6, 2019 ▶ 16:53 20VC: Scale Founder Alex Wang on How To Hire Incredible Talent Before You Are A Hot Company, Why Beating Competition Is Not As Clear Cut As Investors Believe & Why AI Is Under-Hyped Today In Terms of Total Impact
Sep 16, 2019 negative
Insight
Shah: Platform maturity made consumer startups capital inefficient post-2016
“And so my intuition was a platform maturity of the iPhones, of the app store on iOS, of Facebook, of Google, of Snap and Pinterest kind of hit a ceiling where I felt the cost of acquiring these customers in the LTV, according to it, would make the businesses v…”
Semil Shah Sep 16, 2019 ▶ 31:50 20VC: Haystack's Semil Shah on Whether Founders Are Bypassing Seed Funds in Favour Of Less Dilutive Multi-Stage Funds, How Fund Strategy Changes With Fund Scaling & Why The Hardest Challenge is Price Discipline
Sep 27, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Google actively shields its product managers from marketing and sales functions
“The organization does a lot to shield its product managers from marketing or sales or any other function outside of product development and engineering.”
Julia Enthoven Sep 27, 2019 ▶ 11:23 20VC: Kapwing Founder Julia Enthoven on Why Marketing Innovation Is As Important As Product Innovation, Why Every Company Is Becoming A Media Company & The Benefits Of Not Raising Money Too Early
Oct 11, 2019 negative
Opinion
Carlson: Google and Facebook ad spend drives the US student debt crisis
“While I'm not a fan of the specifics of the Bernie free college plan, I wish more politicians were realizing the fact that a large percent of the student debt crisis is actually in the pockets of Google and Facebook.”
Rachel Carlson Oct 11, 2019 ▶ 6:34 20VC: Guild Education's Rachel Carlson on The Benefits of Scaling Startups Outside of Silicon Valley, Why Mission and Margin Are So Tightly Integrated & Why Mums Are The Most Under-Utilised Asset In The Economy
Oct 11, 2019 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carlson: Direct-to-consumer higher ed struggles with rising Google and Facebook CAC
“Our data shows that schools that are trying to acquire students in a B to C format today are struggling across the board, and I actually think while Lambda's newer to the game, you look at some of the older coding boot camps, they are also struggling as they'r…”
Rachel Carlson Oct 11, 2019 ▶ 8:05 20VC: Guild Education's Rachel Carlson on The Benefits of Scaling Startups Outside of Silicon Valley, Why Mission and Margin Are So Tightly Integrated & Why Mums Are The Most Under-Utilised Asset In The Economy
Oct 11, 2019 positive
Insight
Carlson: Early-stage startups win tech talent better in Denver than SF
“So you just have to think about it as a different funnel. So I think in San Francisco, the funnel is very, very wide, but your chance at winning at the bottom of the funnel when you're an early stage company is incredibly hard when you're competing with Google…”
Rachel Carlson Oct 11, 2019 ▶ 25:11 20VC: Guild Education's Rachel Carlson on The Benefits of Scaling Startups Outside of Silicon Valley, Why Mission and Margin Are So Tightly Integrated & Why Mums Are The Most Under-Utilised Asset In The Economy
Oct 28, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Steve Ballmer's executive presence won Microsoft the early cloud battle against Google
“But, you know, in the early days of that battle, when they had way better product, Google had a way better product, Balmer would, and Balmer's still CEO at the time, would show up in companies and say, I'm here. Is Larry Page going to come visit? And of course…”
Ben Horowitz Oct 28, 2019 ▶ 15:51 20VC: a16z's Ben Horowitz on How To Create An Environment of Trust with Founders, How and Why Creating Shocking Rules Is So Impactful To Culture & What The Samurai, Shaka Senghor and Toussaint Teach Us About Company Culture Building
Nov 11, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Snap and Pinterest broke Google and Facebook's acquisition duopoly
“I think Snap and Pinterest have kind of broken through that duopoly, and therefore there's some heterogeneous ways to acquire customers, but not as many as you'd hope.”
Rick Heitzmann Nov 11, 2019 ▶ 27:06 20VC: Firstmark's Rick Heitzmann on The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, His Biggest Learnings From The Pinterest Board, 2 Things VCs Can Do To Prepare Their Companies For The Downturn and Why Now Is A Good Time to Be Contrarian and Invest In Consumer
Nov 15, 2019
Insight
E-commerce spent a decade optimizing discovery but neglected transaction innovation
“Consumers have spent the last 10 years optimizing for discovery. We've put a lot of money into advertising, you know, Google and the Facebook business models and Instagram and getting people to click and go Go visit a site and look at a product, but there hasn…”
Dom Holland Nov 15, 2019 ▶ 11:57 20VC: Why Speed Is The Biggest Differentiator a Founder Can Have, How To Hire Seasoned Tier 1 Talent To An Early Stage Startup & How To Start, Scale and Manage Remote Teams with Domm Holland, Founder & CEO @ Fast
Nov 25, 2019 bearish
Assertion Supported
Every digital ad platform update makes user acquisition more expensive
“There's never been a single update in digital advertising that has made buying cheaper. The advertising algorithms on these major platforms like Facebook and Google are getting hyper-efficient, and every update just makes them more expensive.”
Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 19:10 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games
Nov 25, 2019 negative
Assertion Contradicted
Digital advertising CPMs compound at approximately 40% per year
“The second force at play is essentially the market-wide, the CPMs are just compounding. The number we've seen is about 40% a year, and that's just because of a number of factors around the algorithms of new competitors coming into the market.”
Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 16:35 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games
Jan 6, 2020 positive
Assertion Supported
Jain: Android Grew From Under 1M Total Users To 1M Daily New Users
“We had less than a million total users on Android at the time. It was a phenomenal journey for me to kind of see Android grow from less than a million total users to about a million new users a day.”
Gaurav Jain Jan 6, 2020 ▶ 5:20 20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital
Jan 27, 2020 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Stebbings: 43% of venture dollars go directly to Facebook, Google, and Amazon
“I think it's 43%, according to Clearbank. I might have to check that, but I believe 43% of venture dollars goes directly back to Facebook, Google, and Amazon, as a fun fact.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 27, 2020 ▶ 22:00 20VC: Moxxie Ventures' Katie Stanton on What It Takes To Raise A First Time Fund As A Solo GP, The Entrance of Multi-Stage Funds Into Seed Rounds and The Inverse Relationship of Those That Fund Diverse Managers and Those That Say They Do
Feb 4, 2020
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Google delayed a major Gmail redesign over 30 milliseconds of latency
“And I remember one time we had gone through this big redesign of the label system in Gmail, and we were about to launch it. And actually the night before launch, we held it back because we realized we had unintentionally added about 30 milliseconds or 40 milli…”
Todd Jackson Feb 4, 2020 ▶ 9:28 Breaking News: Meet First Round Capital's Newest Partner, How To Approach Generational Transition as a Venture Firm & The Dangers of Attribution In Venture
Feb 4, 2020
Assertion Supported
Gmail grew to 200 million users during Todd Jackson's tenure
“And we grew Gmail to over two hundred million users during my time there.”
Todd Jackson Feb 4, 2020 ▶ 4:52 Breaking News: Meet First Round Capital's Newest Partner, How To Approach Generational Transition as a Venture Firm & The Dangers of Attribution In Venture
Feb 7, 2020
Insight
Makani: No major company is ever built on a single product
“The reality is no big company is Has ever been built with just one product.”
Shoaib Makani Feb 7, 2020 ▶ 10:40 20VC: Why You Never Want To Fight A Fair Fit For Distribution, Why No Great Company Is Built with 1 Product and When To Release Your Second & What Founders Can Do To Extract The Most From Their Cap Table with Shoaib Makani, Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin
Feb 14, 2020 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Digital ad duopoly will persist indefinitely without data monopoly intervention
“I think there needs to be something to be done about the data monopolies that underlie the duopoly. And unless something is done to kind of deconstruct that data monopoly, then this will persist ad infinitum because of the network effects involved.”
Gabriel Weinberg Feb 14, 2020 ▶ 10:13 20VC: How Founders Should Think Through Distribution and Customer Acquisition Today, The Challenges of the Digital Advertising Duopoly Currently & How To Structure Company Post Mortems Effectively with Gabriel Weinberg, Founder & CEO @ DuckDuckGo
May 1, 2020
Assertion Supported
Twitter Acquired Crashlytics for Nine Figures Before Selling to Google
“Prior to Digits, Wayne and Jeff co-founded Crashlytics, which was acquired by Twitter for a nine-figure sum in January, and then acquired from Twitter by Google in 2017.”
Harry Stebbings May 1, 2020 ▶ 0:43 20VC: Framework For Hiring The Best Talent 100% Remotely, Raising $32M From Benchmark and GV Pre-Launch and How To Think Through Capital Efficiency and Runway Today with Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang, Co-Founders @ Digits
May 8, 2020 negative
Opinion
Conor White-Sullivan: Google prioritizes user tracking for ad serving over organizing knowledge
“Google set out to organize the world's information, and now they are organizing all the information about their users to serve the perfect ad, which is not the same thing.”
Conor White-Sullivan May 8, 2020 ▶ 20:30 20VC: How Roam Research Analyse Product Design, Team-Building, The Future of Collaboration Tools & Applying Tesla Go-To-Market To Roam with Conor White-Sullivan, Founder & CEO @ Roam Research
May 18, 2020 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Helmer: The specific economic powers behind Apple, Amazon, Google, and Netflix
“So Facebook, obviously, network economies. Apple is, they're a variety. Brand switching costs, scale. Amazon is primarily scale. Netflix is primarily scale. Google is probably network economies.”
Hamilton Helmer May 18, 2020 ▶ 31:06 20VC: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: Deconstructing Economies of Scale, How To Assess True Market Size, Assessing Risk vs Uncertainty, What "Brand As Power" Really Means with Hamilton Helmer, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Offi
Jun 5, 2020 positive
Insight
Erickson: Google and Zoom succeeded by building faster horses
“Sometimes users want a faster horse. Google and Zoom are both great examples of that.”
Daniel Erickson Jun 5, 2020 ▶ 16:14 20VC: How To Scientifically Measure Product-Market Fit, How To Efficiently and Accurately Segment Users Into Cohorts, Why Investors Analysing CAC's at Pre-Seed Is Not Useful & How To Determine Between Customer Feedback to Accept vs Reject with Daniel Eric
Jun 22, 2020 positive
Insight
Wilkinson: Direct customer relationships eliminate Google and Facebook platform risk
“In a technology business, there's no middleman, so there's no Google or Facebook risk. There's no algorithm between Us and the community or the customer.”
Andrew Wilkinson Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 10:16 20VC: Andrew Wilkinson on Building The Berkshire Hathway of Tech, Sustainable vs Unsustainable Growth and The Relationship Between Money and Freedom
Jul 10, 2020 negative
Opinion
Mather: Media companies should pay Facebook and Google, not demand payouts
“We should be paying Facebook and Google as media companies, not the other way around. If you can't make your business thrive in this world where Facebook and Google exist, that's on you.”
Alex Mather Jul 10, 2020 ▶ 27:57 20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic
Aug 3, 2020 negative
Opinion
90% of Enterprise Software Startups Pursue Trivial Improvements
“You can't be looking at pluggers that are just trying to make some middleware more efficient or Make ad matching a little better for Google, or what 90% of startups, frankly, are doing in the enterprise software space.”
Steve Jurvetson Aug 3, 2020 ▶ 23:22 20VC: Steve Jurvetson on 20 Years of Friendship with Elon Musk, How To Analyse Market Timing, Why Venture Does Not Scale & Why He Has Never Sold A Share in Any Company He Holds
Sep 25, 2020 negative
Opinion
Google's 70% OKR target eventually became a passive-aggressive commitment-avoidance tool
“Google has one really famous thing about OKRs is that you're expected to only hit 70% of your OKRs, which in the early days was really helpful. It was really a symbol of think big. In the later days, it became a passive-aggressive way to avoid commitment.”
Shishir Mehrotra Sep 25, 2020 ▶ 27:36 20VC: The 4 Phases of Effective Decision-Making, The No 1 Quality of Good Decisions, How To Approach Effective OKR Setting, & How To Optimise and Improve Your Operating Cadence with Shishir Mehrotra, Founder & CEO @ Coda
Sep 25, 2020
Disclosure
Google CFO Patrick Pichette regularly debated divesting YouTube in early meetings
“When I joined YouTube, every press article was, what a big mistake, and every meeting I had with, Patrick was the CFO at the time, and he had just joined Google, every meeting we had was, should we keep this property, or should we get rid of it?”
Shishir Mehrotra Sep 25, 2020 ▶ 6:13 20VC: The 4 Phases of Effective Decision-Making, The No 1 Quality of Good Decisions, How To Approach Effective OKR Setting, & How To Optimise and Improve Your Operating Cadence with Shishir Mehrotra, Founder & CEO @ Coda
Oct 8, 2020 neutral
Disclosure
Lawee Planned CapitalG Succession from Day One Under Alphabet Mandate
“People were asking me, who's my successor from the beginning? So I didn't feel that it's something I kind of need to think of all of a sudden. I've always been thinking about that.”
David Lawee Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 17:29 20VC: CapitalG Founder David Lawee on Why People Overvalue Diversification in Venture, Why Investment Clubs Are More Successful Than Investment Partnerships & How Growth Funds Think About Portfolio Construction, Loss Ratio & Reserves
Oct 8, 2020
Disclosure
Larry Page convinced David Lawee to launch CapitalG internally at Alphabet
“At that point, I was in the mindset of leaving Google, and I talked to Larry Page, and the idea was, for me, in that conversation, was to see if he wanted to invest his own capital in my firm, and he said, why don't you do this within Alphabet? And I thought a…”
David Lawee Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 4:04 20VC: CapitalG Founder David Lawee on Why People Overvalue Diversification in Venture, Why Investment Clubs Are More Successful Than Investment Partnerships & How Growth Funds Think About Portfolio Construction, Loss Ratio & Reserves
Oct 12, 2020 negative
Opinion
Venture capital fund sizes grew too large following Google and Facebook
“So I think in terms of fund size and returns, I do think fund sizes have gotten too large, and it really took off after Google and predominantly after Facebook.”
George Zachary Oct 12, 2020 ▶ 14:29 20VC: CRV's George Zachary on His Relationship To Money and How it has Changed Over Time, Why The Best Founders Have Often Experienced Parental or Home Instability and The Stories Behind Investing in Unicorns; PillPack, Yammer and Udacity
Oct 16, 2020 positive
Insight
Lipkin: Tech-Enabled Service Startups Can Achieve Differentiated Margins in Huge Markets
“In our experience, if you leverage technology to provide a differentiated client experience, you often can also leverage technology to provide differentiated margins. So I think it may not be the world of 99% gross margins that Google experience, but it will b…”
Spike Lipkin Oct 16, 2020 ▶ 21:03 20VC: How To Determine The Risks To Take vs To Pass On, Should Founders Meet Investors When Not Raising & The Most Important Non-Obvious Role of the CEO with Spike Lipkin, Founder & CEO @ Newfront Insurance
Nov 6, 2020
Assertion Supported
Google acquired Invite Media for $81 million
“Before Flatiron, Zatco founded Invite Media, acquired by Google for eighty-one million dollars.”
Harry Stebbings Nov 6, 2020 ▶ 0:26 20VC: Zach Weinberg on Whether A Company is a Democracy, The Importance of Ownership, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed and How he Approaches Both Risk and Personal Capital Allocation
Nov 9, 2020
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zanutto: CapitalG's Collibra thesis originated from discussions with Google engineers
“So for Clibra as an example, that initial idea around data intelligence and data management came from spending time with a number of Google engineers who had regular conversations with folks throughout Google and outside Google who are combating these challeng…”
Derek Zanutto Nov 9, 2020 ▶ 14:25 20VC: Lessons from Investing in Uber and Airbnb, How To Think Through Bundling vs Unbundling, Late Stage Funds Moving Earlier, Early Stage Funds Moving Later& The Mechanics of Venture That Founders Should Know with Derek Zanutto, General Partner @ Capital
Jan 18, 2021 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Silverman: E-commerce will consolidate into a tiny handful of winning platforms
“I find that thesis exceptionally unlikely. The brain can only remember a couple of brands, and so I think the world is consolidating around Fewer and fewer places to buy things online. I mean, if you're a tiny independent shop, you're going to recount on Googl…”
Josh Silverman Jan 18, 2021 ▶ 40:56 20VC: Etsy CEO, Josh Silverman on 2 Defining Traits of Great Leadership, The Danger of Attaching Happiness To Milestones, How To Structure Teams To Optimise for Experimentation and Agility &Whether You Learn More From Success Than Failure
Feb 26, 2021 bullish
Disclosure
Spence: Sonos rejected making $29 speakers to compete with Amazon and Google
“My experience from RIM led me to believe, no, that's exactly what we shouldn't do. We're not going to respond in that way. We're going to build on what we do, which is an open platform. And we're going to take the most useful part of those products, which is t…”
Patrick Spence Feb 26, 2021 ▶ 10:55 20VC: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on His Biggest Lessons Building and Growing Blackberry, The Right Way to View Competition and Innovation Cycles & How To Make The Transition From COO To CEO Most Effectively
Feb 26, 2021 negative
Disclosure
Sonos is suing Google while actively maintaining product partnerships with them
“We're suing Google right now. But at the same time, we still work with them on YouTube Music Service, on Google Assistant, and some of these other areas”
Patrick Spence Feb 26, 2021 ▶ 28:40 20VC: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence on His Biggest Lessons Building and Growing Blackberry, The Right Way to View Competition and Innovation Cycles & How To Make The Transition From COO To CEO Most Effectively
Mar 1, 2021 negative
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Klarna scrapped Google's 20 percent creative time policy for producing nothing
“Google was pushing for a while, 20% of creative time. We implemented 20% of creative time. Nothing happened. We took it away.”
Sebastian Siemiatkowski Mar 1, 2021 ▶ 19:02 20VC: Klarna Founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski on Scaling Europe's Most Valuable Private Tech Company, How To Motivate and Challenge Your Team Most Effectively & The Biggest Lessons From Working with Mike Moritz
Mar 26, 2021 positive
Disclosure
Nubank funded zero-fee products by reallocating marketing budgets from Google and Facebook
“We always, since the beginning said, we'll focus on building the absolutely best product that we can have the best experience and trying to, instead of investing money in marketing and giving that money to Google and Facebook, we'll leave those money in the po…”
David Vélez Mar 26, 2021 ▶ 19:11 20VC: Nubank CEO David Velez on Scaling Nubank to a $25BN Company, Why What Makes a Great Founder Does Not Make a Great CEO & The Responsibility Framework and How Leaders Can Use It To Drive Efficiency
Jul 8, 2021
Assertion Partly supported
CapitalG operates independently despite Alphabet being its sole limited partner
“We're an independent growth fund backed by Google and Alphabet. So the GPs, we have investment decisions. We operate entirely separate from Google and Alphabet, but Alphabet is our single LP.”
Laela Sturdy Jul 8, 2021 ▶ 16:41 20VC: CapitalG's Laela Sturdy on The Current State of Growth with Crossover, PE and Hedge Funds All Entering, How To Think Through Upside and Downside Scenario Planning at Growth & The Biggest Challenges Startups Face Post Product-Market-Fit but Pre-Scale
Oct 11, 2021
Disclosure
Sacca funded his first $50,000 angel check with credit card debt
“That check I wrote was literally a credit card check for me. I didn't have any cash on hand. I was at Google, and I was vesting, but I hadn't sold any stock yet. I went into that one with 50,000 dollars of credit card checks.”
Chris Sacca Oct 11, 2021 ▶ 4:39 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb
Oct 11, 2021
Assertion Supported
Early Google shared board decks company-wide with zero leaks for four years
“Google taught me that when they would share confidential information, they would share the board deck with the entire company on Fridays. Literally, they'd gather the entire company and show them the same slides they had shown the board on Wednesday. And that …”
Chris Sacca Oct 11, 2021 ▶ 35:42 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb
Nov 29, 2021 bullish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Foroughi: AppLovin will become the third-largest digital ad marketplace
“Like if you just to size it, that's Facebook, Google one, two, or in whichever order I'd have to check, but that's the third biggest digital marketplace for advertising in terms of scale that will exist.”
Adam Foroughi Nov 29, 2021 ▶ 32:04 20VC: AppLovin's Co-Founder & CEO, Adam Foroughi on How AppLovin Might Be The Venture Capital Industry's Biggest Miss, How To Run a 1,000+ Organisation with Very Few Meetings & Balancing the Demands of Wall St with Long Term, Sustainable Growth
Dec 6, 2021 negative
Disclosure
Gurley: Failing to pursue Google at 25 employees was my biggest mistake
“My biggest mistake was clear because I brought Larry and Sergey in to present when there were 25 employees, and we didn't lay chase.”
Bill Gurley Dec 6, 2021 ▶ 35:36 20VC: Bill Gurley and Michael Eisenberg on The First Signs of an Impending Bust, What Happens with a Market Crash, How Do Public Markets Impact Private Valuations & The Biggest Lessons from 20 Years Investing in Venture
Jan 20, 2022
Disclosure
Chris Sacca funded his first $50,000 angel investment using credit cards
“But that check I wrote was literally a credit card check for me. I didn't have any cash on hand. I was at Google, and I was vesting, but I hadn't sold any stock yet, and so I literally I went into that one with 50,000 dollars of credit card checks.”
Chris Sacca Jan 20, 2022 ▶ 1:41 Chris Sacca's True Unfiltered Opinion on Facebook and Softbank | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 21, 2022 negative
Disclosure
Partovi passed on Google in 1999 due to competitive hubris
“One of my smartest friends from Harvard, Craig Silverstein, was probably the top guy in our CS program. He and my brother and I were probably always vying for which of us is the best coder in the Harvard class of 94 in computer science, and it was probably Cra…”
Ali Partovi Jan 21, 2022 ▶ 25:10 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo
Jan 24, 2022
Disclosure
Anne Wojcicki: Prominence Makes People Less Direct and Honest With Founders
“If I think back on the last 15 years, the thing that has been the hardest for me is having people be less honest and less direct. Like, you hear this about, and I saw this as with the rise of Google, and, like, people started just coming up, they wanted to jus…”
Anne Wojcicki Jan 24, 2022 ▶ 7:58 20VC: 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki on How To Approach Trust in Business and Personal Relationships, Leadership Lessons from Sheryl Sandberg and Reflections on How The Best Founders Manage Their Boards
Feb 21, 2022 bullish
Disclosure
Doerr: Kleiner Perkins bought 12% of Google for $12 million
“Twelve million dollars bought 12% of Google, which is today as a company worth several trillion dollars.”
John Doerr Feb 21, 2022 ▶ 5:03 How I Bought 12% of Google for $12M; How VC is Fixing Climate Change | John Doerr Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 14, 2022 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Friedberg: Applied Semantics founder Gil Elbaz was top-five Google IPO shareholder
“Applied Semantics, which was acquired by Google in 2003 or 2002, which became AdSense. The founders got equity in Google, and I think still may own a lot of it. And the founder ended up being one of the top five holders of Google stock when Google's IPO happen…”
David Friedberg Mar 14, 2022 ▶ 28:11 20VC: David Friedberg on The Framework for Business Value Creation, The Bifurcation in Venture Today That No One Talks About, The Impact of Interest Rate Hikes on Venture and Step by Step; How TPB Incubates, Funds and Exits The Next Generation of Companie
Mar 14, 2022
Assertion Supported
Friedberg: Google created over 95% of its value post-IPO
“Google has accrued 95% of its value since it went public more than that.”
David Friedberg Mar 14, 2022 ▶ 23:38 20VC: David Friedberg on The Framework for Business Value Creation, The Bifurcation in Venture Today That No One Talks About, The Impact of Interest Rate Hikes on Venture and Step by Step; How TPB Incubates, Funds and Exits The Next Generation of Companie
Mar 16, 2022
Insight
Rachitsky: Big Tech PMs often fail when transitioning to startups
“And similarly, if your PM's been a PM at like Google or Facebook, they're just like really good at PMing at Google and Facebook. There's like a very specific way of building product at these big companies, and you shouldn't assume that they're going to be good…”
Lenny Rachitsky Mar 16, 2022 ▶ 21:04 20 Product: Lenny Rachitsky on The 3 Key Roles of the Product Manager, 5 Skills All The Best PMs Have, When To Hire Your First PM, How to Structure the Hiring Process for PMs & What Leaders Can Do to Make Their PMs Successful
Mar 23, 2022 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Big Tech Product Managers Focus Too Heavily on Strategy and Numbers
“In terms of hiring PMs, the biggest pool of PMs today are coming from like the fan companies, Facebook, Google, et cetera. And they tend to be Strategy and numbers focused.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 6:57 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Mar 25, 2022 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Winters: Pinterest signed up over half the US via Google preview walls
“When people came in from Google, we would let you see a preview of the content, and then we would ask you to sign up to see more of it... As we did that, that was really successful. And we ended up signing up, you know, like over half of the U S up to Pinteres…”
Casey Winters Mar 25, 2022 ▶ 5:01 20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requ
Apr 6, 2022 negative
Assertion Supported
Google's strict code ownership culture hinders cross-team growth efforts
“A good friend of mine was working at growth at Google, and they really have a totally different culture about this at Google, where it's really hard to go and change anyone else's code if you're not in that department or you're not in that team.”
Brian Hale Apr 6, 2022 ▶ 25:25 20 Growth: Why Retention Defines Product Market Fit, What is Good Retention Levels Today, The Most Counterintuitive Elements of Product and Growth & Why So Many Startups Mess Up Hiring For Growth Teams with Brian Hale, Head of Consumer Product & Growth @
Apr 8, 2022 negative
Opinion
Liaw: Regulatory fear has chilled M&A for Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple
“I think that probably the bigger challenge is for a lot of the biggest mega cap tech companies, fear of regulation and regulatory authority intervention is probably causing a lot of them to say, this is probably not worth our time, right? So it's kind of a fun…”
Eric Liaw Apr 8, 2022 ▶ 11:53 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP
Jul 11, 2022
Assertion Partly supported
Mullenweg: Early Google survey showed WordPress on 0.8% of websites
“And shortly after that, maybe a year or two after that, we started to see WordPress show up in like whole internet numbers. And I remember the first time Google did a survey and they found this weird header in HTTP responses that they were like, we're not sure…”
Matt Mullenweg Jul 11, 2022 ▶ 3:49 Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2022 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levesque: Paid Search is Essential as Google Deprioritizes Organic Results
“Paid channels in general have become more important because a lot of these services, a lot of these engines like Google are moving away from showing organic results and showing paid. So paid, certainly paid search, for example, works very well. And it's still …”
Luc Levesque Jul 13, 2022 ▶ 43:22 Luc Levesque: The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring for Growth | 20VC #906 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 5, 2022
Insight
Shariff: A/B testing does not work for early-stage startups
“The reality is in the very early days of startups you don't really have much data. And so, you know, in theory, you might think, oh, let me just like AB test everything and AB test my way to success. And it doesn't really work because like you're tiny, there i…”
Sameer Shariff Aug 5, 2022 ▶ 4:53 Cambly CEO Sameer Shariff: Why I Raised $60M and Didn't Touch a Dollar | 20VC #914 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 12, 2022 bullish
Insight
Claure: Entry valuation is irrelevant for companies targeting massive addressable markets
“The key is to determine in advance if it's a company where price matters or it doesn't. For some companies with an immense opportunity, think of Alibaba, think of Facebook, think of Google, think of Amazon, whatever. It was worth coming in at almost any price …”
Marcelo Claure Aug 12, 2022 ▶ 3:12 20VC: 13 of the Great Investing Minds on When to Pay Up vs When To Remain Disciplined and Walk Because the Price is too High: The Ultimate Guide to Price Sensitivity
Aug 22, 2022 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Larry Page's Rule at Google: Bring Data or My Opinion Wins
“There's this famous saying when I would pitch stuff to Larry, where he goes, Wesley, if you have the data, you're right. If you don't have the data, then I'm right, and you don't want me to be right, because I'm often wrong. So, bring the data.”
Wesley Chan Aug 22, 2022 ▶ 51:52 Wesley Chan: How I Created Google Analytics; The Founding Story of Gmail & Canva | 20VC #919 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 21, 2022
Disclosure
Lieb: Bump sold to Google because it needed to raise capital
“We need, we were gonna need to raise some more money and we weren't sure that that was the right idea for ourselves or for the team or for investors. So usually when you sell a company, it's because you either really can and want to or you need to. For us, we …”
David Lieb Sep 21, 2022 ▶ 6:29 David Lieb: How I Founded Google Photos & Bump; Why I Left Google | 20VC #927 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 21, 2022
Disclosure
Lieb: Google Photos intentionally rejected social features and photo editing
“And we said internally at Google, like, we're not going to build a social tool. This isn't a social network. Like, that's not what we're doing. We're not going to build some crazy, like, photo editing product. Like, it's not about being, quote, creative with y…”
David Lieb Sep 21, 2022 ▶ 8:53 David Lieb: How I Founded Google Photos & Bump; Why I Left Google | 20VC #927 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 21, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lieb: Bump pivoted to photo sharing before being acquired by Google
“We pivoted a few times with bump and ultimately decided to work on photo sharing and then got acquired by Google. And then I was there for nine years.”
David Lieb Sep 21, 2022 ▶ 2:03 David Lieb: How I Founded Google Photos & Bump; Why I Left Google | 20VC #927 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 21, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lieb: I was asked to leave my Google team twice
“I didn't get fired from Google. I did get asked to leave the team twice.”
David Lieb Sep 21, 2022 ▶ 1:03:35 David Lieb: How I Founded Google Photos & Bump; Why I Left Google | 20VC #927 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 10, 2022
Insight
Gerstner: Starting a restaurant takes as much effort as building Google
“And the truth of the matter is it probably takes as much effort, emotional and intellectual to start a restaurant as it does to start Google.”
Brad Gerstner Oct 10, 2022 ▶ 11:36 Brad Gerstner: How I Pick Companies; Lessons from Warren Buffet; Chamath vs Gurley | E935 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 19, 2022
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Schwartz: Segment initially rejected her because her Google background lacked scrappiness
“I was actually rejected when I first interviewed at segment because one of the pieces of feedback was, well, you came from Google. We don't think you're likely to be that scrappy.”
Lauren Schwartz Oct 19, 2022 ▶ 26:06 Fivetran's Lauren Schwartz: Must-Ask Questions to Identify Potential Sales Talent | 20VC #939 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Emil Michael: Uber grew faster than any company in history, including Google
“We grew faster than any company in the world, both geographically And revenue wise, including Google.”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 1:05:26 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Assertion Supported
Emil Michael: Uber's acquisition of Otto destroyed its relationship with Google
“I'd say that the deal that Was under my watch. I didn't like it at the time, but I, you know, it got done was Uber acquiring auto, which was the autonomous car division that that gets started out of Google guys. It was, and I didn't like it for different reaso…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 28:53 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 25, 2022 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Bill Campbell coached Steve Jobs and Google founders simultaneously
“They call them the coach, the trillion dollar coach, because he would, as you know, coach Steve Jobs, who no one in the world thought was coachable, and then he would coach Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and Sergey at Google on two of the most important companies…”
Emil Michael Oct 25, 2022 ▶ 3:22 Emil Michael: How I Negotiated the $4B Uber-China Deal, Why DoorDash Caught Up to Uber | 20VC #941 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 9, 2022 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Steve Jobs called Google at all hours over minor UI details
“The best way to describe, you know, working with Steve is perfection. He would Call us at crazy hours of the night, or, you know, or super early in the morning to tell us that, you know, there was something off with some piece of the UI, which no one had possi…”
Hugo Barra Nov 9, 2022 ▶ 4:27 Hugo Barra: How I Built Hardware for Android, Xiaomi, and Oculus | 20VC #947 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 9, 2022 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Eric Schmidt used Apple board seat to prepare Google for mobile
“Now, back then, and this is kind of incredible, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat on Apple's board of directors, which is a crazy thing to think these days, and it was basically like having a crystal ball. You know, Eric knew that over multiple generations, you know…”
Hugo Barra Nov 9, 2022 ▶ 3:26 Hugo Barra: How I Built Hardware for Android, Xiaomi, and Oculus | 20VC #947 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 7, 2022 bullish
Insight
Empowered engineers are foundational to top tech companies like Tesla and Apple
“There is nothing more than, more important than empowered engineers. And if you look, you know, if you look at companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Amazon, Stripe, Apple, that's the foundation of every one of those companies, empowered engineers.”
Marty Cagan Dec 7, 2022 ▶ 53:02 Marty Cagan: Product Lessons from Steve Jobs and Elon Musk; Why do we idolize engineers? | 20VC #957 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2022 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Pittman: iHeartMedia radio reaches 90% of Americans monthly
“Our radio group alone reaches 90% of Americans every month. Only two companies come close to that, and they don't surpass it. It's Facebook and Google. Everybody else, the biggest TV network in the US reaches about 35% of Americans. Biggest cable network reach…”
Bob Pittman Dec 9, 2022 ▶ 39:46 Bob Pittman: How I Went from Creator of MTV to CEO of iHeartMedia | 20VC #958 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 16, 2023 positive
Insight
Jordan: Startups must separate experimental marketing budgets from core spend
“I love the companies that have a, they segregate an experimental budget from their core, core acquisition budget, just to, because if you bundle them together, it, It's a barrier against experimentation. If you're constantly optimizing Google and Facebook, but…”
Jeff Jordan Jan 16, 2023 ▶ 38:16 a16z GP Jeff Jordan: The Ultimate Guide to Two-Sided Marketplaces | 20VC #966 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 16, 2023 bullish
Assertion Contradicted
Stebbings: 45% of millennials use TikTok over Google for search
“I saw an unbelievable stat, which is like, 45% of millennials use TikTok instead of Google as their primary search engine.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 16, 2023 ▶ 14:26 a16z GP Jeff Jordan: The Ultimate Guide to Two-Sided Marketplaces | 20VC #966 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 18, 2023 neutral
Insight
Snapchat and Pinterest ad channels cannot scale like Meta or Google
“Snapchat, Pinterest, those work, but those are hard to scale. Like you don't get large scale, similar to Facebook and Google.”
Hila Qu Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 10:01 Hila Qu: The Ultimate Guide to Product Growth at Your Startup | 20VC #967 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2023 negative
Assertion Supported
Jordan: TikTok Buys Users at Scale Unlike Early Google or Facebook
“That's not a categorical rule, because TikTok buys users at monstrous scale. But, you know, Google really didn't buy many users, Facebook didn't buy many users, you know, tick, tick, tick, tick.”
Jeff Jordan Jan 24, 2023 ▶ 9:28 The Ultimate Guide for Building a Two-Sided Marketplace | a16z's Jeff Jordan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2023
Assertion Contradicted
Stebbings: 45% of Millennials Use TikTok Over Google for Search
“I saw an unbelievable stat, which is like, 45% of millennials use TikTok instead of Google as their primary search engine.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 24, 2023 ▶ 8:28 The Ultimate Guide for Building a Two-Sided Marketplace | a16z's Jeff Jordan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 bullish
Insight
Coates: Microsoft's AI Bing launch is an asymmetric attack on Google
“Search is like a non-part of their business, but search is everything to Google. Like if search ads stop working, Google doesn't, is not a thing anymore. And so they are swinging for the fences with a completely novel approach, which might not work, but if it …”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 55:26 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Coates: Shopify's key strategic weakness is lacking top-of-funnel control
“I think one of Shopify's challenges today is that we fundamentally do not control the top of the funnel, right? Like the top of the funnel for shopping on is something else, right? It's a social media site. It's a news site. It's an ad on Google. It's somewher…”
Glen Coates Mar 8, 2023 ▶ 51:56 Glen Coates: Why Shopify Will Dominate Amazon; How Microsoft Made Smartest Move of 2023 | E986 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 15, 2023 negative
Insight
Full Marketing Channel Attribution and Consistent CAC Metrics Are Impossible
“I agree. I think it's bullshit. I think it's a really, as, like, a, the expectation that it's going to be a consistent metric across channels, and having, like, a full view of everything that could be included in that is, is impossible. Like, it's not, Unlikel…”
Adam Grenier Mar 15, 2023 ▶ 55:24 Adam Grenier: The Inside Story to Uber’s Hypergrowth; How We Spent $1B/mo in China | E989 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 20, 2023 neutral
Insight
Ackman: Missing Out on Big Winners Can Be Worse Than Losing Capital
“Missing Google can be a, you know, as important a mistake, or maybe even a bigger mistake, if you will, than missing You know, the next, like some other making a bad investment that doesn't work, I guess is my fault.”
Bill Ackman Mar 20, 2023 ▶ 16:32 Bill Ackman: SVB Collapse; Biden vs Trump; How I Lost $400M on Netflix; Bill's 10-Year Long | E991 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 29, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Duggal: Larry Page reviewed every Google candidate packet, including SAT scores
“Google was famous for the fact that Larry literally looked at every hiring packet, including resume. I, what, 12 years after graduating college had to provide my SAT scores to Google. I had to go find them. I had to provide my college transcript, which everyon…”
Jag Duggal Mar 29, 2023 ▶ 20:25 Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 29, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Duggal: Google had no clear definition for product managers in 2006
“When I showed up at Google in 2006, No one really had a definition for what a product manager was. They showed you where the bathroom was, and then they sort of dropped you in a team and said, go.”
Jag Duggal Mar 29, 2023 ▶ 5:14 Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 29, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Duggal: Media tech and ad tech have consolidated and played out
“Media tech and ad tech had kind of played itself out. And I had been on both sides. I had worked for Google and Facebook. I had worked for a challenge, a challenger startup, but the game had kind of consolidated.”
Jag Duggal Mar 29, 2023 ▶ 3:12 Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 29, 2023 negative
Assertion Supported
Duggal: Google's CS degree rule barred Kevin Systrom from PM roles
“Because of that computer science requirement to be a product manager, people like Kevin Systrom weren't allowed to be product managers at Google, right?”
Jag Duggal Mar 29, 2023 ▶ 21:06 Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 7, 2023 positive
Insight
Lacher: European family businesses collectively represent Europe's Google
“If you take those family businesses together, I think this is our Google.”
Rob Lacher Apr 7, 2023 ▶ 52:45 Rob Lacher: How I Scaled to $600M AUM; Hiring Tips for VCs; Venture Capital in Europe vs USA | E999 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 12, 2023 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
De Valk: Google will double down on E-E-A-T to combat AI content
“This is going to create a wave of very, very bad content on the web, and how are we going to surface the really good content? And that's why I expect them to be doubling down on things like the EA team, the things which they've had, expertise, authority, trust…”
Joost de Valk Apr 12, 2023 ▶ 46:18 Joost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 12, 2023 negative
Opinion
Joost de Valk: Google made tracking non-CPC marketing channels impossible
“Measuring the success of SEO is hard, because Google has very, very, very success, successfully, and I'm going to get shit for this Google has very successfully made it impossible for people to track the effect of anything but CPC.”
Joost de Valk Apr 12, 2023 ▶ 35:05 Joost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 28, 2023 negative
Opinion
Guo: Google, Amazon, and Apple are not leading the AI race
“I think you'd be hard pressed to say that, like, Google or Amazon or Apple is, like, leading the field here.”
Sarah Guo Apr 28, 2023 ▶ 25:13 Sarah Guo: On Her New $101M Fund; How AI Impacts Inequality; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1007 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 3, 2023 bullish
Opinion
Hankes: Disrupting Google Search Is a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity
“We're not talking about building the next unicorn or decacorn. We're talking about disrupting search or Google. I mean, that's a trillion dollar opportunity.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 17:02 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 3, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hankes: Best AI Talent Remains Heavily Clustered in Big Tech
“If you think about where the best talent in AI is right now, I think it's OpenAI, And then I think you'd, everyone would tell you it is Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon. And maybe there are folks that have kind of dripped their way into the startup…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 25:18 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 10, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Lauren Schwartz: Google used double-crediting sales commissions for parental leave
“When I was at Google, there was a double conch policy. So everyone wins and everyone's incentivized around the same thing.”
Lauren Schwartz May 10, 2023 ▶ 49:45 20Sales: How to Scale a Career While Scaling a Family; Work-Life Balance; Parental Leave | E1012 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 12, 2023 neutral
Opinion
Delangue: VC Interest in AI Lags Behind Years of Massive Usage
“The VC and the mainstream interest is kind of like a catch up on the reality. Because if you look at usage of AI, it's been massive and it's been growing massively for the past, you know, three years, right? Even before, before ChatGPT, even before like, you k…”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 5:25 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 12, 2023 positive
What-if
Delangue: Open Source Accelerated AI Progress by 30 to 50 Years
“Without open science, without open source, without Google sharing their attention is all you need paper, sharing their birth paper the latent diffusion paper. Maybe we would be 3040, 50 years away from where we are today.”
Clément Delangue May 12, 2023 ▶ 7:43 Clem Delangue: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in AI; Elon's Threat to Sue OpenAI | E1013 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
LeCun: All of OpenAI and the AI world runs on PyTorch
“ChatGPT was developed on PyTorch. Okay. All OpenAI runs on PyTorch. The entire world, in fact, runs on PyTorch, except Google, because they have their own thing, right?”
Yann LeCun May 15, 2023 ▶ 25:39 Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
LeCun: Meta and Google lagged OpenAI due to risk, not tech
“It's just that they didn't have the pressure to produce new products, completely new products that had a lot of risk attached to them.”
Yann LeCun May 15, 2023 ▶ 31:44 Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2023 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2028
LeCun: AI assistants will replace Google and Wikipedia for digital navigation
“People are probably going to use this almost exclusively in the future for their interaction with the digital world. You know, you're not going to go to Google or Wikipedia. You're just going to talk to your assistant.”
Yann LeCun May 15, 2023 ▶ 20:06 Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2023 negative
Assertion Contradicted
LeCun: All Google Transformer Paper Authors Have Left for Startups
“So you look at the original paper from Google about BERT or Transformers, right? The thing that revolutionized NLP, all of them have left. Okay. They're all in startups.”
Yann LeCun May 15, 2023 ▶ 1:02:04 Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2023 bearish
Prediction Held up
Mostaque: AI-synthesized search results will destroy digital media ad revenue
“I think he is right to be worried. Like, again, you look at Google's announcements yesterday, they were talking about this day after Palm Two, You suddenly look at the new Google page where they've got the language model, and it's just text, and where are the …”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 29:56 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2023 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mostaque: Google will be a primary winner in the AI race
“Google will be one of the main winners here. They have the LLMs, they have the hardware.”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 10:37 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Mostaque: Google's Med-PaLM 2 AI model exceeds doctor performance levels
“Now we have MedPOM-II that exceeds doctor levels. So that was a Google announcement yesterday.”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 5:08 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2023 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2028
Mostaque: Only five or six foundation model companies will survive
“I think that there's only going to be five or six foundation model companies in the world in three years, five years. ... I think it's going to be us, NVIDIA Google, Microsoft OpenAI, and Meta and Apple probably are the ones that train these models.”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 45:46 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2023 bullish
Prediction Held up
Mostaque: Google will spend $20 billion annually on AI
“Google will spend twenty billion dollars a year on AI.”
Emad Mostaque May 17, 2023 ▶ 46:20 Emad Mostaque: These 5 Companies Will Win the AI War; Why We Need National Data Sets | E1015 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 2, 2023 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hanks: Top AI talent remains heavily concentrated in big tech
“If you think about where the best talent in AI is right now, I think it's open AI. And then I think everyone would tell you it is Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon. And maybe there are folks that have kind of dripped their way into the startup ecosy…”
Vince Hankes Jun 2, 2023 ▶ 8:03 20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
Jun 16, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Google allocated product roadmaps 70/20/10 across incremental, growth, and moonshots
“They used to have this model, they called it the 70, 20, 10 model. And it's actually a pretty fascinating way of thinking about just a product roadmap and the distribution within it. So, 70% of the product Teams were focused on what are things that are known v…”
Noah Weiss Jun 16, 2023 ▶ 0:50 Noah Weiss: How to Master Product-Led Growth; Scaling PLG to Enterprise at Google & Slack | E1026 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 19, 2023 negative
Insight
Incentives and Legal Fears Kept Google and Meta From Leading LLMs
“Nobody could predict that LLMs would be so useful and powerful before you train one at this scale. And who in the Google org chart had the incentive to invest five hundred million dollars and just to see this without any business benefit for the company? If yo…”
Alex Lebrun Jun 19, 2023 ▶ 25:52 Alex Lebrun: Why the EU's AI Regulation is a Disaster; How Zuck Prepares for Meetings | E1027 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 30, 2023 negative
Opinion
Douwe Kiela: The leaked 'no AI moat' Google memo is completely wrong
“I think in terms of data modes and maybe you, you've seen this come by actually, there was this Google memo from an internal Google employee who had written that open AI and Google have no mode. I think for me as a AI researcher, when I read that memo, I was l…”
Douwe Kiela Jun 30, 2023 ▶ 23:45 Douwe Kiela: Why Data Size Matters More Than Model Size; Why Open Source Isn't Going to Win | E1032 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 12, 2023
Insight
Egan: Early startup sales hires require intellectual range over big-company logos
“I think for a founder who's hiring, I could absolutely see where the big logo hire does not work out. I think, again, what you're looking for there is intellectual range, and that often doesn't just show up from, by the fact that they worked at Microsoft or ca…”
Kevin Egan Jul 12, 2023 ▶ 20:22 Kevin Egan: Biggest Lesson on Managing Sales Teams at Slack and Atlassian | E1034 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jiménez: Google's size prevents individual execution without broad stakeholder partnerships
“You can't do anything on your own at Google. It is so big. It's so complex. There's so many layers and crossover of teams and initiatives and budgets and structures that you have to learn quickly that the stakeholder partnerships you make are critical to how y…”
Lori Jiménez Aug 2, 2023 ▶ 4:37 Lori Jiménez: How to Increase Sales; Hiring Tips from Google; Best Way to Grow Sales Teams | E1043 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 18, 2023 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Socher: Bing and Google copied You.com's AI chat features
“Bing and Google copy, you know, what we have launched last late last year with you chat. And you know, they may have worked on it before, like some people, you know, claim, oh, for, I mean, we've also met the prompt engineering in 2018, but like, they've copie…”
Richard Socher Aug 18, 2023 ▶ 39:38 Richard Socher: The 3 Biggest Barriers to Building AGI; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1050 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 18, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Socher: Google deranked You.com across all sites, causing immediate traffic drop
“We just got deranked in all our sites from Google and saw like a drop right away.”
Richard Socher Aug 18, 2023 ▶ 37:53 Richard Socher: The 3 Biggest Barriers to Building AGI; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1050 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 18, 2023 negative
Assertion Supported
Socher: Google Earns $500 Million Daily From Main Search Ads
“They make five hundred million dollars a day with privacy invading advertisements on that page.”
Richard Socher Aug 18, 2023 ▶ 40:30 Richard Socher: The 3 Biggest Barriers to Building AGI; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1050 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 18, 2023 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Socher: Google Will Transition Core Search to AI Chat Slowly
“And so there is still some innovators dilemma that will not make them change their main experience overnight. It's been very carefully tuned. Every shade of blue has been AB tested, you know, to death. And like you, it's very hard to make a massive change and …”
Richard Socher Aug 18, 2023 ▶ 40:59 Richard Socher: The 3 Biggest Barriers to Building AGI; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1050 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 bullish
Assertion Supported
Shazeer: B2C Products Proved Far Larger Than B2B Enterprise Search at Google
“I remember when I joined Google, there were, like, a lot of people working on this enterprise search appliance, which, you know, it was okay. Like, I think maybe somebody had this conventional wisdom that, like B to B is the only way to make money. But, like, …”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 2:57 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 31, 2023 positive
Insight
Shazeer: Launch General-Purpose Technology Directly to Billions of Consumers
“If you have a technology that is, like, really, really general and has billions of use cases and, like, ordinary people can use, like, launch it to billions of people.”
Noam Shazeer Aug 31, 2023 ▶ 2:44 Noam Shazeer: How We Spent $2M to Train a Single AI Model and Grew Character.ai to 20M Users | E1055 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 15, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Emad Mostaque: Google Spends $20 Billion per Year on AI
“Google spend twenty billion dollars a year on AI.”
Emad Mostaque Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 28:03 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 15, 2023 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Richard Socher: Bing and Google Copied YouChat Months After Its Launch
“We've also seen Bing and Google copy what we have launched late last year with you chat. They've copied us in the sense that we've launched it earlier and then they launched something very similar three to four months after.”
Richard Socher Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 21:29 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 15, 2023 bearish
Insight
Richard Socher: Google's Ad Revenue Creates an Innovator's Dilemma Against AI
“That kind of big change will be hard for Google too, because they make five hundred million dollars a day with privacy invading advertisements on that page. And so you don't just willy nilly change most of that page and you get rid of the five, six ads that ar…”
Richard Socher Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 21:50 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 22, 2023 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kleinerman: Data-rich incumbents will win the majority of AI value
“I would bias towards incumbents that have the data. So I would say, think of all the data that a company like Google has. Or that's public data, or not semi-public, but a lot of user data, or think all the private enterprise data that a company like Snowflake …”
Christian Kleinerman Sep 22, 2023 ▶ 32:27 Christian Kleinerman: Do OpenAI and Anthropic Have a Sustaining Moat? Who Wins the AI Wars? | E1063 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 27, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lanng: AI development shifted from corporate labs to Discord developers
“If you go back five, six years, it was like, AI was made by these, the cathedrals, like Google, and it was like, really serious scientists doing really serious stuff, and now people are hacking and LM models on Discord, and so, so we have this underground that…”
Christian Lanng Sep 27, 2023 ▶ 1:13:31 Christian Lanng: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me" | E1065 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 4, 2023 negative
Insight
Rosenberg: Never hire early sales leaders with big tech pedigree
“Harry, don't hire anybody from Google. Okay. Don't hire anybody that says on their LinkedIn, ex Google, ex Amazon, ex Facebook. Okay. When they put that on their LinkedIn, they're associating themselves with the success of the business. And it is almost imposs…”
Matt Rosenberg Oct 4, 2023 ▶ 14:10 Matt Rosenberg: Why You Should Not Hire Sales Leaders From Big Companies | E1068 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 6, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Rauch: Overweighting big-tech resume credentials was a past hiring mistake
“Sometimes I've placed more weight than I should have on this stellar linked list of awesome brands that you worked at. I did X at, let's just name random companies for the sake of it. Apple, Google, Amazon Netflix. And you look at that and you're like, well, f…”
Guillermo Rauch Oct 6, 2023 ▶ 21:26 Guillermo Rauch: Why Great Companies are Defined by How Many Things They Say No To | E1069 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 23, 2023 positive
Insight
Rouif: App store global distribution enables lean teams without sales staff
“I think there is the App Store story, which is a big part of it. Like, so Apple and Google, like, the App Store and mobile, they're giving you distribution. Yes, they take, like, a cut of it, but Basically, it means they offer, like, a worldwide distribution t…”
Matthieu Rouif Oct 23, 2023 ▶ 11:31 Matthieu Rouif: The Story of PhotoRoom, Is This YC’s Most Capital Efficient Company? | E1074 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 1, 2023 negative
Insight
Meyer: PM success at hypergrowth companies like 2000s Google is false attribution
“If you were at Google during the aughts, or, you know, you think it was because of you. It wasn't because of you know? So how they accomplish extraordinary things At companies that aren't ramping.”
David Meyer Nov 1, 2023 ▶ 20:02 David Meyer: Why You Should Hire People Who Aren’t In Product Already | E1076 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 15, 2023 positive
Insight
Traynor: AI intent-routing will give Apple Google-like dominance over app distribution
“If they become this really nice intermediary layer where you're You don't even pick the app you launch because that is a form of user selection we don't even want in our lives. You just say the thing you want to happen and leave it to Apple to work out what sh…”
Des Traynor Nov 15, 2023 ▶ 46:48 Des Traynor: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI | E1082 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 15, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Traynor: Google squandered its early AI leadership despite inventing Transformers
“Feels like Google, who kind of owned all this at the start, bear in mind with the original paper on Transformers, feels like they have, like, rescued defeat from the jaw of victories, in a sense.”
Des Traynor Nov 15, 2023 ▶ 41:04 Des Traynor: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI | E1082 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 15, 2023 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Traynor: Google could offer free Android phones funded by intent-layer bidding
“I could totally imagine Google doing a thing where they give away effectively free Android phones, powered by the fact That they now control the intent layer, which is when you say, okay, Google, call me a taxi. Google goes and they get you whatever taxi, whic…”
Des Traynor Nov 15, 2023 ▶ 47:36 Des Traynor: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI | E1082 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 20, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Eight Sleep reduced Facebook and Google acquisition costs by 75%
“Facebook or Google CAC now is probably, I think it's like, 75% lower than what it used to be two years ago.”
Matteo Franceschetti Nov 20, 2023 ▶ 12:36 Matteo Franceschetti: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | E1084 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 22, 2023 neutral
Opinion
Seibert: Google must go all-in on AI to prevent existential disruption
“They need to go all in on it. I don't think they have a choice. I agree with you. I think it's existential for them because if AI replaces search, their golden goose has been killed. And so it is way more effective to kill your own golden goose than let and wa…”
Jeff Seibert Nov 22, 2023 ▶ 34:42 Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 22, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Seibert: Google is the most vulnerable tech incumbent to AI disruption
“I think Google's by far the most vulnerable.”
Jeff Seibert Nov 22, 2023 ▶ 40:12 Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Opinion
Seibert: Google Photos is one of the most strategic products ever launched
“So Google Photos, Potentially one of the most strategic products ever launched, because it allowed Google to collect the world's largest library of photos ever assembled. And that's how they were able to train their early vision models and so on.”
Jeff Seibert Nov 22, 2023 ▶ 39:03 Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2023 bearish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Mostaque: Only 5 or 6 foundation model companies will exist in 3-5 years
“I think that there's only going to be five or six foundation model companies in the world in three years, five years. I think it's going to be us, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft OpenAI, and Meta and Apple probably are the ones that train these models.”
Emad Mostaque Nov 24, 2023 ▶ 0:55 The Ultimate AI Roundtable: What Happens Now in AI, Why Google are Vulnerable | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2023
Assertion Supported
Socher: Google generates $500M per day from search advertisements
“They make five hundred million dollars a day With privacy invading advertisements on that page.”
Richard Socher Nov 24, 2023 ▶ 28:19 The Ultimate AI Roundtable: What Happens Now in AI, Why Google are Vulnerable | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2023 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Seibert: Google delayed Gemini to Q1 due to poor performance
“They've just punted Gemini into Q one, which tells me it's not doing very well.”
Jeff Seibert Nov 24, 2023 ▶ 27:33 The Ultimate AI Roundtable: What Happens Now in AI, Why Google are Vulnerable | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2023 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
LeCun: Users will talk to AI assistants instead of searching Google or Wikipedia
“So people are probably going to use this almost exclusively in the future for their interaction with the digital world. You're not gonna go to Google or Wikipedia. You're just gonna talk to your assistant.”
Yann LeCun Nov 24, 2023 ▶ 20:59 The Ultimate AI Roundtable: What Happens Now in AI, Why Google are Vulnerable | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2023 negative
Insight
Rabois: Google's 20% time policy is catastrophic for non-monopoly startups
“If you have a monopoly, for example, Google has this 20%, you know, side project bullshit where they used to. If you have a monopoly business with 99% gross margins or 90% margins, maybe letting your employees waste time once in a while maybe isn't catastrophi…”
Keith Rabois Nov 27, 2023 ▶ 53:12 Keith Rabois & Mike Shebat: Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic| E1087 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2023 neutral
Insight
Rabois: Practices that work at Apple cannot work at Google
“Like, nothing that works at Apple would work at Google. Like, everything Google does is completely antithesis of Apple, and so that's why you have to have, like, a philosophy that accommodates successful examples, and then you apply that philosophy to what you…”
Keith Rabois Nov 27, 2023 ▶ 52:55 Keith Rabois & Mike Shebat: Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic| E1087 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 6, 2023 negative
Insight
PMs From Facebook and Google Often Lack Strong Product Intuition
“I've oftentimes you have PMs from, you know, the Facebooks and Googles of the world that are actually just good at testing. And moving metrics, but their intuition oftentimes isn't actually locked into customer research and actual customers.”
Geoff Charles Dec 6, 2023 ▶ 46:41 Geoff Charles: How To Hire Product Teams & Increase Product Velocity | E1091 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 20, 2023 bearish
Prediction Held up
Söderström: Spotify will not build general frontier AI models to compete
“So that's why, you know, there's no point in trying to compete with them for us because we don't even have the same goal. So we're trying to build exactly the things that we don't think they will build. And we would buy the things that they will build or someo…”
Gustav Söderström Dec 20, 2023 ▶ 27:17 Roundtable #7: Spotify, Adobe and Linkedin on How AI Changes The Future of Product & Design | E1097 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 8, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tomaino: Big tech engineers enter crypto in bull markets, leave in bear
“They always come during bull markets and then leave during bear markets.”
Nick Tomaino Jan 8, 2024 ▶ 25:29 Crypto Roundtable with Nick Tomaino & Kyle Samani: US Elections, NFTs, and Trump | E1100 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 19, 2024
Disclosure
Google and Microsoft rejected Zaria Parvez's job applications out of college
“I've been rejected from big brands for jobs and I was applying out of college because I, my resume, I can send it to you after this, but it's definitely not a traditional resume. It's very different. It's very, it's unhinged. And my whole like life mantra was …”
Zaria Parvez Jan 19, 2024 ▶ 40:06 Zaria Parvez: How Duolingo Scaled to 8M TikTok Followers & How to Create Viral Content | E1105 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 4, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Microsoft is the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund's largest equity position
“Our biggest position is Microsoft. We have big, very big positions in you know, Nvidia, AMD. Alphabet. You name them, we have. Those are our biggest positions.”
Nicolai Tangen Mar 4, 2024 ▶ 23:05 Nicolai Tangen: Managing the Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund in the World | E1122 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 27, 2024 negative
Opinion
Dixon: Only ~1,000 Google employees build cutting-edge products
“Google has 300,000 employees or something. The vast majority are doing customer service, product management. They're maintaining old products. They're doing bureaucratic, you know, PowerPoints, arguing over politics. I don't know what they do, but like, I bet …”
Chris Dixon Mar 27, 2024 ▶ 34:41 Chris Dixon: Who Will Win the Next Generation of Venture? | E1132 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 8, 2024 negative
Opinion
Lehmann: Google went from most respected company to laughingstock over AI
“This is Google that you're talking about, and they shed the bed so hard. They literally just went from like the most respected company in the world to laughing stock in a matter of month.”
Bastian Lehmann Apr 8, 2024 ▶ 58:01 Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 10, 2024
Opinion
Ryan: DoubleClick dominates ad tech today because it won its first five years
“The reason today, which is literally more than 25 years later, that DoubleClick, which is part of Google, dominates the world in ad technology is because we won the battle of the first five years.”
Kevin Ryan Apr 10, 2024 ▶ 7:26 Kevin Ryan: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers & Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC|E1138 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 10, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ryan: AI disruption could displace Google as top search engine within 5 years
“We don't know five years from now if Google's gonna be the number one search engine. There's a chance that's a disruptive technology that allows it to change.”
Kevin Ryan Apr 10, 2024 ▶ 21:06 Kevin Ryan: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers & Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC|E1138 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 19, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mathrubootham: Generative engine optimization will replace SEO for software marketing
“Now we have generative engine optimization, right? Like if a lot of people are going to go to ChatGPT and ask about, hey which software should I use? How do we make sure that the AI models are trained to tell customers that Freshworks is a great product? So, s…”
Girish Mathrubootham Apr 19, 2024 ▶ 13:32 Girish Mathrubootham: Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR | E1142 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 20, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Users will replace Google search with ChatGPT for software product discovery
“तो यही भविश्य है लोग खोज के लिए Google पर नहीं जा रहे हैं बलकि चैट GPT पर जा रहे हैं इसलिए हमें वह करने की जरूरत है”
Girish Mathrubootham Apr 20, 2024 ▶ 15:19 Girish Mathrubootham (HINDI): Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 8, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Hulme: GV manages $10B with 10 to 20-year holding periods
“So our approach at GV is primarily be founder first, and we can take a very long time. You know, we have ten billion dollars under management. Alphabet does not put us under time pressure. We're less worried about IRR than we are absolute returns. And so we fo…”
Tom Hulme May 8, 2024 ▶ 41:34 Tom Hulme: Lessons from a 24x Angel Track Record, 275x on Robinhood & Making Billions on Uber |E1150 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2024 negative
Opinion
Siroker: Google Wave, Buzz, and Glass were technology in search of problems
“Google's notorious for building products that are technology in search of problems. Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Glass, like, all of these products were basically some smart engineer or technologist starting the sentence with, Wouldn't it be cool if, dot, …”
Dan Siroker May 15, 2024 ▶ 1:00:42 Dan Siroker: Second-Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College |E1153 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 17, 2024 bullish
Prediction Held up
Zhang: OpenAI will aggressively compete with Google in web search
“They just hired the search leader from Google. Like, they are gonna go after that space, which is, like, the most lucrative space, and also a space that, you know, should be innovated on.”
Jiaona Zhang May 17, 2024 ▶ 56:28 Jiaona Zhang: Why All Product Teams Should Have a Scorecard & How to Use It | E1154 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 20, 2024
Insight
Arora: Top tech companies achieve product-market fit for unexpected reasons
“Very rarely is it that your first incarnation of your product has perfect product market fit. That's very rare. You really, you know, if you look at the largest companies today, they were all created for a different reason and they ended up getting product mar…”
Nikesh Arora May 20, 2024 ▶ 13:41 Nikesh Arora: Lessons from $102BN Market Cap & How to Create & Sustain Competitive Advantage | E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 20, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Nikesh Arora Opposed Google's Acquisition of Android
“At Google, I was very stroppy with Eric when they bought Android. And I said, Eric, I used to work in the mobile industry. I thought he hired me for my experience. And we shouldn't be buying Android.”
Nikesh Arora May 20, 2024 ▶ 29:28 Nikesh Arora: Lessons from $102BN Market Cap & How to Create & Sustain Competitive Advantage | E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 22, 2024 bullish
Assertion Supported
Levie: AI context windows grew 500x in 18 months
“The token context window was more or less, I think, 4000 tokens. So you kind of give it like a blog post to analyze just in the past, you know, week at Google IO Sundar announced a two million token window model or version of Gemini. So think about that. That'…”
Aaron Levie May 22, 2024 ▶ 8:00 Aaron Levie: How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever & Startups vs Incumbents:Who Wins?|E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 22, 2024 positive
Opinion
Levie: Google now has religion on AI
“And I think, you know, Google IO is merely the, you know, another moment of it manifesting that, that, that, that company has religion now on AI.”
Aaron Levie May 22, 2024 ▶ 35:01 Aaron Levie: How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever & Startups vs Incumbents:Who Wins?|E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 24, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Emad Mostaque: Google spends $20 billion annually on artificial intelligence
“Google spend twenty billion dollars a year on AI.”
Emad Mostaque May 24, 2024 ▶ 10:41 Sam Altman, Arthur Mensch and more discuss:Which Startups Are Threatened vs Enabled by OpenAI?|E1156 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2024 negative
Opinion
Srinivas: Google failed to align user experience and shareholder interests
“This is where Google got it wrong because asymptotically they couldn't achieve that alignment between the user that is you using Google and the shareholder. Wall Street loves it when Google puts more ads. You hate it.”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 5, 2024 ▶ 40:16 Aravind Srinivas:Will Foundation Models Commoditise & Diminishing Returns in Model Performance|E1161 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2024 negative
Opinion
Srinivas: Competing with OpenAI on base models is a terrible arena
“If there are companies that are working on Foundation model competitor to OpenAI. It is definitely like one of the worst arenas to be part of. Almost like I think there are five men standing today sort of thing. Google, and Anthropic, Meta Mistral, and you can…”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 5, 2024 ▶ 22:50 Aravind Srinivas:Will Foundation Models Commoditise & Diminishing Returns in Model Performance|E1161 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2024 positive
Opinion
Srinivas: Click-based advertising is the best business model in 50 years
“Whatever we criticize Google for, the greatest business model, like, in the last 50 years is that click-based advertising. It's just insanely good business model. 80% margins.”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 5, 2024 ▶ 35:50 Aravind Srinivas:Will Foundation Models Commoditise & Diminishing Returns in Model Performance|E1161 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 10, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
US Tech Giants Have Legal Autonomy That Chinese Counterparts Lack
“Google does not work for the US government. Microsoft does not work for the US government. There is, there's ways they're accountable by law, but they have to go through a legal process for that kind of thing. And so, given that legal process doesn't exist wit…”
Reid Hoffman Jun 10, 2024 ▶ 57:56 Reid Hoffman: The Future of TikTok and The Inflection AI Deal | E1163 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 10, 2024 bearish
Insight
Startups Cannot Finance Pre-Revenue Billion-Dollar AI Compute Runs
“Look, if you're saying what really matters is, like, the driving function here will be the billion dollar compute run to make this model, it'll be very difficult for startups to do that, right? I mean, even in this more modern global venture capital where star…”
Reid Hoffman Jun 10, 2024 ▶ 27:22 Reid Hoffman: The Future of TikTok and The Inflection AI Deal | E1163 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 10, 2024 negative
Assertion Supported
ChatGPT's Release Forced Google Onto Red Alert After Delaying Transformers
“Google Brain invents the kind of transformer and publishes it, and it's kind of bouncing around as kind of a research project, and it takes OpenAI developing it, scaling it, and releasing it as ChatGPT for Google to go on red alert and go, oh my god, we should…”
Reid Hoffman Jun 10, 2024 ▶ 32:02 Reid Hoffman: The Future of TikTok and The Inflection AI Deal | E1163 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 21, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Revolut team handed out cards in Google and Uber cafeterias
“We went to all the big tech companies like Google, Uber in our lunch break to hand out cards in their cafeteria.”
Val Scholz Jun 21, 2024 ▶ 12:33 Val Scholz: How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users: Tips, Tactics & Strategies | E1168 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 24, 2024 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Luan: Google's TPU team had under 500 people on a shoestring budget
“I think the TPU team when I was at Google was, like, sub-five hundred people and their budget was a shoestring budget, and yet somehow every generation they taped out quite good chips that were then used to train Gemini and Palm and are used by third parties n…”
David Luan Jun 24, 2024 ▶ 27:36 David Luan: Why Nvidia Will Enter the Model Space & Models Will Enter the Chip Space | E1169 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 28, 2024 negative
Insight
Vasavada: Premature Unicorn Status Attracts Corporate Recruits Over Builders
“The type of people you recruit when they see that you're a billion dollar business aren't focused on, we have a value advice called burn the boats. They're not focused on burning the boats. They're focused on a stable career and growing within an organization …”
Samir Vasavada Jun 28, 2024 ▶ 15:27 Samir Vasavada: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires | E1171 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: Big Tech cloud credits distort AI market valuations
“With the rise of corporate investing with Amazon investing with Google investing with Your largest cloud providers investing. They are no longer purely incentivized by the price of the deal. They're incentivized by the partnership, by the cloud credits. That's…”
Harry Stebbings Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 5:13 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 19, 2024 negative
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Adams: Paid AI add-ons will commoditize into standard tiers
“I think in the short term, it might allow them to make more money. So, like, I think Microsoft and Google both have add-on packages that you pay for to get access to their AI stuff. I think that's a very short-term thing where it'll just become commoditized, p…”
Cameron Adams Jul 19, 2024 ▶ 22:21 Cameron Adams: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? | E1179 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 19, 2024 positive
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Adams: LLM market will mirror cloud infrastructure competition
“There's still a huge amount of competition there, and I think exactly the same will happen with LLMs. They'll be innovating, you know, Google will add a feature, OpenAI will add a feature, some other startup that we don't even know about yet will add a feature…”
Cameron Adams Jul 19, 2024 ▶ 20:55 Cameron Adams: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? | E1179 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 19, 2024 negative
Insight
Adams: Google Wave failed because 2007 browsers and users were unready
“Google wave itself, like the project I work on at Google was really prescient in what it wanted to do in terms of real time communications and collaborations. But it was early for a bunch of reasons, like browsers weren't quite ready. People weren't quite read…”
Cameron Adams Jul 19, 2024 ▶ 4:47 Cameron Adams: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? | E1179 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 22, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hartz: Michael Moritz faked a phone call to avoid founders
“I always remember seeing Michael Moritz speak, give a talk about Google in the early 2000, and there were all these founders there, and he puts his phone up to his face and pretends to talk, and then, like, walks out of the building, you know, and so nobody wo…”
Kevin Hartz Jul 22, 2024 ▶ 36:55 Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 24, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Lemkin: Wiz acquisition faces greater antitrust hurdles than Adobe-Figma
“If Figma could be blocked, I actually think Wiz is, is more competitive to, there's more antitrust, even though I don't think it should be blocked remotely,”
Jason Lemkin Jul 24, 2024 ▶ 5:41 Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 24, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Lemkin: Google's $23B buyout offer for Wiz was not overpriced
“So I don't think, ironically, it's, I don't think it was overpriced. I do think it might have been a good deal for the investors because you avoid so much dilution and risk.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 24, 2024 ▶ 1:59 Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 24, 2024 neutral
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin: Wiz must IPO within 18 months after rejecting Google bid
“When the CEOs in, in, in, in the letter to the team says, we're going to go public instead, you got to do it in the next 18 months or so.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 24, 2024 ▶ 20:08 Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 26, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Only 10 to 15% of Remittance Customers Search Google Before Transferring
“There's still a bunch of the market, not much, so I'd say about 10, 15% of the market, that will Google before they send money.”
Nilan Peiris Jul 26, 2024 ▶ 16:18 Nilan Peiris: What Growth Hacks Worked and What Did Not, from Wise CPO | E1182 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 31, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Mollick: Google used his wife's prompt as a fine-tuning benchmark
“Google used her prompt as the gold standard to measure their fine tuned models against.”
Ethan Mollick Jul 31, 2024 ▶ 33:01 Ethan Mollick: Why OpenAl Abandons Products, The Biggest Opportunities They Have Not Taken | E1184 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 5, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Cahn: The $250B Cloud Infrastructure Market Equals the Entire SaaS Sector
“This cloud business today is a two hundred and fifty billion dollar business. So the cloud business today is the same size as the SaaS sector. That's the business that Azure, Google and AWS control is the same size as the entire SaaS sector.”
David Cahn Aug 5, 2024 ▶ 11:47 David Cahn: Why Servers, Steel and Power Are the Pillars Powering the Future of AI | E1186 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 5, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cahn: Big Tech AI Spending Is Speculative, Not a Guarantee of Revenue
“The wrong takeaway is, oh, Google knows something we don't know, and therefore is making this investment, and therefore hundreds of billions of dollars of AI revenue are guaranteed in the next two years. That's the extrapolation I think people were making that…”
David Cahn Aug 5, 2024 ▶ 9:29 David Cahn: Why Servers, Steel and Power Are the Pillars Powering the Future of AI | E1186 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Insight
Sturdy: Single-LP Model Frees CapitalG From Artificial Sales Pressures
“And that's a huge advantage for us because it means that we can invest and hold over the long term and why we're so obsessed with finding generational companies that will compound over the long term because that creates incredible Money on money and incredible…”
Laela Sturdy Aug 16, 2024 ▶ 38:25 Laela Sturdy: Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund | E1190 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 16, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
CapitalG Targets 3-5x Returns in Growth Deals and 10x Early Stage
“So we underwrite three to five X returns, money on money returns. And you know, depending on the stage. So if it's really early, it will be 10 X, but the core of what we do in growth is three to five X money on money returns.”
Laela Sturdy Aug 16, 2024 ▶ 37:58 Laela Sturdy: Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund | E1190 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 26, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Khan: Larry Page called the AOL revenue-share deal Google's most transformative
“Larry said that the most transformative thing Google did was the AOL deal. Because AOL, they gave them a 95% revenue share when AOL search box was powered by Google.”
Imran Khan Aug 26, 2024 ▶ 44:09 Imran Khan: Why the IPO Market is Not Closed & Lessons From Taking Snap & Alibaba Public | E1194 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 26, 2024 negative
Opinion
Khan: Wiz likely made a mistake rejecting Google's $23 billion buyout offer
“When a business is very small, it's very easy to look at the business saying that, hey, this could be a great business, and in a ways very much could be, I don't know, but the reality is, you know, how many times we have seen that every 50 companies we look at…”
Imran Khan Aug 26, 2024 ▶ 25:47 Imran Khan: Why the IPO Market is Not Closed & Lessons From Taking Snap & Alibaba Public | E1194 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 30, 2024
Assertion Supported
Uber manually onboarded its first million drivers without major digital ad spend
“For probably the first million drivers that we onboarded, a lot of our processes were manual, right? So we weren't doing a lot of like paid spend on Facebook. We were doing a little bit on Craigslist. We weren't doing a ton on Google, but it was really the ope…”
Scott Gorlick Aug 30, 2024 ▶ 7:19 Scott Gorlick: How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers & The Uber’s Expansion Playbook | E1196 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 20, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Carter: Apple and Google will lower App Store fees within 10 years
“I do think that there may be some factors over the next 10 years that start to make this a little bit easier. For example, 15 to 30% app store fees. I think Google and Apple are under increasing pressure to lower the average app store fee, at least in certain …”
Phil Carter Sep 20, 2024 ▶ 40:42 Phil Carter: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Discounts, Paywalls... | E1204 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 20, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Phil Carter: Ladder's Facebook and Google ads failed completely during pandemic
“They tried during the pandemic to just run Facebook and Google ads like everyone else. And it didn't work at all. It was an abysmal failure.”
Phil Carter Sep 20, 2024 ▶ 1:22:12 Phil Carter: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Discounts, Paywalls... | E1204 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 23, 2024
Assertion Partly supported
Dmitry Gurski: Flo team achieved six startup exits including Google and Facebook
“We had six exits up to this moment. We had exit to Google, exit to Facebook, ah, we started several companies, ah which have has revenue in a 100,000,050 million.”
Dmitry Gurski Sep 23, 2024 ▶ 6:44 Dmitry Gurski: From Potato Farm to $200M in Revenue: The Never-Before-Told Story of Flo Health|E1205 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 7, 2024 bullish
Prediction Held up
Kant: Poolside, OpenAI, and Anthropic will rival Big Tech in AI
“What I would like to see and what I think is going to happen is that it's not just Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. It's going to be, you know, an open eye, an anthropic, a poolside, and a set of companies who are able to get that massive escape velocity needed …”
Eiso Kant Oct 7, 2024 ▶ 53:29 Eiso Kant, CTO @Poolside: Raising $600M To Compete in the Race for AGI | E1211 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 7, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Eiso Kant: NVIDIA, Google, and Amazon Lead AI Hardware Volume
“The reason I mentioned those three specifically is that they are all building extremely large volume of chips. And constantly iterating on faster and better and better generations of chips for training and for inference. They're, for me, the three primary play…”
Eiso Kant Oct 7, 2024 ▶ 37:47 Eiso Kant, CTO @Poolside: Raising $600M To Compete in the Race for AGI | E1211 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 7, 2024
Assertion Supported
Kant: Google relies on Broadcom for TPUs while Amazon works with fabs
“Because while Google has to work with Broadcom to be able to bring TPUs into the world, Amazon is working with the fabs directly.”
Eiso Kant Oct 7, 2024 ▶ 20:13 Eiso Kant, CTO @Poolside: Raising $600M To Compete in the Race for AGI | E1211 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 7, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Kant: Poolside deliberately excluded Google, Microsoft, and Amazon from $500M round
“If look at our capital raise, our last five hundred million dollar round, you'll see that there's none of the big hyperscalers, Google, Microsoft, you know, Amazon were part of the round.”
Eiso Kant Oct 7, 2024 ▶ 43:43 Eiso Kant, CTO @Poolside: Raising $600M To Compete in the Race for AGI | E1211 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Wang: SCGE holds neither a long nor short position in Google
“We're not either long or short Google”
Jeff Wang Oct 9, 2024 ▶ 46:19 Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Wang: Disregarding Google at Stanford taught me not to underestimate disruption
“Probably not taking Google more seriously. So I was at Stanford at the time of its founding. I was even a section leader for Marissa Mayer for a computer science class where she was a lecturer. And so I heard about it from her too. And I just thought to myself…”
Jeff Wang Oct 9, 2024 ▶ 1:10:15 Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Wang: Google faces more threats today than ever before in its history
“I do think there are more threats on Google's business than there have been ever in the company's history.”
Jeff Wang Oct 9, 2024 ▶ 0:00 Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 11, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Grimm: Defense will never be a venture-style winner-take-all market
“I don't think there will ever be a kind of venture style dynamic of a winner take all. I don't think this is a situation of like Google versus Yahoo where, where one is the obvious dominant winner by 10 X and then there's the other rands. I don't think that's …”
Matt Grimm Nov 11, 2024 ▶ 32:46 Matt Grimm, Co-Founder @Anduril: How a Trump Administration Changes the Defence Industry | E1224 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 13, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Villig: Google heavily subsidizes Waymo rides to mask high operational costs
“Yeah, but there's a difference between price and cost. Google is one of the wealthiest companies on the planet. They can keep on subsidizing millions of rights for a long time. That doesn't mean the cost structure is there.”
Markus Villig Nov 13, 2024 ▶ 1:13:58 Markus Villig, Founder @Bolt: The Most Insane Story in Startups & The Future of Self-Driving| E1225 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 15, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Malik: Perplexity's ultimate target is competing directly against Google
“I think search is a massive market to go after, and so if there's somewhere we want to live, it's going up against the big guy.”
Raman Malik Nov 15, 2024 ▶ 43:23 Raman Malik: Inside Perplexity’s Growth Machine: What Worked, What Did Not Work | E1226 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 29, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Podjarny: Perplexity won't succeed as expected due to Google's dominant search moat
“I still think perplexity is not going to go as far as people think. Mostly not because of OpenAI, but because of Google.”
Guy Podjarny Nov 29, 2024 ▶ 24:50 Guy Podjarny: The Future of AI Software Development - What is Real & What is BS | E1232 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 29, 2024 negative
Opinion
Podjarny: Google is terrible at product development except for search
“Google is generally pretty terrible at product on many fronts, but the one product in which they actually do a pretty good job is the search product, and they have all the traffic.”
Guy Podjarny Nov 29, 2024 ▶ 25:21 Guy Podjarny: The Future of AI Software Development - What is Real & What is BS | E1232 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 29, 2024 bullish
Insight
Podjarny: Google doesn't need to innovate to beat Perplexity, just copy it
“I don't think they have the product jobs, but I think they have the advantage of such, like, incredible distribution and access to the users that they don't actually need to invent what perplexity is doing. They can copy it.”
Guy Podjarny Nov 29, 2024 ▶ 26:22 Guy Podjarny: The Future of AI Software Development - What is Real & What is BS | E1232 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 4, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Arison: Ads represent 15% of Grindr revenue without app store fees
“Ads are about 15% of our revenue in, in total, but obviously on a margin basis, they're even higher percentage, because it's a very profitable part of the business, and we don't have to pay the Apple and Google taxes on that revenue.”
George Arison Dec 4, 2024 ▶ 36:43 George Arison, Grindr CEO: How Grindr Built a Free Flow Cash Machine | E1234 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 16, 2024 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Hoffman: DeepMind algorithms reduced Google data center electricity usage by 15%
“It was, I think, five, seven, eight years ago, DeepMind ran their algorithms on Google's data centers and figured out how to save 15% of the electricity.”
Reid Hoffman Dec 16, 2024 ▶ 26:31 Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn & Paypal Founder: Trump Administration, Elon Musk and DOGE | E1239 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 16, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hoffman: Nvidia will remain strong despite tech giants building rival chips
“So both, NVIDIA's business will continue to go very strongly because they have an amazing Lead, currently, in amazing chips, and there is you know, massive demand for their chips for doing compute, and many players, Google, Amazon, others, including AMD, are b…”
Reid Hoffman Dec 16, 2024 ▶ 48:04 Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn & Paypal Founder: Trump Administration, Elon Musk and DOGE | E1239 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 8, 2025 bearish
Disclosure
Dan Gill would pass on investing in OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI
“I wouldn't invest in any of them. I think that the foundational models are trending towards commoditization and it's gonna be difficult to capture all of the gains relative to what, you know, Google, Google can capture and Microsoft can capture and others.”
Dan Gill Jan 8, 2025 ▶ 1:04:37 Dan Gill, CPO @Carvana: The Most Wild Story in Public Markets | E1243 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Pishevar: Uber's Series D valuation was negotiated up to $17B from $10B
“So that Series D, like a year after the Series C, which Google and TPG did, that was at three billion. This was at seventeen billion, and we started off at 10. So, Emil was able to negotiate from, like, 10, eleven billion valuation to 17, because there was so …”
Shervin Pishevar Jan 13, 2025 ▶ 31:04 Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross: Google spent 10x to 20x more on AI inference than training
“At Google, we always ended up spending 10 to 20 times as much on the inference as training back when I was there.”
Jonathan Ross Jan 29, 2025 ▶ 20:23 Jonathan Ross: DeepSeek Special - How Should OpenAI and the US Government Respond | E1253 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2025
Assertion Supported
Ross: Google announced first zero-day exploit found by an LLM
“Google just announced recently the first zero day exploit found by an LLM that was previously unknown.”
Jonathan Ross Jan 29, 2025 ▶ 54:45 Jonathan Ross: DeepSeek Special - How Should OpenAI and the US Government Respond | E1253 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 10, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ramaswamy: Microsoft's Live.com Had Better Image Search Than Google
“It will amuse you to know that Live.com, which is a predecessor to Bing, Had the better image search. They had the best image search. Google did not.”
Sridhar Ramaswamy Feb 10, 2025 ▶ 46:08 Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO @Snowflake: Deepseek is Not a Threat to OpenAI & OpenAI Beats Anthropic|E1258 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 10, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Ramaswamy: Google Succeeded Early Because AOL and Yahoo Neglected Search
“Yahoo and AOL. Early on. Those were the entry points. AOL didn't know how to do a search. Yahoo didn't think search was important.”
Sridhar Ramaswamy Feb 10, 2025 ▶ 48:16 Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO @Snowflake: Deepseek is Not a Threat to OpenAI & OpenAI Beats Anthropic|E1258 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 10, 2025 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Ramaswamy: Google Paid AOL Over 100% Revenue Share in Early Deal
“If I remember correctly, the, we paid AOL more money than we made. This was like a hundred plus percent ref share.”
Sridhar Ramaswamy Feb 10, 2025 ▶ 48:28 Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO @Snowflake: Deepseek is Not a Threat to OpenAI & OpenAI Beats Anthropic|E1258 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 10, 2025 positive
Opinion
Ramaswamy: OpenAI and Anthropic Lead AI; Google Gemini Is Fast Follow
“It's OpenAI and Anthropic that have created the best models on the planet for the last three years. It's not Microsoft. It's not Amazon. It's not Google. It looks like, you know, Gemini is good, but let's face it, it's at best a fast follow.”
Sridhar Ramaswamy Feb 10, 2025 ▶ 25:29 Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO @Snowflake: Deepseek is Not a Threat to OpenAI & OpenAI Beats Anthropic|E1258 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 17, 2025 negative
Opinion
Ross: LLMs are better than search, forcing Google to reinvent itself
“Now, Google, ah, has to redo this because LLMs are better than search, right?”
Jonathan Ross Feb 17, 2025 ▶ 45:23 Jonathan Ross, Founder & CEO @ Groq: NVIDIA vs Groq - The Future of Training vs Inference | E1260 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 24, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Morin: Google TPUs lack commercial success outside of Google
“They are very much successful inside of Google, but not much outside of Google, let's say, right?”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 16:21 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 24, 2025 negative
Insight
Morin: Cloud compute hoarding creates fake AI GPU scarcity
“So in, in the case of, you know, Amazon or Google, that would be buying reserved compute, which you're not going to use because if you buy it on demand, you will get tremendously ripped off. So that creates this like face scarcity of compute because that peopl…”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 22:35 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 24, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Morin: Google is the sleeping giant of the AI race
“Google has, like, you know, Android, Google Docs, Whatever, they have everything, they can sprinkle everywhere. This is the sleeping giant in my mind.”
Steeve Morin Feb 24, 2025 ▶ 0:24 Steeve Morin: Why Google Will Win the AI Arms Race & OpenAI Will Not | E1262 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 3, 2025 positive
Opinion
Krieger: Google Gemini benefits significantly from training on YouTube video data
“It's actually clear to me that Gemini benefits from that. Like whenever they have like a good, like video understanding demo, for example, I'm like, well, I, Somebody has like probably the largest repository of video in the world and can likely train on a lot …”
Mike Krieger Mar 3, 2025 ▶ 30:27 Mike Krieger, Instagram CoFounder & Anthropic CPO: Where Will Value Be Created in an AI World?|E1265 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 5, 2025
Disclosure
Osika: Anthropic's Claude is Lovable's main workhorse for code generation
“We use all of OpenAI's models, Google, Gemini, and the main workhorse is Anthropic's cloud model for writing the code.”
Anton Osika Mar 5, 2025 ▶ 36:23 Anton Osika, Co-Founder and CEO @ Lovable: Hitting 85% Day 30 Retention - Better than ChatGPT · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 14, 2025 negative
Opinion
Biilmann: Google has failed to productize generative AI compellingly
“If I look at Google's products, like I now have all these Genesis buttons all over and I never use them. They just haven't managed to productize it in a way that feels super compelling.”
Matt Biilmann Mar 14, 2025 ▶ 0:14 20Product: How to Design and Build Products in a World of Agents | Why AI Will Kill Many SaaS Products | What Products Will Thrive and Die in a World of 100M Developers with Matt Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify
Mar 19, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Stebbings: Google is one of the most unappreciated AI opportunities
“Well, this is why actually I think Google is one of the most, like unappreciated companies right now. When you look at the distribution endpoints that they have to consumers and what they can do with AI, they are by far one of the most exciting opportunities.”
Harry Stebbings Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 1:05:15 Peter Singlehurst: Lessons from Turning Down Stripe, Coinbase and Losing Money on Northvalt · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Torres: Google AI products don't work and Notebook LM is already dead
“They invented this Transformers paper, and everything they put out doesn't work. Like Notebook LM, the great one, like it's already dead, right? The project. So it's like they're trying so hard, but they can't do it.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 12:37 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 24, 2025 positive
Insight
Feldman: Milliseconds of latency destroy user attention in interactive AI
“What we know is that in interactive mode, milliseconds matter. In interactive mode, what Urs Holtz over at Google years ago showed was that you can destroy your user's attention With milliseconds of delay. So being the fastest matters everything in that domain…”
Andrew Feldman Mar 24, 2025 ▶ 16:04 Andrew Feldman, Cerebras Co-Founder and CEO: The AI Chip Wars & The Plan to Break Nvidia's Dominance · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 26, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Green: Only a few VCs can repeatedly back generational giants
“I put on one hand the amount of people that are capable of backing companies like Google's and Facebook's of the world, and doing it more than once. Like, it's a really, really, really small group. It sure as heck isn't me.”
Mitchell Green Mar 26, 2025 ▶ 56:43 Mitchell Green, Founder @ Lead Edge Capital: Why Traditional VC is Broken · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 18, 2025 negative
Insight
Socher: Google's AI struggles stem from ad-model innovator dilemma, not tech
“I think it's never been a question of technical strength for Google. It's just a question of classic innovator's dilemma. You make money by showing ads and lists or blue links. So it's hard to give people just a straightforward, useful answer.”
Richard Socher Apr 18, 2025 ▶ 18:34 20VC: Foundation Models: Who Wins & Who Loses | How Economies and Labour Markets Need to Change in a World of AI | China vs the US in an AI Race: What You Need to Know | Rich Socher, Founder @ You.com
Apr 18, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Socher: LLMs will capture search whenever queries are complex
“And so LMs as part of that unbundling wave of Google, LMs will capture whenever you have a more complex question.”
Richard Socher Apr 18, 2025 ▶ 13:57 20VC: Foundation Models: Who Wins & Who Loses | How Economies and Labour Markets Need to Change in a World of AI | China vs the US in an AI Race: What You Need to Know | Rich Socher, Founder @ You.com
Apr 25, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Gupta: Kraken, Spotify, and Google achieved initial growth without marketing
“The first phase of growth was purely product-led, where marketing did not exist? And this is true for Kraken, true for Spotify, true for Google, because the first phase of growth was either reality, network effects, or just a brilliant product in a category an…”
Mayur Gupta Apr 25, 2025 ▶ 9:14 20Growth: Inside Kraken's $1.5BN Growth Playbook: What Works, What Doesn't and What No Founders Understand About Growth That Will Change Their Company with Mayur Gupta
May 1, 2025 negative
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Box's valuation suffers from competing against free Microsoft and Google
“The reason the stock price is always hard is we're competing against Microsoft and Google who give it away for free.”
Rory O'Driscoll May 1, 2025 ▶ 51:41 What Does it Take to Be Good at Series A and B Today? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 19, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hacker: Luis von Ahn initially resisted hiring product managers at Duolingo
“I was the one who pushed for hiring our first product manager. It was actually interesting because Luis at the time, he's like, oh, we don't need product managers. He's, he had seen some of them at Google. His previous company was acquired by Google. So he had…”
Severin Hacker May 19, 2025 ▶ 53:47 Duolingo Co-Founder, Severin Hacker: How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Education · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 22, 2025
What-if
O'Driscoll: A delayed Google IPO would have set a $140B exit benchmark
“If Google had stayed private one year longer, Google's market cap in the end of oh five, it was about a hundred and forty billion dollars. If they just stayed private another year, The entire data would be swamped by the fact that, oh my God, the biggest ventu…”
Rory O'Driscoll May 22, 2025 ▶ 32:42 Rippling vs. Deel Lawsuit: WTF Happens Now? The Future of the Late Stage Private Market · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 23, 2025 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Harries: ElevenLabs Founders Aim to Build a Company Larger Than Google
“Matty and Peter literally want to build a bigger company than Google. They want to build something absolutely massive.”
Luke Harries May 23, 2025 ▶ 13:29 20VC: ElevenLabs Head of Growth on Why You Do Not Need PMs | The 7-Part Launch Playbook That Gets 700K+ Views Per Product | The Truth About CAC, Payback & Performance Marketing in AI with Luke Harries
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Varun Mohan: Open-sourcing Windsurf front end would not harm adoption or success
“I don't think it would affect, affect much if we had to make it open source, because most of the work that it's kind of like the thing I said before, right? You know, Google is, yeah, they have a front end, but the front end is just a single box. And if they o…”
Varun Mohan Jun 2, 2025 ▶ 1:02:14 Windsurf CEO & Co-Founder, Varun Mohan: AI's Biggest Acquisition to Date! · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2025 positive
Insight
O'Driscoll: Non-generational Series A investments can still generate meaningful returns
“The overextrapolation of the only three deals make money, so therefore everything else at series A is burning money is just, I mean, it's true in that you prefer to be in Google, but it's not the only way to make money.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 5, 2025 ▶ 18:29 Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2025 bearish
Prediction Held up
O'Driscoll: OpenAI misses next year's revenue target by 40% if growth matches Google
“If all OpenAI is, Is just as good as Google, then it's going to miss its number next year by about 40%.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 5, 2025 ▶ 47:06 Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 12, 2025 neutral
Prediction Held up
O'Driscoll: Sundar Pichai won't leave Google, but won't solve AI threat
“So my guess is by far the prior, the most likely outcome is not leave, just continue to manage what you've got reasonably well without ever solving the existential problem.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 12, 2025 ▶ 1:13:22 Elon’s Empire: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink After the Storm & Anduril’s $2.6BN Power Move · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 12, 2025 positive
Prediction Held up
Lemkin: Google stakeholders will do almost anything to keep CEO Sundar Pichai
“So I suspect it's similar at Google, right? I suspect none of the large stakeholders want him to go no matter what, and they will do almost anything to keep him.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 12, 2025 ▶ 1:12:06 Elon’s Empire: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink After the Storm & Anduril’s $2.6BN Power Move · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 11, 2025 negative
Assertion Contradicted
Flanagan: AI Overviews now appear in over 35% of Google searches
“That's on over, like, 35% of all searches today have some sort of AI overviews experience, and so that's rolling out much more rapidly.”
Kieran Flanagan Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 26:00 20Growth: The Death of Growth Teams? | How Hubspot Use AI to Triple Email Conversion | The Future of AI SEO | Why Prompt Engineering is the New Coding | What Every CMO Needs to Know About AI in 2025
Jul 17, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Google deal implicitly valued Windsurf's residual business at $400M
“If open AI was buying for three billion and Google buying everything for three billion and Google pleasingly is buying everything except the revenue on a hundred million bucks for 2.6 billion. Implicitly it's valuing the revenue and the hundred million and the…”
Rory O'Driscoll Jul 17, 2025 ▶ 4:49 Windsurf x Google x Cognition: Full Breakdown: Who Made Money, Who Did Not · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 18, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Cognition learned of Windsurf's Google deal at the same time as the public
“We found out, honestly, on Friday, the same time everyone else did, that all of this was happening, and that this was the split, and that it was Google”
Scott Wu Jul 18, 2025 ▶ 1:20 Cognition CEO Scott Wu on Acquiring Windsurf: The Process, The Deal, The Rationale · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 21, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chen: Surge AI has more daily working PhDs than Big Tech combined
“Like if you think of all the PhDs, even at Google or Meta or Microsoft, we have way more than all of them combined doing work for us in a single day.”
Edwin Chen Jul 21, 2025 ▶ 40:23 Surge CEO & Co-Founder, Edwin Chen: Scaling to $1BN+ in Revenue with NO Funding · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 28, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Casado: Google Subsidizes Language, Code, And Video AI Models, But Not Speech
“Google subsidizes language and code and video, but not speech, right?”
Martin Casado Jul 28, 2025 ▶ 10:43 a16z GP, Martin Casado: Anthropic vs OpenAI & Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 31, 2025 bullish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Google has executed best in AI among major tech giants
“Ironically, Google, who we all piss on, has executed the best of the four. They have a model that works.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 0:00 Why Apple Needs a Management Overhaul & Why Google is Catching Up with Hyperscalers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 31, 2025 bearish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Google failing at AI would destroy its search business
“Like I would argue for Google, if they misfired on AI, they wouldn't have search.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jul 31, 2025 ▶ 1:01:50 Why Apple Needs a Management Overhaul & Why Google is Catching Up with Hyperscalers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 4, 2025
Assertion Partly supported
Big Four Tech Giants Generate $600B in Annual Operating Cash Flow
“You look at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta combined, I mean, they're doing six hundred billion of operating cash flow, just cash coming off the company every single year”
Miles Dieffenbach Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 1:11:57 Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 7, 2025 negative
Opinion
Brian Halligan: Direct listings are risky unless you're Google or Facebook
“I think the direct listing is like, you're a little bit scared. You're not going to get those long loneliness. You're not going to properly market it to them. And it's seven percent to the bankers in the grand scheme of things. It's not that much. I think it's…”
Brian Halligan Aug 7, 2025 ▶ 16:47 Figma's 250% Pop - The Greatest IPO Mispricing Ever? Meta & Microsoft Blowout Quarters: Broken Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 14, 2025 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2028
O'Driscoll: OpenAI Will Hit $1T-$2T Valuation via Subscriptions and Ads
“Looks like its market share is pretty hard to change at this stage. So you start multiplying. You know, you'll have a paid tier of 20 bucks times a lot of people. You'll at some point have an advertising tier, and plus or minus your Google with a subscription …”
Rory O'Driscoll Aug 14, 2025 ▶ 15:23 Sam Altman's Masterplan or a Gift to Anthropic? Palantir & Shopify Crush Earnings · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 25, 2025 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Deeter: Amazon, Google, and AMD chipsets are challenging Nvidia's market dominance
“I do think that we're also getting many more hardware approaches and solutions out there. So that it's not as wonderful as NVIDIA is. It's not just an NVIDIA world anymore. And the chip sets from Amazon and Google and AMD and others are becoming quite capable.”
Byron Deeter Aug 25, 2025 ▶ 30:56 BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 1, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Frosst: Google failed to quickly commercialize or scale the Transformer
“It wasn't then commercialized very quickly within Google. It wasn't scaled up very quickly within Google. A lot of that work had to be done elsewhere and years later.”
Nick Frosst Sep 1, 2025 ▶ 2:41 Cohere Founder, Nick Frosst: How To Compete with OpenAI & Anthropic, and Sam Altman’s AI Disservice · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 1, 2025 negative
Assertion Supported
Frosst: All creators of the Transformer architecture eventually left Google
“It is interesting that all the people who worked on the transformer left To continue to work on the transformer.”
Nick Frosst Sep 1, 2025 ▶ 3:12 Cohere Founder, Nick Frosst: How To Compete with OpenAI & Anthropic, and Sam Altman’s AI Disservice · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 4, 2025 negative
Insight
O'Driscoll: AI search threatens media sites, not product companies
“In fairness, the kind of, the SEO, I think you have to distinguish between people like Canva where they have a product to sell and they're totally happy to sell it via ChatGPT, and then media companies where the only product they have is their content, where i…”
Rory O'Driscoll Sep 4, 2025 ▶ 1:04:07 Anthropic Raises $13BN & OpenAI Buys Statsig for $1.1BN All Stock · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 5, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Alex Schultz: Meta spends less on marketing than its tech peers
“Apart from Apple, whose marketing is paid for by the carriers, we have the lowest percentage of operating income that we spend on the stuff, the media that we disclose in the XK”
Alex Schultz Sep 5, 2025 ▶ 1:01:21 20Growth: Meta CMO Alex Schultz on How All Founders Have to Change Their Marketing Playbook in a World of AI | Is AI Plateauing, What it Means if China Wins the AI Race and Why Zuck is a Generational Leader
Sep 5, 2025
Insight
Alex Schultz: Tech employees naturally build products for power users
“The general company, in my experience, every company, whether you talk Amazon, whether you talk Google, whether you talk Meta, whether you talk Airbnb, they, as employees, tend to be power users of the product, and they, by nature, optimize for people like the…”
Alex Schultz Sep 5, 2025 ▶ 8:49 20Growth: Meta CMO Alex Schultz on How All Founders Have to Change Their Marketing Playbook in a World of AI | Is AI Plateauing, What it Means if China Wins the AI Race and Why Zuck is a Generational Leader
Sep 11, 2025 positive
Assertion Open
Lawson: Domino's Pizza Outperformed Google Stock Over 10 Years
“Better return than Google over that time period.”
Jeff Lawson Sep 11, 2025 ▶ 41:50 OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 29, 2025 negative
Opinion
Ross: Amazon lacks AI DNA compared to Google, Meta, and Microsoft
“Amazon, I think doesn't have AI DNA. And they, like, if you compare them, so you didn't mention Meta, right? But Meta and Google always had the AI DNA, and Microsoft bought it with OpenAI, but that bought them time. Amazon still doesn't have that DNA, but they…”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:29:14 Groq Founder, Jonathan Ross: OpenAI & Anthropic Will Build Their Own Chips & Will NVIDIA Hit $10TRN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 29, 2025 negative
Opinion
Ross: Gemini's integration into Gmail and Google products is practically unusable
“It's like, it's in Gmail, but it's practically unusable. It's in pretty much every product, and it seems thrown in, kind of, like, half thought through”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 1:06:08 Groq Founder, Jonathan Ross: OpenAI & Anthropic Will Build Their Own Chips & Will NVIDIA Hit $10TRN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 29, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ross: Google ran three parallel chip projects, but only TPU succeeded
“So, people look at the TPU as a big success, and what they don't realize is that there were about three chip efforts at Google at the same time and only one of them ended up outperforming GPUs.”
Jonathan Ross Sep 29, 2025 ▶ 7:13 Groq Founder, Jonathan Ross: OpenAI & Anthropic Will Build Their Own Chips & Will NVIDIA Hit $10TRN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 3, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Slonimski: YouTube and Google Demand Gen Can Beat All Discovery Channels
“Google search is, like, overhyped. The whole demand generation piece of Google is underhyped, and YouTube is a huge part of that. We just started entering YouTube with, like, short-term and long-term videos, and it can become huge. It can beat all discovery ch…”
Ketty Slonimski Oct 3, 2025 ▶ 52:41 20Growth: How to Use Influencers to Scale Growth Insanely Fast | How to Optimise User Onboaring for Growth | How the Best Growth Teams Create Organic Growth and Community | Why LTV/CAC Models are BS with Ketty Slonimsky
Oct 6, 2025 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Feldman: Massive AI productivity gains require reorganizing workflows around AI
“If you use OpenAI in various of their competitors, the way you use Google, you'll see a very modest jump. In productivity. If you use them in a fundamentally different way, that was Sam's point, you'll see a huge jump. And if we use, if we reorganize ourselves…”
Andrew Feldman Oct 6, 2025 ▶ 29:55 Cerebras CEO, Andrew Feldman on Why Raise $1BN and Delay the IPO & Why NVIDIA’s Worried About Growth · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 10, 2025 negative
Insight
Degnan: Product-led growth fails alone in enterprise sales
“So PLG is great, but if you want to sell to the enterprise is hyper-political, and you have to have a sales process to do that. And at some point, The PLG motion will fail you, or it won't get you to that, that large enterprise. And if you aspire to sell the l…”
Chris Degnan Oct 10, 2025 ▶ 52:53 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
Oct 17, 2025 negative
Opinion
Zach Lloyd: Google is bad at building developer tools
“Google is not great at developer stuff, just period from my time there.”
Zach Lloyd Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 59:28 20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp
Oct 17, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Lloyd: Google faces a classic innovator's dilemma in AI
“I think Google's a risk. Like, I would never have said that five, 10 years ago. I find myself using ChatGPT more and more, and so I think they have big innovators dilemma problem.”
Zach Lloyd Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 7:36 20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp
Oct 17, 2025 bullish
Assertion Contradicted
Stebbings: Google owns 10% of SpaceX
“They have also 10% of SpaceX.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 9:30 20VC: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week | Competing Against OpenAI's Codex and Claude Code: Who Wins | Why Gemini is Failing and GPT-5 Is Winning | Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | The Ugly Truth About AI Coding with Zach Lloyd, Warp
Oct 30, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Google owns 14% of Anthropic
“Google owns 14% of Anthropic.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 30, 2025 ▶ 1:18:58 OpenAI Restructuring: Who Wins and Who Loses & Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 6, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Google is underappreciated while Amazon is overappreciated
“I do think that for the moment, Google is underappreciated and Amazon is overappreciated.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 6, 2025 ▶ 48:13 Is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC? & Harvey Raises $150M & Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shlomo: Google is most likely to win the LLM race
“Google. By far. They have the compute. They're moving very fast. If Gemini at some point wins the race, like literally wins the race then they have the entire stack. Including like Google Cloud and whatever, whatever they need and they have the data and whatev…”
Maor Shlomo Nov 24, 2025 ▶ 24:50 Base44’s Founder, Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jason Lemkin: Salesforce Agentforce could render AI startups obsolete within two years
“Salesforce could be the next Google. It could be in 18 to 24 months. We could be like, oh my god, Agent Force crushed it. All these startups, we didn't need them because Agent Force is so good.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 27, 2025 ▶ 0:20 Anthropic Raises $30B from Microsoft & NVIDIA & NVIDIA’s Core Business Faces TPU Threat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Jason Lemkin: Google AI products give users no reason to switch
“I actually prefer AIO reviews because I don't have to leave Google. That's a great product. I mean we mean, we're so is Gemini three pro. These are great products. There's no, you're not giving me any reason to leave. They're great. They're truly great softwar…”
Jason Lemkin Nov 27, 2025 ▶ 27:40 Anthropic Raises $30B from Microsoft & NVIDIA & NVIDIA’s Core Business Faces TPU Threat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2025
Assertion Supported
Rory O'Driscoll: Google is spending $90 billion on CapEx this year
“Google is spending ninety billion this year on CapEx.”
Rory O'Driscoll Nov 27, 2025 ▶ 6:57 Anthropic Raises $30B from Microsoft & NVIDIA & NVIDIA’s Core Business Faces TPU Threat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 4, 2025 negative
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Lemkin: Google Will Not Copy Specialized Vertical AI Applications
“Google isn't going to copy that. They're not going to copy automating trust, estate planning investment advice tax efficiency, your investment, legacy planning, or maybe it doesn't do all of that, the investment.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 4, 2025 ▶ 46:30 Eventbrite Sold for $500M, Databricks $5B Raise at $134B Valuation & Why SaaS is Like Japan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Replit updated platform to dynamically rotate LLM providers automatically
“Now with Replit, you don't pick your model anymore. It's all dynamic. It's all gone. You don't pick a lot. You don't pick high reasoning. You don't pick short reasoning. You don't pick anything. It just, and it rotates Google and others”
Jason Lemkin Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 56:19 SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price & Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 11, 2025 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
O'Driscoll: Meta and Google control 70% of all global advertising
“Facebook and Google have 70% of not just all digital advertising, but all advertising.”
Rory O'Driscoll Dec 11, 2025 ▶ 29:01 SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price & Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 15, 2025
Assertion Contradicted
Google and Facebook user monetization grew sevenfold over the last decade
“10 years ago, Google and Facebook were monetizing their users at like one-seventh of what they are today.”
David George Dec 15, 2025 ▶ 50:44 a16z's David George on the Most Controversial Bet at a16z & Do Margins and Revenue Matter in AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2025 neutral
Insight
O'Driscoll: Pure-play compute infrastructure acts as an amplified, high-volatility AI proxy
“They, these companies become the high octane bet on AI. If you think it's going to go up, you buy Google, you get 20% appreciation, but if you buy CoreWeave and you're right, you could get a double. You're right. So they are the highly amplified bet because th…”
Rory O'Driscoll Dec 18, 2025 ▶ 24:56 Will Cursor Kill Figma? Lightspeed Raises $9B & OpenAI’s $1B from Disney & #1 App in App Store · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2025
Assertion Supported
Calacanis: Google almost bailed out Tesla when it faced bankruptcy
“Google almost bailed out Tesla at the last hour when it almost went bankrupt.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 18, 2025 ▶ 1:13:48 Will Cursor Kill Figma? Lightspeed Raises $9B & OpenAI’s $1B from Disney & #1 App in App Store · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2025 negative
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Disney issued a cease-and-desist letter to Google over IP usage
“They sent a cease and desist letter to Google Because for unlicensed use of the content.”
Rory O'Driscoll Dec 18, 2025 ▶ 12:09 Will Cursor Kill Figma? Lightspeed Raises $9B & OpenAI’s $1B from Disney & #1 App in App Store · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Lemkin: Custom chip competition will not threaten Nvidia's dominance in 2026
“You're a fool to invest against Nvidia for 2026. And I think you are arguably a fool to invest into Amazon in 20, 26 for a simple reason. Just a simple, I didn't say 20, 27 or 20, 28. It is not enough time for all this competition to come online. It is not eno…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 22, 2025 ▶ 57:00 Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Google is corporate investor of the year for its massive stakes
“Owning almost 10% of SpaceX, owning, ah, perhaps 14% of Anthropic, depending on dilution, right? Now, and obviously, now this is the greatest in circular investment of all, owning the vast majority of Waymo, which is going to blow up. But those three are, like…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 22, 2025 ▶ 17:43 Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 8, 2026 bearish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Skeptical the Market Can Support Ten Separate AI Research Labs
“It will be interesting to see, can the world support 10? Research labs coming up with 10 different variants of AI, all of which have to build either commercial or consumer businesses. I think on aggregate I'm fairly skeptical, but it's less a quality of, I mea…”
Rory O'Driscoll Jan 8, 2026 ▶ 34:05 Groq’s $20BN NVIDIA Deal | Why Sam Altman Doesn’t Care About Dilution & Invisible Unemployment 2026 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 11, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Harries: ElevenLabs founders want to build a bigger company than Google
“Matty and Peter literally want to build a bigger company than Google.”
Luke Harries Jan 11, 2026 ▶ 12:27 20Growth: The $6.6B Growth Engine Behind ElevenLabs | Why ElevenLabs Do Not Have PMs | The 7 Part Launch Playbook to Crush All Launches with Luke Harries, Head of Growth @ ElevenLabs
Jan 15, 2026 positive
Opinion
Lemkin: Google is currently a much more stable partner than OpenAI
“Certainly today, Google feels like a far more stable partner than OpenAI. It's just the reality. It's not the, OpenAI is not the only game in town anymore for Apple.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 15, 2026 ▶ 14:48 Anthropic’s $10B Raise | a16z’s $15B Fund: Is the Middle Dead in VC? | How OpenAI Could Go to Zero? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2026 bullish
Disclosure
Lemkin: Conducts Vendor Discovery on Claude Rather Than Google
“I do my vendor discovery on Claude and a little bit on Google. That's when I want to find a new tool or a new product, that's where I start. I start with LLMs”
Jason Lemkin Jan 22, 2026 ▶ 46:37 Elon Musk vs Sam Altman | The Implosion of Thinking Machines | Can VC Survive Public Pricing? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2026 negative
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Serving free ChatGPT users costs more than Google or Facebook
“And the cost to serve a free ChatGPT customer is higher than either Facebook or Google.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jan 22, 2026 ▶ 45:21 Elon Musk vs Sam Altman | The Implosion of Thinking Machines | Can VC Survive Public Pricing? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2029
O'Driscoll: Google Search ad dollars will shift to OpenAI
“Their cash cow, which kicks off 200 and forty-odd billion a year of revenue, which is the ads business, Isn't the best product on the market anymore, and some of those dollars will go to open AI, and because it's better real estate.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jan 22, 2026 ▶ 52:01 Elon Musk vs Sam Altman | The Implosion of Thinking Machines | Can VC Survive Public Pricing? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Lemkin: Google Search Is Unusable and Useless for Product Discovery
“I mean, I find Google unusable for discovery, unusable today. It is all random. I can't look, I it's great to see vendors. I can't figure out which product to use or buy. Google's useless.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 22, 2026 ▶ 48:58 Elon Musk vs Sam Altman | The Implosion of Thinking Machines | Can VC Survive Public Pricing? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 31, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Omer Shai says most relevant global web traffic remains on Google
“And again, in general, when you are looking at most of the traffic, the relevant traffic in the world, it's still on Google.”
Omer Shai Jan 31, 2026 ▶ 31:25 20Growth: How Wix Built a $100M Marketing Machine | Why LTV is BS and Why Time Return On Investment is the Most Important Metric | How to 10x Your Growth: What is the Next Great Channel with Omer Shai, CMO @ Wix
Feb 7, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Cohen: Navan's internal AI routing is shifting significantly toward Google models
“We've seen our agentic platform, Cognition, plays between models based on who will give you the best answer, and actually we saw movement much more to Google recently. A lot of the transactions with Edge, which we didn't release yet, but you know, we have it i…”
Ariel Cohen Feb 7, 2026 ▶ 25:55 20VC: From $6.2BN Market Cap to $2.8BN: What Is Not Translating About Navan's Public Story | Are Any Public Company CEOs Actually Happy? | Why Navan Built It's Own Customer Service AI and What it Could Mean For Customer Service AI with Ariel Cohen
Feb 9, 2026
Insight
Acharya: Incumbents improve legacy categories while startups own new AI categories
“When you have this product cycle and you have a capable incumbent, what happens is they usually make their product better for their existing categories. So Microsoft will make a better word processor than they've ever made. Google will make a better search eng…”
Anish Acharya Feb 9, 2026 ▶ 8:25 a16z, Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead? Do Margins Still Matter? Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 28, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Jerry Murdock: Google and Gemini are better long-term assets than OpenAI
“They can, and they are long-term better assets. They've got, if I have an autonomous agent business and I've got Gmail, you're going to have a phenomenal asset that open AI doesn't have.”
Jerry Murdock Feb 28, 2026 ▶ 55:36 The SaaS Apocalypse: Who Lives & Who Dies | Insight Partners Co-Founder, Jerry Murdock · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 2, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Zinman: Google AI search hit 10% of Monday.com's new ARR acquisition
“It was about 10% of our acquisition in terms of new ARR but again, Google is very transactional, so people usually, when they're searching for something, they're willing to buy at this point because the intent is very high, so we lost some of the more transact…”
Eran Zinman Mar 2, 2026 ▶ 40:53 Monday.com CEO on Is SaaS Dead: Will Everything Be Vibe Coded | Eran Zinman · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 5, 2026 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Apple generates $2.6M revenue per employee, Google generates $2.1M
“Apple's about 2.6 million revenue per employee. You know, Google is 2.1.”
Rory O'Driscoll Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 59:49 Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins? | OpenAI's $110BN Mega Round | Cursor Hits $2BN in ARR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Green: Apple spends far less on AI CapEx than tech peers
“And, you know, like Apple's spending very little right now, you know, and those other three or four companies are spending insane amounts of money.”
Mitchell Green Mar 7, 2026 ▶ 8:41 Mitchell Green: Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2026 negative
Opinion
Mitchell Green: Multi-billion VC funds are insane and require hitting next Google
“I think it's insane. I think these funds are way too, and they, just do the math, the fund math on like how, they're clearly, you have to have the next open, you have to have the next Google, effectively, or the math doesn't work, I don't think.”
Mitchell Green Mar 7, 2026 ▶ 56:16 Mitchell Green: Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 16, 2026 neutral
Insight
Rajaram: Startups must avoid competing directly on Google's primary roadmap
“If you're a startup, which is directly in Google's roadmap, like directly, you should not be building it because Google is very good when something is directly in order. They're like a tank. It will just roll over you even slowly, slowly, but it doesn't matter…”
Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 1:01:09 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 26, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2036
Lemkin: Odds Google builds a long-term Figma competitor approach zero
“I think the odds that they desire, decide to build a Figma competitor from this for a decade approach zero.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 26, 2026 ▶ 43:43 Why You Need a $1B Fund To Do Series A | SpaceX at $2TRN & Data Centers in Space | Groq's $20BN Deal · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 11, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2028
Reyna: OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs will buy new foundational model startups
“OpenAI and Anthropic will end up, and Google will end up buying, and 11 Labs will end up buying, like, all of the new foundational model companies that will be popping up and creating research and paying just, like, a few billion here, a few billion there, and…”
Carles Reina Apr 11, 2026 ▶ 1:23:19 ElevenLabs: Building an AI Sales Machine & Why We Set a 20x Sales Quota · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 14, 2026 negative
Opinion
Midha: Europe needs Google-scale compute infrastructure for AI sovereignty
“Like that's roughly what the continent needs for full sovereignty, right? To have as, at least as much infrastructure locally as there is within the alphabet holdings sort of pool. Over the next four years.”
Anjney Midha Apr 14, 2026 ▶ 34:13 The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Rejected It | The Four Bottlenecks in AI | Anj Midha · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 14, 2026 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Midha: Google operates 12 to 15 gigawatts of compute infrastructure
“I think Google Is roughly at 12 to 15 gigawatts of that I'm aware of infrastructure for internal and external deployed needs.”
Anjney Midha Apr 14, 2026 ▶ 33:43 The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Rejected It | The Four Bottlenecks in AI | Anj Midha · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 20, 2026 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: CS grads will join industrial giants over big tech
“Maybe if you're graduating, you know, name your computer science school today, you don't go immediately to Google. You go to literally John Deere or Caterpillar or Eli Lilly, but the skills that you have are going to be just as relevant in just a different dom…”
Aaron Levie Apr 20, 2026 ▶ 6:25 Aaron Levie: Everyone is Wrong; We'll Have More Developers in 5 Years · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 23, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Lemkin: Mid-cap tech buyers cannot afford $1B YC startup valuations
“Google can buy them, but HubSpot, what's HubSpot's valuation as we record this? In the teens of billions? They just can't afford a billion dollar for every YC startup. They don't have the money.”
Jason Lemkin Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 1:29:08 Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 25, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Masad: Google's Gemini is one of the best AI models for design
“Gemini is one of the best models at design.”
Amjad Masad Apr 25, 2026 ▶ 14:09 Replit CEO: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified & Why Coding Models are Plateauing | Amjad Masad · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 25, 2026
Disclosure
Masad: Replit once sent more AI tokens to Google than to Anthropic
“Actually, at some point we were sending more tokens to Google than we were sending Anthropic, despite Anthropic being that kind of the core workhorse.”
Amjad Masad Apr 25, 2026 ▶ 6:49 Replit CEO: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified & Why Coding Models are Plateauing | Amjad Masad · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 25, 2026 negative
Opinion
Masad: Studying computer science just for high Google salaries is over
“Now, if you're not into computer science, if you don't feel like you're drawn to it, like a fly drawn, drawn to a light, then don't go into it because someone told you you're going to make a boatload of money working for Google. That's gone. So that it's prett…”
Amjad Masad Apr 25, 2026 ▶ 33:13 Replit CEO: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified & Why Coding Models are Plateauing | Amjad Masad · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 25, 2026 positive
Opinion
Masad: Google's Gemini AI models offer the best price performance
“Google's Gemini's models have are the best at price performance, for example.”
Amjad Masad Apr 25, 2026 ▶ 6:14 Replit CEO: Why the SaaS Apocalypse is Justified & Why Coding Models are Plateauing | Amjad Masad · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 7, 2026 negative
Opinion
O'Driscoll: OpenAI and Anthropic capture almost all commercial LLM revenue
“And when you look at what's actually going on, the big two guys are getting all the money. Gemini, for some reason, doesn't appear to be able to do a great job of developing code or love and just getting that kind of traction because coding is where it's all h…”
Rory O'Driscoll May 7, 2026 ▶ 20:13 Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 7, 2026 bullish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Google outperforms other reporting tech giants in AI relevance
“I think Google has outperformed everyone in terms of being AI relevant. They are by far the best of the five people who reported this week.”
Rory O'Driscoll May 7, 2026 ▶ 21:04 Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 9, 2026 negative
Opinion
Weitzman: Google Hires Lack Hunger and Infest Startup Culture With Bad Habits
“Typically we found, this is my personal experience, when we hire folks from Google, they come from a place of a ton of abundance. So the hunger is not the same hunger. And you need to coach them out of essentially bad habits. And that can infest your culture i…”
Cliff Weitzman May 9, 2026 ▶ 53:08 Cliff Weitzman: What I Learned from 100 of the World’s Top CEOs & Why Tokens Will Outspend Salaries · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 9, 2026
Insight
Stebbings: Younger generations use AI as an operating system for life
“I think Sam Altman said it very well when he said, you know, older people use it as a replacement to Google and younger people use it as their operating system for life.”
Harry Stebbings May 9, 2026 ▶ 1:57:24 Cliff Weitzman: What I Learned from 100 of the World’s Top CEOs & Why Tokens Will Outspend Salaries · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 14, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Anthropic deal makes up 40% of Google's future backlog
“I think now the anthropic rev commit is about 40% of Google's total future backlog.”
Rory O'Driscoll May 14, 2026 ▶ 13:19 Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 14, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Anthropic committed $200B to Google Cloud over five years
“They also did a deal committing two hundred billion to Google over, I believe it was a five-year period.”
Harry Stebbings May 14, 2026 ▶ 12:22 Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 26, 2026 positive
Insight
Feldman claims NeoClouds face massive cost disadvantages buying Nvidia hardware
“When Google or when Cerebris puts our equipment in our own data center, right, we have a significant advantage Over a NeoCloud, because NeoClouds are buying hardware with gross margins of 70, 80% for NVIDIA.”
Andrew Feldman May 26, 2026 ▶ 18:13 Cerebras CEO on the Future of Data Centres, Token Costs & Memory | Should US Companies Sell to China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 28, 2026 positive
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Nvidia's $50B Quarterly Profit Makes It World's Most Profitable
“It's the 50 something billion in profits, which makes it the most profitable company on the planet, because typically Google clocks in around a hundred to a hundred and twenty billion now a year. Right? These guys, in a quarter, made fifty billion plus, fifty-…”
Rory O'Driscoll May 28, 2026 ▶ 2:07 OpenAI & SpaceX S1 Drops | Layoffs at Cloudflare & ClickUp | OpenRouter & Polsia Raise Mega Rounds · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 30, 2026 negative
Opinion
Laqua: Google represents the worst of corporate employee pampering culture
“You know, I think I really dislike the culture of like pampering everyone or like taking care of them as if you're their parents. I think Google is like the worst of that.”
Nico Laqua May 30, 2026 ▶ 17:08 The Hardest Working Startup in America | Nico Laqua, Co-founder & CEO @ Corgi · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 11, 2026 bearish
Insight
O'Driscoll: Consumer AI will be tougher for OpenAI than enterprise
“I think actually, you know, the consumer space is going to be a tougher space for open. The enterprise space has really been validated. Cause an enterprise is all about automation efficiency and a consumer space. It's about experiences. Apple's well-placed to …”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 11, 2026 ▶ 24:13 SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO | OpenAI Files to Go Public | Uber Cuts 23% of HR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 11, 2026 positive
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Musk earns $2B monthly selling compute to Anthropic and Google
“He found two of his biggest competitors who want to buy from him. You know, he's getting two billion a month, 1.25 from an topic and nine 50 from, no, the other way around, nine 50 from a topic, 1.25 from Google, the other way around, two billion a month. Two …”
Rory O’Driscoll Jun 11, 2026 ▶ 52:22 SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO | OpenAI Files to Go Public | Uber Cuts 23% of HR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 11, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Apple pays Google $1B for Gemini while receiving $20B for search
“I think, to some extent, they're giving in the sense that they're paying Google a billion dollars to use their model as the default model, but reminder, Google pays them, I think, 12 or 20, I used to know the number, twenty billion dollars to be the default se…”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 11, 2026 ▶ 21:46 SpaceX Launches Largest Ever IPO | OpenAI Files to Go Public | Uber Cuts 23% of HR · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 15, 2026 negative
Opinion
Google's AI search mode copies Perplexity but remains inferior
“The whole experience is literally looking like perplexity, except it's still not as good.”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 15, 2026 ▶ 4:42 Perplexity CEO: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta & How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 15, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Google underestimated coding models and lags behind the AI frontier
“They have advantages, all, all advantages one needs to have to be that, but they underestimated the importance of coding models. And so they're far behind the frontier right now. So again, they could catch up totally capable, totally competent team, but today …”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 15, 2026 ▶ 1:06:18 Perplexity CEO: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta & How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 15, 2026 neutral
Prediction Held up
Google will launch a coding agent to compete with Codex
“Google doesn't yet have a product in this category, but I'm sure they're going to come after that.”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 15, 2026 ▶ 8:22 Perplexity CEO: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta & How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 15, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2031
AI agents will generate more revenue than Google or Meta ads
“These products are not going to be used by you know, a hundred million people. But they will generate revenue that's going to be higher than the advertising revenue of Google or Meta. It's going to happen.”
Aravind Srinivas Jun 15, 2026 ▶ 18:44 Perplexity CEO: Micron Will Be More Valuable Than Meta & How Export Controls Helped Not Hurt China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 18, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Randle: OpenAI and Google will match Mythos Fable quality within 3-6 months
“When OpenAI or when Google, like, they're going to get to Mythos Fable quality models very soon, within the next three to six months, and then we're going to see.”
Everett Randle Jun 18, 2026 ▶ 25:43 Anthropic's Fable Banned by US Government | Wix & Adobe Hit All-Time Lows | Mistral Raising at $20BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 22, 2026
Insight
Arora: Differentiated products build brands, while commodities depend on brand
“There's a spectrum, okay? On one end of the spectrum is when you have real differentiated product, in which case the product helps build the brand. Like Google searches, now you Google something, right? On the other hand, it's a commodity. It's water. I don't …”
Nikesh Arora Jun 22, 2026 ▶ 4:28 Nikesh Arora on the Frontier Model Problem: Breadth vs Depth | The Future of Token Costs · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 25, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Only Nvidia and Google outperformed the S&P in last 18 months
“Over the last 18 months since 2025, only two of the Mag seven have outperformed the S&P. It's NVIDIA and Google”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 25, 2026 ▶ 12:32 DeepSeek Raises at $50B | The Rise of Open Source vs OpenAI & Anthropic | OpenAI Builds Own Chip · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 29, 2026 negative
Opinion
Shridhar: Single Large Tech Monopolies Like Microsoft and Google Are Fading
“I see the world more and more being not monopolized by single large companies. You know, Microsoft used to be considered a monopoly and everybody was afraid of it. No longer. Google was considered to be the monopoly. No longer.”
K.R. Shridhar Jun 29, 2026 ▶ 23:22 Bloom Energy CEO: Why We Aren’t in an AI Capex Bubble | Energy Sovereignty & The Future of Power · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Opinion
Bavor: Sundar Pichai's dynamic range in strategic thinking is second to none
“Sundar has a remarkable ability to look at a problem From wildly different zoom levels. His dynamic range in thinking is second to none. Zoomed all the way out. Highest level strategy. How is this going to unfold over the next five years? All the way into the …”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 1:02:42 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 9, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2027
O'Driscoll: AI capex spending will be stopped by demand, not supply
“This isn't, this spending isn't going to stop because the supply side says stop. Facebook aren't going to say stop. Google isn't going to say stop. Microsoft isn't going to say stop. Really, it boils down to the demand side. As long as, and enterprise customer…”
Rory O'Driscoll Jul 9, 2026 ▶ 41:39 Enterprises Fear Frontier Models | Sam Altman Offers Trump 5% of OpenAI | DeepSeek Builds Own Chips · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Abrahami: Wix stock trades on OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google news
“We're trading on others. Companies news. We're not trading on Wix news. We're trading mostly on what OpenAI or Antropic are saying, or Google is saying, right?”
Avishai Abrahami Jul 13, 2026 ▶ 21:18 Wix Founder: Will Base44 Win the Vibe-Coding Wars? | The Truth About the Economics of Vibe-Coding · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Angelopoulos: Google's Gemma sits on the performance-versus-cost Pareto curve
“Gemma, by the way, is pretty good in terms of efficiency. If you look at arena, you'll see the, on the Pareto curves of like performance versus cost. Gemma's on there.”
Anastasios Angelopoulos Aug 2, 2026 ▶ 24:37 Arena CEO: There Will be a $100BN US Open-Source Model & Data is a Trillion Dollar Market
Aug 7, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Frankel: OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX Are Today's Metas and Googles
“And I think in, you know, OpenAI and Anthropic and SpaceX, we're seeing that already. Like these are the Metas and the Googles of our era, highly likely.”
David Frankel Aug 7, 2026 ▶ 20:24 The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
Aug 7, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Frankel: Google Is in Pole Position in AI Due to Search Context
“Like I think Google's, Google is actually, if anything, in pole position because they come from that environment and the ability to search with context, the ability to apply AI with context is just like incredible, but they're having to fight like crazy for it…”
David Frankel Aug 7, 2026 ▶ 1:04:49 The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
Aug 9, 2026
Assertion Supported
Atallah: Google's Jeff Dean is starting an AI agent lab
“Jeff Dean is starting an agent lab right now from Google.”
Alex Atallah Aug 9, 2026 ▶ 29:27 OpenRouter CEO: Why Chinese Open Models Are Beating the US | Why Enterprises Fear OpenAI & Anthropic
Aug 14, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Swulinski: Google Ads was Wispr Flow's best-performing acquisition channel
“Google Ads, it was, it is still the main driver, just and it was surprising across literally everything, right? Non-branded search, Pmax, YouTube ads, everything prints there”
Matt Swulinski Aug 14, 2026 ▶ 35:12 How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
Aug 14, 2026 bullish
Insight
Startups can scale to $10M ARR using only Meta, Google, and lifecycle
“You want those three things spun up because you can scale to your first 1,000,010 million ARR, Just off of those three things. And then obviously, you know, you're investing into the site, you're investing into founder-led content. There's like the other thing…”
Matt Swulinski Aug 14, 2026 ▶ 6:26 How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
Aug 14, 2026
Disclosure
Swulinski ran $1M/mo Google spend and 100+ newsletters solo at Wispr
“For essentially a year and a half, I was the one person at Whisper doing all execution. So imagine a million a month on Google, hundreds of thousands of keywords, ads, experiments, landing pages. I owned every KPI from eyeball to download and then product tick…”
Matt Swulinski Aug 14, 2026 ▶ 1:00:50 How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
Aug 14, 2026 negative
Insight
Swulinski: Meta and Google Ad Algorithms Dislike Usage-Based SaaS Models
“The biggest differences are first in that, like, Meta and Google are not optimized for, like, B to B SaaS usage-based products. Like, they go absolutely nuts with a, so you're telling me there's a predictive revenue of a one person could be a 50,000, you know,…”
Matt Swulinski Aug 14, 2026 ▶ 14:19 How to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
Aug 27, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Consumer AI Could Reach Half Google's Size in a Decade
“I could totally see a business, you know, plus or minus, you know, 50% to the same size as the Google consumer business, maybe over the next decade.”
Rory O'Driscoll Aug 27, 2026 ▶ 40:42 Anthropic's $30T Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service & Robotics are Overinflated
Aug 27, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Anthropic and OpenAI exist only due to hyperscaler funding
“The only people capable of financing a state-of-the-art frontier model in the United States of America has been the hyperscalers themselves. The only reason Entropic and OpenAI exist is because Microsoft, Google, and Amazon gave them enough money to play becau…”
Rory O'Driscoll Aug 27, 2026 ▶ 10:06 Anthropic's $30T Assumption & OpenAI Confirms IPO | Why Customer Service & Robotics are Overinflated
Sep 5, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not yet assessed · timeframe Sep 2029
Weitzman: Buying Rubin GPUs yields one year advantage over cloud renters
“If I want a Reuben, which is like these much faster GPUs, I'll get it faster if I buy it than if I wait for Google to buy it, and then there's other people in front of me in line. So I'm gonna skip the queue by like a lot, and then I'm gonna have like a year o…”
Cliff Weitzman Sep 5, 2026 ▶ 18:15 How to Build Your Own Data Center & Why Every Startup Should Do It
Sep 5, 2026
Insight
Weitzman: Large-scale AI training requires co-located memory and GPU clusters
“If you want to do large scale training like we do, You need the memory to be co-located with a large cluster of GPUs. I can't just rent from Google or Microsoft or even base 10 and run the size of training that I want because I need a gigantic memory card next…”
Cliff Weitzman Sep 5, 2026 ▶ 3:39 How to Build Your Own Data Center & Why Every Startup Should Do It
Sep 7, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Greze: Building an AI assistant is a top-three priority at Apple and Google
“You want to know, the truth is I know what I'm building is a top three priority at Google and Apple, like in the next 12 months. Not a top 10 priority, like a top three priority.”
Jean-Denis Greze Sep 7, 2026 ▶ 4:38 Town vs Instinct vs GrokBot | Why the AI Assistant Market Is Not a Bubble
Sep 7, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Greze: AI market is a blue ocean because users treat ChatGPT as a Google enhancer
“I mean, you know, look, it's a blue ocean market, right? You gotta understand. Like I never, when we go to most customers, they've not heard of anything. It's blue ocean because people, people are using ChatGPT as a Google enhancer. Like that's the market.”
Jean-Denis Greze Sep 7, 2026 ▶ 37:04 Town vs Instinct vs GrokBot | Why the AI Assistant Market Is Not a Bubble
Sep 10, 2026 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: GrokBot violates Google's terms of service to deliver answers
“GrokBot uses Google, which is not allowed, which is prohibited by the term of service to Google things and then give you answers.”
Jason Lemkin Sep 10, 2026 ▶ 2:00 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived | Tesla Launches Cybercabs | Index Pulls Out of Town
Sep 10, 2026 negative
Insight
O'Driscoll: No scaled business is built on scraping LinkedIn or Google
“The LinkedIn scraping in the end, no business at scale ever gets built on that, and no business at scale ever gets built on breaking Google's terms of service.”
Rory O'Driscoll Sep 10, 2026 ▶ 2:54 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived | Tesla Launches Cybercabs | Index Pulls Out of Town
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