My conversation with Mike Volpi @mavolpi, who is one of the strongest early stage investors of the last decade backing companies like Scale, ClickHouse, Confluent, Wealthfront, and many others. When I started investing a couple years ago, Mike was one of the first people I reached out to for advice. Since then he's started his own new firm, Hanabi. We talked about creating a new VC firm, how AI impacts venture capital, and a bunch of his ideas around specific trends in AI and elsewhere. I love this conversation, hope you enjoy. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:39) Building a venture firm from scratch (4:02) Designing Hanabi (5:52) Why stage matters less (9:38) Building a venture brand (13:58) The role of board seats (17:06) Attributes of enduring firms (20:44) The future of AI labs (23:14) Open-source and neolabs (32:49) The compute race (36:51) The future of software (45:49) Investing in defense (47:50) From operator to investor (50:35) Thriving founders today