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.