20VC: What I Learned from 100 of the Best CEOs in the World | What I Learned from Staying with Mr Beast for 3 Weeks | How We Will Spend More on Tokens than Salaries with Cliff Weitzman, Speechify
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2026
⏱️ 105 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cliff Weitzman is the Founder & CEO of Speechify AI. He solved his dyslexia and ADHD in college by building a Voice AI agent that's now used by over 60 million people and has over 1 million five-star ratings. Over 200 software and AI engineers work on Speechify which won the Apple Design award last year.
AGENDA:
00:00 — Until You Hit $100K Do Not Spend on any Channel Other than Meta
04:53 — How I hacked the college system by applying to 26 universities
06:33 — The "Great Guy" yearbook prank that accidentally outed me
08:35 — What I learned from hunting down the top 100 CEOs in the world
11:51 — The "Warrior" rule: Why I force my senior leaders to edit their own ads
13:52 — Why companies are like bodybuilders: The Bulking and Cutting cycle
17:34 — I test 1,000 AI-generated ads every single day
20:13 — How I built a custom AI ad platform in just four days
23:19 — The one $3,000,000 ad I filmed in a hot tub with red headphones
32:15 — Why we will soon spend more on AI tokens than employee salaries
34:55 — "I'm disappointed in you": The 1,000-credit daily AI requirement
36:31 — How LLMs helped me find my father's cancer when doctors couldn't
41:13 — Why 40% of billionaires are dyslexic—and why you should be too
45:41 — Why I refuse to hire anyone who has worked at Google
47:05 — I flew into a war zone in Ukraine just to keep one engineer
55:49 — Why performance reviews are a total waste of time
58:32 — QA is the most valuable skill in the world (and you're probably bad at it)
01:03:59 — Why we keep our valuation and funding a total secret
01:07:51 — The "Virus" Strategy: How Logan Paul hijacked the WWE
01:11:32 — What I learned from sleeping at Mr Beast's house for three weeks
01:14:15 — How we made a 36X return on Nvidia using high-leverage options
01:23:44 — I found the hacker who stole $200k—then I hired him
01:32:45 — Why I spent 11 days sleeping in a Walmart parking lot
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | don't even bother spending money on any platform that's not meta until you reach $100,000 a month and spend on meta. Companies go through cutting and bulking cycles like bodybuilders do. We test almost a thousand day I generated ads a day right now. We're getting to the point where soon we're going to spend more in tokens than we spend on actual salaries. If you don't spend a thousand credits a day, I'm disappointed in you. If you can really trust someone, you can afford to pay them significantly more. The world around us was built by people no smarter than you and I. You could do things. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stubbings, and in our show today we have Cliff Weidstman, found and CEO of Speechify. So this is the guy who solved his dyslexia and ADHD by building a voice AI agent agent that's now used by over 60 million people and has over a million five star ratings. |
| 0:43.1 | I've never had a guest who has such bad shit crazy stories. |
| 0:47.2 | So check this out. |
| 0:48.1 | What I learned from sleeping at Mr. Beast's house for three weeks, this is the man that got hacked, went and tracked down the hacker, |
| 0:57.0 | then hired him and got him to live with him also. He spent 11 days sleeping in a Walmart parking lot |
| 1:06.1 | in the middle of America. There is the most insane amount of stories from Cliff, and this is one of the most |
| 1:12.6 | fun and fascinating stories we've ever featured on 20VC. But before we dive into the show today, |
| 1:18.9 | meet Ava, the first autonomous AI BDR built by Artisan to run your entire outbound on autopilot. |
| 1:25.6 | Hey Jason Lemkin from Saster here. Artisan is S-tier. |
| 1:28.8 | We've replaced our entire outbound sales team with Artisan. I believe we've sent over 50,000 |
| 1:32.9 | highly customized emails to Artisan. The open rate is twice what it was with humans, |
| 1:37.3 | and they close 100K deals day after day. Ava sources leads from over 250 million contacts, |
| 1:43.5 | enriches every prospect with intent signals, |
| 1:46.5 | then writes and sends personalized multi-channel outreach, self-optimizing over time. |
| 1:52.2 | When a lead replies, she handles objections and books meetings straight into your A.E's |
| 1:56.5 | calendars without any human input. Artisan is backed by Y Combinator and has raised $36 million |
| 2:02.3 | to build the first truly autonomous AIBDR. Hire Ava, the AIBDR, and put your outbound on |
| 2:09.2 | autopilot at artisan.co slash 20VC. That's A-R-T-I-S-A-N.co-C-2-0V-C. |
| 2:19.1 | While Artisan scales outreach, Intercom helps you support faster. |
| 2:23.4 | As AI agents become more common in customer experience, teams often end up juggling multiple silo tools for every job. |
| 2:30.9 | Well, Finn was built to change that. |
| 2:32.6 | It's a single unified agent that works across |
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