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Saam Motamedi

26 statements across 1 episodes · 12 bullish · 6 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2024 by Saam Motamedi · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Saam Motamedi's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Everything said about Saam Motamedi, oldest first

Jul 15, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Saam Motamedi: Seed rounds frequently hit $100M+ post-money valuations
“It's not unusual for us to see seed rounds for companies that are just getting started being priced in the many tens of millions of dollars, even a hundred million dollar plus post money ranges.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 0:05 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Motamedi: No new horizontal system of record SaaS company launched in 5-6 years
“Now, why has there not been a new deep horizontal system of record SaaS company built over the last five or six years? I can't think of one.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 16:48 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Motamedi: Right now is the best time in years to invest in SaaS
“I couldn't disagree more. I sincerely believe it is the best time in a long time to be building SaaS companies and investing in SaaS.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 16:22 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Insight
Motamedi: Moving up the application stack protects focused AI models
“If you can start with a better focused model and then very quickly move up the stack into the application layer, it's actually a very good strategy.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 1:03:52 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 negative
Insight
Motamedi: Young VCs focus too much on personal metrics over firm success
“I think most young investors make a big mistake, which is they think too about too much about themselves and not enough about the firm.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 55:39 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Motamedi: Series A valuations range from $80M to $200M post-money
“For series A, based on what we're saying, again, for that kind of cohort of companies, If you have a little bit of product market fit, again, we're seeing pricing between 80 and maybe a 152 hundred post on the high end.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 24:11 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024
Insight
Saam Motamedi: Founders cannot overcome poor market dynamics late in growth
“Markets have gravity. And I don't think even the best founder can overcome a market that has the wrong dynamics when it's too late.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 44:33 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: Long-term value creation for standalone AI API services is doubtful
“I think if you're just building like, you know, An API service. I'm more skeptical. I think there's a lot of value this year, next year. I'm skeptical how it plays out.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 14:53 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: OpenAI will compete ruthlessly in pure code generation
“I think coding is a foundational capability. And I think if you just take kind of Pure code generation. I would bet very strongly that OpenAI is going to compete ruthlessly on that.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 11:35 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Motamedi: Greylock's 17th fund is $1B and targets 20-25%+ ownership
“For us, you know, we invest, you know, we're investing in our 17th fund. It's a billion dollar pool of capital. We are more ownership sensitive than price sensitive within a range, and so the lens we take on our kind of core early stage positions is how many o…”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 29:07 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Motamedi: 80% of Greylock investments start before company inception
“In this case, we got to know these people when they were still full-time employees elsewhere, and we're helping them before the company even existed, and that actually, I think something like 80% of our investments, they're of that flavor, where we met the per…”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 32:15 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Insight
Motamedi: VCs shouldn't pass on elite founding teams over early-stage valuations
“So when you find one of those teams, I really don't believe you should be passing on price in those ranges. Because whether you do it at 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, if that company goes on to get to a hundred million plus of ARR with high growth, you're going to be ve…”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 25:53 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 neutral
Insight
Motamedi: Customer service AI startups should not build their own models
“Whereas you mentioned customer service AI, that's an area where I don't think you need tie-in, where the startup should be really focused on everything except for the model.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 15:31 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: VC reference checks do not correlate with founder quality
“I would say in my experience, it's not correlated. Like I have backed great founders who did 12 references on me and I've backed great founders who did zero references on me. And so for what it's worth in my data set, it hasn't been correlated”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 1:07:01 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: Dismissing AI startups as 'wrappers' will age like early SaaS critiques
“I think we're going to look back on this discourse a few years from now, and it's going to feel very similar.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 9:40 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2034
Motamedi: Sales reps won't use Salesforce's interface in 10 years
“And I would argue in 10 years, sales reps won't even know what the Salesforce UI looks like because the interface to the underlying system of record has changed.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 19:01 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: AI pricing power requires replacing human workflows
“The bet I would take is if you take a slightly longer term view I do think you will be able to price to increase price pricing power, but the way you're going to do that is by really replacing elements of work.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 22:20 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 negative
Opinion
Saam Motamedi: Most venture capitalists are not helpful
“And our view is most people in Metro Capital are not helpful.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 0:23 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024
Insight
Motamedi: Don't overthink market dynamics when backing iconic repeat founders
“And when you have the opportunity to work with someone like that, you don't overthink the dynamics around the market because he for sure understands it better than you do.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 52:54 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Motamedi: AI application layer investing is no different from traditional software
“I don't think it is. And I think this is like one of the biggest misnomers in the venture zeitgeist where”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 9:10 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Saam Motamedi: Series B market is frothier than peak 2021
“I think the series B market may be even frothier than it was in 21.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 48:22 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 positive
Prediction Held up
Motamedi predicts SaaS will shift to hybrid seat and work-based pricing
“I think we're going to see hybrid pricing models. Where you're going to layer on to seats the type of work that you're doing for the end user, and you're going to monetize that separately, and that will allow these companies to continue growing inside accounts…”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 15:48 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Motamedi: Focused AI applications will yield many large public companies
“Like, I think there's going to be many, many large companies, public companies built that will be focused applications On top of these large model capabilities, but that's where we're focused.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 12:26 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024
Insight
Motamedi: Sourcing is the hardest and most important pillar of VC
“But I think the hardest and most important is sourcing. I believe like you are only as good as what you source.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 54:53 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: Foundation models with tightly coupled applications will generate strong venture returns
“On the other hand, we do think there are some applications where you need to own the model because the model needs to be tied to the application. Whether it's a personal agent, as an example, you referenced inflection. And for those, we actually do believe mon…”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 14:17 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Motamedi: OpenAI model competition will not disrupt ElevenLabs due to workflow moats
“It might compete on the model layer, but I don't think it will matter for 11 labs because I think they built really fantastic workflow around it.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 1:04:25 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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