Dec 11, 2023 · 1h 19m · news
Sam Corcos: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible | E1093 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 20VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Levels co-founder and CEO Sam Corcos, exploring his highly systematic, data-driven approaches to startup fundraising, radical company transparency, co-founder dynamics, and extreme personal optimization.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 27.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 3.7 Guest teaching 4.0 Guest disagreement 2.0 Harry pushing back 3.7
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 43:06 Sam dismisses investor pitch meetings as inefficient pre-read material repeats
Sam forcefully counters Harry's pitch advice by stating that investor availability is infinite and time is finite, concluding he can either read his pre-sent memo out loud or the investor can just read it themselves.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 43:06 Harry refuses Sam's advice to send pre-meeting materials to VCsHarry directly rejects Sam's recommendation to send dense materials before investor meetings, arguing VCs look for reasons to say no and advocating for face-to-face salesmanship instead.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:08:32 Sam's systematic 10-minute date dismissal processSam stuns Harry by explaining how he applies a one-page requirement document and a six-month engagement target to dating, resulting in multiple dates ending respectfully within ten minutes.
Harry holds his own ▶ 37:24 Harry details gamified investor tracking and competition mechanicsHarry demonstrates deep investor relations expertise by outlining a Google Sheet pipeline mechanism with hyperlinked LinkedIn profiles and explicit investor tagging to trigger social competition among angels.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Childhood Ambitions and Parental Expectations | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Harry introduces Sam and asks about childhood ambitions, Jewish parental expectations, and a story about bumping into Vinay in New York. The conversation is relaxed, lighthearted, and purely conversational. | |
| The Psychology of Planning versus Spontaneous Travel | 3 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Harry pushes back on Sam's anti-planning mindset by pointing out that Sam is an optimizer who would miss curated experiences without planning. Sam reframes optimization around spontaneous discoveries. | |
| Perceived Risks vs. Statistical Realities of Spontaneity | 2 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Sam educates Harry on statistical risk versus perceived risk, citing child kidnapping and hitchhiking data to argue news media distorts risk perception. Harry probes how founder risk tolerance changes with company scale. | |
| Defining Luck: Preparation, Opportunity, and Dedication | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Harry cites Sahil Bloom's framework on four types of luck, while Sam explains the Dunning-Kruger curve to illustrate how his confidence in technical opinions evolved over time. | |
| The Crucial Co-Founder Dynamic of Disagree and Commit | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | Harry explicitly disagrees with applying 'disagree and commit' to co-founders, arguing strategic disagreements make full commitment impossible. Sam counters that if a co-founder cannot commit, they must leave. | |
| The Role of Morale and Forward Progress in Talent Retention | 4 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Harry challenges Sam's radical transparency model, asserting that transparent 1-on-1s eliminate psychological safety. Sam explains how sharing 1-on-1s and performance reviews works in practice. | |
| Real-World Execution of the Keeper Test under Transparency | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Sam describes a real-world case study where executing the Netflix Keeper test transparently during a 1-on-1 resulted in peer support rather than corporate politicking. | |
| Scaling the Talent Bar and the Fragility of Team Trust | 4 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Harry challenges Sam's assumption that high talent bars can be maintained at massive scale, arguing A-players are inherently rare. Sam acknowledges the U-shaped talent curve at scale. | |
| The Merits of Financial and Fundraising Transparency | 3 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Harry expresses skepticism about fundraising transparency, noting it creates severe anxiety for employees. Sam responds that financial opacity causes catastrophic distrust when companies fail suddenly. | |
| Deliberate Fundraising and Levels' Product Retention Challenges | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry zeroes in on product churn, asking if admitting Levels' 25% retention rate scares growth VCs. Sam casually confirms the low retention figure and details their plan to reach 40%. | |
| Using Loss Aversion and Disincentives for Accountability | 6 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Harry pitches using loss aversion and financial penalties to drive user retention. Sam reveals Levels has already run 15 cohorts testing that exact wearable challenge disincentive model. | |
| Why Founders Should Pitch as Much as Possible | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | Harry forcefully criticizes founders who do not know competitors as 'poor quality founders'. Sam corrects him, framing them as inexperienced rather than poor quality due to VCs seeing far more deal flow. | |
| Proactive Engagement: How to Extract Value from Investors | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry probes how founders can extract value from hundreds of investors. Sam outlines clear rules for specific, highly actionable investor requests instead of vague asks. | |
| The Art of the Specific Ask: Leveraging Cognitive Biases | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Harry demonstrates investor relations expertise by describing a gamified Google Sheet tactic with hyperlinked profiles to trigger competitive behavior among investors. Sam details chunking bias and conversion rates. | |
| Evaluating the Real Value and Operating Support of VC Firms | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry brings up Vinod Khosla's view that 90% of VCs detract value and questions why VC platform teams are disrespected. Sam defends a16z's operating partners and Trust Ventures' regulatory support. | |
| Strategies for Pre-Meeting Material and Managing Investor Pitch Dynamics | 5 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Harry directly rejects Sam's practice of sending pre-meeting materials, arguing investors just look for reasons to pass. Sam reframes filtering out uninterested VCs early as an intentional time-saving feature. | |
| The Role of Associates and Principals in Venture Capital | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Harry breaks down VC organizational structure into two associate archetypes (research analysts vs outbound prospectors). Sam shares negative experiences where partners had no recollection of principal pre-work. | |
| The Theatrics of Fundraising and the Legendary Moshe Lifshitz Pitch | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Sam describes pitching Moshe Lifshitz with a live glucose spike demo after drinking green juice, emphasizing the role of pitch theatrics in selling a big vision. | |
| Investor Diligence, Managing Heavyweight Board Members, and Feedback Cultures | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry questions whether taking on iconic board members like Jeff Jordan causes founders to succumb easily. Sam responds that experienced founders realize 'nobody knows anything' and treat VC opinions as guesses. | |
| The Philosophy and Practice of Time Optimization and High Performance | 2 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Sam details his productivity engine, including calendar audits, Chrome website blockers, treating calendars as primary to-do lists, and leaving open buffer space. | |
| Intentionality in Family Planning, Parenting, and Partner Relationships | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | Harry presses Sam on whether his rigid time-optimization will survive a newborn child and challenges Sam's definition of intentionality versus true spontaneity. | |
| A Systematic, Data-Driven Approach to Intentional Dating | 3 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Sam explains his data-driven dating framework, complete with a one-page requirements doc and a 6-month engagement deadline, noting several dates ended within 10 minutes when requirements were missed. | |
| Co-Founder Diligence, Equity Splits, and Vulnerable Conflict Resolution | 4 | 4 | 3 | 6 | Harry explicitly disagrees with Sam's advice to address co-founder issues immediately, arguing fatigue or stress requires picking your moment. Sam clarifies that immediate means hours or days rather than months. | |
| Quick-Fire Questions: From Product Over-Staffing to Global Concerns | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | In the quick-fire round, Sam admits eating sugar, shares that over-staffing the product org was his worst resource decision, and cites the collapse of the epistemic commons as his biggest global concern. |
Statements from this episode (60)
Corcos: Founders Should Target Believer VCs Rather Than Convert Skeptics
“It's a little bit challenging because when you're fundraising, you're a prophet, not a missionary. You have the vision, and you're trying to get people who already get it. You're not trying to convert people to your religion.”
Corcos: Founders Mistakenly Treat Early Investor Contacts as Precious Gems
“I think one of the major mistakes that people make early on is they treat investor contacts like precious gems.”
Corcos: Child stranger abductions are as rare as lightning strikes
“Say if you have a child, the odds that your child is kidnapped by a stranger Is about the same as them getting struck by lightning.”
Corcos: News consumption creates a false perception of global risk
“Ultimately the news is poison and it makes you view a, It gives you a perception of the world that is not real.”
Corcos: The Main Downside of Starting a Company Is Mild Embarrassment
“Like starting a company feels risky, but really what's the worst that can happen? Like it doesn't work and you feel like mildly embarrassed. It's actually the downside situation is not the worst thing that can happen.”
Corcos: People Become More Afraid of Failure as Their Reputation Grows
“The more reputation you have, The more afraid you are of failure, which is ironic because it should be the opposite, but this is, this seems to be just a default state of human nature.”
Stebbings Prefers Investing in Serial Entrepreneurs Over First-Time Founders
“I really only like to invest in serial entrepreneurs, Sam, because I think you do so many stupid things to The first time around”
Corcos: Co-founders who cannot commit to CEO decisions should leave
“There's a point at which, you know, you can disagree behind closed doors, but once the path is defined, which is defined by the CEO, you've got to get behind it or you've got to leave. Frankly, like if you can't get behind the idea and you can't get behind the…”
Corcos: CEOs have a 1% impact on everything and no direct deliverables
“When you're the CEO, you have a one percent impact on everything, but you have Almost nothing that you can actually point to as your own work product.”
Stebbings: Celebrating wins creates complacency while 20VC remains behind competitors
“I find wins quite uncomfortable. I don't want everyone to get complacent. We haven't won shit. We're still behind other people in media and funds.”
Stebbings: Incremental title and salary increases are key to talent retention
“Little and often is my secret to retaining great talent. And what I mean by that is you have title and salary, and I increase them separately, but little and often to create that kind of feeling of forward momentum more frequently.”
Levels eliminated corporate titles beyond basic functional roles
“We've done away with titles beyond just, yeah, beyond just functional definitions.”
Levels publicly posts all investor updates and all-hands meetings
“We post all of our investor updates publicly online. All of our team, all hands are publicly posted online.”
Corcos: Job Titles Serve as a Form of Non-Monetary Employee Compensation
“Titles are a form of compensation.”
Levels shares meeting notes and performance reviews internally with all staff
“We share basically everything, including all of our one-on-ones and team meetings are all shared within the company. So you can see all of the one-on-ones between every other person at the company performance is shared within the pump within the company. So yo…”
Corcos: Employees outside an immediate team rarely identify low performers
“They actually very often don't. The people who work directly with them, maybe like the two or three people who are closest to them know, but everyone else at the company, if they end up leaving, it's a complete mystery why they left.”
Corcos: Startup talent quality follows a U-curve as companies scale
“I think in many ways there's also a U-shape to this, where in the very early days, sometimes you just hire the best person that you can get. Because you don't have a lot of choices. And then over time, as you see some amount of traction, you can attract really…”
Corcos: Keeping Performance and Compensation Secret Created Distrust at Levels
“And the two exceptions that we made were compensation and individual performance. So we kept those two secret. So one-on-ones were secret. If somebody was failing, it was secret. And when somebody would depart, they would write their own definition of why they…”
Stebbings: Transparency around fundraising risks severe team morale issues
“Fundraising transparency is a real challenge for me because teams get Caught up in it. Oh, we're going to raise around. And then if it takes longer, if it doesn't happen, it can create real morale challenges.”
Corcos: Fundraising transparency works when founders build internal trust
“If you've built up enough social capital internally, think of it like you've built up the trust bank with enough of enough credibility that people know that you're not lying to them, then it's totally fine. And it's never been an issue.”
Corcos: Employees must know company financials so they can contribute
“People should know the financial state of the company. People should understand what's going on because people can contribute to these things.”
Corcos: Levels has 25% retention, which is insufficient long-term
“I mean, churn is still very high. It's like 25%. We have 25% retention, which is not what it needs to be for this to work in the long term.”
Corcos: Health tracking retention relies on accountability over learning
“The people who stay the longest They value the accountability of the tool more than they value the discrete learnings of each step.”
Levels ran around 15 cohorts testing loss disincentives for health goals
“Yeah, we've done something in the range of about 15 different, 15 cohorts with the wearable challenge, which we've been doing with Justin Mares, where you commit some amount of cash upfront, and then every time you miss your goal, you lose some amount of money…”
Corcos: Most founders treat fundraising as isolated events, not trend lines
“I think most founders treat each fundraise like a dot rather than a trend line.”
Corcos: Levels raised capital primarily from multi-year investor relationships
“A lot of the people that we raise money from are people that I've known for three, four, five plus years.”
Corcos: Founders Should Take as Many Investor Meetings as Possible
“I think you should take as many meetings and do as many pitches as you can.”
Stebbings: Founders Who Do Not Know Market Competitors Are Poor Quality
“Do you know, I think that's a poor quality founder. I'm like, if you don't know your market, if you were to ask me about fund or media competition, I could tell you everyone break them down by pros and like, that's just a bad founder.”
Corcos: VCs Have Far Greater Market Exposure Than Founders
“The reality is that VCs or investors broadly just have way more exposure than a founder does. If you're a founder and you're working on your one company for five years. You don't know what's going on outside of your company. You don't have the capacity. You're…”
Levels raised from approximately 100 angels before institutional capital
“Before we had our first institutional capital, I think we had about a hundred angels and operators that were investors that we were able to tap pretty consistently for the first couple of years.”
Stebbings: Very few founders extract real value from angel investors
“I think that it's great to have these names, but very, very few actually extract the value that they want or need from them.”
Corcos: VCs spend only an hour a month thinking about your startup
“They spend maybe An hour a month thinking about your company and you spend all day, every day thinking about your company.”
Corcos: Founders fail if they don't maintain explicit lists of investor asks
“The first and most important thing is you need to know what you need. If I say, how can I help? And you say, I don't know, you've already failed. You need to have a list of things that your, you and your team need help with, because you'd be surprised at how o…”
Levels secures VC support via a dedicated asks section in updates
“In our investor update, we have an asks section. Of things that people on our team need or things that the company needs. And we very regularly get conversions from those from our, just sort of the broad outreach to our investors.”
Corcos: Levels sent over 3,000 targeted investor asks with 50% conversion
“I think we've had something like more than 3000 specific investor asks that I've sent people. And I think our conversion rate is maybe 50% from that group, but pretty high.”
Corcos: Average Founders Only Send Five Requests Per Year to Investors
“From the exposure that I've had to other founders, that they probably send something in the range of Five requests per year.”
Stebbings: Transparent Pipeline Sheets Drive Investor Competition and Value
“When it comes to like sales pipeline in particular, share a Google sheet with the companies that you want to speak to, the specific person within the company, hyperlink, hyperlink their LinkedIn. So it's super easy for me to go. Oh shit. Actually, I do know th…”
Corcos: Founders Should Turn Down Capital From Unengaged Investors
“If it is a really an expectation of you that your investors will be engaged and respond to your emails and participate to some degree, you should set that as a clear expectation and say, this is what we expect from our investors. If that's not you, Totally. Ok…”
Corcos: Levels Has Extracted Value From Over 110 a16z Operating Partners
“I think our team has extracted value from, I think more than a 110 of the operating partners. From the Andreessen team.”
Corcos: Most VC Platform Services Fail, but a16z Is the Best
“I think part of the answer is that most firms are not good at it. It's sort of the short answer. I think most firms, they understand when they talk to founders, they say that it's the thing that they want, but they're not very good at delivering on the value. …”
Corcos: Sequoia's Vernal and Andreessen's Jordan Read Every Pre-Meeting Document
“The people who were most engaged was Mike Vernal at Sequoia and Jeff Jordan and Andreessen. They read every document. Jeff actually even fixed some typos like deep in like a 50 page document.”
Stebbings: Early-Stage Founders Should Not Send Pitch Decks Before Meetings
“If it's like early, early meetings, Don't send it ahead of time, because generally investors look for reasons to say no.”
Corcos: Pre-Meeting Rejections Are Wins Because Founder Pitch Time Is Finite
“The number of investors available is effectively infinite, and the amount of time that you have to pitch people is finite. And so if you can get them to say no before you have to spend any time with them, that's actually a win, not a loss.”
Stebbings: VC associates fall into research or outbound sales roles
“Being in the industry, there's kind of two functions or two types. One is like the research person who is just incredible depth and analysis, post meeting, benchmarking, landscape analysis, you name it. And the other is outbound sales prospecting. We can't mis…”
Corcos: Founders Should Use Roll-Up Vehicles for Early Startup Fundraising Rounds
“If there's one thing I would have done differently is I would have used a rollup vehicle of some kind to just make the collection easier. Those weren't as common when we did our seed round. It was the round that had the larger number of people in it. Having a …”
Levels found early post-IPO company employees were their highest-ROI investors
“When we did some analysis on who our most ROI positive investors were, one of the biggest categories was early employees at post IPO companies. And these are people who have some amount of capital that they want to deploy, but maybe, you know, five, 10,000 dol…”
Corcos: Founders pitching investors with only one deck are doing it wrong
“If you only have one deck with one pitch, you're doing it wrong. You've got to try different avenues of attack. You've got to try different language. You've got to try different pitches to determine which of these work.”
Corcos: Theater and performative salesmanship are critical when pitching big visions
“I think if you're trying to pitch a big vision for the future, theater is absolutely critical.”
Levels tracks investor engagement and has investors who ignored 17 requests
“We keep track of all of these things on how many emails we send, what the, Conversion rate is on those requests. And like, we have several people on the list that I've sent them 17 requests and they've converted on zero of them.”
Corcos: Founders must diligence prospective board members like potential marriage partners
“If you're taking on a board member, you need to do the amount of diligence that you would do if you're considering marrying this person.”
Corcos Prefers Direct, Full-Contact Investors Like Keith Rabois Over Passive Ones
“Keith from founders fund is known for being pretty full contact. And I. Talk to some people who really did not like working with him, but they didn't like working him. They didn't like working with him for reasons that I would actually enjoy working with him, …”
Corcos: Using your calendar as your primary to-do list maximizes productivity
“One of the biggest is using your calendar as your primary to-do list. That's probably the biggest unlock for me in terms of just being realistic about how much I can deliver in the course of a week.”
Corcos: Roughly 80% of Couples Report Worse Marriages After Having Kids
“Something in the range of 80% of people say that their marriage is worse after having kids.”
Corcos Manages Relationship Logistics With Wednesday Dates and a Notion Doc
“We do a weekly date night, which we have scheduled on Wednesdays. We do also every Saturday, we have scheduled family priorities where we have a running notion doc of logistics, things that we argued about that we want to talk about, just dedicated time just t…”
Corcos: Dating Is a Matching Problem, Not a Sales Problem
“I think the biggest mistakes that people make is they treat Dating like it's a sales problem rather than a matching problem.”
Corcos: Six Months Provides Enough Data to Judge Romantic Fit
“Usually you have enough data points within about six months to know if it's the right fit.”
Corcos: Equal Equity Splits Are Not Required for Co-Founders
“As a rule, I would say, no, it's not required. I think it depends a lot on subject matter expertise. It depends a lot on also how you view the definition of what a co-founder is.”
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