Michael Mignano, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, explains why early ARR growth in generative AI startups can be misleading due to low user retention.
“With a lot of these explosive high ARR companies that we've seen over the past couple of years with AI, it's not really a secret. You guys have probably heard of this as well. Many of them are very, very churning, right? They churn very quickly.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
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More from Michael Mignano
Opinion
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“I just don't, I don't know if the format is, is viable longterm as a solution, I think.”
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PredictionNot checkable as stated
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Insight
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“Apple had two separate apps for these things, right? They had music and they had podcasts, two separate apps. And that was a total gift to Spotify because Spotify could take the podcasts and put them right next to the music. So you never had to leave the exper…”
Michael MignanoMar 13, 2025▶ 7:55Michael Mignano on Building Anchor, Social Podcasting, and the Future of Oboe.
AssertionSupported
Mignano: Josh Moore built AI app Wave to $5M ARR solo
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Michael MignanoMar 13, 2025▶ 20:08Michael Mignano on Building Anchor, Social Podcasting, and the Future of Oboe.
Insight
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“I don't think a model by itself is necessarily interesting. I think there needs to be a product and a team behind it. And so I think if you were starting a model, you know, if you were starting a company today that was training a foundation model, I think you …”
Michael MignanoMar 13, 2025▶ 24:21Michael Mignano on Building Anchor, Social Podcasting, and the Future of Oboe.
PredictionOpen · timeframe Mar 2028
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“You have to imagine the next step is you start to see other types of video content on the platform. And even if they can start chipping away a few market share percentage points here and there, YouTube's catalog, that's a big deal for Spotify.”
Michael MignanoMar 13, 2025▶ 8:46Michael Mignano on Building Anchor, Social Podcasting, and the Future of Oboe.
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