#58 - Miles Grimshaw

Miles Grimshaw is a Partner at Thrive Capital, an investment firm that builds and invests in internet, software, and technology-enabled companies. Thrive recently closed on $5BN in new funds and also announced Thrive Holdings, a permanent capital vehicle to invest in, acquire, and operate businesses for the long term with the strategic application of technology.

During his time at Thrive, Miles has led investments in companies like Airtable, Monzo, Benchling, Lattice, and more recently Cursor, a code editor built for programming with AI, which you’ll hear us chat about. That team raised a $900 million round at a $9.9B valuation in June.

Prior to Thrive, Miles was a General Partner at Benchmark, where he led seed investments, most notably in LangChain.

We spoke about trillion dollar companies, silicon valley as an idea, business genetics, practicing scales, and Swedish House Mafia.

0:00 - Intro

2:14 – “The Era of Doing”

6:15 – Startup Capital Intensity in the Age of AI

9:14 – The Rise of Trillion Dollar Outcomes

15:11 – Silicon Valley as an Idea

21:04 – Physics vs Biology-Style Investing

25:41 – Business Genetics and Compounding

33:04 – Dying of Indigestion and Going Multi-Product

35:55 – Co-Pilots, Command Centers, and Defensibility

40:07 – Investing Stage Agnostically

44:29 – When is VC a Good Capital Instrument?

49:18 – Thrive’s Core Beliefs

53:57 – A Bet vs a Commitment

57:49 – The Few Ideas Miles Takes Seriously

59:47 – Doing a Few Big Things vs a Million Little Things

1:03:54 – Practicing Scales

1:06:22 – What Should More People Be Thinking About?

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