Jonathan Abrams
21 statements across 2 episodes · 3 bullish · 16 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Apr 15, 2016 by Jonathan Abrams · said 16 times in 10 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Jonathan Abrams's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (14), Matt Ocko (1), Beezer Clarkson (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2017 8 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Benchmark's Peter Fenton on How To Differentiate Between Good & Great VCs, Why Ownership Is A Bigger Determinant Of Returns Than Valuation & What Makes A Truly Exceptional Board Member
- 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige
- 20VC: AngelList's Naval Ravikant on The Secrets To Success At Seed, Why Micro VC Is The Return of Traditional Series A & Why We Will See The Unbundling Of Traditional VC Brands
- 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 8 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: YC's Justin Kan on The 3 Qualities All Successful Investors Have & Why 'VCs Don't Really Do Any Real Work'?
- Immediately's Branko Cerny on The Rise Of Bottoms Up Sales and The Importance of Branding For Enterprise SaaS Companies
- 20VC: Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson & Brad Feld and Why Fundraising Is An Art & Not Everyone Can Be An Artist with Howard Lindzon Founder @ Stocktwits & Managing Partner @ Social Leverage
- 20VC: Data Collective's Matt Ocko on Why "All Fund Size Models Are Wrong" and The Lifecycle of Current Venture Funds Is Inefficient?
- 20VC: What LP's Want In VCs with Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures
- 20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Jonathan Abrams, oldest first
Apr 15, 2016 negative
Abrams: Sand Hill Road VC Team Collaboration Is Largely A Myth
“And my experience working with a large central road firm is you primarily are engaged with one partner. Even if they talk about their sort of collaborative team approach, the reality is you're pretty much talking, you know, mostly engaging with one person. And…”
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 negative
Abrams: Friendster Went Through Six CEOs In Six Years
“And selling the company six years later, we went through six CEOs in six years. I was, you know, sort of routinely excluded from board decisions and the, our software was rewritten into worse software. The website barely worked for a couple of years and a lot …”
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 negative
Apr 15, 2016 bearish
Abrams: Winning Frontier Tech Companies Will Emerge Cycles After Current Startups
“So I kind of feel like some of these sort of frontier tech areas that people are interested in right now, if they're actually really going to be big, the companies that will really be big in those industries will probably be the companies that'll come a couple…”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: VC stances on valuation sensitivity are personal religion, not data
“When it comes to this idea of whether you should be price sensitive or not, there's a lot of different opinions, and none of them really seem to be backed up by data, so it'd be interesting if a venture capitalist came on the show and said, look, we analyzed o…”
Aug 25, 2017 positive
Abrams: Startup boards need operational executives over celebrities and investors
“And I think more boards should probably have more nerdy Choices like more CFOs, more CIOs, CTOs, CMOs. I think there should be just more boring operational people on, on some of these boards than the, you know, quite as many celebrities and investors, but ulti…”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: Claiming to 'fall into VC' is usually masking unacknowledged privilege
“Really it does sound like the benefit of privilege when a family member or a former college roommate or somebody gives you this lucky break that is an entree into that world. It's a weird way of saying that you fell into it. It just doesn't sound like somethin…”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: VCs claiming to 'fall into VC' contradicts firm diversity excuses
“When you hear venture capital, you know, famous VCs sometimes in the media talking about the lack of diversity in their firms and being challenged about it and saying that they can't relax their standards, and fair enough, but when then you hear people saying …”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Aug 25, 2017 positive
Abrams: Statistical analysis proves larger VC portfolio size correlates with solid returns
“The reality is there are people who've actually done the math. I've actually seen, you know, a bunch of people who've done the math and proven that a portfolio that has a certain size statistically can be correlated with decent returns.”
Aug 25, 2017 bearish
Abrams: AI is currently overhyped in startup pitches and VC focus
“I think one of the things I think is overhyped now is AI, and, or really, or maybe talking about AI, because I'm sure a lot of the, you know, I've invested as an angel in over-fifty startups, I'm sure plenty of them are using AI, but when I hear everybody talk…”
Aug 25, 2017 positive
Abrams: Higher-priced angel investments performed better than cheaper deals
“In my case, the angel investments that I've made that were a little high in price have been ones that I was glad that I've made. And when I see ones that are sort of below market or really on the cheaper side, usually they're not the deals I want to do.”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: VC GPs pitch fund strategies that contradict their actual execution
“A lot of managers, GPs, are coming to them And pitching a certain strategy for their fund that is not at all what they've actually been doing or not what they end up doing, and they're pitching that they're going to have a certain specific type of strategy and…”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: VCs cannot effectively serve on 10 to 15 boards simultaneously
“I think a lot of people are on too many boards. So even if you are a fantastic board member, I don't know how you can be a fantastic board member at 10 companies or 15 companies at once. I just think that requires sort of a superhuman attribute.”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: Most startup boards are fundamentally ineffective
“This is an unpopular opinion, but I think most boards are just not very successful, and you look at some of the things that you read in the press about very famous companies sometimes, and some of these companies have some of the most famous venture capitalist…”
Aug 25, 2017 negative
Abrams: Top VC brand signaling matters much less than people pretend
“The idea that, that being a Sequoia company is going to be this huge advantage in terms of the branding, there's a lot of great investors these days that have great reputations, so chances are, if you have a bunch of Competitors. They probably have great names…”