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Today's show:

Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today's problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy's Aileen Lee, Floodgate's Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau's Ben Lerer joined Alex to dig into exiting pre-AI startups, rising valuations, token spend, why they are keeping their funds small, and whether the government just tripped OpenAI and Anthropic!

Guest Links:

Aileen Lee https://x.com/aileenlee

Cowboy VC https://cowboy.vc

Mike Maples https://x.com/m2jr

Floodgate https://www.floodgate.com

Bene Lerer https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjlerer

Lere Hippeau https://www.lererhippeau.com

Timestamps:

0:00 Aileen Lee, Mike Maples, and Ben Lerer join the show

5:13 Venture liquidity returns: what SpaceX/Stripe distributions mean for LPs

9:13 Bending Spoons prices IPO at $29/share, roughly $18.4B valuation

10:31 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!

12:09 "Companies get bought, not sold" — Ben on taking first offers seriously

17:41 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

19:34 Mutiny's burn-the-boats AI pivot with Jaleh Rezaei

20:19 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

22:15 Mike's KeepSafe story: the "rule of 70" and profit-first companies

25:12 The new growth bar: 5x, 4x replaces triple-triple-double-double

28:55 Fund size is your strategy: why Floodgate and Lerer Hippeau stay small

30:11 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou

37:39 The $100M Series A: Starcloud, General Intuition, Scale Cognition, Scout AI

40:35 King-making rounds and why mega-seeds destroy optionality

54:11 Open-weight models: the GLM-5.2 moment and going model-agnostic

55:30 Why fine-tuning open models is a treadmill, with Cursor/Kimi as an example

1:03:28 Grading the Trump administration on Mythos and Fable

1:06:33 Rising anti-AI sentiment, the wealth gap, and lessons from social media

1:11:43 Raising kids in the post-intelligence era

1:12:35 Where to find the panel and what each firm is investing in

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