Mike Volpi is a General Partner at Hanabi Capital, with a background that spans senior operating roles and nearly two decades of investing. Mike currently sits on the boards of several innovative companies, including Scale AI, ClickHouse, Ferrari, and Confluent, where he is known as a thoughtful sounding board and a steady presence through the highs and lows of startup life.

Mike is a retired partner at Index Ventures, where he led investments in category-defining companies across AI, software, and infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at Cisco, including as Chief Strategy Officer and SVP/GM of Cisco’s routing business, giving him firsthand experience in building products and teams at scale.

We discussed what it takes to build a great venture firm in the AI era, why many of venture’s traditional rules are breaking down, and how AI is reshaping software, investing, and company building. We also explored the future of frontier AI labs, robotics, defense tech, and the mindset founders and investors need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(0:39) Building a venture firm for AI

(4:02) Designing Hanabi

(5:52) Why stage matters less

(9:38) Building a venture brand

(13:58) The role of board seats

(17:06) Attributes of enduring firms

(20:44) The future of AI labs

(23:14) Open-source and neolabs

(32:49) The compute race

(36:51) The future of software

(45:49) Investing in defense

(47:50) From operator to investor

(50:35) Thriving founders today

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Links:

https://x.com/mavolpi

https://www.hanabi.com/

https://x.com/jaltma

https://uncappedpod.com/

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[email protected]