Harry Stebbings, the British podcaster who broke into the tech world with 20-minute interviews with venture capitalists and founders, used his fame to become a VC himself. Now, Stebbings has closed his third investment vehicle, his largest to date. 20VC, the company named after the podcast series, has closed a $400 million fund.
As European technology companies continue to lag behind their U.S. counterparts at almost every stage of investment, 20VC's new fund will use Stebbings' media name and connections to attract more attention and help them move forward. Focus on supporting local startups.
“I'm really tired of everyone making fun of Europe,” he said in an interview today. “We have an incredible company and we have great people. We need to make Europe great again. Mega!” he added with a laugh.
Approximately $125 million of the fund will be allocated to seed investments and $275 million will be allocated to the Series A round. Stebbings said this fund has not yet been deployed as 20VC is still investing from its second fund, which raised $140 million in 2021.
The new funding was raised in four weeks, a relatively quick result considering the constraints swirling around venture capital.
There are a few other notable takeaways from this news.
Despite the tough environment for founders, this is a reminder that money exists for investment and that pot is clearly still growing. When it comes to startups, Europe remains an interesting opportunity for US limited partners. Stebbings noted that the majority of the fund's backers are American, and more than half are institutional investors. “I never wanted to go to MIT as a student,” Stebbings said. “I'm thrilled that they decided to fund me.'' European venture capital has a lot of power when it comes to connecting with European startups.
Venture capitalist firms like Accel, as well as successful founders turned investors, have an established presence in London and the wider region. However, many such investors still put their money into 20VC. why? Mr. Stebbings brings a very personal face to his company, helping investors avoid risk.
20VC says 40 founders from companies including Atlassian, Candy Crush, Canva, Capital One, Datadog, Deliveroo, Eventbrite, Iconiq, Procore, Spotify, UiPath, and Vinted have invested in the fund. Also investing are general partners Accel, Benchmark, Coatue, Cyberstarts, Founder Collective, Founders Fund, Khosla, NEA, TCV and Thrive.
“We're also very grounded for U.S. funds,” he said.
Stebbings has capitalized on the zeitgeist as an online creator who has built a successful business around content. In his case, that business is in the venture capital space, but he leverages his profile to help open doors and land term sheets.
“The media platforms have been really helpful,” he said. When 20VC debuted in 2020, it was essentially a “micro-VC” with just $8.3 million invested and typically piggybacked on a seed round. It currently has over 50 million views on TikTok and YouTube, which is a big number for baseball's de facto VC and startup. “Having Sam Altman or Marc Benioff on the show makes a big difference. The founders really want to take your money.”
Stebbings himself is not a trained engineer. When he started 20VC, he was studying law at university, but dropped out when everything took off. He doesn't try to hide this.
“I'm not interested in technology,” he said when asked if there was a category that was gaining attention right now. “I follow great entrepreneurs and I think it's complete bullshit to think we're smarter than the market. If there's one thing we have to learn, it's that great entrepreneurs… If that's the case, then my job is simply to find the best founders before anyone else.”
More than that, his selling point from early on was that he brought operational experience to portfolio companies.
“20 VC has a revenue of over £10m and is a highly profitable and sustainable business,” he said. “No, I'm not a technology founder, but an operator. I work 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and have been doing it for years.”
Now, that scope has expanded, with 20VC running what Stebbings calls “sub-funds” in categories such as sales, product and growth. These also have teams run by people with operator experience, who have their own careers and are interested in companies that may benefit from practical advice in these areas. (and founder).
Even though Stebbings broke the mold on how VCs are formed, he still hasn't changed the economics of VCs. It's “just like any other market,” he says. “One percent of companies earn 90 percent of the profits.”
But that might not be such a bad thing. “We can do more to normalize it in Europe and encourage trying and failing,” he said.
For VCs, he says, this highly uneven calculation may ironically increase, not reduce, their chances of winning big. “Returns for venture companies will decline overall, but [but] “For the 1%, companies will become much bigger and better than ever before, because the scale of outcomes is much greater than ever before,” he predicted.
That being said, Stebbings is still waiting on his “MEGA” payment. Many of the companies he invested in are still relatively young, the IPO market is still fairly dead, and some of the startups in its portfolio still show that 20VC was focused on the US when it was founded. There is.
Stebbings said the closest competitor is probably Tripledot, a London-based game studio valued at just over $1 billion, according to PitchBook, which last raised money in 2022.