Mike Mignano

speaker

1,346 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 6 Jul

Mike Mignano’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 20VC: Why Now is the Time for the Application Layer | Why OpenAI & Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Why VCs Should Reduce Weighting on Price & Ownership in an Age of AI with Mike Mignano, USV · 6 Jul 2026 podcast

that is better than the transformer, right?

There are a number of these labs out there, thinking machines, safe superintelligence from Ilya and Daniel.

I think if I were to bet, I would say the labs that already have the advantages, but that doesn't mean there isn't a new architecture being worked on in a lab somewhere that could leapfrog all of it.

I think in that world, enterprises and individuals are probably optimizing for a couple of things.

I think they're probably optimizing for cost, right?

They're starting to think about the trade-offs between intelligence and spend and how they can optimize their token spend.

So what does that mean?

It probably means

you know, leveraging things like open weight and open source models.

It probably means leaning into things like the routing layer to optimize the token usage towards the model that maybe gives you the most bang for your buck rather than always just token maxing and picking the most powerful model.

I think the other thing it looks like is choosing tools and products and, you know, hate to use the new the new buzzword of the past six weeks harnesses that are maybe a little more human aligned.

But I know everyone will be like, oh, how... I think of the harness as the application that tightly, tightly couples with the model.

So in the case of, you know, Claude, it's like the Claude desktop app.

And I would say specifically Claude Code and Claude Cowork that are sort of having this loop, this flywheel of product and model sort of engagement.

You know, some other harnesses that I think people are pretty excited about are things like Hermes.

I consider Hermes a harness that takes over your Mac Mini.

I don't know if you've set it up yet.

Pie from Arendelle is another great harness, European company.

Having products, agents, harnesses that are human aligned and aligned with

your own goals and incentives, I think is going to be really, really important.

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