20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jesse Zhang is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Decagon, the conversational AI platform for customer experience. As one of the fastest growing companies in the valley, they have raised over $230M at a last round price of $1.5BN. Prior to Decagon, Jesse founded Lowkey (acquired by Niantic), studied CS at Harvard, and worked at places like Google, HRT, Citadel, and Intel.
AGENDA:
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Messages
03:43 Olympiad Mathematician to Startup Founder
05:34 Selling to Niantic and What I Did Differently the Second Time
07:16 Why 90% of Founders Build Companies the Wrong Way
12:19 Scaling to $50M ARR in 15 Months
31:31 Is the AI Talent War Out of Hand: How To Compete with Meta Pay Packets
32:38 Why Remote Work is Total BS
34:06 Competitors in AI Customer Experience: Sierra, Intercom and more
37:34 AI Market Predictions
44:56 Embracing Stress and Winning Culture
50:13 Quick Fire Questions: Most Underrated AI Founder, Biggest Changed Opinion
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and welcome to a very special episode of The Memo. |
| 0:04.6 | The Memo is a monthly show where we sit down with a breakout founder of the day. |
| 0:09.4 | Today, joining us in the hot seat, we have Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, |
| 0:14.4 | the conversational AI platform for customer experience. |
| 0:17.7 | Now, it's one of the fastest growing companies in the Valley. |
| 0:20.0 | They've raised over at |
| 0:21.2 | $230 million, with the last round pricing them at $1.5 billion. And prior to Decagon, Jesse founded |
| 0:28.9 | Loki, which was acquired by Neantik. This was so much fun to do. The schedule completely |
| 0:34.3 | went out the window. It was awesome. Get ready. Get the notebooks out. |
| 0:38.8 | This one's a special one. |
| 0:40.1 | But before we dive into the show stay, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. |
| 0:45.1 | 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. |
| 0:52.9 | That's why we use Coda, the all-in-one |
| 0:55.6 | collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. |
| 1:01.3 | Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper |
| 1:06.1 | teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda brain, is a game |
| 1:12.6 | changer. Powered by Grammally, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, |
| 1:17.6 | aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos |
| 1:23.0 | while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your |
| 1:28.7 | working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including |
| 1:33.5 | Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. |
| 1:39.9 | Head over to coda.io slash 20VC right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. |
... |
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 2026.