20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

If you're not motivated by the fear of losing, I think you're asleep at the wheel. At the very beginning, there's three reasons why pre-seed companies fail. They run out of money, they run out of hope and co-founder disputes. There are three types of people. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened. Pitching VCs is like a game of poker. You should never reveal too much information about what you're seeking. I put all my Thiel Fellowship money, and I invested it in Adam Guild and other amazing entrepreneurs.
I think when it's all said and done, it will be in the eight figures. If you back someone who's above average IQ, very smart and never give up, of course they'll succeed. The VCs will say anything to get you to sign right there and then. Anything. For every anthropic employee who's making 20 to 100 million, there's 7,000 block employees being laid off. It's not sustainable. You can't have 50,000 people with all the money. I think actually there could be a revolution in our lifetime. Something has to change. Do you think you will make more money from your investing than you will do not pay?
I think unfortunately, I'll make more money from the investing. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, if I could invest in one emerging manager sub $50 million fund, it would be this manager today, Josh Browder, Browder Capital. Honestly, I thought this guy was amazing when I came into this interview, but I didn't know the show would be quite as good as this turned out to be. So, there's some insane points that are important to remember with Josh. He makes founders that he invests in live in his spare room, The Four Seasons, until they raise a seed round. Also, he turned his Teal Fellowship 100K grant into a $10 million angel portfolio. He was one of the first investors in companies like Micro One, Yuzu and many more. I've never had such good founder references on any GP that we've ever had on the show as I have with Josh. I spoke to 12 Josh got an average of 9.2 out of 10 across those 12 founder references. This is one of the best shows that we've done in a long time. And I honestly just felt really grateful to have made a new friend after doing this show with Josh. But before we dive into the show today, did you know the industry average for booking a business trip is 45 minutes? That's a massive waste of your team's time. Well, with Navan, your employees can book a trip in just seven on average. Navan is the AI-powered travel and expense platform designed for companies that value efficiency. It drives real business impact through high employee adoption and automated policy control. Now, the built-in AI approves in-policy bookings and blocks the rest automatically. This allows finance teams to stop chasing receipts and skip the month and chaos. And you get this real-time visibility that can save your company up to 15% on your travel budget. And that's why leaders like Visa, Stripe, Figma, and even Anthropic rely on Nivan these days. Go to nivan.com/20vctoday to see for yourself. And you'll get a chance to win two business class flights anywhere in continental US. No purchase necessary, rules apply. Head over to nivan.com/20vc now. Once Nivan simplifies the travel, Airwally simplifies the spend behind it. Founders, let's get real about the growth tax. You've raised VC funding and you're scaling globally. And it's no longer about shipping product. It's about orchestrating operations across continents. But suddenly, your payments and finance stack is choking your growth. You're logging in to lots of different banking portals, waiting days for transfers and reporting across entities. It's operational drag and it's at your scale. It's costing millions. That's why I'm so excited to partner with Airwallets. Airwallets are more than just a banking alternative to HSBC or Citi. Airwallets brings you an intelligent financial operating system that powers how global businesses operate and grow, allowing you to manage and automate banking, treasury, payments and spend. The most exciting part for me, they're heavily investing in agentic finance. If you're scaling globally, you need a banking and finance platform that's borderless, real time and intelligent. Check out Airwallets today and see how they're helping thousands of businesses like Canva, McLaren and Deal. Scale at airwallets.com/20vc.
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