Why Data Is the Next $1 Trillion Market
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Today's show:
How many startups matter in tech? Fewer than you think. That's why venture capitalists are tripping over themselves to get onto their cap tables, no matter the cost. Why? Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi argues that the Valley has never been more "power-law-pilled" than it is today. Basu Trivedi joined Cendana Capital's Michael Kim and TWiST's Alex Wilhelm to go deep on secondary markets, the state of startup M&A, why the SaaSpocalypse may be temporary, and what could trigger a retrenchment of the AI trade. It's Wednesday, so it's time for our venture capital roundtable to go deep on how VCs are investing today, and where on the horizon they have their eyes fixed!
Guest links:
Nikhil Basu Trivedi https://x.com/nbt
Footwork https://www.footwork.vc/
Michael Kim https://x.com/MKRocks
Cendana Capital https://www.cendanacapital.com/
Show links:
The USVC-Anduril blowup https://x.com/ankurnagpal/status/2072701195714531398
Kline Hill Cendana Partners https://www.secondariesinvestor.com/kline-hill-and-cendana-raise-400m-for-second-vc-secondaries-fund/
GPTZero's exit https://gptzero.me/news/preserving-whats-human/
Salesforce buys Fin https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2026/06/15/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-fin/
Vercel buys Better Auth https://vercel.com/blog/vercel-acquires-better-auth
Figma buys Bud https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/07/figma-acquires-team-behind-a-vibe-coding-app/
Protoge https://withprotege.ai/
Windborne https://windbornesystems.com/
Etched https://www.etched.com/
Lovable's reported raise https://sifted.eu/articles/lovable-300m-13-2bn-valuation
Josh Browder https://x.com/Joshuabrowder
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction: Nikhil Basu Trivedi (Footwork) & Michael Kim (Cendana Capital)
1:59 The Anduril vs. USVC secondary market blowup
4:08 Why Silicon Valley is 'power-law-pilled'
8:23 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
9:37 Information asymmetry in the secondary markets
9:45 Every.io — For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io
15:02 Is SPV fraud smoke or fire?
16:32 Superhuman acquires GPTZero
19:54 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!
21:10 The M&A wave
27:19 The SaaSpocalypse debate
29:59 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.
30:44 Data's moment in the energy → compute → data loop
35:01 Where will AI value accrue?
40:04 What could cause an AI correction?
42:17 Why some companies are "too big to miss"
46:23 China's possible open-weight model ban
53:28 Young founders: Etched, Thiel Fellows, Z Fellows, Neo
55:33 Portfolio spotlight: WindBorne's weather balloons and data moat
58:47 Michael's favorite fund manager: Josh Browder
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Footwork’s Secret Sauce | Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith are the Co-founders of Footwork where they invest up to $15 million in Seed and Series A rounds. This is the first time they've ever sat down to record a conversation together on video.
We talk about starting the firm in 2020, their secret sauce for working with founders, lessons investing in Canva’s Seed round, scaling Stitch Fix from $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital, why AI will enable a new wave of entrepreneurship, and how public company boards are discussing AI today.
Thank you to Tony Staehelin, Andrew Riesen, and Hunter Walk for helping brainstorming topics for the conversation.
Thank you to Flex for supporting this episode.
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:24) Starting Footwork from a tweet in 2021
(3:11) Difference between startup and public company boards
(4:52) 20-40% of board meetings are now about AI
(7:48) How Footwork’s investing in AI today
(10:37) AI will enable millions of new entrepreneurs
(15:04) 37 questions to ask when starting a VC firm
(17:40) Importance of differences
(23:08) The pace of VC is faster than operating
(26:26) Footwork’s secret sauce (2x board seats, 1-pager)
(31:59) Investors should talk to and help employees
(37:05) Building an equal-carry partnership
(39:33) How Footwork makes decisions
(43:21) Navigating short-termism and politics in VC firms
(51:18) “You’re only as good as your next investment”
(53:30) Characteristics of great founders
(58:13) Canva’s Seed pitch in 2014
(1:02:54) Joining Stitch Fix as 4th employee
(1:06:40) Scaling Stitch Fix $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital
(1:16:48) Raising from Bill Gurley after a failed Series A
(1:19:40) Footwork’s office near YC
(1:22:10) Opportunities in consumer health
(1:25:20) Using flash mobs to win deals
(1:26:15) Dad life
Referenced
Footwork: https://www.footwork.vc/
Anything: https://www.anything.com/
Table22: https://www.table22.com/
Canva: https://www.canva.com/
Stitch Fix: https://www.stitchfix.com/
Honeydew: https://www.honeydew.com/
Follow Mike
Twitter: https://x.com/msmith492
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcsmith1
Follow Nikhil
Twitter: https://x.com/nbt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilbt
Substack: https://nbt.substack.com/
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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20VC: Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds & AUM is a Vanity Metric | Why 99% of Investments in AI Startups Will Go To Zero | Being a "Traction First" VC & Investing Lessons from Investing in Canva and Missing Figma with Nikhil Basu-Trivedi
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm investing its first fund. In his venture career, he has invested in the early rounds of several companies that have exited or are currently valued at over $1B, including Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color Health, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, and The Farmer's Dog. Prior to Footwork, Nikhil was a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, on the investment team at Insight Partners, and on the founding team at Artsy.
In Today's Episode with Nikhil Basu Trivedi We Discuss:
1. From Summer Intern to Founding a Firm: The 13 Year Journey:
How did Nikhil first make his way into venture as an intern at Insight Partners in NYC?
What does Nikhil know now that he wishes he had known on his first day in venture?
Why does Nikhil advise all young VCs to "not look at their business card"? Why does title not matter in venture?
Should founders meet with Juniors as well as GPs and more senior people?
2. Small Funds Outperform Large Funds:
Why does Nikhil believe that small funds outperform large funds?
Why is AUM the biggest bullshit metric in VC?
How does Nikhil advise seed stage founders who have offers from seed firms for smaller rounds at lower valuations and are weighing them against larger rounds with higher valuations from multi-stage funds?
Does Nikhil believe that platform value-added services really provide any value?
3. The Art of Investing:
What has been Nikhil's biggest investing win? How has it changed his approach to investing?
How does Nikhil prioritize between people, traction, and market? What is most important?
What has been Nikhil's biggest investing miss? How has that changed his approach?
Does Nikhil believe the great founders are immediately obvious?
Why is market size the single question that keeps Nikhil up the most?
4. The Dysfunctions of Venture Capital:
What are the single biggest areas of misalignment between GP and LP?
What do many GPs see and know well that LPs should know and see more of?
What are the biggest ways that decision-making breaks down in a venture fund?
Why does Nikhil believe that so much of the investment in AI is going to go up in flames?
20VC: The Future For Autonomous Vehicles & How Software Is Eating Cars with Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Investor @ Shasta Ventures
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is an early stage investor with Shasta Ventures, where he focuses on consumer, mobile and SaaS. Prior to joining Shasta, Nikhil was a member of the Insight Venture Partners team in NYC. Before making the move into venture, Nikhil co-founded Artsy in his sophomore year at Princeton University, Artsy now employs over 100 people and has raised over $50m in venture financing. One of Nikhil's main passions is self driving cars and so today's show will be centred around the proliferation of autonomous vehicles and what that means for us as a society?
In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Nikhil come to be a VC in SF having spent his early years in the UK?
2.) Why is Nikhil so excited about self-driving cars? What is the enabler that is allowing this mass rise of the autonomous vehicle?
3.) What happens in a world of little mechanical engineering at all, where repairs can be achieved with software updates? How does this change the complexity of production? How does this change what the supply chain might look like? How does this change the capital structure required?
4.)How does the rise of the autonomous vehicles effect the sharing economy? Is Nikhil bullish on Lyft, Uber, Didi? With on demand, when will we reach a point of equilibrium when the supply of drivers that gets drawn in and the price that attracts consumers will be equivalent?
5.) Who is the leader, is this a winner take all, will the acquisition of GM and Cruise mean a dominance? Who has Nikhil been impressed by?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Nikhil's Fave Book: Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson and Michael Moritz
Nikhil's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily, CB Insights
Nikhil's Most Recent Investment: Tally
As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nikhil on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!
Product Hunt Radio: Episode 2 w/ Kat Manalac, Nikhil Basu Trivedi, & Jack Altman
This week Kat Manalac (Partner at Y Combinator), Nikhil Basu Trivedi (VC at Shasta Ventures), and Jack Altman (Growth at Teespring) join me (Ryan Hoover) in the second episode of PHR. We chat about online-to-offline apps, a product to fight those darn San Francisco parking tickets, and the trend toward anonymous communication. Products mentioned: Flock - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/flock Jukely - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/jukely design+code - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/design-code Cloak - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/cloak-ios Fixed - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/fixed Patreon - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/patreon Secret - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/secret Rando - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/rando Facebook Nearby Friends - http://www.producthunt.co/posts/fb-nearby-friends Intro/outro music by eldienneproductions -https://soundcloud.com/eldienneproductions/hip-hop-beat-instrumental --- Product Hunt is a daily leaderboard of brand new products. Visit producthunt.co.
