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 Absolutely. No short-term commitment in starting a firm. I do want to ask you, because you mentioned Masthead and Venrock there, and so now you've seen kind of three different firms internally. How have those experiences differed, and what were the key experiences and learnings from watching those kind of three such different living organisms?
A Yeah, so I mean, so Masthead, you know, is a first-time fund, and you, I really saw the benefits of being at a firm Or you really had a blank slate, right? You could do anything. You didn't have a past history of both legacy investments as well as kind of legacy processes. And then going to Venrock, it was almost an opposite situation where here you had this storied firm that's been around for 50 years, and a firm that's been around 50 years has been doing something right, right? And so, you learn the kind of classic training and the nuts and bolts of venture. You know, everything from investment processes and decision-making processes to just kind of the The operations of running a firm, and so when we started NextView together, between Rob, Lee, and I, the three of us had been at four different venture firms, and so we were, had the benefit of actually kind of being able to cherry pick some of the best things from four different firms and incorporate that into our own culture and their own, our own way of how we operate.
AI assessment note: “Masthead, you know, is a first-time fund... And then going to Venrock”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Absolutely. No short-term commitment in starting a firm. I do want to ask you, because you mentioned Masthead and Venrock there, and so now you've seen kind of three different firms internally. How have those experiences differed, and what were the key experiences and learnings from watching those kind of three such different living organisms?
A Yeah, so I mean, so Masthead, you know, is a first-time fund, and you, I really saw the benefits of being at a firm Or you really had a blank slate, right? You could do anything. You didn't have a past history of both legacy investments as well as kind of legacy processes. And then going to Venrock, it was almost an opposite situation where here you had this storied firm that's been around for 50 years, and a firm that's been around 50 years has been doing something right, right? And so, you learn the kind of classic training and the nuts and bolts of venture. You know, everything from investment processes and decision-making processes to just kind of the The operations of running a firm, and so when we started NextView together, between Rob, Lee, and I, the three of us had been at four different venture firms, and so we were, had the benefit of actually kind of being able to cherry pick some of the best things from four different firms and incorporate that into our own culture and their own, our own way of how we operate.
AI assessment note: “cherry pick some of the best things from four different firms”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q perfectly to my next topic, and something that I know that you're very excited about, being personal voice computing. So with that in mind, I want to start by addressing, we've seen the big players, as you said, Amazon, Apple, Apple, Even Google makes strides into voice over the last 12 months. So, why have we seen this inflection point in the development and excitement of such technology? Why now?
A Yeah, so why now? I think partially is around initially spurred by Amazon, right? They had this, this Echo device, which became a sleeper runaway hit, right? So, ten million devices were shipped in 2016. Somewhere between 20 to forty million are going to be Shipped in here in 2017. You put on top of that their Alexa everywhere strategy where they're embedding, you know, Alexa in third party hardware devices. So you're going to have literally tens and tens of millions of devices which are connected to the internet in people's homes and then accessible by the most natural user interface possible, which is the voice. If you think about that, like, pervasive connectedness to the internet, like, to me, that is A remarkable transformation, and by the end of the year, literally, fifty million devices in people's homes are going to have that kind of connection. Like, that's really powerful, and that's the inflection point.
AI assessment note: “fifty million devices in people's homes are going to have that kind of connection”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q I was, I had been there three years, liked being on the venture side of things, and I was getting recruited to Venrock, so I ended up joining Venrock in, uh, in, I do have to ask, though, kind of, in terms of making the switch from entrepreneur to VC, was there an inflection point when you realized that, actually, you were a VC by, by destiny at that point?
A I think it wasn't until we started NextView together that it was at the point where, What do I want to be doing for the rest of my life? And I realized that I just want to be at the point of company creation over and over and over again. And the way that I can do that the most often is being a venture investor. And on top of that, being a seed venture investor, right? You get to get involved in the projects at the earliest stages. And so I just want to be a part of those processes over and over again. And then, you know, with next view, you know, starting a firm, we've got this kind of meta thing going where it's a Couple decade endeavor for us to start a firm from the ground up.
AI assessment note: “it wasn't until we started NextView together that it was at the point”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q perfectly to my next topic, and something that I know that you're very excited about, being personal voice computing. So with that in mind, I want to start by addressing, we've seen the big players, as you said, Amazon, Apple, Apple, Even Google makes strides into voice over the last 12 months. So, why have we seen this inflection point in the development and excitement of such technology? Why now?
A Yeah, so why now? I think partially is around initially spurred by Amazon, right? They had this, this Echo device, which became a sleeper runaway hit, right? So, ten million devices were shipped in 2016. Somewhere between 20 to forty million are going to be Shipped in here in 2017. You put on top of that their Alexa everywhere strategy where they're embedding, you know, Alexa in third party hardware devices. So you're going to have literally tens and tens of millions of devices which are connected to the internet in people's homes and then accessible by the most natural user interface possible, which is the voice. If you think about that, like, pervasive connectedness to the internet, like, to me, that is A remarkable transformation, and by the end of the year, literally, fifty million devices in people's homes are going to have that kind of connection. Like, that's really powerful, and that's the inflection point.
AI assessment note: “initially spurred by Amazon, right? They had this, this Echo device, which became a sleeper runaway hit”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q I was, I had been there three years, liked being on the venture side of things, and I was getting recruited to Venrock, so I ended up joining Venrock in, uh, in, I do have to ask, though, kind of, in terms of making the switch from entrepreneur to VC, was there an inflection point when you realized that, actually, you were a VC by, by destiny at that point?
A I think it wasn't until we started NextView together that it was at the point where, What do I want to be doing for the rest of my life? And I realized that I just want to be at the point of company creation over and over and over again. And the way that I can do that the most often is being a venture investor. And on top of that, being a seed venture investor, right? You get to get involved in the projects at the earliest stages. And so I just want to be a part of those processes over and over again. And then, you know, with next view, you know, starting a firm, we've got this kind of meta thing going where it's a Couple decade endeavor for us to start a firm from the ground up.
AI assessment note: “I think it wasn't until we started NextView together that it was at the point”
Answered raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 3.70
Q unanimous decision-making. I do have to ask one more question with regards to kind of those past experiences. We had Tony Conrad at True on the show who said that over his career, he's changed from being a very kind of Academic thoughtful markets investor to being a founder-driven gut investor. How have you seen yourself change then over the three different funds and 10 or so years in venture?
A Yeah, so I think I had two mentors within the industry. Rich Levandau, you know, he was at a massive now at Avalon and Mike Terrell at Venrock,, uh, Benrock, and they're very different investors. One very intuitive based and one very kind of politically driven. I've tried to take the both of those, incorporate that into my own thought process in decision making. But then what I realized, I think, you know, over the last couple years is that I have tended, you know, given I'm an internet marketer by background, I've tended to make investments that have some type of marketing theme. So they're either marketing business, sales and marketing businesses themselves on the B to B side, or on the consumer side, there's actually some kind of unique distribution advantage for the consumer service, or even the Kind of rigorous analytical marketers. I just love the marketing DNA. You know, I think if you can solve distribution and get your product out there, whether it's a B to C company or B to B company, lots of other problems go away, right?
AI assessment note: “what I realized, I think, you know, over the last couple years is”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q unanimous decision-making. I do have to ask one more question with regards to kind of those past experiences. We had Tony Conrad at True on the show who said that over his career, he's changed from being a very kind of Academic thoughtful markets investor to being a founder-driven gut investor. How have you seen yourself change then over the three different funds and 10 or so years in venture?
A Yeah, so I think I had two mentors within the industry. Rich Levandau, you know, he was at a massive now at Avalon and Mike Terrell at Venrock,, uh, Benrock, and they're very different investors. One very intuitive based and one very kind of politically driven. I've tried to take the both of those, incorporate that into my own thought process in decision making. But then what I realized, I think, you know, over the last couple years is that I have tended, you know, given I'm an internet marketer by background, I've tended to make investments that have some type of marketing theme. So they're either marketing business, sales and marketing businesses themselves on the B to B side, or on the consumer side, there's actually some kind of unique distribution advantage for the consumer service, or even the Kind of rigorous analytical marketers. I just love the marketing DNA. You know, I think if you can solve distribution and get your product out there, whether it's a B to C company or B to B company, lots of other problems go away, right?
AI assessment note: “what I realized, I think, you know, over the last couple years is that I have tended”
