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JL Jason Lemkin Jason Lemkin Founder of SaaStr, a community and media platform for B2B software founders, and managing director of SaaStr Fund; he previously co-founded EchoSign, acquired b...

“What's the killer app? Another reservation at a Cheesecake Factory or TGI Fridays? We need to see the VisiCalc of Muse.”

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · Startups & Venture · September 2026

“What's the killer app? Another reservation at a Cheesecake Factory or TGI Fridays? We need to see the VisiCalc of Muse.” — Jason Lemkin, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Context

Lemkin is skeptical of Meta's Muse agent. He says every horizontal platform has needed one killer app, that OpenClaw never found one, and that restaurant bookings and carpool scheduling are not it. A moment later he admits Muse is beautiful and fun to use.

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Transcript

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch Around 23:48 into the episode
Harry Stebbings

What do you mean, does it matter? Sorry.

Rory O'Driscoll

Yeah.

Jason Lemkin

What's the killer app? Another reservation at a Cheesecake Factory or TGI Fridays? We need to see the VisiCalc of Muse. We need to see what is the killer app. Every horizontal platform needs a, you know, traditionally needs some sort of Killer app, right? I'm just skeptical. I'm just wondering, right? I don't think in this whole thing, I don't think there was a killer app for OpenClaw. And I don't know if there is a killer app for Muse because, or Instinct, because there wasn't one for OpenClaw.

Harry Stebbings

Is it not being your discovery mechanism to shopping? Like a WeChat, a super app? You know, Zuck has spoken about taking portions of transactions as being the business model as well.

Jason Lemkin

The model's good, but what are his examples? Scheduling his daughter's carpool. Is that really what a trillionaire needs to do with a general? He can't even come up with a good use case of Muse for himself. He's making up consumery things. I had to schedule ballet lessons from my daughter. I mean…

Harry Stebbings

I don't know if it needs to be. And I know that sounds stupid, but no, but I use Instinct in a similar power user way. I think latency is a real problem with Instinct, by the way, which might not be with Matt. I wait for responses. Minutes. It's like the first days of Chat GPT. It's a real problem.…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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