Founder Collective
includes Founder Collective Fund I, Founder Collective Fund II
105 statements across 15 episodes · 33 bullish · 27 bearish · 9 people on the record · first statement Nov 16, 2015 by David Frankel · said 159 times in 33 episodes since 2015 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (103), David Frankel (33), Micah Rosenbloom (6), Gokul Rajaram (4), Zachary Bookman (3), Roger Ehrenberg (2), Jason Lemkin (2), Chris Dixon (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 15 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
- The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
- Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Why Now is the Time for the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Mike Mignano, USV · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2024 28 mentions in 6 episodes 5 per episode
- David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Chris Dixon: Who Will Win the Next Generation of Venture? | E1132 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zachary Bookman: Why Valuations and Fundraising are BS | E1235 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Roger Ehrenberg: Why VC Returns Will Get Worse & Why LP Incentive Structures are so Broken | E1117 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Avi Eyal: Making $2.3BN on Monday, Stripe & PillPack from Entrée Capital MP | E1173 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Homebrew’s Hunter Walk & Satya Patel: Why $100M is Not Enough to Execute a Seed Strategy | 20VC #972 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- DEBATE: State of Seed Investing w/ Jason Lemkin, Sam Lessin, Frank Rotman & Harry Stebbings | E1047 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Sheel Mohnot: How I Got Married in the Metaverse; Founder vs Product vs Market | E1035 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 18 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
- 20VC: Biggest Lessons and Challenges Building One of the Most Successful Seed Funds, How To Manage Investor Psychology, Self-Doubt and Insecurity & The Secret to Truly Successful Venture Partnerships with David Frankel, Co-Founder @ Founder Collective
- 20VC: Scaling to $122M ARR IPO with $6M in Net Burn, Olo. The Ultimate Journey of Capital Efficiency, What Worked, What Did Not Work and How Leaders Need To Reshape Thinking Around Resource and Attention Allocation
- 20VC: Whoop Founder, Will Ahmed on How CEOs Can Perform at their Highest Level, Why There is Value in Struggle Early On, Why Realism is Overrated in Startups and How To Create a Culture of Delegated Decision-Making
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
- 20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital
- 20VC: Airtable's Howie Liu on Potential Consolidation In The Collaboration Tools Market, The Transition From Peacetime To Wartime CEO & How To Make The Move To Remote Work Successful; The Process Beyond The Tools
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2018 36 mentions in 7 episodes 5 per episode
- 20VC: Lessons Learned Scaling PillPack from Seed to Amazon Acquisition, Why Investors Should Spend More Time Assessing Human Capital Risk Taken by Founders & The Right Way To Think About Capital Efficiency in Scaling with David Frankel, Managing Partner @
- 20VC: Why Every Startup Will Either Fail or Rebrand, How To Do OKRs The Right Way & How To Know The Reversible From the Irreversible Mistakes with Jack Groetzinger, Founder & CEO @ SeatGeek
- 20VC: How To Think About Founder-Category Fit, Why The Biggest Opportunities Are In Category Re-Architecture & What Can Be Done To Increase The Amount of Women In VC with Nadia Boujarwah, Founder & CEO @ Dia & Co
- 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble
- 20VC: Why Serial Entrepreneurship is Overrated, Why You Will Get Fired If You Listen To Your Board & How To Construct Investor Update Emails The Right Way with Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO @ Joymode
- 20VC: Ryan Caldbeck on Why The Business Model of VC is Broken, Who is To Blame, How The Best Funds Will Use Data Intelligently Moving Forward & Whether We Are In A Consumer Bubble Or Not?
- 20VC: Why Your Board Are Right 50% of The Time, Biggest Lessons From Being Mentored By Reed Hastings & Raising $130m in Funding and The Balance Between Growth and Capital Efficiency with James Reinhart, Founder & CEO @ ThredUp
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 18 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
- 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Focus On Top Line Valuation, Why Capital Efficiency Is Key To Returns And Investment Success & Why Despite Popular Thought, $100m Is An Exciting Exit For VC with Micah Rosenbloom, Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
- 20VC: The Power Of A Concentrated Seed Portfolio, Why Operational Value Add Models At Seed Do Not Make Sense & Why We Will See A Shakeout Of Growth Stage Investors with Roger Ehrenberg, Founder & Managing Partner @ IA Ventures
- 20VC: Why Valuation Is Of Critical Importance At Seed, How To Understand Innovation Cycles & Having 3 CEOs and Burning $10m a Month with Lee Hower, Co-Founder @ NextView Ventures
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: How AI Can Enhance Not Replace Humans? What Will Differentiate Between The Winners & The Losers In AI? Why AGI Is Further Away Than We Think with Nitesh Banta, Founder & CEO @ B12
- 20VC: The 3 Things LPs Want To See From VCs & Why The Table Stakes For VCs Is Higher Than Ever with Judith Elsea, Co-Founder @ Weathergage Capital
- 20VC: Why Valuation Is A Stupid Concept, VC Is Ripe For Disruption & Not All LPs Are Made Equal with Michael Skok, Founding Partner @ Underscore VC
- 20VC: What It Takes To Raise A VC Fund & Investing in First Time Fund Managers with Michael Kim @ Cendana Capital
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Founder Collective, oldest first
Nov 16, 2015 neutral
Nov 18, 2015 negative
Founder Collective avoids pro rata rights due to founder misalignment
“We don't do a lot of Parada for a bunch of reasons, including we don't think In most cases, in many cases, Parada's aligned to the founder, because the problem with Parada is you're always a net buyer of the founder's company, and they're always a net seller.”
Nov 18, 2015 positive
Eric Paley claims Founder Collective is among the top funds globally
“I think our fund is performing you know, people like to say top quartile, top decibel I think we're, I mean, I think our fund's truly one of the very, you know, Count on your hands the number of funds performing as well right now. So I don't know if we're goin…”
Nov 18, 2015 positive
Founder Collective's small Uber seed check would move the dial for anyone
“Yeah, so, ok, so we are, you know, as investors in Uber, and we didn't write a very big check, I think that current value alone of that small check would be very attractive to any venture fund of any size, even though our check that we started with was small, …”
Nov 18, 2015 neutral
Nov 18, 2015 neutral
Breakout portfolio companies rarely need VC help, says Eric Paley
“Struggling through how hard it is to build companies in 90% of our portfolio. And then there's the 10% that just does amazingly well, and it's really fun to help those companies, and we do get involved, and we do contribute to those, too, but they don't really…”
Nov 18, 2015 positive
Nov 18, 2015 bullish
Nov 18, 2015 neutral
Founder Collective writes $200K to $2M seed checks depending on lead status
“We write checks at the seed stage between sorry, between 200,000 dollars and two million dollars. So it depends if we're leading or participating. We don't have a Is there an opportunity to lead, and who's the most qualified fund for this particular opportunit…”
Nov 18, 2015 bullish
Feb 3, 2016 negative
Nov 23, 2016 positive
Nov 23, 2016
Nov 23, 2016 positive
Eric Paley says capital efficiency gives founders more control and lowers risk
“So, so at Founder Collective, we've been actively talking about what we call efficient entrepreneurship, the efficient use of capital, which ultimately leads to much more founder ownership, much more founder control, and actually, believe it or not, much less …”
Nov 23, 2016 positive
Nov 23, 2016 negative
Paley's study of 71 IPOs shows capital raised doesn't drive startup success
“We looked at 71 IPOs over the last five years, the 71 tech IPOs over the last five years. To study whether venture capital in the outlier cases could be argued to have really driven greater success. And it turned out there was effectively no correlation betwee…”
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 neutral
Feb 15, 2017
The highest-returning venture investments are non-obvious deals that consensus rejects
“It's sort of a core belief that the best investments we've made and the best investments out there were not obvious, and they were the kind of wacky deal in the corner of the room that everybody else sort of passed on”
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 positive
Feb 15, 2017 negative
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 negative
Jan 6, 2020 positive
Jain: Success in venture capital requires staying small and resisting expansion
“Success and venture actually means you have to fight that inherent desire to expand and grow. Success and venture means you have to get really, really good at what you set out to do. You stay within your lane. And that's counterintuitive because it's staying s…”
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022 neutral
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022 negative
Frankel passed on Remitly after Sequoia's Roelof Botha raised diligence concerns
“Beam at Mobile, Matt Oppenheim comes to mind. I loved what he was doing, and then I got into diligence, and I spoke to Rulof Buerta, who was in Zoom, and he helped talk me out of it, just talking about how difficult, you know, foreign kind of compensation was,…”
Feb 7, 2022 neutral
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022 negative
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022
Feb 7, 2022 bullish
Founder Collective backed Peartree to modernize the child adoption industry
“One of them, Peartree comes to mind. Peartree is using dating style software in the adoption industry, literally adopting kids, and so, you know, if you look at that, there's a massive, archaic industry that's been done the same way forever.”
Feb 7, 2022 positive
Feb 7, 2022
Sep 20, 2023 positive
Sep 20, 2023 positive
Paley: Trade Desk Founder Limited Fundraising to Preserve Acquisition Optionality
“And I'll tell you another story, you know, with Trade Desk, one of the reasons we didn't raise a lot of money was, we were the last ones in, and people just thought it was played already in the programmatic advertising market. But one of the reasons we didn't …”
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Paley: High seed valuations lower a startup's chances of ultimate success
“So I just think there's another problem outside of, it's a different form of risk, which is the likelihood of success, in my opinion, goes way down for those companies, which is super counterintuitive because you're like, well, but they have more money at a hi…”
Sep 20, 2023 bearish
Eric Paley: Overvalued unicorns face one of three realistic fates
“One of three things are going to happen to those companies, right? They're either going to take the extraordinary amount of cash they got, cut their burn rates down and figure out how to build real companies. And by the way, many of those will still never rais…”
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Paley: Startup Execs Should Compare Real Financials Against Valuation Hype
“If you're coming into a company as a senior executive and you have a CEO is bragging to you about how big their last round was in dollars and how big the post money was, ask to see the financials and compare those financials to what they're claiming in the van…”
Sep 20, 2023 bullish
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Paley: Investors won't recapitalize overvalued startups with low revenue
“If you're recapping a hundred million dollar revenue company at a billion dollar valuation, but it really should be recapped. People will do that work, but if you're recapping a three million dollar run rate revenue company with a billion dollar valuation, the…”
Sep 20, 2023 positive
Paley: Struggling founders should return unspent capital to investors
“I actually think that if you want to maintain your integrity, you want to maintain your integrity, and you don't have product market fit, and you raise money at a crazy valuation, and you don't want to have this burden on your back for possibly years, and by t…”
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Paley: VC obsession with ownership targets hurts founder alignment and returns
“We do not focus on ownership. We actually think that's a very problematic mindset. There's a whole bunch of downstream issues, including, first of all, our missions about alignment with the founder, and the whole ownership mentality. You can twist yourself in …”
Sep 20, 2023
Feb 19, 2024 positive
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures Co-Led The Trade Desk's Seed Deal Off a PowerPoint
“We literally committed on the basis of a PowerPoint. And we worked on that deal with Founder Collective. So Eric Paley and I both sat on the board. And so we literally co-led the seed round together and then IA breached them three times before raising their Se…”
Oct 14, 2024
Frankel: Founders Fail to Cut Burn Due to Loyalty and Overconfidence
“But these founders get onto this treadmill, and it's just, it's almost impossible to slow this thing down. I think what they feel like is their, and their loyalty is to the team that they've put in place, their loyalty is to the last set of capital that still …”
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Oct 14, 2024 neutral
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024
Frankel: Seed funds can return capital via multiple moderate exits, not just mega-unicorns
“Fund returners, you need four or five good fund, good companies. If we sell four companies at two hundred fifty million dollars each, right, we can return a fund. If we sell 10 companies at a hundred million each, like, nobody cares about that, we can return a…”
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Frankel: Backing product ideas without founder chemistry is a major VC mistake
“When I look at it and I go, I fell in love with a what? Like, I fell in love with a what, but I really didn't love the entrepreneur at the beginning, and I wasn't, you know, the chemistry wasn't there, that's a mistake.”
Oct 14, 2024 bearish
Frankel: Founder Collective passes on AI seed rounds at $100M valuations
“When I see those rounds at like 25 on a hundred, pretty much we're out. We're pretty much out. Again, team versus theme. So, you know, there are rare instances where we see someone who's just like, you cannot ignore, you wake up in the morning, you go, oh my g…”
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Oct 14, 2024 neutral
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Frankel: Venture funds aren't taking enough risk if they aren't losing money
“But I think it's the most unfair feature of capitalism, Harry, is the most you can lose is all your money. The most you can make is three, you know, 3000 X, right, or unlimited. If you just look at that, it is such an unfair feature of capitalism, and my LPs m…”
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Frankel: Founder Collective built dedicated systems and staff for partner matchmaking
“So, Harry, I promise you, I imagine a lot of your time is like, oh, think about that fund, think about that partner, to the point that over 15 years we've operationalized this. Like our software, I don't care if you use Monday, Airtable, we use Airtable. But o…”
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Frankel: Backing successful second-time founders hasn't worked out due to hubris
“I would say generally founders who've had enormous, enormous success and exits come to the next opportunity with some degree of hubris. I speak about this personally. I sold my first business And I thought I could conquer anything. And they look at any vertica…”
Oct 14, 2024 bearish
Oct 14, 2024
Frankel: Major decisions are made on 51% conviction, not certainty
“The, every great decision was never binary. It was always weighing up scales, and I think getting to conviction is confusing for people because they listen to this and they go, oh, you were binary about that. Like, you knew unequivocally, and the truth was, li…”
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Frankel: Liquidation preferences are a fundamental and fair venture capital mechanism
“Well, I would disagree with Nick, because I would say, prefs are fundamental. Saying, you should give your investor your, their money back, right, before you kind of, you know distribute the spoils to everybody. I think that's a fair tenet.”
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Oct 14, 2024
Frankel: Founder Collective liquidates smaller IPO stakes for cash but distributes stock for large positions
“The answer there typically has been with big distributions, with large positions, so fund movers, or it's half the fund, we distribute, and we say it's up to you. With smaller positions, when at IPOs, so desktop metal, for instance, it got to the point where i…”
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Frankel: Founder Collective passed on Pinterest due to portfolio conflict
“The first thing that comes to mind is like Pinterest. The founders came to us and we had a conflict. We had a very strong associate in Zach Klein, who was the chairman of supply. We, we'd invested in supply. We couldn't make the investment.”
Oct 14, 2024
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Oct 14, 2024 negative
Mar 16, 2026 neutral
Jul 6, 2026 negative
Stebbings: I passed on Suno's seed round over 1% ownership target
“I turned down sooner when David Frankl at Founder Collective introduced me at The Seed. You know what the lesson was there? Really interesting. I hope Mikey's okay with me saying this. I'm sure he is. It was a 250 K check or a 200 K check. And so the ownership…”
Aug 7, 2026 bullish
Aug 7, 2026 positive
Frankel: Moderately Successful Second-Time Founders Outperform Prior Massive Winners
“And I think overall we've done a little better on second time founders who didn't do that great up front. They didn't, they did okay, right? It's life changing. Like the first million dollars is so life changing. But they're really hungry. They've learned some…”
Aug 7, 2026 negative
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Aug 7, 2026 positive
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Frankel: Founder Collective Is Too Small for LPs Requiring $50M Checks
“A lot of them, like, have minimum size checks now, so we're too small for quite a few of them. It's like, if I can't put fifty million dollars to it, and I think there's, it just reflects the inflation of the entire environment, and there are a bunch that real…”
Aug 7, 2026 negative
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Aug 7, 2026 positive
Aug 7, 2026 negative
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Aug 7, 2026 bullish
Frankel: Seed VCs Should Sell 20% of Winners Early to Generate DPI
“Even in your top names, sometimes taking 20% off the table, if you can return 25% of the fund, particularly if it's a newish fund, so if it's a, you know, if it's a twenty-twenty-four fund and you can give back 25%, like, why wouldn't you do that? And you're s…”
Aug 7, 2026 neutral
Frankel: Co-Founding CTOs Are Often Redeployed After Scaling Past 50 People
“The CTO at some point up to 50 people, you're golden. And then at some point you go, actually we could bring in better, better technical skills. And if you've got a good co-founding CTO, that person becomes like a Swiss army knife and is deployed in different …”
Aug 7, 2026 positive
Frankel: Founders Use Founder Collective as Insurance in Mega Seed Rounds
“I think we're being seen and I'm, I could be over extrapolating the last 20 deals that we've been involved in almost as an insurance policy. Where we're side by side, we're putting in 500 K or a million. There's been eight, nine million dollars going in, and T…”
Aug 7, 2026
Aug 7, 2026
Frankel: Suno experienced far lower dilution than Whoop due to rapid momentum
“Like we're so proud to be in both, but sooner, you know, sooner has been a very quick journey. So if you look at like how lower, how much lower the dilution is, part of it is just how quick the momentum of that has been versus a whoop, which is hardware took a…”
Aug 7, 2026 bearish
Frankel: Billion-Dollar Early Rounds Are Momentum Plays, Not Seed Value Investing
“I think that that's the momentum business, and I think knowing how and when to get out quickly with some of those really, really matters, and that's not really my business. So my business is value, is getting involved early, and trying to find value opportunit…”
Aug 7, 2026
Frankel: Founder Collective sold some Uber early near $10B valuation
“You know, in retrospect, we probably sold a little too early, so this was early on, you know, this is a business that's getting close to ten billion dollars in valuation, and there's an opportunity to take some off the table, and you're very new.”