Welcome to the Learning Corner, a weekly Precursor Ventures podcast, where members of the Precursor team walk through their favorite articles and news snippets across the venture ecosystem.
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This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into how the rise of AI agents is paradoxically driving startup founders to work longer and harder than ever, with some monitoring their bots around the clock and describing the experience as nothing short of addictive. They then unpack a wave of CTOs and engineering leaders quietly walking away from their roles, driven by founder mode, preference stacks that have rendered equity nearly worthless, and the fact that AI labs like Anthropic are now paying individual contributors more than most executives make elsewhere. The episode closes with
This week on The Learning Corner, an observation from investor Matt Turck that startups today are either AI-native rocketships or left for dead opens up a real conversation about what that binary actually means for founders building outside the hype cycle. Michelle Volz's essay "To Be or To Do" uses military legend John Boyd's framework to argue that Silicon Valley has quietly shifted from rewarding builders to rewarding the performance of building, and why discipline is the actual path to the biggest outcomes. We finally close with Vinnie Lauria, Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures, who
This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Gil Dibner's argument that Series A investors have fundamentally abandoned their core function, opting instead to invest way too late, way too early, or simply accumulating options without conviction. They then unpack Sequoia's twenty-year hype analysis that shows the most valuable companies are almost never founded in the peak hype year of their category, and what today's signals might tell us about the next big wave. The episode closes with Maple VC's Talent Arbitrage framework and why the Builder, the nonlinear, hardest-to-categoriz
This week on The Learning Corner, we dig into three pieces that all orbit the same uncomfortable question: who is actually accountable when things go wrong? Angela McNeal's "The Architecture of Blame" argues that AI does not invent accountability gaps, it industrializes them at machine speed across every workflow at once. New academic research reveals that VC-backed startups are statistically more likely to commit fraud, and that investors are not passive victims but active co-creators of the conditions that make it happen. We close with a Wall Street Journal investigation into how the AI tale
This week Mia and Charles are joined by Precursor intern Aleena to dig into three good reads. First up, Ashley Smith's piece on the pressures young founders face today, including predatory incubators that trade small checks for outsized equity stakes. Then, YC's Fall 2026 Requests for Startups, featuring the first ever entry from a sitting US Secretary of the Army. They close with Frontier, a piece unpacking why AI labs stopped calling their models foundation models and started calling them frontier models, and what that shift reveals about how durable their moats really are.
This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into Nick Chirls' case for patience as an underrated venture strategy, using the owners versus tenants framing to explain why short term thinking is eating the industry. They then explore David Deming's argument that humans still hold a real edge over AI in social learning, especially in reading people and building trust from just a handful of interactions. The episode closes with George Sivulka's provocative piece comparing AI agents to a workforce, drawing parallels between tokenmaxxing and headcount bloat, and looping and meetings about
This week Mia and Charles dig into whether using AI tools means quietly giving away your most valuable knowledge, what Sierra learned building a single company wide AI agent instead of one per department, and why data, not tokens, might be the next trillion dollar category in AI. They also touch on New York's new one year moratorium on large data center construction. Tune in for a debate filled conversation about what it really means to adopt AI at work today.
Is AI venture living through its biggest bubble yet, or its biggest winner-take-all cycle ever? Charles and Mia break down Samir Kaji's read on the duality driving valuations to record highs. They also dig into a Stanford field experiment proving cold pitches to investors work far more often than founders think, and challenge Tomasz Tunguz's take on why most startups don't actually have a real moat at founding. A fast, sharp look at three ideas shaping venture right now.
This week we dig into a piece from Halle Tecco exploring how healthcare VCs are splitting into two camps on ownership discipline as AI drives valuations to decade highs. We also break down Sam Lessin's argument that the SpaceX IPO signals the end of the DCF as the only globally scalable story of value, and what it means that minority belief systems can now pool conviction at trillion-dollar scale. We close with Sarah Guo's "The Untrainable," a sharp framework for understanding where real moats exist in the AI era and why the defensible work is exactly the stuff that can't be benchmarked. Tune
This week we featured Tony Fadell's interview with Lenny Rachitsky, covering how great products are built with pain at the center and why fast software is the new fast fashion. We also dig into Hunter Walk's practical framework for how early-stage VCs should communicate SAFE note markups to their LPs. And we close out with Reuters' reporting on Kirkland and Ellis committing $500 million to build a fully proprietary AI platform, and what that signals about where the legal industry is heading.
This week on The Learning Corner, economist Alex Imas makes a counterintuitive case that AI will not eliminate human labor but instead relocate scarcity toward a "relational sector" of nurses, teachers, craftspeople, and care workers where human presence is the product itself. Lisa Kostova shares one of the most honest accounts of vibe coding gone wrong, arriving at a major conference with 40 ready buyers and a product too broken to sell. We close with Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, who argues the title of software engineer is dissolving but predicts 100 times more people w
This week on The Learning Corner, we dig into Rachel Karten's viral piece on AI-obsessed leadership and what happens when organizations adopt AI without any real strategy. We then discuss Karan Dhir's framework for career bets that actually compound versus the ones that just look like progress, including a debate on whether the AI era has quietly rehabilitated the generalist. We close with Charlie Warzel's Atlantic piece on AI malaise and whether the anxiety around AI is actually a geography problem more than a technology one.
This week on The Learning Corner, Charles and Mia discuss a good read explaining why the quiet builder playbook is no longer enough and why founders must now own their narrative to win. They dive into a provocative take on the job market arguing the signal collapsed, not the opportunities, and what that means for the next generation of candidates. They also explore the rise of the High-Impact Individual Contributor and how AI is reshaping career paths at every level. Plus a quick flash on OpenAI's reported plans to file for IPO as early as September at a valuation of up to one trillion dollars
This week on The Learning Corner, we open with an argument on why traditional networking culture is mostly negative selection and why broadcasting your work publicly is the stronger play. We then dig into why AI is making the "what" of your work more important than the "how," and which skills actually become load-bearing in that world. We close on a sobering piece about AI psychosis spreading through executive suites, the sycophancy loop baked into AI tools, and what it means when the feeling of running a massive organization is completely disconnected from what is actually shipping.
This week on The Learning Corner, Charles and Mia dig into who actually owns the AI agents you build at work and whether you can take them with you when you leave. They unpack what happens to a founder's standing inside a VC firm when their partner walks out the door, and why that moment is really the start of a new fundraise. They close with a sharp framework for separating companies that are truly AI-native from those just using better autocomplete. Three great reads, one tight conversation.
This week on The Learning Corner, Charles and Mia dig into Lucas Vaz's viral thread arguing that the era of easy, low-priced, diversified venture investing is over and that seed fund math is fundamentally broken. They also break down Garry Tan and YC's official guidance on why founders need to stop conflating LOIs, GMV, and ARR before it costs them investor trust. The episode closes on China's decision to block Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus AI and what it signals about the closing window for cross-border AI deals.
This week on The Learning Corner, Manny Medina, co-founder of Outreach, shares his biggest regret as a founder and why he believes killing your competition is the actual job description of a VC-backed founder. Samir Kaji breaks down his fundamental truths in venture capital today, touching on the widening barbell between large and small firms, ARR reporting concerns, and honest uncertainty around AI. We close with the bombshell SpaceX and Cursor partnership announcement, unpacking what a $60 billion acquisition option and a million H100 equivalent supercomputer really signals about where the A
This week we are diving into whether domain expertise is becoming more important in Vertical AI, not less, breaking down new data from The Euclid Ventures team that challenges the narrative that youth and technical ability are all you need to build a winning company. We then get into Micah Rosenbloom's breakdown of seed valuation inflation and what it means for early stage return math in today's market. We close on Kyla Scanlon's piece on AI and academic cheating, and what it really signals about the generation of workers and founders entering the workforce.
This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles dig into a piece by Ashley Smith of Vermilion Cliffs Ventures on why seed round names have become essentially meaningless, with YC Demo Day valuations hitting $40M post for companies with eight weeks of runway. They then unpack Auren Hoffman's sharp and practical breakdown of how to actually ask for advice without wasting people's time, and why closing the loop is the most underrated relationship builder in your network. The episode closes on a major structural shift in venture: family offices and private wealth firms cutting out VC middlemen a
This week on The Learning Corner, Ashley Mayer makes the case that tech's biggest players have forfeited the narrative and it is now up to startup founders to give people a reason to root for the future. Pavel Prata at Murph Capital argues that the value-add model that transformed venture is now playing out one layer up at the LP level, and most allocators haven't caught up yet. We also dig into Jenny Fielding's take on the return of agile funding and whether stacking small SAFEs in an AI-driven world is a founder-friendly evolution or a short-term optimization with long-term consequences. All
This week we cover the explosive whistleblower exposé on Delve, a YC-backed compliance startup accused of fabricating audit evidence and leaving hundreds of clients unknowingly exposed to legal liability. We then dig into Jerry Neumann's "We Have Learned Nothing," a data-backed argument that decades of startup frameworks have produced no measurable improvement in whether companies actually succeed. We close with the Wall Street Journal's reporting on OpenAI's major strategic pivot away from its "do everything" approach to refocus on coding and enterprise, and what that signals about competitio
This week on The Learning Corner, Om Malik makes the case that reputation and perceived authority now convert faster than financial capital, and that the tech ecosystem has fully internalized that game. We then dig into a provocative LinkedIn post from CRV's Reid Christian, where CEOs are starting to build token output per month into formal performance reviews as a core KPI. We close with a thoughtful piece from Deciens on intellectual lineage and why choosing whose shoulders you stand on is one of the highest leverage decisions a founder or investor can make. Three reads, one tight conversati
This week on The Learning Corner, Micah Rosenbloom from Founder Collective challenges the viral narrative that VC returns suck and asks whether we are all just spinning data to fit our own models. Jeff Weinstein draws a striking parallel between today's AI funding frenzy and the Nifty Fifty stocks of the 1970s, arguing that being right about a company has never been enough if you are wrong about the price. Rob Go at NextView rounds things out with a sharp framework breaking down the four approaches to early stage venture and what the real failure mode looks like for each. Three great reads wit
This week on The Learning Corner, Mia and Charles unpack the resignation letter of an Anthropic safety researcher who walked away from one of the most valuable companies in the world, alongside Anthropic quietly walking back its flagship safety commitment. They then dig into Jack Dorsey's decision to cut Block's workforce nearly in half, not because the business is struggling, but because he believes AI has fundamentally changed what it means to build a company. They close with a sharp LinkedIn post from Euclid Ventures GP Nic Poulos making the case that the venture industry has developed a co
This week we dig into the viral Citrini Research "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" memo, a scenario written from the future that rattled public markets and sparked a real conversation about what happens when AI works exactly as promised. We also highlight a great StrictlyVC Download episode with Stacy Brown-Philpot, founder of Cherryrock Capital, on what it takes to win at Series A in today's market. We close with a LinkedIn post from Alex Pall of Mantis Venture Capital on 2021-vintage founders hitting a first-principles reset in the age of AI.
