Harry Stebbings
Founder & Host, 20VC. On 3 shows, 1,492 appearances, plus 16 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
hostinvestorfounder
Harry Stebbings is the founder of 20VC and host of the 20VC podcast. He is also a venture capital investor who conducts interviews and publishes content on technology startups.
3shows
1,492appearances
1,588statements
466resolved
321supported
49contradicted
69%fully supported
86said about them ↓ Everything Harry Stebbings said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Traditional 'triple-triple-double-double' startup growth is no longer attractive for VC
“I turned down a company the other day, Because they were going from, like, one and a half to five to 15, and there's an opportunity cost of capital to say that's very real, and the growth expectations are just very different. In other words, triple, triple, do…”
Stebbings: 20VC hires mostly immigrants because British people lack strong work ethic
“Pretty much only hire immigrants. British people don't work very hard.”
Stebbings: TBPN is the Clubhouse of our era with near-zero engagement retention
“I think it's Clubhouse of our era. And so they have brilliant channel market fit, which is they crush it on Twitter for very specific clips. When you look at any of their view rates, very little. When you look at their retention on engagement rates, fuck all.”
Stebbings: I would put my entire $400M fund into OpenAI
“If I could do anything without fear of retribution from my LPs, I'd put my four hundred million fund into OpenAI.”
Stebbings: European founder quality is much worse than in the US
“I think the quality of European founders is much worse than the US”
Stebbings: The younger generation of workers is lazy and expects high compensation
“I think this generation is fucking lazy. They do not work, sorry, I'm on a rant now. They do not want to work hard, they do not want to come into the office, they get paid top dollar, and actually, they want great package, they want all of this, and they don't…”
Stebbings: Remote Work Is One of the Most Poisonous Things
“I don't buy remote by the way. I think remote is one of the most poisonous things.”
Stebbings: Series B investors are offering founders $1M payouts to return capital
“You know, it is, but I'm seeing now I've seen four this month where the series B's are saying, Hey, preemptively we fucked up, but give us our cash back and we'll give you a million each.”
Harry Stebbings: Most retail investors on Robinhood are incompetent
“I think most of the people who invest in there are incompetent and shouldn't be given dollars. This will definitely be taken out, no doubt. I think this is like, you know, you're empowering people who should not be investing. They do not understand public mark…”
Stebbings: Society No Longer Fundamentally Operates as a Democracy
“I don't think we fundamentally live in a democracy anymore, because I know I don't, and I know that pretty much everyone around me is too afraid to say how they truly feel.”
Stebbings: OpenAI fumbled voice AI due to poor management and hiring
“Well, I think with all candor, that's because of incredibly poor management. And hiring, and that was theirs to take, and they fumbled the bag across every spectrum.”
Stebbings predicts Meta's stock price would rise if Mark Zuckerberg departed
“If Zuck expired, Meta's stock price would increase.”
Cognition Reportedly Raising at $46B Valuation With $1.6B Projected ARR
“Cognition raising round at forty six billion dollars reportedly. They will end the year at 1.6 billion in ARR. Currently doing 800 to 900.”
Stebbings: Mercor Crosses $2B ARR and Raises at $20B Valuation
“I'm an investor in McCaw. I never thought this would be as big as it has got as quickly as hit, as it has done. It's crossing out two, two and a half billion ARR. They're doing a new round led by General Catalyst at twenty billion.”
Stebbings: Surge AI at $3.5B ARR, Mercor $2.5B, Handshake $1B, Micro1 $500M
“Surge are doing three, three and a half. McCaw are doing two and a half. Handshaker doing one. Micro One are doing half.”
Stebbings: Chinese Open-Source AI Providers Are Inherently Advantaged Over US
“I think the comparative landscapes they sit in mean that the Chinese open source providers are just inherently advantaged, sadly.”
Stebbings: Scaling From $1.5M to $15M ARR Is No Longer VC-Fundable
“I turned down a company the other day that went from one and a half, and they were gonna go to five, and then they were gonna go from five to 15, and it's just not enough anymore. It's just not interesting. I'm sorry for venture. We have an opportunity cost of…”
Stebbings: The $1 Billion Valuation Has Become the New Series A Standard
“I think a billion dollar valuation is the new series, eh? And you're like, whoa, Harry, whoa, whoa, kiddo, calm down, listen to the facts. We used to do a fifty million post and hope it would become a 1,000,000,020 x, without dilution, blunt. Now, you enter at…”
Stebbings: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei will successfully lobby for AI restrictions
“I just think Sam Altman is someone who I would never, ever bet against, and I think he's the best politician in the world, and I think when he says something, he says it with intent, and when he says we should give five percent away to the administration, he's…”
Series A is the worst stage due to 200x ARR valuations
“I think Series A is the worst place to be today, and my partners always hate me for this, because all Series A founders are like, great, we won't go and see them but it's the worst place to be. You have, like, one to three million in revenue, and you're at 200…”
Sub-$100M boutique seed funds will be the worst-performing VC category
“I think one of the worst performing groups in terms of venture in this vintage will actually be the small boutique seed funds, which is what every single LP that you speak to today, Matt, wants. Every LP. This is the funniest thing. Every LP wants San Francisc…”
Stebbings: Wealthy founders and investors make superior, rational decisions
“I think better, I think founders are better and investors are better when they are already rich. If I'm being blunt, I think you make more rational, sound decisions that are not made with economic impatience.”
Stebbings: $50M to $100M seed funds get crushed in current market
“The worst place to be is a 50 to a hundred million dollar seed fund. You will get crushed by the large funds who are able to write large checks and lead rounds, but you're also not small enough to be collaborative. Very difficult middle ground to be in.”
The other half of the tape: Harry Stebbings's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 65 times in 35 episodes across the shows. 21 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 29John Coogan 23Sam Blond 1Kyle Parrish 1Erik Torenberg 1
Statements about Harry Stebbings, by other people (21)
Weitzman: Union Square Ventures has storied name but lacks strong leadership
“What I would do is I would join Union Square Ventures. I would join an institution that has a really storied name, but doesn't have particularly strong leadership. And I would become the leadership for that organization.”
Greze: Town can hit $100B valuation with 10M paying users
“I think if we can get about ten million people paying for the product, we can get to that.”
Altman: Seed VCs have a 15-year window before being replaced
“Yeah, we have to compete with them, we have to do better than them, there's not room for all of us, and Frankly, I kind of think, Harry, you were younger when you started, so you might have a little more time. I got, like, 15 years of this until I'm really goo…”
Lemkin: Tech Market Will See an IPO Week in H2 2024
“I have a lot of money with Harry that it's an IPO week in the second half of twenty-twenty-four.”
Braun: LPs Back Young VCs Based on Character, Not Achievements
“They're betting on you because they like you and they want to see you win. That's the truth. That's the part you're missing. They're betting on you because of who you are, not necessarily what you've achieved, because there's a lot of other people who are much…”
Carney: Tech investors in 2022 face a boom before an inevitable bust
“Well, actually, I think the first thing to say, Harry, is you are seeing a boom right now. You just haven't seen the bust yet.”
Libin: Founders should be the worst person at every job function
“So never hire someone whose job you can do better than them. Only hire people, only surround yourself with people that are ridiculously better than you or that are superior to you in their job or other things as much as possible. Like always be the worst perso…”
Katz: ClickHouse extended its financing despite having $1B on its balance sheet
“And so we did a financing earlier this year, and then we extended it and brought in some strategic investors like yourself and David Sachs and Michael Dell and JP Morgan. We didn't need the capital. We had a billion dollars on the balance sheet.”
Swulinski: PostHog's unconventional website UI succeeds as audience pattern disruption
“That's like a pattern disrupt thing for them, and they know who their target audience is, and the target audience appreciates the weirdness.”
Laqua: High-ambition founders would have been military generals 200 years ago
“If we were alive you know, 200 years ago, we'd probably be generals, like fighting some sort of wars or something.”
Rory O'Driscoll: Competition persists because no founders or investors will step away
“Everyone complains about competition, and everyone's prepared to do anything to solve the problem except the one thing that will solve the problem, which is step away from the table yourself, Harry.”
Lemkin: RevenueCat powers 40% of mobile subscription apps
“On Revenue Cat or Harry and I Investors, they power 40% of mobile subscription apps. I think the average app across all mobile paid apps is like six percent a month churn.”
Hays: Deploying a full $400M early-stage fund exclusively in Europe is concerning
“The reason that I'm bullish overall on, I'm not bullish on the European focus. . I mean, I guess that if he's gonna invest the whole, if he's gonna invest the full four hundred million in Europe, that's concerning.”
Lemkin: Expects to lose $70K bet on 2024 tech IPO resurgence
“And I have, you know, I've got 70,000 dollars with you that there'll be 26 IPOs next year. I think my, I think I may have been off by six months, so I'm going to lose.”
Max Rhodes: Interviewing candidates on childhood yields less value than recent work
“But I think the value of that time is a little less than the value of more recent professional experiences.”
Libin: A founder's struggle to delegate is a failure to hire well
“Like, it is your failure if you have not hired people that you think are better than you at their job.”
Altucher advises 18-year-old Harry Stebbings to skip college for real-world experience
“And I hope you don't go to college and instead do things that are really exciting and adventurous with your life.”
Tobi Lütke: Most top jobs in ten years do not exist today
“It's a brilliant start, and that is going to be true in 10 years too, and 10 years after that.”
Hays: Harry Stebbings will collect $80M in management fees on new fund
“He's pulling down eighty million of management fees on that fund.”
Jerry Colonna: Genuine choice in work behavior requires full awareness of trade-offs
“And once you have consciousness, then you have choice. And if you choose to never take a vacation, Harry, do so consciously. If you choose to derive all of your self-worth and meaning from your job, do so consciously and fully conscious of the cost and benefit…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Official SaaStr Podcast 36
TBPN 27
20VC 2
2026 19 mentions in 13 episodes 1 per episode
- Software Isn't Dead. It's Gotten Harder with Scale Venture Partners' Rory O'Driscoll
- Agents Didn't Kill Sales. They Just Exposed It with SaaStrAI CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- $4 Trillion in IPOs, $100B in M&A, and Why B2B Spend is Booming
- Why Your Next Hire Should Report to an AI, Tragedy Apps, and Too Many AI SDRs? | The Agents #004
- The 90/10 Rule for AI Agents: What to Vibe Code, and What To Just Buy
- AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin
- CRO Confidential: 0 to $600M in Under 4 Years. The ElevenLabs GTM Playbook with Carles Reina
- The Agents #008: Agents Are Merging, Not Multiplying. Plus, Sam Blond on Why Outbound Isn't Dead.
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 27 mentions in 17 episodes 2 per episode
- Andrew Reed on Sequoia and How to Be a World-Class VC
- Wednesday’s Diet TBPN
- The State of AI + Software: Where It’s Going - Fast
- Is The Classic GTM Playbook Really Dead? with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- The Complete Guide to Vibe Coding without a Developer with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- What Happens When AI Kills Your SaaS Growth? Live Q&A with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- Weekly Recap: Grok 4 Launch, Texas Floods, Web Browser War, Top Signals, Meta Smart Glasses
- Airwallex CEO & Co-Founder, Jack Zhang: The Angel That Turned $1M into $1BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 9 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 18 mentions in 4 episodes 5 per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Harry's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & Host, 20VChost | 1483 +16 | 1,560 | 69% 320/465 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | Founder & Host, 20VC | 8 | 21 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Founder & Host, 20VC | 1 | 7 | 100% 1/1 | full record on TBPN → |