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Mike Mignano

lines on the record: 77
first: 2026-07-06
most recent: 2026-07-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So, my partners the other day Rebecca and Nick, we asked each other actually, like, what are, you know, what do you want? What do you want to do at USV? And I said three things. First thing is, I want to show up to work each day and collaborate with people who I love being around, people who I enjoy collaborating with, people who I just have fun with. That's actually number one for me. Number two is I want to partner with some incredible founders. And again, like similarly, I want it to be about that relationship and that dynamic, you know, and I want these founders, obviously, who are going to change the world. And number three is I want to produce generational returns in terms of funds. In that order, number one for me is show up to work, have fun with the people I work with. Number two is partner with founders who I love and who I believe can produce generational companies. And then number three is produce generational returns as a fund in that order. And I think that's a good recipe. I think if you optimize for fun.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think that there was a moment not that long ago where I, and I know I said the opposite a few minutes ago, but where I thought the model providers could do everything I did. I thought that we were headed towards this world where there would be one company or five companies that would just do everything. And I think fortunately, what I've been reminded of over the past year or so or two years is that companies can't do everything. They can't do everything. Even the biggest companies can't do everything. And I remember, oh man, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we thought the same thing about Google. We thought the same thing about Apple. We thought these companies are going to just take everything. And the reality is they can't. And they don't. And so I've been reminded of that recently. And it's been a surprise, and I'm glad for it.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She buy pressure tests you, right? Hey, are you sure? Talk me through it. Talk me through it. But once you, I'm sure once you, or no, not even. Okay.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids do what interests them, but I never want to pressure them to do it. I want to support them. You know, I want to be there for them. I want to drive them to practice. I want to do everything I can to empower them, but I never want to pressure them too much.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel I was extremely fortunate growing up in that I had parents that were extremely supportive of me and my interests but who also did not pressure me in any one direction. I'll give you an example. I grew up in a home where baseball, an American sport, I don't think it's very popular here was a very big deal. Baseball's a very big deal. And I played some baseball growing up. But I didn't continue with it. And, you know, I think there are a lot of homes like that in the United States where, you know, if you're not playing the sport or going to the university or pursuing the career in the thing that the family really cares about, you're a failure or you get pressured into sticking with it. And my parents, my dad, who, you know, former coach and baseball player, great, what do you want to do next? And I think that that is so important. And it's definitely something that I really try to remember and try to instill in the values of my family with my kids. You know, I really want my”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the biggest lessons I've learned from Fred is that there is really nothing more important than your relationship with the founders. A, because that's probably the best thing you can do to help a founder is just to be there for them, right? Like that's what founders need. Founders are lonely. I could tell you as a former CEO, it's a lonely, punishing job. And so just having somebody you can actually trust and actually feel you're aligned with is very, very important. But secondly, selfishly, I think reputation is everything in this business. You need a great reputation. And the only way you're going to have a good reputation is if you have great relationships with founders.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the lightspeed growth fund is phenomenal. Again, they've done anthropic, they've done XAI, they've done SpaceX, they've done amazing, amazing investments over the past, I mean, over the history of the firm, but really over the past four years of AI, they've been phenomenal.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was really fortunate at Lightspeed to collaborate closely with Nat Freeman and Daniel Gross before they went over to Meta. And yeah, when Nat would send me a deal, which he did on multiple occasions. And by the way, that's actually how I met Mikey from Suno. You know, I always knew to pay attention. You know, if Nat's sending me a deal, I got to pay attention to that.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Matt's brilliant. So, Matt has innovated on a completely new model of venture where he arms angel investors. These are not scouts. These are angel investors. He arms them with additional funds on top of their.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Putnam, CEO of board. Have you seen Board? Tabletop Gaming Console just announced Series A few weeks ago from USV. When I met Board, when I met Bryn, I was blown away. Force of nature founder, such clear vision, such deep domain expertise so prior to board, which is a beautiful tabletop display, Brin was the founder and CEO of Mirror. The Mirror workout device, which she sold to Lululemon. She took that domain expertise and said, I know how to build a tabletop gaming console now with the same hardware and the same supply chains and just crushed it. When I met her, I walked out of that meeting and I thought to myself, I have to invest in this company.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I probably underestimated just how big independent media could become. When we built Anchor, you know, we had this vision of democratizing audio and giving everyone a voice. And I would say by the time I left Spotify in 2022, I'll admit I kind of thought the opportunity was baked. I was like, okay, it's done. It's done. You know, we've got YouTube. We've got Spotify. We've got, you know, whatever. We've got X. It's gotten so much bigger since then. And that was only four years ago. So much bigger. I mean, every traditional TV show or, you know, media personality, everything has made the leap over to self-publishing or independent media. I mean, I think you're a model example. You've been doing this forever. But also just like huge names that were on some of these large media organizations that just made the leap. And now they just have a YouTube show or they just have a show on Spotify. And so like, I don't even think we've reached the peak yet. I think television.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ask you So, one company that I would have loved to invest in a long time ago, which we didn't at light speed, we met them a few times. And I think we can never really wrap our head around kind of price. Also at the time where they fit in the market. Now, I think with the benefit of hindsight, I really regret not ever having had the opportunity to invest in Substack. I really believe in Substack. I realize it's not your traditional sort of AI company, but I think over the past eight years, and I think the trend is continuing, I think we're moving more and more and more towards a world of self-publishing and people controlling their own destiny in terms of media and what they create and what they publish and how they monetize it. And I think no company, maybe other than X, has done a better job of that than Substack. And so that's a company where, you know, I love the founders. I love the purpose behind the company. I love the product and the platform. Unfortunately, never got a chance to invest.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some platforms that are making it easy to make games with AI, you have no greater aspiration for this content, right? You're not trying to become a hit game developer. You're just having a lot of fun making games on your computer. And we see that a lot in Suno.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you're talking about do you need a crater side and a consumer side, similar to what we saw play out on Spotify as an example. I think when I originally invested, we thought that it did. Now I'm not so sure that we understood what Suno could be back then. What is happening now in Suno is what Mikey and the team have been saying for a while and what I now believe is that it's literally a new behavior. The team calls it creative entertainment. People are coming into Suno. They're making music for the pure joy and entertainment value of making music. You know, previously, like let's say on Anchor, you would make a podcast for the purpose of getting distribution and eventually monetizing it, right? Now AI has made music creation so much fun that you're making music to make music. And I think it's actually not too dissimilar to what we see with Claude Cote or Midjourney, right?”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I probably would have said yes when I invested. First of all, I do think it is a platform, but I think you're asking about something different. Consumption plans.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we believe that Suno has unlimited upside potential. You know, if you look back at the history of media on the internet and you think about the generational platforms that truly democratized a medium, right? YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook to some extent with writing and publishing. I mean, these are insanely valuable platforms and you don't really think about the upside of them.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Mikey and the Suno founders, it was immediate. I met Mikey Not always. Not always with Suno it was. Mikey and I sat down at a restaurant near my home in Hoboken, New Jersey. His family's in Jersey, so we met up in Hoboken. We just immediately hit it off. Just instant connection. And, you know, I immediately recognized how not only how smart he and the team were about the models they were building, about their vision for the world, but also how passionate they were about the problem. Mikey is a former musician. I felt like he could deeply, deeply connect to this idea of how do you make music creation expressing yourself, creativity, how do you make it easier?”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I knew Chris up close. So when I was building Anchor, the Socratic office, Socratic was his previous startup, was right behind ours. And we did a few meetups together. You know, we've got our teams together for a few happy hours. And I would talk to him as another founder and we would share our struggles and, you know, get advice from each other. I was like, this guy, I know he can do it. I've seen him. I've seen him do it. Pure founder of it.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two different motions, by the way. Granola, for me, was a pure founder bet. Pure founder bet. I knew Chris. I've known Chris now for 15 plus years.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I often see communication as a big hurdle for founders. I think one of the hardest things you can do as a leader is communicate effectively because I think communication touches every part of company building. It's part of recruiting, which as we know is one of the most important things you could do. You have to be able to communicate your mission, your values, why you exist, what you're trying to accomplish. You have to communicate to investors, right? If you're not a great communicator, you're not going to be able to raise capital. You're not going to be able to put venture dollars into the business. You need to be able to communicate your product vision to your team, right? How can you align the team around building the perfect product if you can't communicate it? You have to be able to tell your story to the market when I think about some of the mistakes I've made in evaluation. It's maybe been on communication. That's probably been one of the biggest.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I first started this job, I would have said product, market, founder. I've completely flipped that. Now founder market product. I think that the founder is the most important thing. At the end of the day, most startups, especially early stage startups, they're going to pivot in some form or another. What's most important is are they resilient? Can they execute? Can they adapt to change?”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your bet based on that evaluation and that judgment and that team doesn't do those four things, you made a bad bet. So don't project. Don't project. You have to really believe in the team and the team's judgment and the team's ability to execute on their own plan. That was a big lesson for me as a former CEO.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can't project your own ideas on the founder. Sure, you can offer ideas, of course, if the founder wants, but especially as a former operator, you know, you often think, oh, I know how this business should be built, or I know how this product should work. And I think that can really, really get you into trouble. You know, one of my former partners, Jeremy Liu at Lightspeed, I made this mistake a few times and he called me up one day and he said, hey, I think you're projecting as a former founder. And he's like, in my experience, that's very, very dangerous and very risky. I think it was a great lesson. The reality is even if you have great ideas and you think you know the answer, even if you're right, by the way, reality is it's the founder's company and they may want to build it a completely different way. And not only that, if you project your ideas on a team that you're evaluating, you might get a completely wrong, right? You might look at a business and say, I know what this company needs to do. It needs to do A, B, C, D, and then it's going to win. But if you make”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can think of some of the best deals I've done and even though I'm happy with where the price landed in hindsight, I'd probably pay double the price if I could go back and do it again.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I told a story on that podcast where when Anchor first launched, I had never met Fred. And the Anchor app accidentally auto tweeted for Fred. And he has a big follower count on Twitter at the time. Now it's X, obviously. And he was not happy about that. He started lighting me up on Twitter. This is one of the days, like the day after we launched Anchor. Obviously, that was uncomfortable for me as a first-time founder. But to your point, I cold emailed him right after the fact and I apologized and I offered to troubleshoot it with him. And he responded immediately and he was super gracious and forgiving and understanding. And so I had a similar experience.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I talk to my partner, Fred Wilson. Got a shout out, Fred, one of the goats. And I asked him a question. I said, what is the biggest lesson you've learned in VC? Actually, I asked him, what are a couple of the biggest lessons? And one of them was never pass on price. So Fred says never pass on price. I think in reality, there's probably some nuance. Just to bring it back to the USV strategy, I think for us, again, if we're investing a little bit later stage, we need to really believe that it's a market winner. The multiple can be very, very, very high. And in that case, we can be a little bit more elastic on price. But I think at the earliest stages, especially when we're investing out of our, you know, our small funds, I do think there will always be a limit for us on price just because otherwise we can't make the fund math work.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We think that we are coming out of a period where there has been a massive infrastructure build out and very, very capital intense companies, firms, large firms that were able to invest in those very capital intensive companies have done phenomenally well. But again, I think we're also now playing in a world where there will be a proliferation of startups and apps at the application layer that are less capital intensive. And for those, again, I think you're going to need to know what you're looking for. And I think you can get in those companies at more modest check sizes. Now, I don't think you can have a fund that's in the middle to do that. I think you need to either be on the large end and play the consensus game or be really small and really opinionated and multiply a much smaller fund.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think in general, you always want to believe that the things you're betting on are playing in large markets with very, very large surface areas. And we're going to look at every company that way. But I do think that because our funds are smaller, similar to yours, there's probably more downside protection for us in that model than, say, at a larger fund where you have to multiply billions of dollars. For us, the fund that we're investing out of now, the core fund, it's a $275 million core fund. And so you can multiply that a lot easier than multiplying, say, several billion dollars, especially if you get the same type of ownership that a larger fund is getting.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not sure. For us, for USV at the later stages, if we don't think that there's a gigantic outcome, it probably doesn't make sense for us to bet.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a perfect example. You know, we saw that where it was, and we said to ourselves, how big can we see this getting? We think it can be a lot bigger than it is now. And so for this one, we're not going to be ownership focused. We're just going to put a check in. We may not be able to bet every round from here out because, again, we have constraints to the size of our funds, but we think there's enough opportunity and enough upside from here that it's worth it”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What can the multiple be on that? Is it a 10x? Is it 100x? Is it a thousand x? If it is, you know, if it's something really big like that, then you don't really need to think about ownership.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on stage. The way we think about it at USV is that the seed and series A stage ownership is important. And the reason is the outcomes are bigger right now. You talked about it. And the companies that end up doing really, really well raise a lot of capital very, very quickly and the valuations get very high. And in those later rounds, it's actually very, very hard to buy ownership, especially if you're a small fund. And so you have to get that ownership early on. And seed in series A are kind of the rounds where you can do that. Now once a company sort of crosses that chasm, maybe into the series B or to the series C, you can identify them as being market leaders and potential generational companies, then I think it matters less. Then it's just about getting capital into those companies and underwriting it as a cash on cash type outcome. Forgetting about percentages, just imagining, okay, if we put $25 million into this.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Series A's are expensive now. They're 100 million posts. They're 80 million posts. They're occasionally 150 million posts. And so, yeah, if you want to write a check into around that size and get decent ownership for your fund, you have to have a slightly bigger fund than you had three years ago.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazing entrepreneur I think it all goes back to what are you optimizing for what's your mission? What are your constraints? We talked about VC early on before we stepped into the studio here. USV has always had small funds. It's the game we like to play. You can be very successful in terms of what you're trying to accomplish as a venture firm with a small fund. Now, maybe that same model can't work if you have a $10 billion fund, but we're playing a different game. And I think you're playing a different game too.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do worry about it. What I have also learned about AI products and granola is that context is extremely valuable, right? If granola gets inside of your organization and everyone in the organization starts using it and producing and accumulating all of this amazingly rich and valuable context, that's not something you as an enterprise want to give up. You've built out this incredibly rich history of information that actually helps you work better. I think this era of building AI products is in many ways about being first and about moving really, really fast.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do worry about that, of course, absolutely. We saw this play out with Slack. By the way, Slack is still around. It's still a massively valuable product. But yes,”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe, but I think you want to get your foot in the door. And I think when you want to get your foot in the door, you want to sell one thing. And once you're in, then you can expand horizontally to different categories. But I think if you come in, expand it really, really wide. Now you have to convince the enterprise to give up all these different things, right? You got to give up your Gmail and your Google Docs and your Google Sheets and your calendar, right? And this, end that. Whereas if you're just doing meeting notes, it's like, hey, we're just going to be your second brain for your company, right? We're not going to do anything else. We're just going to be your second brain. Oh, and by the way, we're the best at it.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the nice thing about granola, what it really has going for it, and one of the things that I believe has helped that company in enterprise penetration is being really focused, right? They're just doing notes. They're just doing notes. I think there are other companies, startups selling into the enterprise that try to do, you know, many different things.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know going back to what we talked about earlier with seed, I think if you put yourself out there in the world, you're going to see deals that match those themes and ideas. Not to say I didn't do that at Lightspeed. We did that at Lightspeed as well, but to the point earlier about being very focused on energy, right? Or now being very focused on this rebel alliance, we're going to see a lot of those companies come to us. And I think when you're small, you kind of have to pick your spots. You have to have constraints and focus on a small number of things. And so I think to the extent that we see things different, it's because we focus really, really deeply. And for a period of time, we may only look at a couple of different areas that we have theses on.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There usually isn't a market winner that takes 100% of the market or 80% of the market. Usually what you see is that the market winner takes something like 30% of the market, right? Which means the 70% remaining is totally up for grabs. And if the market's big enough, that can produce some really large winners.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're always going to be startups and founders and entrepreneurs that specialize and do the really hard things before anyone else has thought of them that end up prevailing. I mean, just take Spotify, which we talked about at the beginning, right? Spotify went up against a behemoth. It's classic David and Goliath story, and they could have been killed 50 different ways along the way, but they specialized. And they did the hard thing early and often, and now they're obviously the winner. So I hear you that the labs can kind of go into any application layer. Not only do I think that that's not true, I also just think it's not really fun. And what fun can we have as venture capitalists if we don't believe that startups can take down the Goliath?”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe we just talked about a bridge. I think you had Shiv on here recently. A bridge has been working on this problem for close to 10 years now. And it's given them a massive advantage. It turns out in highly regulated industry is like healthcare. You can't just walk in the door and say, hey, we're going to do healthcare now. You have to actually build relationships, build partnerships, clear through regulatory hurdles. And that ends up being a form of emote. USV invested in a bridge, I think, in 2018, eight years ago now. It took that company, you know, five, six, seven years to hit this inflection point now where this product is being used by so many doctors in so many different healthcare systems because they were able to clear those hurdles. And so we can say that we live in a world where the labs and the hyperscalers can take over any product and any market. But the reality is that's been the story of technology and innovation since the beginning of time.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“USV led the seed indoctrinic a couple of years ago. At the time, it seemed like a crazy idea. AI putting a doctor in literally everyone's pocket. Now we could have invested in AI that make medical practices faster, more efficient, or help you with insurance claims, or we can put doctors in everyone's pocket and totally reinvent the model with AI. So I think that's what we're talking about when we talk about obliterate, don't automate.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you just talked about automation and you talked about, I think you were talking about SaaS in a sense. I think there have been amazing companies built that automate existing workflows, existing processes. But at USV, we like to bet on businesses that obliterate, that literally obliterate markets and existing business models. We actually don't do a lot of enterprise investing for this exact reason. Enterprise investing often requires selling to a middleman, you know, selling to selling to customers or building things that just make existing businesses faster. We want to invest in businesses that literally reinvent the way something is done. Take Doctronic as an example. Are you familiar with Doctronic?”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Solutions. I think that there's an opportunity for automation in the enterprise. Personally, I would much rather build products and companies that obliterate. That's actually something we talk about at USV all the time. Don't automate, obliterate. But hey, some people want to automate.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have a bet in a company called Rune. Amazing company. Have you heard of Run They're building micro data centers that sit directly next to generators, you know, wind farms and things like that to solve the portability issue. How do you get the energy as close as possible, as quickly as possible to the compute, to the data centers? And so we're on the lookout for things like this that are sort of innovating the model of energy and portability of energy.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, but I think there's also a lot of innovation happening. And where there's innovation, you can find early teams that are doing science experiments before anyone else is thinking about them. USV a few years ago invested in a great company called Radiant, which is building small nuclear reactors that literally come off of a factory line. You know, and it's going to be one of the first companies in the world to test in the dome in the United States for nuclear energy. And so I think there are a lot of interesting models and ideas happening on the edge of innovation. Those are the best places to bet as a venture capitalist because in the earliest days they're actually not that capital intensive.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defining companies. So USV, again, I think has never been afraid to take a position. And I think USV did not invest in any of the big model A or companies. But what USV now has been doing for a number of years, and I'm a big believer that we haven't seen the full circle of this narrative play out, is they've been betting on energy. They've been betting on energy since 2001. And the idea has been for a long time now that no matter what model wins, if you believe in AI and if you believe in intelligence, there's going to be an energy layer underneath that is going to be needed to power these things. And over the time since 2001, we've learned that we only need even more energy than we thought and we need more portability of energy than we thought. And so energy is a big theme at USV. It was starting in 2001 and it still is to this day in 2026. Did I say 2001? I meant 2021.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe on the other hand, we've seen time and time again in the enterprise, in infrastructure specifically, that these infrastructure companies, they become deeply embedded in the developer workflows and in the developer ecosystems, and you just can't rip them out because it just becomes the gold standard. So maybe somebody will build that routing layer that every developer adopts and never wants to remove.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. I think a lot of companies right now are thinking about charging a small margin on top of it. And I think to your point, that might not be a great business model. I put out a piece on X about this a few weeks ago, and a number of people chimed in with some of their ideas. And one interesting idea I heard was this notion of almost a bounty model at the routing layer where the routing layer gets rewarded for choosing the right model, right? So if you choose the most efficient model or the best model for a certain task, that's when they collect a fee. And I thought that was kind of an interesting idea. Haven't necessarily seen it built out yet, but I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.”
2026-07-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source