20VC: The Best AI Companies Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies | Will Simile Kill Kalshi, Polymarkets and NASDAQ | How to Sign Fortune 500 Companies As Customers in Weeks with Joon Sung Park, Simile
Topics discussed
Intro, sponsor reads, and guest introduction
Simile's origins and the Smallville simulation
Solving the memory problem for AI agents
Simile's positioning vs. LLM providers
Prediction vs. counterfactuals and market strategy
Beyond surveys: modeling complex social systems
AGI, safety, and the North Star metric
Model improvement and reward signals
Compute costs and simulation scalability
Enterprise product-market fit and early customers
Synthetic panels vs. human panels
Balancing research lab and product company
Sales cycles, pricing, and customer value
The power of simulation over simple prediction
Building an all-star team and founder traits
Leadership style: paranoia vs. long-term vision
Talent retention and recruiting from academia
The $200M funding round and investor logic
The role of VCs and market froth
Compute costs and future simulation scale
Future applications: AGI, dating, and hedge funds
Societal impact and personal simulation
Investment advice and personal journey
Closing remarks and sponsor reads
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