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JL Jason Lemkin Jason Lemkin Founder of SaaStr, a community and media platform for B2B software founders, and managing director of SaaStr Fund; he previously co-founded EchoSign, acquired b...

“A billion today is the new $100 million, right? A billion is just the entry point for like a classic B round. In the old days ... Series B investors used to say, as long as it's 100 million or less, it didn't matter because the classic Series B wanted a billion dollar plus IPO.”

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · Startups & Venture · October 2026

“A billion today is the new $100 million, right? A billion is just the entry point for like a classic B round. In the old days ... Series B investors used to say, as long as it's 100 million or less, it didn't matter because the classic Series B wanted a billion dollar plus IPO.” — Jason Lemkin, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

In a mock investment committee, Harry Stebbings asked whether they would back a Series B at a $1 billion valuation. Lemkin passed, calling it a classic early-stage bet "with a bow tie," while saying he regretted passing on a much larger round in Modal.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 2026-10-22 Listen to the episode → More from Jason Lemkin → More Startups & Venture quotes →

Transcript

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch Around 37:08 into the episode
Rory O'Driscoll

Probably in some simplistic who's the winner, you're probably right, those are the three biggest. But maybe the stimulus is, I don't think it's like the hyperscalers where no one else mattered.

Harry Stebbings

…to decide that you're probably going to do modal at 15.7 billion. Yeah. And so if we call an investment committee, there was another round that was announced, which was town at a billion dollars. I think it was $108 million Series B. Are we going to do this from our growth fund, Jason? Well,

Jason Lemkin

…Even if the margins never hit the 40s, we make money on this deal. Like, there's just no question that the markets crash. Town, I'm going to pass on, Harry. And if you and Rory and the rest of the team want to do it, I'm fine with it. You know, a billion today is the new $100 million, right? A billion is just the entry point for like a classic B round. In the old days, when the three of us met, Series B investors used to say, as long as it's 100 million or less, it didn't matter because the classic Series B wanted a billion dollar plus IPO. They wanted their 10X, so 100 million, 80 million. They didn't care, right? So a billion is the new 100 million. Town has no data. It's sort of interesting revenue. It has a smart team. This is just a bet. This is just an old classic Series A, Series B with a bow tie at a billion. And if you want to, if this is one of the 10 you want to make in the next 12 months, just do it. I just consider it…

Harry Stebbings

we're not doing it, Jason. Well,

Jason Lemkin

I mean, the good news is the team only predicts it needs about 500 million of inference over the next 12 months. So that's much better than the Instinct team, which needs 5 billion. So in a sense, I like it for the fun because we're a little more conservative than our peers. So all we need to do is…

Harry Stebbings

you rather do Instinct at 30 billion or town at a billion? All

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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