20VC Exclusive: Mercor Raises $100M at a $2BN Valuation: Scaling to $70M in ARR in 24 Months | 9-9-6: 9AM-9PM - 6 Days Per Week: The Most Intense Culture in Silicon Valley | The Future of Programming, Models and Data with Adarsh Hiremath
Adarsh Hiremath is the Co-Founder and CTO @ Mercor, an AI recruitment platform and one of the fastest-growing companies in technology. They have scaled to $70M in ARR in just 24 months. They are famed for working 6 days per week, 9AM to 9PM. All of their founders are Thiel fellows, they are also the youngest unicorn founders ever with the fundraise announced today raising $100M led by Felicis at a $2BN valuation.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
04:36 How Debating Makes The Best Founders
06:05 Do People Treat You Differently When a Unicorn Founder
10:58 Scaling to $70M ARR in 24 Months
13:42 How Culture Breaks When Scaling So Fast
23:49 The Future of Foundation Models
24:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic
24:32 Data: Synthetic vs Human
27:10 The Future of Programming and AI
28:15 The Impact of AI Tools on Software Development
28:51 Why Software Will Become Commoditised
29:55 Network Effects and Marketplaces
33:13 Raising From Benchmark After a Helicopter Ride
37:30 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC Host, Harry Stebbings is also joined by one of the great founders of our time with prior founder episodes from Spotify's Daniel Ek, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman.
If you would like to see more of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), head to www.20vc.com for more information on the podcast, show notes, resources and more.
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