Was venture capital heading for a reckoning that the AI boom postponed?

Harry Stebbings · May 1, 2024

The industry has learned nothing — pricing and deal activity in AI companies, including AI customer support tools, is astoundingly ridiculous

33:23 20VC: Mark Suster on The Biggest Fundraising Lessons for VCs, Why the Correction in Venture is Still to Come, Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path & The Woke Left and a Trump Administration; What Happens?

Mark Suster · May 1, 2024

The venture industry learns nothing and is doomed to repeat its history

33:35 20VC: Mark Suster on The Biggest Fundraising Lessons for VCs, Why the Correction in Venture is Still to Come, Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path & The Woke Left and a Trump Administration; What Happens?

Harry Stebbings · May 6, 2024

Venture capital has learned nothing from the excesses of the last cycle

Scope: framed as deliberately provocative

27:04 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Are Foundation Models Commoditising | Why Frontier Models Will Be Closed Source | Why the Value is in the Application Layer | The Future of AI is "Selling the Work" Not the Tools

Sarah Tavel · May 6, 2024

VCs have no institutional memory — 'we're goldfish'

27:09 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Are Foundation Models Commoditising | Why Frontier Models Will Be Closed Source | Why the Value is in the Application Layer | The Future of AI is "Selling the Work" Not the Tools

Mitchell Green · Mar 28, 2025

The venture industry was heading for a reckoning and only the AI boom postponed it.

Investors did not change behaviour after the 2021 bubble, so the underlying problem was never corrected — AI arrived and bailed them out.

0:00 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital

Mitchell Green · Mar 28, 2025

Bad returns will eventually reverse venture's platformization, but the correction will take a long time because AI arrived just as the industry was about to face a rude awakening

The reckoning from 2021-era excess was imminent and then AI showed up and postponed it

51:40 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital

Harry Stebbings · Mar 28, 2025

AI functioned as a painkiller that masked venture's underlying problems rather than solving them

51:51 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital