20VC: The Memo: The State of the VC Market: Why Seed Funds Can't Invest in "Hot Startups" Anymore, Why Series A & B is Terrible, Why the IPO Market Will Explode in 2024 & Why VC DD is BS & Every VC Has More Fraud in their Portfolio with Jason Lemkin
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2023
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was an entrepreneur, selling EchoSign to Adobe for $100M where it is now a $250M ARR product.
In Today's Episode with Jason Lemkin We Discuss:
1. WTF is Happening At Seed Right Now:
- Why does Jason believe seed is more active than ever?
- Is the pricing of seed rounds impacted since the downturn?
- Why does Jason believe it is not only not the end of party rounds but just the beginning of them?
- Why does Jason believe you cannot fail if you have $1M in ARR and an amazing founder?
- Why does Jason believe that seed investors cannot participate in "hot seed rounds" anymore?
2. Is Series A a Dead Zone:
- How does Jason analyze the Series A and B environment today?
- What has changed in what investors expect and want to see in potential Series A and B investments?
- What happens to the many companies who raised pre-emptive Series As and have 10 years of runway but no product-market fit?
- Why does Jason believe founders should offer to give the money back when it is not working?
- What happens to the Series A and B market in the next 18 months? When does it come back?
3. Growth: People are Too Negative!
- Why does Jason believe that growth is more active than many are giving credit for?
- What are the ARR benchmarks required to get a good growth round term sheet today?
- Why does Jason believe that VC DD is a load of BS?
- Why does Jason believe that every VC has fraud in their portfolio? Will they come out?
4. Ring That Bell: IPOs and M&A:
- Why does Jason believe 2024 will be an amazing year for IPOs?
- Why does much of the IPO market rely on Stripe and Databricks?
- What is needed for an amazing 2024 IPO market?
- How does Jason evaluate the M&A market in 2024? Will regulation get in the way?
5. Jason Lemkin: AMA:
- Why does Jason Lemkin believe this generation of workers will never work hard again?
- What is the only way for seed funds to make money investing in serial entrepreneurs?
- What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known when he started investing?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Anyone that thinks seed isn't happening, they're out of their minds. |
| 0:03.1 | I don't think seed investors can participate in hot startups anymore. |
| 0:07.2 | The reason there's a huge slowdown at A&B is not because the money isn't there. |
| 0:11.0 | Everyone that's good has a fund, but it'll be an IPO week in the back half of 24. |
| 0:14.7 | I'm reasonably caught. |
| 0:15.7 | I'll bet you whatever you want, five to one, that this is right. |
| 0:19.4 | It'll be an IPO week in the back half of 24. My word, what a show we have in store for you today. This is the memo with me, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:24.9 | Now, the memo is the monthly show where we deep dive on a specific topic or company, and |
| 0:28.9 | today it is the state of the markets themselves. From seed to IPO and M&A, what is happening, what is not happening, and what can we expect. And joining me is Jason Lamkin, |
| 0:38.0 | founder at Saster, one of the best performing early stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, |
| 0:43.4 | Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipe Drive, Sales Loft, Talk Desk, and Revenue Cat, to name a few. |
| 0:49.3 | And prior to Saster, Jason was an entrepreneur selling Echo Sign to Adobe for $100 million, |
| 0:57.0 | where it is now a $250 million ARR product. But before we dive into the show today, we need to talk about SANA. |
| 1:01.0 | SANA is an AI-powered learning and knowledge-sharing platform. |
| 1:04.0 | Think of it like ChatGPT for all your company's knowledge. |
| 1:08.0 | SANA integrates with all your company's apps in under five minutes and can search |
| 1:12.6 | through every single file, dog, pull request, video and more in under 100 milliseconds. |
| 1:18.6 | Assistant is generative AI at its most useful. |
| 1:21.6 | Say you need to create a course on OKR fundamentals for your employee onboarding program, |
| 1:25.6 | and you're just really short on time. |
| 1:27.6 | Well, Assistant can generate the outline and contents from scratch, complete with relevant |
| 1:32.4 | imagery. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.