20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face
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Podcast Summary
In the final episode of 20VC's weekly show, Harry Stebbings hosts Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll for a comprehensive "Big Fat Quiz of the Year" covering the standout achievements and predictions for 2026. The trio awards recognition for best founder, fund, and product of 2025, with Dario Amodei of Anthropic taking founder honors for Claude's transformative impact on AI coding and productivity tools (05:16). They analyze breakout companies like Databricks and Eleven Labs, discuss the surprising talent wars that reshaped hiring practices, and debate which public tech stocks will dominate in 2026. Looking ahead, they predict SpaceX, Canva, Databricks, and Anthropic as the most likely IPO candidates, while warning of potential AI-driven unemployment backlash (01:02:29).
- Main themes: Year-end venture capital awards, breakout AI companies, public market predictions, IPO speculation, and societal implications of AI-driven unemployment
Speakers
Harry Stebbings
Host of 20VC podcast and venture capitalist, known for building one of the most prominent venture capital podcasts globally. Stebbings has established himself as a leading voice in the startup ecosystem through his extensive interviews with founders and investors.
Jason Lemkin
Founder and General Partner at SaaStr, one of the leading B2B software communities and investment firms. Lemkin previously founded EchoSign (acquired by Adobe) and has become a prominent voice in SaaS investing and entrepreneurship education.
Rory O'Driscoll
Venture capitalist with extensive experience in European and global markets. O'Driscoll brings a critical analytical perspective to venture investing and has been involved in numerous successful technology investments throughout his career.
Key Takeaways
AI Infrastructure Creates Unprecedented Value Creation Speed
The panelists highlighted how Claude 3.5 and later models fundamentally changed software development, enabling products like Cursor, Lovable, and Replit to reach massive scale quickly (05:16). Jason emphasized how tools like Eleven Labs went from a $2,000 two-week process to a $30 ten-minute solution for voice generation (26:43). This represents a paradigm shift where AI doesn't just provide incremental improvements but creates step-function value propositions that justify premium pricing and rapid adoption.
Talent Acquisition Wars Reshaped Industry Norms
The biggest surprise of 2025 was the extreme lengths companies went to acquire AI talent, with individuals receiving $100 million packages and companies being acquired for $14 billion primarily for their teams (28:23). Rory noted this wasn't just about money but represented a complete breakdown of traditional hiring conventions and social norms (29:39). This trend reflects the reality that when companies are spending $75 billion on CapEx, investing $5 billion to ensure the right people are deploying that capital becomes rational.
Traditional SaaS Must Prove AI Value Through Pricing Power
The discussion revealed a critical distinction between companies that talk about AI and those that can charge for it (42:23). Notion successfully doubled their pricing by moving users from $10 to $20 monthly plans through AI features, while companies like Adobe claimed $5 billion in "AI-influenced revenue" without meaningful pricing uplift (45:51). The key insight is that bundling AI for free reduces operating margins by 10% without revenue expansion, making pricing discipline essential for AI monetization.
Venture Scaling Eliminates Traditional Risk-Reward Calculations
Jason observed that venture capital no longer has a ceiling, fundamentally changing industry mathematics (30:27). Companies can now go from $2-8 billion valuations in weeks, and trillion-dollar IPOs are expected in 2026 (30:01). This creates a dynamic where early-stage ownership optimization becomes less relevant when later-stage deployment of significant capital can yield comparable returns, reshaping how investors think about entry points and position sizing.
AI Unemployment Backlash Will Occur Regardless of Causation
The panelists predicted that any increase in unemployment will trigger massive AI backlash because industry leaders have already "admitted to the crime" by publicly stating AI will displace jobs (01:03:02). Even if unemployment rises due to unrelated factors like tariffs or economic cycles, AI companies will bear the blame because they've positioned themselves as job disruptors (01:03:11). This represents a significant political and social risk that could impact AI adoption regardless of the technology's actual employment impact.
Statistics & Facts
- Claude 3.5 and 3.7 enabled a breakthrough year for AI-powered coding tools, with none of the successful products working effectively before these models became available (05:16). Context: Jason argued this was the foundational technology that made products like Cursor, Lovable, and Replit viable for the first time.
- Eleven Labs scaled to $400 million ARR in 2025, demonstrating massive growth in AI voice generation (25:47). Context: This exemplifies the rapid scaling possible when AI tools provide genuine step-function value improvements over traditional solutions.
- Anthropic's growth rate is now faster than OpenAI's, with valuation convergence occurring even after OpenAI's potential new round at $800 billion (08:09). Context: Rory used this to justify Dario Amodei as founder of the year, highlighting Anthropic's disciplined execution.
