Matt McIlwain at Madrona argues the AI industry obsesses over models while ignoring the business models and applications that actually make money. Successful founders need authentic curiosity, the ability to decide amid conflicting data, and a bias toward action that feeds back into learning.
You're watching Monty TV. I'm Jackie Korshe, sitting down now with Matt McIlwain, the managing director of venture capital firm Madrona. Thank you so much for sitting down with me, Matt.
Great to be with you, Jackie.
Do you think that we are too focused on models right now and not everything around them?
Absolutely. Models are not all you need. In fact, the most important AI model is the business model. And so how do I make money off of these things? And candidly, I underestimated both OpenAI and Anthropic's ability to move up the stack and monetize. But ChatGPT, strictly speaking, isn't a model. It's an application. It's a reasoning machine. It's an intelligent agent. Right. And the same thing is what Anthropic's doing, much more so in the enterprise now. That's where the money is.
Now you have the intel on what every founder really wants to know. What makes a great founder?
Oh, I think there's 3 things that make a great founder. One is authentic curiosity. And what that means is that you are humble enough to not think you know everything. And I've seen the difference. People that fake curiosity and real curiosity. The problem, if you're really curious, then you get conflicting data. So the next thing is to be able to synthesize data and be able to understand and make decisions off of conflicting data. The third thing, which is actually more hard than you'd think, is then acting on that data. Some people can think it all through, but they're afraid to act. And I'm like, get out there, have a bias towards action, 'cause you know what happens when you have a bias towards action? You learn and you get more data and you're all the way back around to curiosity again. So curiosity, synthesis, bias towards action. That's what founders need to have.
Now that is invaluable advice. Thank you so much, Matt. That was great.
