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 5 5.00
Q So, so complete lack of innovation in, in the operational and the functioning side of VC there. Switching sides of the table then to the startups themselves. What are the big changes then in how companies raise seed money? Has it stayed the same? Have we seen a massive fundamental transition?
A You know, I, I think we've seen a, you know, substantial evolution that continues to happen. And so it used to be the companies would raise a series A at inception, and then they'd raise a series B after product market fit and a series C for expansion. And then around oh eight seed investing started to institutionalize driven by capital efficiencies from open source and cloud computing platforms like AWS and the distribution channels like the app stores and social networks. And so then seed became the new way and everyone else sort of shifted upstream a notch. And then the a round followed seed, you know, sort of typically post product market fit. And then so on, this phenomenon continues to shift as the seed funds have now grown to often a hundred million dollar plus funds. So now there's often a pre-seed round of an incubator or friends and family or even a pre-seed fund investing before the quote unquote seed round. And then on top of that, now there's a post-seed round often is emerging as an alternative to a, to raising a full series A. So you may not be a, you know, sort of a five million dollar valuation anymore, but now you're at 15 or 20 and you don't want to go raise, you know, ten million dollars and sell a third of the company in order to get one of the bigger VCs on board. And oftentimes, you know, a few million dollars will take you another year or two out and all…
AI assessment note: “I think we've seen a, you know, substantial evolution that continues to happen.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So, so complete lack of innovation in, in the operational and the functioning side of VC there. Switching sides of the table then to the startups themselves. What are the big changes then in how companies raise seed money? Has it stayed the same? Have we seen a massive fundamental transition?
A You know, I, I think we've seen a, you know, substantial evolution that continues to happen. And so it used to be the companies would raise a series A at inception, and then they'd raise a series B after product market fit and a series C for expansion. And then around oh eight seed investing started to institutionalize driven by capital efficiencies from open source and cloud computing platforms like AWS and the distribution channels like the app stores and social networks. And so then seed became the new way and everyone else sort of shifted upstream a notch. And then the a round followed seed, you know, sort of typically post product market fit. And then so on, this phenomenon continues to shift as the seed funds have now grown to often a hundred million dollar plus funds. So now there's often a pre-seed round of an incubator or friends and family or even a pre-seed fund investing before the quote unquote seed round. And then on top of that, now there's a post-seed round often is emerging as an alternative to a, to raising a full series A. So you may not be a, you know, sort of a five million dollar valuation anymore, but now you're at 15 or 20 and you don't want to go raise, you know, ten million dollars and sell a third of the company in order to get one of the bigger VCs on board. And oftentimes, you know, a few million dollars will take you another year or two out and all…
AI assessment note: “I think we've seen a, you know, substantial evolution that continues to happen.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q said about the scalability there and a bit before, and, and we had Chad Byers, um, GP at Sousa Ventures on the show the other day, and he spoke about a low board to partner ratio and the benefits of this. I'm intrigued with regards to scalability is, and what's your views on, on board to partner ratio? And how you look at optimizing your role as a board member?
A At the seed stage, we don't take board seats. Frankly, I think that the cycle of board interactions is far too slow. We tend to be very highly engaged with our companies, and so we're touching on them at least a weekly basis, if not daily basis. And so, you know, much like the specialization that sort of GM pioneered in the We have a talent partner who used to run executive search for Facebook. We have market development partners who come from, you know, having to run programs like that at Andreessen Horowitz or run major sales and marketing teams for, for top venture backed companies, et cetera. And so we have functional resources in house for all the sort of day-to-day blocking and tackling as well as seven full-time people on the investment team. When you add that up, we have 17 people today supporting 13 companies and over 50 advisors. If anything, we're, we're over-resourced. Relative to the number of companies. And so, but the benefit of that is that, you know, we're not waiting for the company to come report to us on a quarterly basis at a board meeting. We're having much more degrees of interaction on a, on a regular basis. Uh, and then over time, you know, if we do take board seats, we actually bring to bear, not just our own investment team, which has heavy operational experience, but a network of over In essence, as venture partners, so that you get this sort of spec…
AI assessment note: “At the seed stage, we don't take board seats.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And playing Davo, Devil's advocate there slightly. Often early stages kind of categorized as a stage of the people, you know, it's all about judging founders and founder assessment. Having such a data-centric approach, is there the potential to lose the human element of assessing kind of the eye of the tiger and the founder?
A Um, I'd still believe in, you know, heavily in human loop systems, and so we're not trying to assess the quality of the founder, you know, with using data. Uh, what we use the data for at the seed stage, you know, you still have to do all the traditional venture capital blocking and tackling, but we use data for context on, you know, what's the strength of competitors, how fast are they growing those types of things. And, you know, we use technology at the seed stage to understand that a company exists and we use it to sort of track down and then pursue those opportunities. And then we use technologies to streamline the diligence process, the collaboration between our network of advisors who are all deep domain experts. Uh, and I can often serve as references for those founders on, on how gritty determined and effective they have been, uh, in various roles that they may have been in the past. You know, I, I think it's a misperception that, that what we're doing is actually trying to use data to, to score a company in that sense. Uh, that's not at all what we're doing. We're using technology to enable discovery, competitive intelligence, contextualization, collaboration, and ultimately support of our portfolio companies. So, so we look more like Uber than we look like Mattermark in that sense.
AI assessment note: “we're not trying to assess the quality of the founder, you know, with using data.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q And you mentioned the other funds there. How do you look at kind of competitive differentiation when it comes to actually getting into the deals themselves? How do you assess SignalFire's performance and approach in itself and in terms of getting into the competitive deals?
A I think in the seed weight class, there's few if any firms that frankly can come close to having the same sorts of resources we have. We have 17 full-time people, over 50 advisors around the firm. You know, we've really taken great efforts to, to architect the firm around the specific pain points that entrepreneurs have. For example, it's not just about building technology for finding and monitoring investments, but it's as much about helping our companies with competitive intelligence, with data insights into operational elements of their business, and the sort of critical Task of recruiting key executives and the best engineers. So, you know, in the research we did, interviewing over 500 founders, recruiting was the number one pain point of almost all the founders, and so we put massive resources into this area going, you know, so far as building a proprietary SaaS recruiting platform from scratch, and we're also in the process of building a talent agency in-house, and so we offer, you know, senior support in market development, growth hacking, data science, and have this network of 50 advisors Um, available on demand to our companies in every sort of key functional area from technology, architecture, pricing, sales and marketing, design, M&A, et cetera. And as a result of that, we have an unbelievably high win rate, um, against the top venture firms in the industry and almos…
AI assessment note: “And as a result of that, we have an unbelievably high win rate”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q said about the scalability there and a bit before, and, and we had Chad Byers, um, GP at Sousa Ventures on the show the other day, and he spoke about a low board to partner ratio and the benefits of this. I'm intrigued with regards to scalability is, and what's your views on, on board to partner ratio? And how you look at optimizing your role as a board member?
A At the seed stage, we don't take board seats. Frankly, I think that the cycle of board interactions is far too slow. We tend to be very highly engaged with our companies, and so we're touching on them at least a weekly basis, if not daily basis. And so, you know, much like the specialization that sort of GM pioneered in the We have a talent partner who used to run executive search for Facebook. We have market development partners who come from, you know, having to run programs like that at Andreessen Horowitz or run major sales and marketing teams for, for top venture backed companies, et cetera. And so we have functional resources in house for all the sort of day-to-day blocking and tackling as well as seven full-time people on the investment team. When you add that up, we have 17 people today supporting 13 companies and over 50 advisors. If anything, we're, we're over-resourced. Relative to the number of companies. And so, but the benefit of that is that, you know, we're not waiting for the company to come report to us on a quarterly basis at a board meeting. We're having much more degrees of interaction on a, on a regular basis. Uh, and then over time, you know, if we do take board seats, we actually bring to bear, not just our own investment team, which has heavy operational experience, but a network of over In essence, as venture partners, so that you get this sort of spec…
AI assessment note: “At the seed stage, we don't take board seats. Frankly, I think that the cycle”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And you mentioned the other funds there. How do you look at kind of competitive differentiation when it comes to actually getting into the deals themselves? How do you assess SignalFire's performance and approach in itself and in terms of getting into the competitive deals?
A I think in the seed weight class, there's few if any firms that frankly can come close to having the same sorts of resources we have. We have 17 full-time people, over 50 advisors around the firm. You know, we've really taken great efforts to, to architect the firm around the specific pain points that entrepreneurs have. For example, it's not just about building technology for finding and monitoring investments, but it's as much about helping our companies with competitive intelligence, with data insights into operational elements of their business, and the sort of critical Task of recruiting key executives and the best engineers. So, you know, in the research we did, interviewing over 500 founders, recruiting was the number one pain point of almost all the founders, and so we put massive resources into this area going, you know, so far as building a proprietary SaaS recruiting platform from scratch, and we're also in the process of building a talent agency in-house, and so we offer, you know, senior support in market development, growth hacking, data science, and have this network of 50 advisors Um, available on demand to our companies in every sort of key functional area from technology, architecture, pricing, sales and marketing, design, M&A, et cetera. And as a result of that, we have an unbelievably high win rate, um, against the top venture firms in the industry and almos…
AI assessment note: “we have an unbelievably high win rate, um, against the top venture firms”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And playing Davo, Devil's advocate there slightly. Often early stages kind of categorized as a stage of the people, you know, it's all about judging founders and founder assessment. Having such a data-centric approach, is there the potential to lose the human element of assessing kind of the eye of the tiger and the founder?
A Um, I'd still believe in, you know, heavily in human loop systems, and so we're not trying to assess the quality of the founder, you know, with using data. Uh, what we use the data for at the seed stage, you know, you still have to do all the traditional venture capital blocking and tackling, but we use data for context on, you know, what's the strength of competitors, how fast are they growing those types of things. And, you know, we use technology at the seed stage to understand that a company exists and we use it to sort of track down and then pursue those opportunities. And then we use technologies to streamline the diligence process, the collaboration between our network of advisors who are all deep domain experts. Uh, and I can often serve as references for those founders on, on how gritty determined and effective they have been, uh, in various roles that they may have been in the past. You know, I, I think it's a misperception that, that what we're doing is actually trying to use data to, to score a company in that sense. Uh, that's not at all what we're doing. We're using technology to enable discovery, competitive intelligence, contextualization, collaboration, and ultimately support of our portfolio companies. So, so we look more like Uber than we look like Mattermark in that sense.
AI assessment note: “we're not trying to assess the quality of the founder, you know, with using data”
