20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mignot, Partner @ Index Ventures

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Martin Mignot is a Partner at Index Ventures, the best-performing fund in the world right now. In the last three months, they have sold Wiz for $ 32 billion, sold Scale for $14.9 billion, and IPO'd Figma as the largest investor. In addition to this, they are the largest or second-largest shareholders in Roblox, Revolut, Adyen and Datadog.

Agenda for Today:

00:00 – Why Gross Margin is the Biggest Sin in the Early Days

04:50 – Why Most People Shouldn’t Become VCs

07:40 – Why it is BS to Suggest the Future of VC is Boutique vs Mega Fund

09:10 – Do Multi-Stage Funds Really Give a S*** About Seed

13:50 – The Founder Trait That Trumps Market Size Every Time

18:45 – How Spotify Still Haunts Index Ventures & What They Learn From It?

28:50 – The Brutal Truth About European vs. U.S. Founders

34:20 – The Case for a European AI Giant (and Who Might Build It)

40:50 – The Return of the 7-Day Founder Work Week

52:10 – Biggest Lessons from Leading Revolut’s Series A

56:40 – Betting Against Nick Storonsky? Don’t.

1:03:10 – The One Competitor Index Ventures Admires

Transcript

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0:00.0	beware of gross margin in the early days. And I think that's a mistake we've made a couple of
0:04.3	time. You have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad growth margin. All the
0:09.0	LLM providers were very clear examples of that. I think if that's the only thing that's holding you
0:14.0	up, in most cases, I would totally ignore it. We never pass and we never lose the deal or pass on the deal because of price in the early
0:22.4	stage. So we've been around for 30 years. We invested, I think, 11.5 billion dollars. We've
0:28.2	returned, I think, about close to 30 and we still have, you know, 20 plus in, you know, in holdings.
0:34.3	Most of that is concentrated in eight, nine companies.
0:39.2	And we've invested in close to 400 companies over the years.
0:42.3	You are listening to 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:44.6	Now, I first met this guest nine years ago.
0:47.6	Their fund has been flying for the last six to 12 months.
0:52.8	I mean, oh my God, they sold WIS for 32 billion. They sold scale for 14.9 billion.
0:59.7	They IPOed Figma as the largest investor. Can you guess the fund? You got it. It's index ventures.
1:06.7	One of the best performing funds on the planet. I'm so thrilled to welcome Martin Minio,
1:11.6	partner at Index Ventures. And in addition to the crazy success names that I mentioned,
1:16.8	they're also the largest or second largest shareholders in, check this out,
1:21.1	Revolut, Roblox, Adien, Datadog, list goes on. Such an incredible conversation here here and so much fun to have Martin back on the show after nine years.
1:32.1	But before we dive into the show stay, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen.
1:37.0	What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools.
1:44.9	That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the
1:51.5	world get on the same page, offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets,
1:56.8	Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity, and their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda brain, is a game changer.
	...

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