Latest news with #20VC
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Europe's biggest VCs are going to war over adopting China's 996 ‘always on' culture: ‘Don't listen to a jumped-up finance bro in a hoodie'
A war is brewing in Europe's startup community over three numbers that would have mass implications for tech workers, and perhaps beyond: 996. Stoked by an ongoing debate about Europe's competitiveness with other territories, leaders of some of the region's biggest VCs have waded into a battle startups should be working in order to compete with U.S. and Chinese tech firms. Harry Stebbings, founder of the 20VC fund, ignited the latest debate last weekend when he said Silicon Valley had 'turned up the intensity,' and European founders needed to take notice. '7 days a week is the required velocity to win right now. There is no room for slip up,' Stebbings said on LinkedIn. 'You aren't competing against random company in Germany etc but the best in the world.' His fellow venture capitalist, Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot, followed up in a lengthy post raising the idea of tech startups needing to work long, intense hours now more than ever. The fast-moving world of AI left no time for complacency, Mignot argued, in addition to the emergence of global competition and the need to maximize productivity among workers in a scarce talent pool. In his post, Mignot cited a 2018 Financial Times editorial by Michael Moritz, the Welsh billionaire chairperson of Sequoia Capital, who suggested Silicon Valley entrepreneurs adopt the then-little-known 996 model. It's where employees work from nine to nine, six days a week, adding up to a 72-hour work week, or double the average weekly working hours in the EU. Mignot credited Moritz with introducing the 996 model to a Western audience. A representative for Index Partners didn't respond to a request for comment. Stebbings' and Mignot's remarks caught the attention of both Amelia Miller, co-founder of Ivee, and Suranga Chandratillake, a general partner at Balderton Capital. 'Burnout [is] one of the top 3 reasons early-stage ventures fail. It is literally a bad reason to invest,' said Ivee's Miller on LinkedIn. Balderton's Chandratillake shared Miller's sentiment, and leveled his criticism at the messengers calling for a 996 culture: 'All the versions of this post I've read are from VCs who've never built a technology company themselves. I remember such 'advice' well when I was a founder. If you're a CEO, don't listen to a jumped-up finance bro in a hoodie who has never done your job telling you how to do it!' Chandratillake tells Fortune he felt compelled to wade into a public argument on the train home from work after reading what he thought were new versions of a 'dangerous' conversation on expected working hours. The former startup founder has seen the negative effects of that 'always on' mentality from some founders he has watched knowingly or unknowingly adopt the 996 model. Those founders tend to 'fail in a slightly depressing, sinking out of significance kind of way,' he said. 'You get addicted to this thing of, 'I'm just gonna make these incremental improvements in my company.' And you're growing a little bit every day, you're building a little bit every day, but you completely miss some big strategic shift that's going on around you, and as a result, you just don't make the right pivot.' The 'always on' narrative is compelling because it's an easy explanation for complex problems, Chandratillake believes. 'I always say Californians are great at telling stories, right? There's a reason why Hollywood is in LA,' said Chandratillake. 'If a thing takes 10 or 20 years to build, there's just no way you can sprint for that long without stopping.' Through Balderton, Chandratillake has been an investor in cutting-edge wellness programs for the founders of its portfolio companies, using methods practised by astronauts and athletes to ensure recovery and prevent burnout. While he advocates for more awareness of physical and mental health among founders, Chandratillake doesn't go as far as to support the idea of work-life balance. He admits he would frequently pull all-nighters at critical moments, like around funding rounds and quarterly deadlines, while building the startup Blinkx, which he eventually took public. 'You have to be smart about having moments to balance yourself, not because you're trying to create this wonderful work-life balance existence, but because you know that in a couple of weeks time, there's going to be a crunch.' The argument surrounding work culture in Europe isn't new, as opposing voices seek to support or dismiss the idea that a cross-Atlantic divergence in productivity growth is a result of differing work ethic. The sparse number of European tech companies populating the Fortune 500, or the list of the world's most valuable companies, has been used as a prime example of the fallout of this perceived shortfall. Last year, Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway's $1.8 trillion wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, claimed Americans work harder than Europeans owing to a higher 'general level of ambition.' Speaking on Stebbings' 20VC podcast last year, Monzo co-founder and serial entrepreneur, Tom Blomfield, took a more nuanced approach, singling out the U.K., where he felt the concept of the 'American Dream' was 'antithetical to British culture.' Chandratillake said he doesn't subscribe to the idea that Europe is being left behind, and envisions at least three European companies—Spotify, ASML, and Arm—he thinks can hit a $1 trillion+ valuation in the future. 'We might be behind from a timing point of view, but I don't think we're behind from a sort of effort or energy point of view right now.' As for whether he thinks a four-day week will be the norm in the future, Chandratillake was the bearer of bad news. 'Humans have a way of just making themselves more work. So I think the nature of the work will shift. I think the ways in which you can do it may be more flexible. 'But every 100 years or so, it seems like someone suggests that we're going to all work less, and unfortunately, they turn out to be wrong.' This story was originally featured on
Business Insider
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company
Jack Zhang said his mistakes include not outsourcing to a good recruiter in the early days, expanding overseas too quickly, and not prioritizing company culture. The Airwallex cofounder and CEO spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast aired on Monday. "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn," Zhang said of his first mistake. "Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and then give them access to my LinkedIn password." Zhang cofounded Airwallex with four friends in Melbourne in 2015. The Singapore-based fintech company provides cross-border payments and financial services through its banking network and protocols that allow different software components to communicate with each other. Last week, the company announced that it raised $300 million in a series F funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion. Zhang said that his second mistake was that Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. He said the company got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk. The CEO said the last thing he would change would be investing in company culture early. "In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience — they're from a bank, they're from Citibank, they've built a Swift network before," he said. "They join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going to do doesn't work.' None of those people worked." He said that experience matters less than other characteristics. "We should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on," Zhang said. "But we didn't, so we had to fire all of them," he added, speaking of his challenging early hires. Zhang is among tech CEOs who have looked back on their companies' early days and said they waited too long before delegating. Earlier this month, Luis von Ahn, the cofounder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, said that he micromanaged 50 employees in the early days of the company. He said he only learned to spread the responsibility once it became "impossible" to manage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said in a talk at Stanford University. "Two of my executive team are sitting here — head of people and head of finance. I am neither good at those things nor do I get energy from them, so they have all the freedom in the world," he said. Microsoft's former CEO, Bill Gates, is also outspoken about delegation and how he learned that he could not be involved with every project or team member as the company grew.
Business Insider
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company
The CEO of Tencent and Sequoia-backed payments startup Airwallex said that if he had to start over, there are three things he would do differently. Jack Zhang said his mistakes include not outsourcing to a good recruiter in the early days, expanding overseas too quickly, and not prioritizing company culture. The Airwallex cofounder and CEO spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast aired on Monday. "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn," Zhang said of his first mistake. "Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and then give them access to my LinkedIn password." Zhang cofounded Airwallex with four friends in Melbourne in 2015. The Singapore-based fintech company provides cross-border payments and financial services through its banking network and protocols that allow different software components to communicate with each other. Last week, the company announced that it raised $300 million in a series F funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion. Zhang said that his second mistake was that Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. He said the company got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk. The CEO said the last thing he would change would be investing in company culture early. "In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience — they're from a bank, they're from Citibank, they've built a Swift network before," he said. "They join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going to do doesn't work.' None of those people worked." He said that experience matters less than other characteristics. "We should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on," Zhang said. "But we didn't, so we had to fire all of them," he added, speaking of his challenging early hires. Zhang is among tech CEOs who have looked back on their companies' early days and said they waited too long before delegating. Earlier this month, Luis von Ahn, the cofounder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, said that he micromanaged 50 employees in the early days of the company. He said he only learned to spread the responsibility once it became "impossible" to manage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said in a talk at Stanford University. "Two of my executive team are sitting here — head of people and head of finance. I am neither good at those things nor do I get energy from them, so they have all the freedom in the world," he said. Microsoft's former CEO, Bill Gates, is also outspoken about delegation and how he learned that he could not be involved with every project or team member as the company grew. "I had always been the taskmaster, the one who incessantly worried about losing our lead, and fearing that if we weren't careful, we'd be sunk," Gates wrote in his memoir.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Duolingo's tech chief says his leadership principle is 'reduce, automate, delegate'
Duolingo's tech chief, Severin Hacker, uses a "reduce, automate, delegate" leadership strategy. He said it's important to strike a balance between being in "founder mode" and being a manager. Hacker said he adapted his leadership style as the company grew to 800 people. Duolingo's cofounder has a three-part principle for striking the right balance between "founder mode" and having some hierarchy in the company. "One of my principles is reduce, automate, delegate," said Severin Hacker, who is also the company's chief technology officer. He spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast published on Monday. Hacker cofounded Duolingo in 2011 with Luis von Ahn, his doctoral supervisor at Carnegie Mellon University. The language-learning app has since gone public and employs about 800 people. Speaking about "reduce," Hacker said that once a month or once a quarter, he thinks about what he needs to do — and what he can drop. "If you just don't do it, is it the end of the world?" he said. Once he decides that a task is necessary, he tries to gauge if it can be automated, such as using ChatGPT to write a report or answer a question. Lastly, he said he delegates what cannot be automated. "I've handed off most of the day-to-day engineering to our head of engineering," Hacker said. "I'm now a little bit out of the weeds." He said he's focused on AI and its implications for Duolingo and deciding what the company should invest in. "I probably spend 80% of my day thinking and acting on this AI question," the CTO said. The company has doubled down on AI usage in the past year. It uses the technology to generate lessons, and last month, Duolingo's CEO von Ahn made headlines for outlining all the ways he plans to integrate AI at the company, including for hiring and evaluation decisions. Duolingo's use of AI and growing user base have made it an investor darling. It hit over 46 million daily active users this year, and its stock is up 191% in the past year. Duolingo has expanded its offerings from about 40 languages to math, music, and, recently, chess. Hacker said that his role has changed every year since he cofounded the company. He added that it's important to find a balance between being in founder mode — Silicon Valley lingo for a leader who is very involved in the company day-to-day — and being a manager, who often delegates and prefers hierarchy. "At a certain scale, you need to have managers or layers," Hacker said. "The oldest organization in the world, the Catholic Church, that is still around, it's very hierarchical and and I think there's probably some reason for it." Earlier this month, von Ahn, too, said that his leadership style changed as the language learning company grew in size. In an interview at Stanford University, the CEO said that he no longer gets into the fine details of every task, not because he doesn't want to, but because it's impossible to micromanage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Duolingo's tech chief says his leadership principle is 'reduce, automate, delegate'
Duolingo's cofounder has a three-part principle for striking the right balance between "founder mode" and having some hierarchy in the company. "One of my principles is reduce, automate, delegate," said Severin Hacker, who is also the company's chief technology officer. He spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast published on Monday. Hacker cofounded Duolingo in 2011 with Luis von Ahn, his doctoral supervisor at Carnegie Mellon University. The language-learning app has since gone public and employs about 800 people. Speaking about "reduce," Hacker said that once a month or once a quarter, he thinks about what he needs to do — and what he can drop. "If you just don't do it, is it the end of the world?" he said. Once he decides that a task is necessary, he tries to gauge if it can be automated, such as using ChatGPT to write a report or answer a question. Lastly, he said he delegates what cannot be automated. "I've handed off most of the day-to-day engineering to our head of engineering," Hacker said. "I'm now a little bit out of the weeds." He said he's focused on AI and its implications for Duolingo and deciding what the company should invest in. "I probably spend 80% of my day thinking and acting on this AI question," the CTO said. The company has doubled down on AI usage in the past year. It uses the technology to generate lessons, and last month, Duolingo's CEO von Ahn made headlines for outlining all the ways he plans to integrate AI at the company, including for hiring and evaluation decisions. Duolingo's use of AI and growing user base have made it an investor darling. It hit over 46 million daily active users this year, and its stock is up 191% in the past year. Duolingo has expanded its offerings from about 40 languages to math, music, and, recently, chess. Evolving leadership Hacker said that his role has changed every year since he cofounded the company. He added that it's important to find a balance between being in founder mode — Silicon Valley lingo for a leader who is very involved in the company day-to-day — and being a manager, who often delegates and prefers hierarchy. "At a certain scale, you need to have managers or layers," Hacker said. "The oldest organization in the world, the Catholic Church, that is still around, it's very hierarchical and and I think there's probably some reason for it." Earlier this month, von Ahn, too, said that his leadership style changed as the language learning company grew in size. In an interview at Stanford University, the CEO said that he no longer gets into the fine details of every task, not because he doesn't want to, but because it's impossible to micromanage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said.
