20VC: Do Margins Matter in AI? | Is Defensibility Gone For Good? | Is Vertical SaaS Dead in a World of AI | What SaaS Rules Are BS and No Longer Apply in a World of AI | The Future of Venture: Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS with Byron Deeter
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, and one of the most renowned SaaS investors. Byron has led 19 unicorn investments, including IPO successes like ServiceTitan, Procore, Twilio, Box, Gainsight, Intercom, DocuSign, SendGrid. His portfolio includes eight companies that have gone public. Insane.
Agenda:
00:00 – Why are the stakes in AI higher than ever before?
05:20 – Is defensibility in AI gone for good?
07:40 – Do margins even matter when backing the next Anthropic or Perplexity?
09:50 – How does Byron think about future dilution when investing in AI today?
12:10 – With 40% of venture money going to 10 deals, is there any point investing elsewhere?
13:40 – Is vertical SaaS dead? Is there any point when the large players can own it?
18:00 – Will AI shift from the tech budget to the human labor budget and unlock trillions?
21:10 – Are we entering the era of billion-dollar businesses built by 10 people?
25:20 – Is treble-treble-double-double now too slow for AI companies?
33:10 – In today's AI gold rush, is it better to scream the loudest or just build the best product?
41:10 – What specific growth rates are best in class, good and not good enough today?
55:00 – Is venture now just a game of scale — Chanel vs. Walmart?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The stakes are way higher than they've ever been. |
| 0:03.0 | I thought we understood this next phase we're going into, how big this was going to be. And very sincerely, we've probably added a zero to everything. I think there's going to be a lot of trillion-dollar businesses that are created from this. The game is on. It's coming, definitely. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now stay, we welcome an old friend of the show, Byron Dieter, one of the best SaaS and cloud investors |
| 0:24.2 | of the last decade. |
| 0:25.5 | Check this out. |
| 0:26.2 | He's got 19 unicorn investments. |
| 0:29.3 | Eight of his companies have gone public. |
| 0:31.7 | Procore, service titan, Twilio, box, send grid. |
| 0:35.7 | The list goes on. |
| 0:36.9 | Byron is this incredible sage of SaaS, cloud wisdom. |
| 0:41.4 | This was so much fun to do reflecting on how SaaS is both different and similar to the AI wave today |
| 0:47.2 | and how he and Bessemer think about really being a frontrunner in the next wave of AI investing. |
| 0:52.6 | But before we dive into the show today, I love seeing the team come together to make this |
| 0:56.8 | show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and |
| 1:01.2 | the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why |
| 1:05.9 | we use Coda, the all-in-one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on |
| 1:12.8 | the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates |
| 1:18.3 | deeper teamwork and quicker creativity, and their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda |
| 1:24.0 | brain, is a game changer. Powered by Grammali, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation |
| 1:29.0 | and expansion, aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to |
| 1:34.4 | organize the chaos while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, |
| 1:39.9 | Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. |
| 1:52.7 | Head over to coda.io slash 20VC right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's Coda Codda.io slash |
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