Although I avoid doing podcasts like the plague, I did participate in one recently along with my partner Brad who co-founded USV with me back in 2003.

Our partner Nick has a podcast called The Slow Hunch. The title was inspired by our friend Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From.

Nick asked Brad and me to sit in his apartment, drink tea, and talk about USV and the Slow Hunch that brought us together to make USV and point it in the right direction 20+ years ago.

While much of this conversation is about the past, we also talk a lot about AI, crypto, and where things are headed now in the second half of the podcast.

It is 75mins long so you will need your own pot of tea or long drive or hike to get through it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it.

I read this in Yoni Rechtman's substack today:

oversized funds lead to overfunded companies leads to bad returns and more importantly bad outcomes for founders/businesses. We’ll get Softbank 2.0 but even more widespread: every company could be super lean and profitable but instead will be pushed toward undisciplined and ruinous spending

This is not a new state of play.

This has been the venture capital business for well over a decade now.

Every breakout company in our portfolios is offered 10x the money they need and most of them take it because how can you not turn down an endless supply of capital?

But of course, this dilutes the founders, the seed investors, the early VC investors, and also leads to wasteful and unproductive spending.

Yoni points out that this is happening at the same time that AI is making starting and building companies less expensive than ever.

Like Yoni, I don't think this conflict gets resolved any time soon.

But some founders are opting out of this nonsense and I do think we will see more of them do so.

It is easier than ever to bootstrap a company to sustainable operations. Some founders will do it. Others will notice. Maybe it will even become fashionable to do so.

At least one can hope.