Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Alan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to have you here. Can you kick us off by hearing a little about yourself and your background and how you made your move into the venture industry?
A Sure. Happy to. It's my absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you, Harry. Um, so I'm currently a partner at Exceed Capital, a seed stage enterprise focused venture firm that invests in Enterprise software companies that are built on unique technologies. We're currently managing a sixty million dollar fund. It's our second fund, and our investment approach is to build a focused portfolio, spend quality time with each company to help them succeed and get to series A and series B. In terms of my personal background, I was trained as a an electrical and computer engineer in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia. And after graduation, I was a, I became a software developer at a commercial printing technology company called Creole, which digitized the whole commercial printing industry and went public in the late nineties. After that, I joined a very early stage network security startup as the first engineering manager, shipped our first product, moved into product marketing, but unfortunately the business didn't take off. So we closed down after two years. Uh, and then the third startup was called Bycast, um, which was a private storage cloud software company. When I joined, we had one customer. I started in professional services, deploying our solutions in the field, spending a lot of time with customers and with our salespeople. And, about a year and a half later, moved in…
AI assessment note: “went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and then joined XSEED after graduation.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And discussing your investment strategy a little further, a company comes in to pitch to you, say, is there a checklist in your head, and if so, what's at the top of it? Is it revenue? Is it product? Is it team? What's your checklist?
A Well, given our stage of investment at the seed stage, oftentimes we invest in companies before they have a product or before they have any meaningful revenue. At the highest level, we evaluate each investment opportunity, uh, along three types of risks. One is technical risk. Would the technology work? Would the product deliver on its promise? Right, so that's risk number one. We actually like Companies that have a high level of technical risk, because we believe strong engineering talent can overcome technical risks, and if it's actually a difficult technical problem to solve, it means there is a higher barrier to entry for this market, which helps the company to, um, protect this margin, and build other types of moat around this business. So technical risk is number one. The second risk is execution risk, and what do we mean by that? One, are the founders The right founders for the opportunity. Is there a fit between founders and opportunities? And the second risk is, have they got a complete team to go execute against this opportunity? And on this second one, we're actually willing to be flexible because we're C-stage investors, and oftentimes, at this stage, you don't have a complete team yet, and we have a very strong network from which we could recruit and help these teams fill out their management team. The third risk is market risk, and this is the biggest risk that we…
AI assessment note: “we evaluate each investment opportunity, uh, along three types of risks.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And discussing your investment strategy a little further, a company comes in to pitch to you, say, is there a checklist in your head, and if so, what's at the top of it? Is it revenue? Is it product? Is it team? What's your checklist?
A Well, given our stage of investment at the seed stage, oftentimes we invest in companies before they have a product or before they have any meaningful revenue. At the highest level, we evaluate each investment opportunity, uh, along three types of risks. One is technical risk. Would the technology work? Would the product deliver on its promise? Right, so that's risk number one. We actually like Companies that have a high level of technical risk, because we believe strong engineering talent can overcome technical risks, and if it's actually a difficult technical problem to solve, it means there is a higher barrier to entry for this market, which helps the company to, um, protect this margin, and build other types of moat around this business. So technical risk is number one. The second risk is execution risk, and what do we mean by that? One, are the founders The right founders for the opportunity. Is there a fit between founders and opportunities? And the second risk is, have they got a complete team to go execute against this opportunity? And on this second one, we're actually willing to be flexible because we're C-stage investors, and oftentimes, at this stage, you don't have a complete team yet, and we have a very strong network from which we could recruit and help these teams fill out their management team. The third risk is market risk, and this is the biggest risk that we…
AI assessment note: “we evaluate each investment opportunity, uh, along three types of risks.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And talking about technical and non-technical founders, do you, would you ever invest, would you invest in non-technical founders? I mean, do you think that's a big red flag or, or is it ok?
A Well, in a general sense, I, I do not believe non-technical co-founders are, um, a big red flag at all. There are a lot of, uh, amazing companies founded by non-technical co-founders. It's just when it comes to XE's investment focus, we have a preference for companies that are built on unique technologies. So that biases us towards companies that are founded by technical co-founders. But the, the best Founding teams actually are teams that, that bring together a very strong technical co-founder, as well as a very strong and experienced, uh, non-technical commercial co-founder. And between the two of them, you've got, uh, the product and the business sides of the, of the company covered. And in the, in the early stages of the company, there are really two things that you, that you're doing. You're building a product and you're selling it.
AI assessment note: “I do not believe non-technical co-founders are, um, a big red flag at all.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Absolutely. And then what do you think founders should look for in VCs? Is there any way that they can tell that the VC is the right VC for them?
A Certainly, there is a level of personal compatibility that needs to be there. Once you've signed, once an investor has invested in your company, you can't get rid of them. You are, you are based, you're really committed. Um, it's almost like getting married. So you want to look for someone with personal compatibility with you. But in addition to that, you also want someone who could help you in areas where you need help. So for example, let's say you're a technical co-founder, you know a lot about the space you're tackling from a technical standpoint, but you've never run revenue before, you've never managed a sales team before, um, or you need help on the commercial side. Well, you probably want to look for an investor who either has operating experience in that space, um, Uh, a commercial operating experience or who has, who knows people who could act as your advisor and potential hire to help shore up that part of your company.
AI assessment note: “you also want someone who could help you in areas where you need help”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And talking about technical and non-technical founders, do you, would you ever invest, would you invest in non-technical founders? I mean, do you think that's a big red flag or, or is it ok?
A Well, in a general sense, I, I do not believe non-technical co-founders are, um, a big red flag at all. There are a lot of, uh, amazing companies founded by non-technical co-founders. It's just when it comes to XE's investment focus, we have a preference for companies that are built on unique technologies. So that biases us towards companies that are founded by technical co-founders. But the, the best Founding teams actually are teams that, that bring together a very strong technical co-founder, as well as a very strong and experienced, uh, non-technical commercial co-founder. And between the two of them, you've got, uh, the product and the business sides of the, of the company covered. And in the, in the early stages of the company, there are really two things that you, that you're doing. You're building a product and you're selling it.
AI assessment note: “I do not believe non-technical co-founders are, um, a big red flag at all.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Absolutely. And then what do you think founders should look for in VCs? Is there any way that they can tell that the VC is the right VC for them?
A Certainly, there is a level of personal compatibility that needs to be there. Once you've signed, once an investor has invested in your company, you can't get rid of them. You are, you are based, you're really committed. Um, it's almost like getting married. So you want to look for someone with personal compatibility with you. But in addition to that, you also want someone who could help you in areas where you need help. So for example, let's say you're a technical co-founder, you know a lot about the space you're tackling from a technical standpoint, but you've never run revenue before, you've never managed a sales team before, um, or you need help on the commercial side. Well, you probably want to look for an investor who either has operating experience in that space, um, Uh, a commercial operating experience or who has, who knows people who could act as your advisor and potential hire to help shore up that part of your company.
AI assessment note: “personal compatibility that needs to be there... someone who could help you in areas where you need help”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q And what attracted you to the venture industry?
A It was a little bit serendipitous, actually. I wasn't, ah, it wasn't as if I had a strategic plan to become a venture capitalist. Ah, I actually was going to start a company, ah, graduating from Stanford, but after experimenting with four different ideas during school and doing a lot of customer development work, I still hadn't found one that was so compelling that I wanted to spend the next five to 10 years of my life building. And so I started looking for product leadership roles in startups instead, and during that process, I was speaking with a number of venture firms, including Exceed, to see if there's any fit in the portfolio, and one of the general partners at Exceed, Rob Siegel, is also a lecturer at the Stanford GSB, and I had taken some of his classes while I was a student there. So we had a very Very open conversation. And it turns out actually, it was actually raising a new fund at that time. And the investment focus was going to be on, uh, in the enterprise space, which is my background. Uh, so I kind of showed up at the right place, right time. And, uh, joined exit as a result.
AI assessment note: “I kind of showed up at the right place, right time.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q And what attracted you to the venture industry?
A It was a little bit serendipitous, actually. I wasn't, ah, it wasn't as if I had a strategic plan to become a venture capitalist. Ah, I actually was going to start a company, ah, graduating from Stanford, but after experimenting with four different ideas during school and doing a lot of customer development work, I still hadn't found one that was so compelling that I wanted to spend the next five to 10 years of my life building. And so I started looking for product leadership roles in startups instead, and during that process, I was speaking with a number of venture firms, including Exceed, to see if there's any fit in the portfolio, and one of the general partners at Exceed, Rob Siegel, is also a lecturer at the Stanford GSB, and I had taken some of his classes while I was a student there. So we had a very Very open conversation. And it turns out actually, it was actually raising a new fund at that time. And the investment focus was going to be on, uh, in the enterprise space, which is my background. Uh, so I kind of showed up at the right place, right time. And, uh, joined exit as a result.
AI assessment note: “It was a little bit serendipitous, actually. I wasn't... as if I had a strategic plan”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.00
Q And you recently wrote an article on the five key characteristics of successful product managers. So let's, let's switch this up a little and ask, what are the three main characteristics required to be a good VC, or even a great VC?
A Well, Great V , we've seen a lot of great VCs come from varied backgrounds. So first of all, I don't think you have to have done certain things in your life to become a great VC. But, um, one of the things I've observed with great VCs is they, they are very good at reading entrepreneurs, in picking the entrepreneurs that have the perseverance and the right balance of strong conviction and adaptability. To both pursue the vision with relentless grit, but also be able to adapt to market changes and, and customer learnings. Um, one of the, the very experienced and successful VCs, uh, that I met with early on in my, in, in my VC time once gave me this analogy. Being a VC is like a talent scout. The entrepreneurs are the stars, are the talent that you're looking for. You are the scout. You are acting in the background. The, the, The stars are going to become famous. You're not going to become famous, but if you're doing a job right, you're going to be finding a lot of these future rock stars.
AI assessment note: “one of the things I've observed with great VCs is they, they are very good at reading entrepreneurs”
