Michael Mignano
@mignano • 63,232 subscribers
General Partner @USV. Co-Founder Anchor (acquired by Spotify) and @OboeLabs. Early investor in @meetgranola, @suno, @xai, others.
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Videos
The one and only Nikita Bier is today's guest on Out of Office. He's X's head of product, a Lightspeed venture partner, and the world's leading expert on consumer product growth. He and I recently had a long conversation in Los Angeles where we covered the evolution of the X product, how he mastered growth by hacking and learning to "think like an adversary", and what it's like to work with Elon Musk. Enjoy. Chapters: 00:00 No Silver Bullet to Growth 00:18 The Evolution of X: From PayPal to Financial Network 01:25 A Tour of South Bay 01:56 Growing Up in South Bay: Internet Adventures 03:11 From Hacking to Growth Hacking 06:57 Joining X: The Journey and Challenges 09:14 Revolutionizing X: Growth and Product Development 15:44 The Role of a Product Head at X 29:13 Balancing Free Speech and Authenticity on X 34:58 The Future of X: AI, Links, and User Engagement 37:22 Solving Engagement Issues on X 40:42 Working with Elon Musk 50:13 Building Viral Apps: TBH and Gas 01:02:35 Consulting and Angel Investing 01:10:09 AI's Impact on App Development 01:12:49 Personal Anecdotes and Reflections
Michael Mignano583,302 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Fred Wilson is one of the greatest VCs of all time. He is also my new partner at USV and I'm lucky to say that. We've known each other for years, but becoming partners felt like a reason to get to know him even better. So a few weeks ago, we walked around Union Square and caught up about what Fred Wilson has learned over nearly 40 years of VC, how AI may be making the profession obsolete, how to build an investment thesis, why he believes the Knicks will win the NBA title this year, and a few of his long held grudges. Here's a video of that conversation, set at Union Square, Madman Espresso, the USV office, and Leon's on Broadway. Chapters: 3:22 - That time Fred wrecked Mike on Twitter 6:01 - Pre-Internet VC in NYC 9:50 - Early Internet Investing and Raising for Flatiron Partners 11:59 - The Dot-com Crash Killed Fred’s First Firm 14:28 - Fred’s Grudge Against Coffee Shop 16:35 - How to Pick the Right Team at Right Time 18:28 - AVC blog, Gawker’s Nick Denton, 20:44 - Jim Kramer invented Tweeting 21:46 - Why Fred Bet on Twitter Early 23:39 - Building Agents on Claude Code and Tasklet 26:20 - Claude Mythos and Doomerism 27:27 - The Original USV Thesis 29:19 - Network Effects and Brad’s Thesis 31:29 - Coinbase: Thesis, Investment, Outcome 33:18 - Investing in Decentralized AI 34:59 - Open Source AI 36:55 - AI Kill Zone: Legal AI is Dead, Energy Investments 42:37 - USV Agents Will Replace Its Partners 47:00 - Are VC’s building themselves out of a job? 48:30 - Leon’s, NYC’s New Tech Watering Hole 50:52 - Generative Art 53:18 - SOLIENNE: AI Artist trained by Kristi Coronado 54:25 - What About AI Scares Fred 55:40 - Societal Backlash to AI 58:10 - Advice to Early Career VCs: There’s More Risk in Not Doing Deals 1:00:48 - Fred’s Biggest Regrets: Saying No Because of Price 1:04:17 - Fred’s Bold Prediction for the Knicks and the Mets
Michael Mignano220,017 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Garry Tan (Garry Tan), CEO of YC, has been in San Francisco forever. And he's not leaving. After having him as a guest on Lightspeed's Out of Office, I can see why. A few weeks ago, Garry and I walked the streets of SF to talk about the city's highs and lows, founder resilience at Y Combinator, local politics, death threats, and why venture needs to move earlier in the age of AI. I even got to see Garry's sauna up close. Full video here. If you enjoy it, please subscribe below. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to San Francisco's Tech Scene 01:04 Meeting Gary Tan: A Journey Through San Francisco 02:22 Gary's Early Days in Tech 04:09 The Impact of San Francisco on Tech Aspirations 06:16 Political Awakening and Local Involvement 18:38 Saunagate and Garry’s Personal Life 22:36 Relationship to Faith and Technology 30:32 Reflections and Future Aspirations 31:05 Rejection and Resilience in YC Applications 31:32 Handling Public Criticism and Rejection 32:13 The Journey of Building a Startup 34:06 Transition from Initialized to YC 35:59 YC's Investment Strategy and Success 37:52 Changes and Future of YC 49:32 Community Involvement and Local Impact 50:45 Future of San Francisco and Tech 52:40 Future of YC and Venture Capital 56:13 Personal Insights at the Bar 56:31 Conclusion and Farewell
Michael Mignano94,076 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Introducing Out of Office, a new show from Lightspeed. For this first episode, I'm joined by Casey Neistat. We walk the streets of NYC and talk about how AI, for better or worse, is going to make better videos than even the best filmmakers. Preview here, full episode links below.
Michael Mignano96,781 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten
When AI took off a few years ago, I launched a podcast (typical VC move) to talk to the people building all the coolest stuff. It was fun, and I learned a lot. But I quickly realized every tech podcast looks the same. Including mine. And I got bored. Then, I got inspired by new formats from shows like TBPN and indievc, and tested a few episodes where I got out of the office (with my dude Semil) and out into the real world and ditched the prep materials. It was a lot more fun, and the viewers seemed to like it, too. So today, we at Lightspeed are launching a new show dedicated to just that: No office, no Zoom, no filter. It's called Out of Office. The first episode, featuring my good friend Casey Neistat, drops on Tuesday. It's a good hang. Subscribe below. K thanks.
Michael Mignano60,509 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten
Mike Krieger (Mike Krieger) is the CPO of Anthropic ($10B+ raised) and the co-founder of Instagram, which he sold to Meta for $1B. Here's the full video of my recent conversation with him. Mike has one of the AI industry's most interesting jobs. He shared with me how he and his team craft product strategy for the company that's leading the charge on AI in the enterprise. Specifically, we discussed how frontier model innovations both drive product and vice versa (how product ideas inform AI research). We also talk about the long term defensibility of models (inspired by the emergence of DeepSeek), and how Mike believes that not only will individual models have specific strengths over others (such as in areas like coding, science, etc), but that a model's "vibes" will also be a major factor for driving customers' choice. Mike also shared his view on how AI will reinvent media and the business model of advertising on the internet, drawn heavily from his work building one of the most successful ad products ever built (Instagram) and his work on Artifact, an AI news product he also co-founded. Lastly, Mike dove deep into what it's like building for the Enterprise for the first time in his career, and how lessons from Instagram and Meta inform not only product development, but how Anthropic thinks about scaling its team in this period of hypergrowth. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:54 Mike Krieger's Journey to Anthropic 03:17 Building Product Strategy at Anthropic 07:43 Rapid Iteration and Safety 10:58 Differentiating AI Models and User Experience 17:57 Impact of AI on Consumer Products and Business Models 24:39 Enterprise vs. Consumer Product Strategy 29:19 AI in Personal Life Management 30:15 Open Source and Claude Integrations 33:09 AI-Assisted Product Development 37:13 Scaling Teams and Processes at Anthropic 42:17 Reflections on AI and Future Prospects
Michael Mignano85,943 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
Embracing all the VC stereotypes, Semil (legendary seed investor and one of Figma's earliest backers) and I took the pod on the road to Montauk, near where each of us grew up. Semil shared the full story for how he got into the Figma Series A, "design as an enduring differentiator", and the rationale behind VC's current obsession with seed rounds (and why every major investor, including multi stage platforms, are vying to be the first check of record). We also covered Meta's assembly of the AI Dream Team, how TBPN, indievc, and Join Colossus are shaping the future of tech media + brand (and how they influenced this episode), and the growing battle between CDNs (Cloudflare, etc) and AI companies. Special thank you / shout out to scott belsky who made an amazing off-camera cameo in the end that ended up on the cutting room floor (our bad, not his). Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:30 Reflecting on Long Island 01:47 M&A Frenzy and Talent Wars 02:10 Meta's Strategic Moves 06:30 Apple's AI Strategy 11:12 Figma's IPO Success 21:33 The State of Seed Investing 25:30 The Model's Mathematical Basis 26:00 Case Study: Firebase Acquisition 27:19 Seed Fund Strategies and Challenges 30:30 Founders' Incentives and Signal Risk 36:40 AI Agents vs. CDNs: A Legal Playground 42:57 The Evolution of Podcasts and Media 51:31 The Future of AI Branding 56:03 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Michael Mignano50,364 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten
Semil Shah (Semil) is one of the greatest seed investors ever, with early bets on Figma, DoorDash, and Instacart. He's also the next guest on Lightspeed's Out of Office, Episode 2. A few weeks ago, he and I hosted a talk on seed investing, prediction markets, startup launch videos, and AI with a bunch of our friends and co-investors at the famed NYC music venue, Joe's Pub. We also filmed our pre-game walk and talk before we got to the venue. Full video here. If you enjoy it, please subscribe below. Chapters: 0:00 – Launch videos and why everything looks the same 1:30 – New podcast formats 2:30 – The launch video arms race 6:30 – Generative media & the true cost collapse of video 10:59 – Is any app category safe from OpenAI? 13:10 – Sam Altman & execution 18:00 – How consumers actually use AI 20:01 – What Sora means for social media 24:09 – Seed investors and the “AI wave” 29:24 – Live at Joe’s Pub: Scott Rogowsky intro 30:39 – Sports and the betting market 35:40 – Polymarket and prediction markets 43:30 – Why seed is under attack 47:20 – People vs. markets 52:20 – AI and category risk 59:00 – Signs of an AI bubble 1:06:03 – The AI roll-up craze 1:11:08 – Audience Q&A
Michael Mignano28,448 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
We at Lightspeed are humbled to be leading a $30M Series A in Macroscope, which officially launches today. Founded by Kayvon Beykpour (Kayvon Beykpour), Joe Bernstein (both of whom co-founded Periscope), and Rob Bishop, Macroscope kills organizational micromanagement and bugs by using AI to deeply understand your code and product. We're joined by Macroscope's amazing seed investors Thrive Capital, Adverb Ventures, and GV. Check out this conversation with Kayvon, where he explains Macroscope, and also dishes on his time at Twitter (including the story of Twitter's attempt to buy Clubhouse, the meeting between Kayvon and Elon after the Twitter acquisition, Periscope's negotiation with Twitter, and a lot more). Or read on... 1/
Michael Mignano25,277 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten
Where are all the consumer AI apps??? This is the question I posed to s-tier consumer investors scott belsky (Uber, Pinterest) and steve jang (Coinbase, Postmates). We're almost 3 years into the AI hype the we're still all mostly just talking about ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. We explore the answer through the ways in which the entire consumer stack (input, memory, personalization, browsers, hardware) are being re-written by AI and how that may give birth to the consumer opportunity we've all been waiting for. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 00:43 The Current State of AI Products 02:48 Surprises and Challenges with LLMs 05:24 Future of Consumer AI and Personal AI 15:49 Memory and Personalization in AI 21:52 Potential Risks and Business Models 24:22 The Battle for User Data in AI 25:11 Optimism in AI Model Inference 27:00 The Role of Open Source Models 28:13 The Future of AI Hardware 28:54 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Hardware Startups 30:29 The Evolution of Consumer Hardware 38:36 The Reinvention of Browsers 46:23 The Potential of AI-Enhanced Browsers 47:54 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Many thanks to my good friends for joining me in this discussion 🙏
Michael Mignano25,155 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
Granola (Granola) is awesome because it doesn't simply outsource your thinking to an AI meeting bot (like all of those weird apps that sit in your Zoom calls). Instead, it merges your actual, human-written notes with the AI transcript to generate something that's accurate, actionable, and actually useful. CEO Chris Pedregal (Chris Pedregal) joined me on the latest episode of Lightspeed's Generative Now to talk about this approach and why Granola has gotten so popular in the tech community so quickly. Full podcast listen links in the post below 👇
Michael Mignano16,807 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
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