20VC: a16z's $15BN Fundraise with Alex Rampell | The Best Companies Have Hostages Not Customers | The Best Founders Materialise Capital, Customers and Labour | Mid-Sized Funds with Die and The Future of Venture Capital
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andressen Horowitz, where he leads their $1.7BN apps fund. Just last week, a16z announced they had raised $15BN for their latest funds, over 20% of all capital raised by venture firms. At a16z, Alex has led deals into Plaid, Mercury and OpenDoor to name a few.
AGENDA:
04:55 How to Do 5x on a $15BN Fund Pool?
09:21 What Two Groups of Funds Will Win the Next Decade in VC?
14:39 What Three Things Are the Best Founders Able to Do?
19:22 The Best Companies Have Hostages, Not Customers
31:37 The Two Types of Deals You Want To Do In VC
38:52 The Importance of Founder/Capital Fit
40:34 Multiple Successive Rounds Are Dangerous… Here is Why?
42:13 Challenges of High Valuations
45:27 The Importance of Ownership in Deals
52:47 Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead
58:33 Advice on Selling Companies
01:11:55 What is the Future of Venture Capital
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think you want to invest in people that can materialize labor, capital, and customers. The way that I do it, just kind of to be pithy about it, is like we either want to buy any percent, any percent of something that is absolutely working or high ownership of something that could work. The best companies have hostages, not customers. So probably of the unicorn class, I would bet that maybe 5 percent will ever be able to go public. We were buying out of the money |
| 0:22.9 | call options and we hope they expire in the money. We don't necessarily think you could take it as a |
| 0:26.9 | given that a small fund will outperform a large fund. $15 billion. That is how much Andresen Horace |
| 0:33.9 | just raised. It is over 20% of the entire pool of capital raised by venture firms. |
| 0:40.6 | Today I'm joined by Alex Rampel, general partner at Andreessen, where he leads their $1.7 billion |
| 0:46.3 | apps fund. He's also led deals in Mercury, Plaid, Open Door and many more. And this is one of the |
| 0:52.1 | best shows that I've done in a long, long time. |
| 0:54.7 | I actually think to one of Alex's statements every single day. It's taught me so much. And it's |
| 1:00.6 | very simple. Will the startup acquire distribution before the incumbent acquires innovation? I have |
| 1:07.5 | Alex to thank for that and it always sticks with me. But before we dive into the show today, over 80% of Fortune 100 companies are running their businesses with AirTable. |
| 1:17.2 | AirTable Kamblesi with the scale of an award-winning infinitely flexible no-code system, |
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| 1:29.3 | Think of it like mission control for your company. |
| 1:32.3 | Airtable goes beyond organization and automating repetitive tasks. |
| 1:36.3 | It lets you use your data to inform strategy, monitor progress and take action. |
| 1:42.3 | Every cell is capable of performing hundreds of AI-powered tasks, |
| 1:45.8 | like web research or localization, and using those results to inform and update hundreds or |
| 1:51.3 | thousands of other cells and workflows in real time. Unlock the true scale of your workflows |
| 1:56.8 | at www.aertable.com forward slash 20VC. AirTable is the infrastructure of innovation. |
| 2:04.3 | And just like AirTable organizes your workflow data, MetaVue organizes your conversation insights. |
| 2:10.0 | This episode is brought to you by MetaVue. Who says hiring has to be fair? |
| 2:14.2 | Every founder, VC and exec I speak with knows this. Your ability to hire is the |
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