Aug 29, 2025 · 1h 10m · more-or-less
#114 Seed Rounds at $2B? The Dangers of AI Hype in VC With Tony Conrad · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the More or Less podcast, hosts Britt and Dave Morin sit down with True Ventures founding partner Tony Conrad to examine the realities behind artificial intelligence valuations, the dynamics of venture capital culture, and emerging tech shifts across space, search, and social media.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 19.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.1 Guest teaching 4.0 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 46:41 Tony counters Dave's claim that social networks are dead
When Dave declares that social networks no longer exist and friends do not matter, Tony directly pushes back by highlighting how surprisingly vital LinkedIn and information networks remain.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 31:18 Dave drills into the incumbent nature of AI ARRDave immediately refuses to let Tony present a 150M ARR surge as proof of generic AI startup velocity, aggressively pressing to confirm it belongs to an established incumbent with pre-existing distribution.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 40:42 Tony introduces and defines AEO to DaveTony teaches the hosts how Answer Engine Optimization prioritizes first-party press releases over third-party earned backlinks, introducing an acronym and strategic framework Dave admits he had never heard before.
The host holds their own ▶ 22:17 Dave outlines the technical architecture of space solar powerDave demonstrates formidable technical expertise by detailing how Starship's expanded payload volume makes infrared laser solar energy beaming economically feasible for Baiju's new venture.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcoming Tony Conrad and True Ventures' Legacy | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Britt cites recent Carta data on boutique seed firms to frame the conversation, while Dave playfully challenges calling True Ventures boutique. Tony explains the philosophy behind True's non-attribution model and lessons learned from the 2000 dot-com bust. The tone is highly collaborative and warm between longstanding peers. | |
| Human Connection and EQ: Supporting Founders Through Crisis | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | The conversation focuses on co-investments and founder support, with Tony describing stepping in to extend runway for a founder whose house burned down. Dave articulates the extreme loneliness of founders and reinforces the necessity of founder mental health support. Both sides enthusiastically affirm each other's emotional intelligence in venture capital. | |
| The Venture Landscape: Inspiring Firms and Contact-Sport Hustle | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Tony shares admiration for legacy firms like Index and Kleiner as well as emerging solo GPs like Sarah Guo and Modern Technical Fund. Dave and Britt share their own history with Index mentors like Volpe and Danny Meyer. Tony stresses that venture remains a high-hustle contact sport, drawing on Ron Conway's classic networking style. | |
| Space Tech Frontiers: SpaceX Starship and Orbital Opportunities | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Dave demonstrates deep domain expertise regarding the SpaceX Starship launch, detailing how Starship's cargo volume unlocks orbital solar energy beaming via infrared lasers for Robinhood founder Baiju. Tony shares True's thesis in Finnish satellite imagery company ICEYE to provide sovereign non-US intelligence data. The dialogue is technical and peer-to-peer. | |
| AI Revenue Realities: Enterprise Incumbents vs. The Pilot Trap | 7 | 5 | 2 | 5 | When Tony highlights an enterprise portfolio company adding over 100M ARR from AI, Dave quickly probes whether this is merely an incumbent leveraging pre-existing enterprise distribution. Dave highlights the pilot trap, explaining how 30K to 50K enterprise AI trials often mask product instability. Tony agrees, drawing parallels to deceptive early ad tech revenue. | |
| Search in the AI Age: Navigating the Shift from SEO to AEO | 4 | 7 | 2 | 3 | Tony educates Dave and Britt on the emerging shift from SEO to AEO, explaining how generative answer engines reward first-party source authority over earned media backlinks. Dave admits he has not heard the term AEO yet, and compares its early gaming to search spam. Tony emphasizes that True recently retained an AEO optimization agency to adapt. | |
| The Death of Social Graphs and LinkedIn's Surprising Resurgence | 7 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Dave delivers a strong thesis that traditional social graphs are dead, replaced entirely by algorithmic recommendation engines that ignore real-world friendships. Tony counters slightly by pointing out that information networks like LinkedIn are surprisingly thriving, leading Dave to cite Meta CMO Alex Schultz promoting his book on LinkedIn. | |
| Physical Brands, AI Hype, and Navigating Mega Seed Valuations | 6 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Dave pushes Tony on whether True has stopped investing in consumer brands like Blue Bottle or Sweetgreen, prompting Tony to explain that they have hit pause to direct all cognitive bandwidth toward the AI shift. They debate whether current AI progress is linear or exponential, comparing it to iPhone iterative cycles, and Tony warns founders against accepting bloated seed valuations. Dave highlights that many high-valuation AI companies suffer from negative gross margins. | |
| Pop Culture Corner: Taylor Swift and Cultural Supernovas | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | The hosts transition to their pop culture segment, discussing Taylor Swift's business savvy and her engagement to Travis Kelce. Tony admits to reading several articles despite not being a core fan, jokingly comparing her cultural reach to an AI supernova. Dave displays his own musical background, discussing high school bands, wedding playlists, and John Mayer's tenure with Dead & Company. | |
| First Concert Memories and Classic Rock Confessions | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Tony closes the show by prompting Dave and Britt to reveal their first concerts. Dave names Counting Crows and Wallflowers, Britt admits to Backstreet Boys, and Tony humorously confesses his sister took him to Donny Osmond before his first self-purchased ticket to AC/DC. The banter is breezy and affectionate. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Conrad: True Ventures Strives to Be a Non-Attribution Firm
“We're definitely, we strive to be a non-attribution firm. Although everybody in internally certainly knows who does the deals and who's working on deals and founders definitely have a dedicated person, but We have a tendency just to think that, you know, one s…”
Conrad: VCs Win Deals Through the Firm Brand, Not Personal Brands
“Yes, your hustle does source deals, and you do have to make the call, but ultimately you win these deals often because of the body at work and the reputation of the most important brand, which is not The me brand, but the us brand.”
Tony Conrad: Kleiner Perkins lost its way before Mamoon Hamid revitalized it
“Mamoon, the work he's done over at Kleiner is like, to me, Incredibly inspirational. I mean, I felt like Kleiner had really lost his way at one point in time. And honestly, in some weird way, it kind of saddened me because I, they were such an important firm i…”
Tony Conrad: Sarah Guo's Conviction has quickly reached venture's forefront
“Then you got Sarah Gow's fund, Conviction, which is really quickly, you know, has moved up into the forefront of everybody's, you know, list.”
Dave Morin invests in space energy startup founded by Robinhood's Baiju Bhatt
“We just did a really interesting space energy investments with Baiju, who was the former founder of Robinhood.”
Dave Morin: SpaceX Starship will be viable for investment within 24 months
“Yesterday was a pretty strong signal that, you know, you can start investing in this new platform, and you're probably gonna see it in the next 24 months.”
Tony Conrad: Junior VCs must network at least three nights a week
“I tell our younger team, if you're not out at least three nights a week, then you're probably shouldn't be doing this at the end of the day.”
Tony Conrad: True Ventures Portfolio Company Will Hit $150M AI ARR
“We have one portfolio company that, and these are real numbers, not venture numbers... It's already unicorn status valuation that opened a new in December had zero revenue around this new product line. And this year ends at minimum one 50 AR are on that busine…”
Conrad: Enterprise Software Has Moved Past the Word 'SaaS'
“I would say SaaS is, you know, like, if you're an enterprise person, you're not saying the word SaaS anymore. That's dead. I mean, literally, you're not saying that. Nobody thinks that's hot, right?”
Conrad: Anthropic Holds an Enterprise Lead Over Competitors
“I think Anthropic actually has on the enterprise side of the equation... I think has definitely a lead here, or at least reputationally, I think it does.”
Tony Conrad: AI answer engines favor direct press releases over earned media
“In AO, it's just the opposite. It is about actually putting value disproportionate amount of value of whatever's coming from the horse's mouth. Right? So whatever it is that we're putting out there. So a press release, you may not have done one lately because …”
Conrad: True Ventures refuses to submit data to Forbes Midas List
“We don't do Midas lists. Like we don't, this is back to non-attribution.”
Morin: Slow Ventures and Offline Ventures never submit data to investor rankings
“When I was building Slow Ventures, we were non-attribution. We never submitted data, right? And so we like, we're never on any of these lists. We do the same thing at offline. We really are non-attribution. We don't submit data, right?”
Dave Morin: Social networking is dead because algorithms replaced real-world relationships
“Truth is social is dead today, right? There are no more social networks that anyone uses because everything, you know, followers don't matter. Your friendships don't matter. There's no actual functional social relationships inside of any of these systems today…”
Tony Conrad: LinkedIn is surprisingly amazing and powerful
“The social network of LinkedIn is, like, kind of amazing and powerful, powerful, right? And like, I would have never, like, oh my god, like, take me out back and force me to, like, to post on LinkedIn. Now I'm posting all the time”
Dave Morin: Meta CMO Alex Schultz is the smartest growth marketer ever
“He's easily the smartest growth marketing person, like maybe of all time. Like he is the true source of truth for what growth marketing became in Silicon Valley.”
Conrad: True Ventures will not invest in AI infrastructure layer
“And so I just think for us as a firm where we're not going to invest in the kind of the infrastructure, you know, kind of layer per se, right? That's just not, you know, the, those checks were already just way still beyond. That's what we talked about. Fifty m…”
Conrad: True Ventures has paused investing in non-AI startups
“Like, I think it's just required us to just say, pause for a second on all things that are non AI, because we're going to have catch up like almost every firm, by the way.”
Conrad: Many fast-growing AI startups have net negative margins
“A lot of these are net negative margin.”