20VC: The AI Bubble Is Wrong | AI Margins Need to Improve | Revenue Concentration Should be a Concern | Why People Over-Estimate Open Models But Enterprises Still Fear Frontier Models with Aaron Katz, ClickHouse

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
We're just getting started.

**Aaron Katz** (0:00)
This seems to be accelerating at an unprecedented pace. We haven't seen revenue growth like this in our lifetime. We went zero, 12, 50, 200, and we'll finish this year north of 500 We need to get to a billion dollars of ARR as quickly as possible. I'd put the over under at December, 2027, and I would take the under. We could take the company public next year if we wanted to.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:22)
This is a very special 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. The show you're about to listen to, oh, it was not filmed in the usual recording studio. No, no, we went to Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham Football. Why? Well, our guest today just got front of shirt sponsorship for Craven Cottage, and for Fulham, most importantly, the team that play there. Welcome Aaron Katz, founder and CEO of ClickHouse, industry leading online analytical processing database management system. Try saying that after a couple of tequilas. But they've just crossed 350 million in ARR. They have customers like Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Tesla, Netflix. If you're a great company, you can't use ClickHouse. And Aaron is incredible. He was one of the leading executives at Elastic for years. Before that, he spent 12 years working with the one and only Benioff at Salesforce. Now he's obviously the co-founder of ClickHouse, which is worth over 15 billion dollars. I cannot wait for you to hear this discussion. It was so much fun for me to sit down with a dear friend and Aaron. But before we dive into the show today, founders face a different set of challenges at every stage of growth. For Sid Shait, co-founder and CEO of D-Matrix, JP Morgan delivered the guidance and expertise to help navigate what came next. He credits JP Morgan's high touch approach with supporting D-Matrix as it grew and expanded internationally. Whether you're in the early days or expanding into new markets, JP Morgan helps startups navigate complexity with real confidence, offering personalized guidance and deep sector expertise. Find out how JP Morgan helps founders at jpmorgan.com/growwithoutlimits.
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Aaron, dude, I've done over a thousand shows. I've never had a setting quite like this for a show. So thank you so much for hosting at Fulham Football Club.

**Aaron Katz** (4:03)
Yeah, total joy.

**Harry Stebbings** (4:04)
Now I want to start with just a little explainer on what is ClickHouse and what does ClickHouse become in a five-year period? Just to set the scene there.

**Aaron Katz** (4:14)
Yeah, well, as one of our more recent investors, I think you understand the thesis behind it, which is it's the world's most popular open-source database and it satisfies a very broad array of use cases and it's used by nearly every AI native company, Anthropic, OpenAI, Weights and Biases. It's known for its lightning-fast query execution, extreme resource efficiency in terms of storing vast volumes of data.