Venture in the Age of AI

Don Butler reflects on tech cycles, job shifts and why AI might matter more than the internet ever did.

Author

Alastair Goldfisher, Contributing Podcast Host & Writer
May 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Screenshot from a virtual interview featuring Alastair Goldfisher and Don Butler. On the left, Don Butler wears glasses and a light blue button-down shirt, smiling slightly in front of a beige paneled wall. On the right, Alastair Goldfisher also wears glasses, dressed in a plaid shirt over a dark tee, seated in front of a bookshelf filled with books and folders. A microphone is visible in the foreground, indicating a recorded video conversation.

Screenshot from a virtual interview featuring Alastair Goldfisher and Don Butler.

Venture in the Age of AI

By Alastair Goldfisher
Veteran journalist and creator of The Venture Lens newsletter and The Venture Variety Show podcast. Alastair covers the intersection of AI, startups, and storytelling with over 30 years of experience reporting on venture capital and emerging technologies.

Don Butler has seen a few cycles. As a longtime VC and Managing Director at Thomvest Ventures, he joined the firm in early 2000, just as the dot-com bubble was about to burst.

He’s lived through market mania before. But this time, he says, it’s different.

The AI boom isn’t just another cycle. It feels deeper. More foundational. Like a shift in how work gets done, how capital gets deployed, and how firms themselves operate.

In this episode of The Venture Variety Show, Don and I dig into the forces reshaping venture capital in real time, from solo GPs using AI as their sidekick to firms quietly phasing out analyst roles in favor of automated research tools.

We talk about the jobs being replaced, the ones being created and the vertical winners likely to emerge.

Here’s what we cover:

🔶 Why venture firms don’t need to hire analysts

🔶 How AI tools are powering new sourcing and diligence workflows

🔶 What job displacement looks like at the fund level and where new roles may emerge

🔶 The rise of the solo GP backed by AI

🔶 And how human behavior is already shifting in surprising ways when interacting with AI agents

One quote that stuck with me:

“It would not surprise me to see [a firm] having an AI associate. I can see the day where maybe the majority of new solo GPs are basically … a solo GP plus some form of agent.”
—Don Butler, Thomvest Ventures

This conversation was recorded a few months ago, before I officially launched The AI Cognitive Shift, a podcast series in collaboration with AiNews.com that looks at the impact of AI on society, culture and the future of work.

But the themes Don touches on—AI’s effect on jobs, systems, and decision-making—are exactly what I’m exploring in that other podcast, as well. If you’re following both shows, this one connects a lot of dots.

If you’re building, investing, or just trying to understand how AI is reshaping business from the top down and bottom up, give this one a listen and let us know what you think.

You can follow The Venture Variety Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

And you can also follow The AI Cognitive Shift on YouTube.

If you enjoy this episode with Don Butler, please like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to this Substack to catch more founder and investor conversations as soon as they’re posted.

Thanks for listening!

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