Kevin Hartz
42 statements across 6 episodes · 11 bullish · 9 bearish · 5 people on the record · first statement May 22, 2017 by Kevin Hartz · said 67 times in 15 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Kevin Hartz's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (45), Miles Dieffenbach (7), Julia Hartz (7), Maggie Hott (2), Dylan Serota (2), Joe Lonsdale (1), Elad Gil (1), Andrew Dudum (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Roelof Botha on His Biggest Lessons Working Alongside Don Valentine, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone, Leading Sequoia's US Business and What Sequoia Do To Retain Their Edge at the Top & The Crucible Moments That Define Startup Success
- 20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
- 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2018 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Why Founders Must Use VCs as a Barometer, How to Make Distributed Teams Work Successfully & The Biggest Mistake People Make Early In Their Career with Dylan Serota, Founder @ Terminal
- 20VC: Hims' Andrew Dudum on The Scaling Playbook of The Fastest Growing Mens Wellness Brand, How To Be Truly Innovative In Today's World of Online Marketing & Raising at a $200m Valuation within Year 1
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 39 mentions in 3 episodes 13 per episode
- 20VC: Eventbrite Founder, Julia Hartz on The Lessons Learned Scaling Eventbrite to Unicorn Valuation & $3Bn in Gross Ticket Sales
- 20VC: Founders Fund's Chief Scientist on Why AI Is Mostly A Scam, Why The Value of Large Datasets Is Mostly Overplayed & The Societal Effects of 4m Truck Drivers Being Unemployed with Aaron Vandevender
- 20VC: Elad Gil on Becoming One of Silicon Valleys Top Angels, Why Most People Get Market Sizing Wrong & Should VC Services Always Be Bundled Together?
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
Everything said about Kevin Hartz, oldest first
May 22, 2017
May 22, 2017 negative
May 22, 2017
Kevin Hartz identifies as an operator rather than a venture capitalist
“I really have spent most of my career on the operating side having founded a couple companies and actually recoil when I hear the term venture capitalists or being called a venture capitalists. I really think of myself as a, as an entrepreneur, as a company fo…”
May 22, 2017
Kevin Hartz: Venture investing requires slowing down compared to fast startup operations
“In a startup, you know, you're trying to move really quickly. You're trying to make decisions and have things happening on the investing side. You really need to kind of tap the brakes or really be prudent about what you jump into.”
May 22, 2017 positive
Oct 20, 2017
Oct 20, 2017
Oct 20, 2017 neutral
Aug 31, 2020
Aug 31, 2020 neutral
Aug 31, 2020 positive
Aug 31, 2020 negative
Aug 31, 2020 bullish
Aug 31, 2020 neutral
Hartz: A* has $200M and 24 months to complete a de-SPAC
“In our case, we have a twenty-four-month time frame to get all the way to what's called the de-SPACing process, and that's simply that putting our two hundred million that we have in A star, our first vehicle one onto the balance sheets and effectively merging…”
Aug 31, 2020 bearish
Hartz: Speculative SPAC deals will collapse like the dot-com bubble
“What we do see, and what we do predict, unfortunately, is something akin to perhaps the dot-com bubble in 99 and 2000, where you saw a lot of bright, shiny objects, and big flash in the pan market seeming successes, and then you'll see a lot of these coming do…”
Oct 16, 2020
Oct 16, 2020
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Sequoia outbid Hartz on Airbnb's seed round, but founders included him anyway
“I was angel investing with Keith Rubois and Javid Karim, and Javid is the co-founder of YouTube. And, you know, we just fell in love with those guys and made them an offer. And Sequoia out, out did us and got the lead, but they cut us in nicely because, you kn…”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Hartz: Brute TAM analysis is overdone; great teams expand small markets
“Brute TAM analysis is maybe overdone. I'd focus more on the teams. You know, great teams always find their way to kind of slingshot from a market, from the small market to the big market, or it takes the small market to become a big, to get into a big market.”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Hartz: Y Combinator maintains an ideal venture model despite constant industry criticism
“Y Combinator continues to have this, like, ideal venture model. Like, as much as, you know, in every class that comes around, Like, the whole valley says, oh, now they've really jumped the shark, they're no good anymore, but like, year after year after year, t…”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Hartz would not have funded himself given his comfortable background
“I probably would have never given myself a check for, like, growing up in an easy, waspy, white, middle-class American town with, you know, no hard upbringing and a town full of lawyers and real estate people and doctors versus, you know, people like Max Levch…”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Hartz dismissed and missed an early investment opportunity in YouTube
“I think of when I was stepping down as CEO of Zoom, Keith and Roloff held a lunch for me in the city, in San Francisco. What was the name of that place? And Keith was talking about this YouTube thing. I was just kind of Burnout of like, you know, it was like a…”
Jul 22, 2024 bearish
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Hartz favors Sequoia's hands-on VC model over Founders Fund's hands-off approach
“Given those two extremes, I actually lean more towards, ah, the role of Sequoia's side, because I've just seen that kind of help and oversight and having that kind of star chamber of great talent cut so many corners of mistakes that would be made.”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Hartz: Seed startups spend $10M to hit the same milestones as $1M
“I feel there's like Boyle's Law as applied to capital. So if you raise a million dollar round for your seed company, you'll spend it and build a company with that million. But if you raise five million or ten million, you'll spend it just the same and get to t…”
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024
Hartz: VCs should offer calm support in crises, tough love during success
“Tough love is needed when it's doing extraordinarily well. Like, when things are going terribly wrong, And there are the, you know, butterflies, and stomach, you know, is, like, seized up, and teammates are quitting, and somebody's hacked the site, or whatever…”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Hartz: Jason Calacanis screamed at him over ticketing TechCrunch events
“He used to call me up at Eventbrite and scream at me, like, for, you know, he had a big rivalry with TechCrunch, And when we would ticket things for TechCrunch, he would get really angry and like, just call me up and scream at me for doing that.”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024
Pierre Lamond made Kevin Hartz force-rank direct reports and fire the lowest
“In the very first meeting, I'll always remember, he said, Kevin, I want you to go up to the whiteboard, and I want you to write your direct reports down, but I want you to force rank them, you know, one to seven, or how many it was, and so I go and I write the…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024
Hartz regrets turning down Peter Thiel's invitation to join Palantir at inception
“The day that acquisition of PayPal by eBay was announced Peter had resigned, and I met him up at the Sundeck restaurant in up on Sand Hill Road, and he said, you know, Kevin, I'm working on this business, and, you know, we're taking kind of the fraud algorithm…”
Aug 4, 2025 positive