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

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

December 22, 2025·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Jason forecasts SpaceX, Canva, Databricks, and Anthropic will IPO in 2026, starting with SpaceX this summer.

The episode opens with Jason Lemkin arguing emphatically that Claude 3.5 and 3.7 deserve product of the year because without Anthropic's model improvements, none of the vibe coding wave, including Cursor, Lovable, Replit, and Gamma, would have been possible. All three panelists converge on Dario Amodei as founder of the year, with O'Driscoll noting that Anthropic's valuation growth outpaced OpenAI's during 2025 and that Dario played a steadier execution hand. Harry nominates Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president, as a close second for navigating Elon Musk's politically polarizing brand during a difficult geopolitical year. The panel debates Alex Wang of Scale AI, who sold to Meta, as a high-return founder but one whose world impact remains unclear. Vlad Tenev of Robinhood is praised as a masterclass in multi-product execution, going from meme app to trusted adult fintech with nine products generating over 100 million in revenue each. The fund of the year discussion centers on Benchmark, praised for maintaining conviction on Cursor and other bets before they were obvious. For 2026 predictions, the panel forecasts four major IPOs: SpaceX first, followed by Canva coming out of nowhere, Databricks in the back half of the year, and Anthropic at year end. OpenAI is excluded because it is burning too much capital. On stocks, the panel is bullish on Meta and cautious on Oracle and CoreWeave. The most consequential prediction is around AI unemployment: Lemkin argues that if unemployment rises two or three points for any reason, the resulting political and social backlash against AI will make the current anti-tech sentiment look mild, and that a genuinely scared society could legislate or restrict AI development in ways that permanently alter the industry trajectory. Rory O'Driscoll counters that history suggests productivity gains from new technologies ultimately create more jobs than they destroy, but acknowledges the transition costs are real and politically explosive.

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