Episode #102: The 10 Person AI Pilled Startup, The McDonaldization of VC, "Investors Didn't Understand Us"

This week, Mia and Charles dig into Jacob Sansbury's post on how Spawn, a ten person startup, spends 30x its payroll on AI tokens and ships 77,000 changes a month with a permanent fleet of AI agents. Next, they unpack Kyle Harrison's "The McDonaldization of Venture Capital," which argues that with AI taking 82.7% of US venture dollars and the biggest firms soaking up most of the capital, venture is optimizing for more burgers instead of better ones. They close with a sharp note from Chris Tottman on the founder refrain "investors didn't understand our business," and how to tell whether that's true or a sign you've forgotten what an outsider needs explained. Together, the three pieces ask the same question from different angles: when the machines and the money both pull toward the average, where does the truly new idea come from?

Episode #101: Anthropic Files Its S1, Owning GPUs Isn't Compute, Is Venture Just Closet Indexing?

Charles and Mia break down Anthropic's S1 filing, from $16.3B in first half revenue to Charles's question of whether San Francisco is living in the future or on a "feature branch" the rest of the world never adopts. Next, Nick Rubin's dinner recap on the gap between GPUs and usable compute opens a conversation on capital as the new moat, the credit markets financing the AI buildout, and growing local opposition to data centers. Finally, Jake Gibson's "On Risk" argues venture is starting to look like the public markets, and Charles explains why founders now need to think like VCs and why chasing 2021 ARR benchmarks means playing the wrong game. Three pieces, one thread: AI is minting enormous wealth for a small few, and the rest of the ecosystem is still figuring out what that means for them.

Episode #100: 300 Reads Later, Are VC Skills Obsolete?, Making Venture Exciting Again

For our 100th episode, we turn the mic on Charles to reflect on the state of venture, using the themes that have come up again and again across roughly 300 good reads since we started the show. We dig into whether the skills that made investors great still matter in an AI-first market, drawing on pieces like Alberto Romero's "You Spent Your Whole Life Getting Good at the Wrong Thing" and Sarah Guo's "Relevance Decays." Charles looks back on what surprised him most over the last two years, from the seed squeeze and the bubble debate to founders who now say they work for their AI agents. We close on where venture needs to go to feel exciting again, and the one line summary of venture in 2026 Charles would leave for someone reading it in 2036.

Episode #99: The Death of VC’s Short Kings, Seed Valuations Need a Correction

This week Mia and Charles dig into Kyle Harrison’s “The Death of Venture Capital’s Short Kings,” on Benchmark and USV, the two firms that built their identities on staying small, both raising their largest funds ever this year. Then Nnamdi Iregbulem’s “Valuations Need a Correction” argues that seed valuations are financing prices for the few companies that successfully raise, not a read on what the average startup is worth. Once you correct for that, seed market value is climbing while the number of active seed startups shrinks, a concentration story that looks a lot like the Mag 7 and the S&P 500. Two pieces, one thread: more capital and higher marks are telling a much narrower story than the headlines suggest.

Episode #98: Relevance Runway vs Cash Runway, 20VC Venky Ganesan Episode Breakdown On Seed Being An Option

This week Mia and Charles start with Steve Vassallo's argument that founders obsess over cash runway when the clock that actually matters is relevance runway, and that plenty of well funded companies are racing against good enough AI versions of their own product. Then they dig into Venky Ganesan's 20VC episode with Harry Stebbings, where he says every seed check is an option bet and large funds are indifferent to seed valuations because they are buying a seat at the table. Charles answers from the pre-seed seat: is a Precursor check an option or a bet, and does ownership still matter before a company is an outlier?

Episode #97: Rob Go of NextView on Seed VC's Existential Crisis

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles welcome Rob Go, Cofounder and Partner at NextView Ventures, whose writing has been a staple of our reading list since the beginning. We revisit his piece arguing that seed VC is facing a structural crisis rather than a normal down cycle, and the one question he says the whole debate comes down to: classic venture or super compounder? Rob also breaks down the four approaches to early stage venture and how funds drift down the valuation curve without meaning to.

Episode #96: a16z's College Alternative, Running From the Luxury Bus, Is the Music About to Stop?

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Andreessen Horowitz's $35 million bet on the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a two year college alternative backed by Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and OpenAI. They then unpack a sharp post from signüll arguing this may be both the best and worst time to start a company, as AI makes building cheap and advantages disappear just as fast, with the big labs close behind. The episode closes with Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures on reflexivity in AI valuations, house money versus FOMO, and why position sizing may matter as much as picking winners.

Episode #95: The Fool's Gold Problem, Dario's "We Must Pace the Frontier"

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Gil Dibner's argument that venture has barbelled into two extremes, a tiny set of consensus darlings that can raise at any price and everyone else, who are increasingly paying pure gold prices for fool's gold. Then they turn to Dario Amodei's essay "We Must Pace the Frontier," the rare moment where Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk all agreed the AI industry needs to slow down. They unpack what "pacing" actually means, and whether it is good or bad news for the thousands of startups building on top of these models.

Episode #94: The Middle Ground Is Gone, Funded Teams With No Plan, Being Legible to Capital

This week Mia and Charles dig into a market that only seems to have two speeds. Ethan Kurzweil of Chemistry argues the trillion dollar startup is a pink elephant nobody can unsee, and that the pedestrian double or triple has become a relic of a bygone era. David Cahn looks at what happens after the money lands: a generation of well funded teams with big visions and no clear steps to get there. Nikunj Kothari of FPV Ventures closes it out with a tactical playbook for founders raising this fall, from the number you say out loud to why VCs don't actually want a "deal."

Episode #93: Vertical AI Today with Nic Poulos of Euclid Ventures

This week we sit down with Nic Poulos, Co-Founder and General Partner at Euclid Ventures and one of the sharper voices on vertical AI, to pressure test the thesis as we head into the end of Q3. We dig into what defensibility actually looks like when any founder can spin up a vertical AI product in a weekend, why a $500M median exit is great math for some funds and tough math for others, and where "death of SaaS" narrative currently sits. Nic also revisits his 2026 predictions on deep tech fragmenting and religion as a vertical AI opportunity.

Episode #92: Working for Your AI Agent, Engineering Leaders Head for the Exit, What Capital Wants Now

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into how the rise of AI agents is paradoxically driving startup founders to work longer and harder than ever, with some monitoring their bots around the clock and describing the experience as nothing short of addictive. They then unpack a wave of CTOs and engineering leaders quietly walking away from their roles, driven by founder mode, preference stacks that have rendered equity nearly worthless, and the fact that AI labs like Anthropic are now paying individual contributors more than most executives make elsewhere. The episode closes with a sharp, timely read on what growth investors actually want right now: a credible path to a $20 billion company with you as the emerging winner, nothing more and nothing less.

Episode #91: AI Rocketship or Left for Dead, The Worst VC Introduction, To Be or To Do

This week on The Learning Corner, an observation from investor Matt Turck that startups today are either AI-native rocketships or left for dead opens up a real conversation about what that binary actually means for founders building outside the hype cycle. Michelle Volz's essay "To Be or To Do" uses military legend John Boyd's framework to argue that Silicon Valley has quietly shifted from rewarding builders to rewarding the performance of building, and why discipline is the actual path to the biggest outcomes. We finally close with Vinnie Lauria, Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures, who breaks down why a VC who already passed on your company is one of the worst people to introduce you to another investor and why credible signal matters far more than access in fundraising.

Episode #90: Is Series A Broken?, Are Winners Ever Found In Hype Markets?, The Power Of The Builder Archetype

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Gil Dibner's argument that Series A investors have fundamentally abandoned their core function, opting instead to invest way too late, way too early, or simply accumulating options without conviction. They then unpack Sequoia's twenty-year hype analysis that shows the most valuable companies are almost never founded in the peak hype year of their category, and what today's signals might tell us about the next big wave. The episode closes with Maple VC's Talent Arbitrage framework and why the Builder, the nonlinear, hardest-to-categorize founder, is the most important and most overlooked signal in early stage investing.

Episode #89: Industrializing the Blame Game, VC-Backed Startups and Fraud, Will You Quit on Me?

This week on The Learning Corner, we dig into three pieces that all orbit the same uncomfortable question: who is actually accountable when things go wrong? Angela McNeal's "The Architecture of Blame" argues that AI does not invent accountability gaps, it industrializes them at machine speed across every workflow at once. New academic research reveals that VC-backed startups are statistically more likely to commit fraud, and that investors are not passive victims but active co-creators of the conditions that make it happen. We close with a Wall Street Journal investigation into how the AI talent war is turning founders into acquihire targets, with VCs now explicitly asking in diligence: will you quit on me?

Episode #88: Supporting Young Founders Well, YC's Fall Requests For Startups, Why Labs Say Frontier Not Foundation

This week Mia and Charles are joined by Precursor intern Aleena to dig into three good reads. First up, Ashley Smith's piece on the pressures young founders face today, including predatory incubators that trade small checks for outsized equity stakes. Then, YC's Fall 2026 Requests for Startups, featuring the first ever entry from a sitting US Secretary of the Army. They close with Frontier, a piece unpacking why AI labs stopped calling their models foundation models and started calling them frontier models, and what that shift reveals about how durable their moats really are.

Episode #87: Patience Pays In Venture, Why Humans Beat AI, Managing Your Agent Workforce

This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Nick Chirls' case for patience as an underrated venture strategy, using the owners versus tenants framing to explain why short term thinking is eating the industry. They then explore David Deming's argument that humans still hold a real edge over AI in social learning, especially in reading people and building trust from just a handful of interactions. The episode closes with George Sivulka's provocative piece comparing AI agents to a workforce, drawing parallels between tokenmaxxing and headcount bloat, and looping and meetings about meetings. Tune in for a conversation on long term thinking, the future of human judgment, and how to actually manage an AI agent workforce well.

Episode #86: Paying For AI Twice, Sierra's Bet On One AI Agent, Data's Next Trillion Dollar Category, NY Halts Data Centers

This week Mia and Charles dig into whether using AI tools means quietly giving away your most valuable knowledge, what Sierra learned building a single company wide AI agent instead of one per department, and why data, not tokens, might be the next trillion dollar category in AI. They also touch on New York's new one year moratorium on large data center construction. Tune in for a debate filled conversation about what it really means to adopt AI at work today.

Episode #85: Venture's Cognitive Dissonance Moment, Cold Pitches Actually Work, Building Your Moat Later

Is AI venture living through its biggest bubble yet, or its biggest winner-take-all cycle ever? Charles and Mia break down Samir Kaji's read on the duality driving valuations to record highs. They also dig into a Stanford field experiment proving cold pitches to investors work far more often than founders think, and challenge Tomasz Tunguz's take on why most startups don't actually have a real moat at founding. A fast, sharp look at three ideas shaping venture right now.

Episode #84: Convicted vs. Disciplined Healthcare VCs, The Capitalist Multiverse, The Untrainable

This week we dig into a piece from Halle Tecco exploring how healthcare VCs are splitting into two camps on ownership discipline as AI drives valuations to decade highs. We also break down Sam Lessin's argument that the SpaceX IPO signals the end of the DCF as the only globally scalable story of value, and what it means that minority belief systems can now pool conviction at trillion-dollar scale. We close with Sarah Guo's "The Untrainable," a sharp framework for understanding where real moats exist in the AI era and why the defensible work is exactly the stuff that can't be benchmarked. Tune in for a packed episode touching on venture math, narrative-driven markets, and what it actually takes to build something durable when the models keep getting smarter.

Episode #83: Tony Fadell on Building Products That Last, SAFE Adjusted TVPI, Kirkland's $500M AI Bet

This week we featured Tony Fadell's interview with Lenny Rachitsky, covering how great products are built with pain at the center and why fast software is the new fast fashion. We also dig into Hunter Walk's practical framework for how early-stage VCs should communicate SAFE note markups to their LPs. And we close out with Reuters' reporting on Kirkland and Ellis committing $500 million to build a fully proprietary AI platform, and what that signals about where the legal industry is heading.