20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face

What It Covers

Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll award 2025's best founders, funds, and products, then predict 2026's IPOs, stock winners, and AI's employment impact in their year-end venture capital review episode.

Key Questions Answered

• •Founder execution in AI infrastructure: Dario Amodei at Anthropic delivered Claude 3.5 and 3.7 models that enabled functional vibe coding products like Cursor, Replit, and Lovable. Growth rate exceeded OpenAI while maintaining profitability focus, with valuation converging despite starting behind.
• •Venture fund performance metrics: Index Ventures dominated through multiple exits including Wiz, Figma seed investment, and Revolut at 75 billion valuation. Neo achieved aesthetic success with first money into Cursor, Kalshi, and Cognition despite smaller absolute returns, demonstrating accelerator model resurgence beyond YC dominance.
• •B2B SaaS AI monetization challenge: Companies must achieve genuine co-attach revenue lift, not just AI-influenced bookings. Notion succeeded by doubling pricing from ten to twenty dollars monthly per seat for AI features. Adobe's 5 billion in AI-influenced revenue fails this test without net new bookings.
• •Public market AI stock dynamics: Palantir, CloudFlare, Mongo, Shopify, CrowdStrike, and Snowflake reaccelerated growth in late 2025 by capturing genuine AI tailwinds. Salesforce trading at five times revenue presents opportunity if Agent Force achieves 20 percent customer co-attach, potentially lifting stock 30 percent.
• •2026 IPO prediction sequence: SpaceX goes public first in summer, followed by Canva addressing timing risk, then Databricks as series M financing, and Anthropic year-end. OpenAI delayed to mid-2027 due to excessive burn. Taking companies public at trillion-dollar valuations creates unprecedented banking challenge with 950 billion in locked shares.