This Week in Startups
This Week in Startups

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

July 1, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The venture capital roundtable on This Week in Startups convened Aileen Lee (Cowboy VC), Mike Maples (Floodgate), and Ben Lerer (Lerer Hippeau) to assess a market that is simultaneously liquid, frothy, and disorienting. The conversation ranged from the return of venture exits to the distorting effect of $100 million Series A rounds, the rise of open-weight Chinese models, and the growing gap between what multi-stage funds will finance and what actually needs building. The panelists agreed that the AI era has compressed business cycles dramatically, making it hard to separate signal from noise.

The return of liquidity and the changing exit landscape

After a multi-year drought, venture liquidity is picking up. Bending Spoons priced its IPO at $29 per share, above its range, giving it an $18.5 billion non-diluted valuation. The company doubled revenue year over year and posted positive GAAP net income in Q1. Mike Maples called the IPO encouraging, noting that Bending Spoons is a vehicle that has been "gobbling up older companies" — including AOL, Evernote, and Vimeo — and that the market needs more such vehicles because traditional SaaS multiples remain depressed and M&A has been quiet.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Panelist Check-In** - Alex welcomes Aileen Lee (Cowboy VC), Mike Maples (Floodgate), and Ben Lerer (Lerer Hippeau) for a VC roundtable.
  • 2 (05:05) **Venture Liquidity and Fundraising Climate** - The panel discusses how recent exits (IPOs, M&A) are affecting LP sentiment and future fundraising.
  • 3 (09:04) **Bending Spoons IPO and M&A Revival** - The panel analyzes the Bending Spoons IPO as a signal that M&A is returning for pre-AI companies.
  • 4 (14:00) **Shaking Up "Orphan" Portfolio Companies** - Ben discusses the challenge of reviving older portfolio companies that have been neglected by later-stage investors.
  • 5 (19:51) **"Burning the Boats" and Pivoting to AI** - The panel discusses the challenge of pivoting pre-AI companies to become AI-native, using Mutiny as a case study.
  • 6 (25:00) **The New Growth Bar and the "Easy Come, Easy Go" Problem** - The panel discusses how AI has raised the bar for growth (quintuple/quadruple instead of triple/triple) and the consequences for the ecosystem.
  • 7 (34:30) **Consumer Hardware Spotlight: Board** - Ben discusses Lerer Hippeau's investment in Board, a physical digital board game from the founder of Mirror.

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Show Notes

This Week In Startups is made possible by:


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Today’s show:

Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today’s problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy’s Aileen Lee, Floodgate’s Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau’s Ben Lerer joined Alex to dig into exiting pre-AI startups, rising valuations, token spend, why they are keeping their funds small, and whether the government just tripped OpenAI and Anthropic!


Guest Links:

Aileen Lee https://x.com/aileenlee

Cowboy VC https://cowboy.vc

Mike Maples https://x.com/m2jr

Floodgate https://www.floodgate.com

Bene Lerer https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjlerer

Lere Hippeau https://www.lererhippeau.com


Timestamps:

0:00 Aileen Lee, Mike Maples, and Ben Lerer join the show

5:13 Venture liquidity returns: what SpaceX/Stripe distributions mean for LPs

9:13 Bending Spoons prices IPO at $29/sha

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