The Best AI Companies Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies | Simile Co-founder & CEO

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

August 1, 2026

Duration

1h 5m

Channel

The Twenty Minute VC

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Joon Sung Park is the Founder and CEO of Simile, the AI simulation company building foundation models of human behaviour; allowing companies to test how real people may think, decide and act before making a decision in the real world. Simile has now raised $300 million in total, including a $200 million Series B announced last week at a $2 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Index Ventures. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:26 The Valentine's Day Simulation That Put Joon on the Map 03:56 How Agents Got Memory, Planning & Reflection — The Origin Story 07:07 Simile vs. Frontier Models 07:59 Say vs Do: Why Behaviour Data Beats Survey Data 09:33 Prediction Is Overrated 12:31 Is Simile Just a Fancy Qualtrics? The TAM Question 15:48 How Many People Do You Need for Accurate Simulations? 16:56 The Data Flywheel: How the World Becomes the Ground Truth 19:59 Can Simile Simulate Elections, Democracies & Wicked Problems? 21:43 Who Should and Shouldn't Have Access to Simulation Technology? 33:07 How to Build a World-Class Research Team That Doesn't Quit 35:59 The Two Contradictory Superpowers That Make Great Founders 39:10 Competing for Research Talent in the Tens of Millions 43:28 From Researcher to CEO: What Joon Looks for in Academic Founders 44:33 Raising $300M in Six Months: How the Round Came Together 58:01 Is Simile the Future of Love and Matchmaking? 1:00:45 Quick Fire Round ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Joon Sung Park on X: https://twitter.com/joon_s_pk Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #simulation #ai #ceo #founder

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Joon Sung Park

  guest

  Co-founder and CEO of Simile, working on simulation-based AI systems and defensible data acquisition strategies.

• Harry Stebbings

  host

  Founder and host of The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), interviewing startup founders and investors in tech and venture capital.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Joon Sung Park and Harry Stebbings, The Best AI Companies Have Unique Data Acquisition Strategies | Simile Co-founder & CEO explores simile’s vision: defensible behavior data to run human simulations at scale Simile’s core bet is that the winning AI companies will have defensible data strategies, and for human-behavior modeling that means acquiring representative real-world behavioral data rather than relying on what people say online.

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