Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307

**Alex Wilhelm** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome back to Twist. My name is Alex. It's Wednesday, which means it's time for yet another Venture Capital Roundtable. This time, I do have to say we have an incredible panel. And as you can tell from the bags underneath my eyes, there's more than a little bit going on. So today, we're gonna be looking into strong second quarter exits, including a number of IPOs, the return of Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models, rising demand for open weight Chinese models, including GLM 5.2, what to make of $100 million series A rounds and even larger seed rounds, and how our panelists are navigating investing in yet another boom. This Week in Startups is brought to you by CLA. Innovation takes balance. CLAs, CPAs, consultants and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at claconnect.com/with you. Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks in 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twist and agree.com. Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract to cash stack. Go to agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life. Now today I have with me Aileen Lee from Cowboy VC. Aileen, how are you doing?

**Aileen Lee** (1:17)
Oh great. I'm excited to be here.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:19)
Now your firm raised $230 million fund for and a $140 million opportunity fund back in 2023 You guys have back to Drata, Standard, Kernel and Binti amongst others. How goes fundraising for Fund 5?

**Aileen Lee** (1:31)
We're not raising for Fund 5 right now.
We're still investing Fund 4 And it's a, I mean, we're going to talk about it. It's a wild time right now, but a lot of exciting things to look at right now. And some, I think founder quality is incredible right now.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:43)
It's always good to hear. We also have Mike Maples from Floodgate. Mike, how are you doing?

**Mike Maples** (1:47)
Can't complain.

**Alex Wilhelm** (1:48)
Now you filed with the SEC to raise a $130 million fund eight in May. Floodgate has backed Lost Energy, Hadrian and Applied Intuition. Have you filled up that new fund?

**Mike Maples** (1:57)
Well, I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, but we're pretty good shape.

**Alex Wilhelm** (2:02)
Good. And then finally, we have Ben Lerer from Lerer Hippeau, which closed a $200 million fund nine last year. Lerer Hippeau is back to Zipline, which we've had on the show a number of times. Palmetto ends in business amongst others. Ben, how are you?

**Ben Lerer** (2:14)
I'm doing okay. I have more to complain about than Mike, I guess.

**Alex Wilhelm** (2:18)
Okay. Well, do you want to start? We can start with the therapy session and then get into the conversation.

**Ben Lerer** (2:22)
Let's get into it. We got time. We have time.

**Alex Wilhelm** (2:23)
Actually, before we do anything serious, I want to point out that there's two of us here who tweet all the time, Mike and myself, and then there's these two people on the show today who apparently have lost access to their Twitter accounts, namely Aileen and Ben. So from Mike and I, how do you two manage to shut up when there's so much going on that both infuriates and delights us? Like, how do you not just constantly go at it?

**Aileen Lee** (2:44)
I mean, I definitely have become a little bit more of a lurker. I used to be a lot more of an active tweeter.

**Ben Lerer** (2:49)
So I actually, I was an active tweeter back in the day.
And actually a pretty active social media user. And I think it was probably during COVID that I sort of felt that the trade was no longer worth it. Like, there was, I just sort of like hit a wall and went cold turkey one day. I went to a dinner with a friend. He told me that he had sort of pulled off all social media and was living his best life. And I sort of, you know, had like a second and third drink and I was like, I can do it too. And deleted like deleted the apps and and really like didn't go back at all. I have become a little bit more of a lurker of late, like Aileen. But look, I just I wasn't getting the joy out of it. I really do think that like in general, social media is like not great. I have young kids. I like feel the sort of FOMO that comes from it and the angst that comes from it. And I just like decided to pull out. And I understand that like there's probably some trade offs in terms of like brand building and, you know, puffing out my chest that I lose as a result of it. But I try to put that sort of time and energy back into other productive things.