Sarah Tavel
40 statements across 7 episodes · 15 bullish · 12 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Apr 6, 2016 by Sarah Tavel · said 74 times in 36 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Sarah Tavel's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (48), Jeremy Levine (9), Charlie O'Donnell (4), Eric Vishria (3), Michael Eisenberg (2), Delian Asparouhov (2), Sarah Guo (1), Sameer Shariff (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 14 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- Eric Vishria: Where is the Value in AI - Chips, Models or Apps? | E1206 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Aaron Levie: How the Business Model of SaaS Changes Forever & Startups vs Incumbents:Who Wins?|E1155 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mamoon Hamid: AI - Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws | E1217 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Andrew Bialecki: Is Klaviyo the Most Under-Priced Public Company? | E1170 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Michael Eisenberg: How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race | E1167 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Alex Wang: Why Data Not Compute is the Bottleneck to Foundation Model Performance | E1164 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Roundtable #7: Spotify, Adobe and Linkedin on How AI Changes The Future of Product & Design | E1097 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: NEW FORMAT: Harry Stebbings on Why Seed Pricing is as High as Ever, Why Series A is the Best Place to Invest Today, Why Growth Founders Need to Reshape Expectations, Why M&A Windows Remain Shut and When Will IPO Windows Crack Open
- Michael Eisenberg and Adi Levanon: Israeli Resilience in Crisis | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- Cambly CEO Sameer Shariff: Why I Raised $60M and Didn't Touch a Dollar | 20VC #914 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20Growth: Five Key Functions of a Growth Team, The Biggest Lessons Starting Uber's Growth Team and Scaling Facebook's, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth and What Separates Good From Great in Growth Leaders with Ed Baker, Former VP of Growth @
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 13 mentions in 2 episodes 7 per episode
- 20VC: The Pinterest Memo: Bessemer's Jeremy Levine on The Secret To Success within User Generated Content Plays, Where Most Investors Make Mistakes When Analysing Consumer Social and How The Pinterest Deal Wouldn't Have Happened without a Diverse Partners
- 20VC: The Memo: Sequoia's Alfred Lin on Why Chasing GMV Leads To Bad Behaviours, How To Approach Competition and Capital Efficiency & The Core Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Input and Output Metrics
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 10 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: How To Solve The Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? How Important Is Differentiated Supply? How To Prevent Leakage? How to Create Marketplace Defensibility and more with Alyssa Ravasio, Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp
- 20VC: Zach Weinberg on Whether A Company is a Democracy, The Importance of Ownership, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed and How he Approaches Both Risk and Personal Capital Allocation
- 20VC: Why You Never Want To Fight A Fair Fit For Distribution, Why No Great Company Is Built with 1 Product and When To Release Your Second & What Founders Can Do To Extract The Most From Their Cap Table with Shoaib Makani, Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Benchmark's Bill Gurley on 5 Traits Benchmark Look For When Adding To The Partnership, Why The Abundance of Capital Is Today's Biggest Challenge in VC & The Right Way To Think About Market Size When Assessing Opportunities
- 20VC: Benchmark's Chetan Puttagunta on The One Question To Ask When Analysing Market Size, How To Compete in Today's War for Talent & Why We Have Seen An Over-Rotation In Running Businesses Based on Metrics
- 20VC: Mercury Founder Immad Akhund on Why Angel Investing Makes Founders Better Operators, The Right Way For Founders To Discuss and Present Competition To Investors & How To Think About Your Initial Wedge Into The Market and How It Expands Over Time
- 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
- 20VC: Spark Capital's Alex Clayton on How The Best Growth Investors Source, Evaluate and Win Deals, Why Market Depth Is Crucial When Analysing Markets & Why Capital Is Only A Temporary Competitive Advantage
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Top 3 Considerations When Evaluating Consumer Businesses Today | 700 Meetings, 70 LPs, 2 Years, What It Takes To Raise a First Time Fund| The Power of The Female Network In Action Today with Anu Duggal, Founding Partner @ Female Founders Fund
- 20VC: Lessons From Scaling Trulia to IPO, How To Maximise Your Impact within Your Organisation and Why No One Is Ever 100% Ready For The Next Job with Heather Fernandez, Founder @ CEO @ Solv
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Why Companies Going Bust Is Part Of The Plan, Why Most VCs Are Later Stage Than They Think & Why Venture Capital Is Humbling with Charlie O'Donnell, Founder @ Brooklyn Bridge Ventures
- 20VC: Why Spray & Pray Investing Is Wrong, Why Data-Informed VC Beats Data Driven VC & What To Look For When Investing In A Marketplace with Josh Breinlinger, Managing Director @ Jackson Square Ventures
- 20VC: Preparing For The Next Big Trend, Why Conversational Will Be The Next Big Thing & How Entrepreneurs Should View Market Size with Sarah Guo @ Greylock Partners
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 10 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Sam Lessin on Why Bots Will Change Business & The Internet Has Mostly Failed
- 20VC: How Startups Should React To Today's Funding Environment & Why Big Markets Are More Forgiving with Jenny Lefcourt, Partner @ Freestyle.vc
- 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next
- 20VC: Maveron's Rebecca Kaden on The Patterns Of Entrepreneurship and Taking A Consumer Product From Niche To Mass Market
- 20VC: Sprig's Gagan Biyani on The 3 Principles Of Fundraising and Building The World's Largest Restaurant
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Sarah Tavel, oldest first
Apr 6, 2016 positive
VC Blogging Acts as a Freemium Model for Founders
“I think of blogging and doing all these types of things as essentially the equivalent of the VC freemium model. You know, we're trying, like, as much as we can, like, we're getting ourselves out there because otherwise, you know, founders should be making a de…”
Apr 6, 2016
Multi-Billion Dollar Consumer Businesses Must Be Free or Better and Cheaper
“If you want to build a truly mid-market, kind of, you know, I'm focused on businesses that will become large, enduring, multi-billion dollar businesses, and I think in order to build one of those, You either have to figure out how to give something away for fr…”
Apr 6, 2016 negative
Apr 6, 2016 positive
Founders Need VCs to Be Truth-Seekers, Not Just Founder Friendly
“Oftime, what a founder really needs, I believe is for someone else to be a truth seeker and ask the hard questions or show a blind spot that they might have or push them in some way. And, Sometimes when I hear founder friendly, I hear, I think of like, oh, jus…”
Sep 24, 2018 neutral
Reaching profitability requires daily discipline and tight prioritization of key tasks
“And getting to profitability takes an incredible amount of discipline. My partner, Mitch Lasky, he describes it as his daily act of will, where, you know, every day it's making the decision to do three things instead of the 10, and that is a muscle that you ha…”
Sep 24, 2018
Market physics ultimately dictate startup outcomes over founder quality, says Tavel
“I absolutely agree with Andy. You know, it's so frustrating when you meet a fantastic founder. Like I'm very much someone who my first link reaction to a company is first the founders. Like that is what gets me leaning in on a potential investment. And the har…”
Sep 24, 2018 positive
Operating experience improves board governance but not deal picking, says Sarah Tavel
“But I think that most operating experience you know, the experience that you get as an executive, as a founder, as a product leader in a company, I think that experience is really timeless. You know, because what you're learning is how to hire great leaders, h…”
Sep 24, 2018
The best founders use board meetings for strategy, not status updates
“I think that the best founders really do know how to use the board and make it productive. They don't use the board meetings as a status update or asking for permission. Instead, they use the board meetings to really get the people around the table to push the…”
Sep 24, 2018
Winning investments combine great founders with dynamically evolving market opportunities
“The nuance that I'll add, though, is that, you know, markets aren't these static things. They're dynamic. They're constantly evolving. They're being transformed by outside influences like technology disruptions or even secular trends, and so I really end up Fi…”
Sep 24, 2018 negative
Easy venture capital diffuses focus and makes pivoting to profitability dangerous
“When companies are able to raise a lot of capital easily, they naturally take on more of a growth orientation. Yeah, I kind of think of it as you can turn the wheel towards growth, and you, or you can turn the wheel towards profitability, and all these compani…”
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 negative
Startups raising massive capital struggle to yield positive returns, warns Tavel
“And I worry about what the effect is going to be on returns for our asset class. And also for, you know, the eventual outcomes of these companies that are raising a lot of capital. And it's not clear to me when you raise As much capital as many of these compan…”
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 bullish
Crypto investing will increasingly mirror Open Source 2.0 corporate governance models
“The trajectory right now is that increasingly investing in crypto is looking more and more like technology investing that we've always had. It reminds me very much of kind of the open source one point O era. And I just think this is going to look a lot more li…”
Sep 24, 2018 positive
Investors should pay premium valuations for startups demonstrating clear network effects
“Kind of the way I think about it is that when there is a company that has the potential for a clear network effect and something's really working so much so that you feel like that company can really get away from you in terms of growth, then paying what does …”
Sep 24, 2018 negative
Sep 24, 2018 negative
Operator VCs risk projecting their own execution abilities onto startup founders
“When you are a former operator and you've been successful in a job, you meet with a company and there can sometimes be this inclination to project onto the company that you're meeting with what you know is possible if you were the one executing.”
Jun 24, 2019 negative
Nov 23, 2020
Nov 23, 2020 negative
Nov 23, 2020 positive
Tavel: Being underestimated is a startup's best defense against capital incineration
“This is one of the reasons why I think it's actually a competitive weapon for a startup right now to be underestimated from the outside, because the second that there are multiple competitors going after your opportunity, the unit economics just degrade becaus…”
Nov 23, 2020 positive
Nov 23, 2020 negative
Tavel: Compressed venture timelines will cause suboptimal board relationships
“Rounds are just happening so quickly right now, and to use the analogy I used before of speed dating, it just feels like It used to be that a round would happen over the course of a couple weeks, but now I just see things happening in a few days, and it is the…”
Nov 23, 2020
Nov 23, 2020 positive
Tavel: Benchmark does not delegate operational work to platform teams
“At Benchmark, our model is that we don't delegate any part of our job. We've tried not to scale our business and just be focused on scaling the founders with whom we work. And so that means that there isn't a talent partner that is doing recruiting calls for m…”
Nov 23, 2020 positive
Tavel: A great board member functions like a supportive, truth-seeking spouse
“What a great board member is, is similar to when you find the person that you're supposed to marry. If you're always just dating, and then you go on a speed date, and you meet with five people, and then you just decide to get married to one of those people, yo…”
Nov 23, 2020 neutral
Nov 23, 2020 bearish
Mar 24, 2021 positive
May 6, 2024 negative
May 6, 2024 bullish
Sarah Tavel: AI application startups will improve and expand margins as models advance
“I think all the companies that we invest in, they will only get better as the underlying models get better. And they'll be able to take on more work over time. They'll be able to, you know, take, you know, have better and better margins, better because they wo…”
May 6, 2024 bearish
Tavel: Benchmark barely reserves capital for follow-on investments
“We don't think about reserves. Period. Barely. We're very oriented towards our initial investment, and in that moment, you know, we are more ownership sensitive than probably most other firms. But then after we invest, we are 100% aligned with whatever objecti…”
May 6, 2024 negative
Sarah Tavel: First-wave AI wrappers derived 90% of product value from OpenAI
“The first wave of these AI companies, you could, they, people would talk about them As a, like, you know, wrappers around an LLM. But what that essentially meant is that if you have like this hundred percent distribution, 90% of the value that the startup was …”
May 6, 2024 neutral
May 6, 2024
May 6, 2024
Sarah Tavel names passing on Ethereum as her biggest investment miss
“Without question, Ethereum. I, you weren't expecting that. I can see, you know, what, well, Ethereum, I mean, I remember I was at Greylock. And the ICO had just happened, I believe, or just closed. And I was reading more about what's possible with smart contra…”
May 6, 2024 bullish
May 6, 2024 bullish
May 24, 2024 positive
Sarah Tavel: AI enables software startups to sell completed work outcomes
“What AI enables is actually a very different unit of work that you sell, which is doing the work. And so you're almost a software company that looks like a services business. That is able to sell like the full work product that the outcome, as opposed to selli…”
May 24, 2024 positive
Sarah Tavel: Non-seat-based AI models will disrupt traditional SaaS incumbents
“And this is very disruptive to incumbents because incumbents are used to thinking about selling per seat and pricing per seat based on the cost of the headcount. But if instead you're selling something that doesn't require a seat, that is like a very disruptiv…”