Coverage
Venture Capital
The venture conversation: founders, GPs, and the allocators who fund what comes next. Sentiment and coverage from the shows where venture capital talks to itself.
Refreshed nightly · readings through November 5, 2026
Who's advertising, and what's being discussed
Aug 2026 – Oct 2026Paid sponsor reads and organic mentions across the venture capital shows we track. Ad copy is masked out before mentions are counted, so a vendor's own ads never count as people talking about it.
Top advertisers
By ad reads · change vs the prior 3 months
- 1Northwest Registered Agent
- 2Plaud
- 3Base44
- 4Framer
- 5SRS Acquiom
Most-discussed vendors
Share of episodes with an organic mention · change vs the prior 3 months
- 1ChatGPT
- 2Grok
- 3Salesforce
- 4Figma
- 5Legora
Mentions over time
Track any vendor's share of the conversation month by month, and compare up to five.
148 episodes from 6 shows scanned in Aug 2026 – Oct 2026. Sponsor tracking for venture capital runs from Apr 2026.
What this page measures
We transcribe every episode of the venture capital shows listed below and score what gets said in them. Not what analysts predict, and not what a survey panel reports after the fact. What practitioners tell each other while the quarter is still running.
Podcast interviews are unusually good evidence for this. The guest is a working operator, the format is long enough that talking points run out, and nobody is answering a multiple-choice question. When sentiment in a sector turns, it tends to show up in how people talk months before it reaches a published number.
The scores below run 0 to 100 against a 50 neutral baseline, weighted by how much reach an episode has. Readings refresh nightly across a trailing 30-day window. A cut this narrow can go thin in a quiet month, and when it does we say so rather than publishing a number built on four episodes. Full methodology.
What the Venture Capital conversation reads like
Sentiment across the five topics we score, measured only on venture capital shows. Trailing 30 days against the same window a quarter ago; thin cuts fall back to a 90-day read.
Future Outlook
76.1
Economy
43.3
Industry Forecast
61.1
AI
66.1
Innovation
75.6
Future Outlook
12-mo avg 74.4 · points from average
Economy
12-mo avg 42.8 · points from average
Industry Forecast
12-mo avg 59.9 · points from average
AI
12-mo avg 68.0 · points from average
Innovation
12-mo avg 75.8 · points from average
Each topic against its own 12-month average (the zero line), within venture capital shows only. Above means the conversation is running hotter than normal for that topic; below, cooler.
Latest in Venture Capital
newest across the tracked shows
This Week in Startups
Nov 5, 2026
Why a Do-Nothing Congress could be great for markets | E2359
This episode is a post-midterm venture capital roundtable hosted by Jason, with D.A. Wallach (Time BioVentures), Elana Gold (2 Roads Capital), and Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures). The panelists discuss how a split Congress could affect tech and venture, including data center politics, the intergenerational divide over AI and jobs, and whether 2027 may be the last window for major M&A. They also cover private market access, prediction markets, and tokenized trading platforms.
Equity
Nov 4, 2026
Building on open source AI? Hugging Face’s policy chief on the costs, risks, and trade-offs
Irene Solaiman, Chief Policy Officer and SVP of Strategy at Hugging Face, discusses the economics of open-weight AI models, including how developers and cloud providers capture revenue through inference, licensing, and enterprise contracts. The conversation covers U.S. versus Chinese open model competition, the role of harnesses and cheaper models for startups, and recent cyberattacks on open AI platforms such as the Open Code incident. Host Rebecca Bellan and Solaiman also examine the trade-off between securing open ecosystems and preserving their openness.
This Week in Startups
Nov 3, 2026
Odyssey CEO Oliver Cameron is 90% sure we live in a simulation | E2358
Oliver Cameron, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey, discusses the company's world model technology, which trains AI on video to learn physics, cause and effect, and to generate simulated environments in real time. He explains why a demo of a simulated fruit fly brain flying through an AI-generated world went viral and how it sparked interest in simulation theory. The conversation also touches on the potential uses of world models for robots and AI agents.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC)
Nov 2, 2026
20VC: Who Wins the Inference Market | Has Open-Source LLM Inference Peaked? | What Happens to the Cost of Compute | The Real Limits of Post-Training and RL with Erik Bernhardsson, Modal CEO
Erik Bernhardsson, co-founder and CEO of Modal, discusses building an AI infrastructure platform for inference, training, and agents, including his path to founding the company in his mid-30s. The conversation covers inference market structure, gross margins in AI infrastructure, GPU procurement and pricing, competition and brand, and talent and equity compensation. Topics also include Modal's Series D fundraising and his views on defensibility and moats.
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC)
Oct 31, 2026
20VC: David Tisch on Why High Ownership and Concentration is BS | Why No Manager Actually Wants to Stay Small | Why Competing with the Mega Platforms is a Losing Game | Why the Lean Startup is a Fake?
David Tisch, an early-stage investor at Box Group, discusses how venture market conditions have changed, including larger seed round sizes, lower dilution in later rounds, and how concentrated funds compete for deals. He also argues that the Lean Startup methodology is flawed, that pro rata rights must be earned, and that Box Group's approach of smaller checks and non-ownership-focused investing has worked. The conversation with host Harry Stebbings also covers LP frustrations and his views on the best venture firms and business models.
This Week in Startups
Oct 31, 2026
Binance Hacked $6.3B Stolen, DoorDash Buys Instacart For $17B, Jake Newfield from Hermetiq, + More!
This Week in Startups episode covers the roughly $6.3 billion Binance hack, including Jason Calacanis's 2021 warning about leaving funds on crypto exchanges and CZ's backstop of customer losses. It also discusses DoorDash's $17 billion acquisition of Instacart and whether the deal is an overpay or a regulatory risk. The episode features Hermetiq co-founder and CEO Jake Newfield, per the episode title and show notes, and includes the annotated app contest and a tribute to Patrick Stewart.
The Venture Capital roster
6 showsThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC)
The Twenty Minute VC
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) interviews the world's greatest venture capitalists with prior guests including Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Once per week, 20VC…
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis covers startups, tech, markets, media, and all the hottest topics in business and technology. He also interviews the world's greatest founders, operators,…
Equity
TechCrunch
The intersection of technology, startups, and venture capital touches everything now. That’s why Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast, digs into the business of startups for…
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
All-In Podcast, LLC
Industry veterans, degenerate gamblers & besties Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker.
Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers
Samir Kaji
Venture Unlocked offers unique insider insights into venture capital through our Podcast and writings.
BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley
BG2Pod
Open Source bi-weekly conversation with Brad Gerstner (@altcap) & Bill Gurley (@bgurley) on all things tech, markets, investing & capitalism
Need this cut deeper?
Term-level trends, competitor mentions, and custom segments within the venture capital conversation are available as custom research. See the Conversation Index or get in touch.