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Miles Clements

Partner, Accel · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investor@Mkclements ↗accel.com/people/miles-clements ↗

Miles Clements joined Accel in 2009 as its first associate and helps lead the firm's growth fund, focusing on enterprise software and developer tools. He has backed companies including Cursor, Linear, Laravel, and Atlassian, and oversees Accel's Ignite program.

42statements → 14claims → 8claims resolved → 63%fully supported → 3.81/5average certainty → 2.43/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 3said about them ↓

5 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 5 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 predictions · 9 assertions · 7 opinions · 12 insights · 8 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Miles argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Clements: Cursor will build specialized coding models for enterprise users
“Cursor is going to build specialized coding models that are going to serve specialized coding tasks, especially for a lot of enterprise users.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 7:23 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Clements: 90% of Cursor users are daily active agent users
“90% of cursor users are daily active users of the agent product.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 5:02 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
90% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.9

redirected or did not address 1 of 27 assessed questions (4%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

258 words/min while actually speaking · 10.9 um and uh per 1k words · 9.4 false starts per 1k · 26.4% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 9,016 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 5/10
setup questions received 22%

Everything Miles Clements said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Clements: VCs that never lose deal fights aren't competing hard enough
“I think if you're not putting yourself out there in losing, sometimes you're not chasing competitive enough things.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 29:54 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Open · timeframe Mar 2027
Clements: 95% of developers switch AI models daily
“And one of the things that we're learning is like 50% of developers switch model families on a daily basis and 95% of developers switch models on a daily basis.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 6:24 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Clements: Cursor will build specialized coding models for enterprise users
“Cursor is going to build specialized coding models that are going to serve specialized coding tasks, especially for a lot of enterprise users.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 7:23 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clements: Accel's initial Cursor investment was priced at 4-5x year-end ARR
“Actually, this company is growing so quickly that on a multiples basis, you know, our first investment was at like four times, five times year-end ARR.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 9:13 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Clements: VCs get hammered sitting in the middle of consensus
“I think you can actually be successful in this market investing in consensus. And I think you can actually do really well investing in like non-consensus. I think you get hammered sitting in the middle.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 12:07 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clements: Accel lost ServiceTitan over rigid valuation caps before $9B valuation
“We had fallen in love with our envy. We were chasing this round. It was going to happen in the two 50 or three hundred million dollar range. And, you know, we had these rigid rules about like, you definitely can't pay more than six times, six to eight times fo…”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 16:28 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clements: Nobody builds ARR compounding levers better than Parker Conrad
“And I think nobody in the world does that better than Parker Conrad.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 20:52 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
What-if
Clements: Breaking VC rules for Rippling would have been worthwhile
“And I think like, I don't regret not breaking the rules in general, but you know, this would have been a time when it could have been worthwhile.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 22:20 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clements: Traditional VC startup benchmarks are now largely obsolete
“I think this is why, you know, the benchmarks that used to give us all comfort are largely obsolete now. And so, like, you have to be really clued into the usage intensity of your product and really understand how people are using it.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 25:00 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Clements: VC funds must ladder ownership over time to reach 20%
“Today, you have to back into 20% the other way. Like, you do what the market will allow in the earliest possible investment. You sponsor a tender, you do a growth round, you do an IPO round, and you can ladder your way up to 20% ownership. You have to be a mul…”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 32:14 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Clements: Targetting $100B exits at Series A leads to failure
“If you're just constantly stepping to the plate and trying to, you know, I can see at the series A that this is going to be a hundred billion dollar exit, you will just overswing and you will fail.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 33:35 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Clements: Anthropic and select private AI companies could reach $1T valuations
“I think that company and a small handful of companies in the private market today are operating on a different plane. You know, I think it is not bombastic to say that some of those businesses could be trillion dollar companies.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 35:45 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Clements: Private equity firms will acquire overvalued 2021 tech startups
“I think it's probably a good time to be in the LBO business. I think it's probably a good time to be in the Toma Bravo Vista Blackstone KKR business. There will be homes for a lot of those companies, you know, who get themselves to a sustainable place and they…”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 41:02 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Clements: Generational AI opportunities and outcomes are just beginning
“Those companies will be bigger than the outcomes that I probably envisioned a year ago, and there is still time to be a part of some of them, and because, like, the innovation flywheel is just getting started. We are barely scratching the surface.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 42:54 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clements: Public market repricing of SaaS software stocks is an overrotation
“Fundamentally, people are valuing the future cash flows and the future terminal value of these companies differently, and I don't think that's wrong, but I do think this has been an overrotation.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 46:44 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Clements: Highly vocal board members are inversely correlated with actual helpfulness
“I think there's generally an inverse correlation between how vocal somebody is and how helpful they actually are. So the person who just has to get the first and last word in and shows up at the board meeting and has to teach you something that you didn't alre…”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 53:57 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Clements: VCs can achieve success in the current market backing consensus deals
“You can actually be successful in this market investing in consensus.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 12:07 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Contradicted
Clements: 90% of Cursor users are daily active agent users
“90% of cursor users are daily active users of the agent product.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 5:02 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clements: Cursor's AI agent product usage grew 15x last year
“The agent product grew 15 X last year.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 5:07 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clements: Cursor cloud agent accounts for 35% of merged PRs
“You know, the cloud agent product, which was new as of like October 30th, so it's only been in market for three months, is now responsible for 35% of merged PRs in cursor.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 5:10 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Clements: AI verticals will sustain multiple major winners, not monopolies
“But I also think the way that a number of these verticals are going to play out in a number of the AI categories, there's going to be a couple of really big companies and several of them.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 18:15 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clements: Extrapolating temporary ARR spikes as product-market fit is a trap
“There have been investments where, you know, a company went from, they had a million dollars of ARR, and then in the period that you know, before they fundraise, they had like a four million dollar quarter, and it's like, they've got it. Like the product marke…”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 24:24 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clements: Accel missed investing in early AI foundation model companies
“A lot of firms miss the model companies early, and we're guilty of it.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 27:31 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Clements: A healthy VC deal win rate is around 80%
“I think a healthy win rate would be, like, 80%.”
Miles Clements Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 29:32 "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Show 18statements(18 left)

The other half of the tape: Miles Clements's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00112120252026episodesmentions
01120252026episodes it came up in
0010.52120252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 2 mentions in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
"Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings Mar 9, 2026 40m
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