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Aaron Hirschhorn

Founder & CEO, DogVacay · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Aaron Hirschhorn is the founder and CEO of DogVacay. He founded the pet sitting company in 2012 and raised capital from investors including Benchmark Capital.

13statements → 7claims → 6claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.92/5average certainty → 1.46/5average debate potential → 4.6/5argument clarity · the sources → 5said about them ↓

4 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 6 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Aaron argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Hirschhorn predicts lack of differentiation will kill food delivery startups
“Food delivery space is a great example. Massive fucking market, don't get me wrong, like, massive market opportunity, but at the end of the day, there's not a lot of differentiation. All these guys are gonna be battling on price, and they're not all gonna surv…”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 15:14 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
US pet services is a fragmented $15B market with no dominant player
“The pet services market is fifteen billion dollars in the U.S. And completely fragmented, where nobody has even a couple points of market share, so it's a wide open opportunity.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 3:00 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
83% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.6 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.6 · compression 4.1

answered every one of 26 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

270 words/min while actually speaking · 15.8 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,187 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 60%

Everything Aaron Hirschhorn said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Held up
Hirschhorn predicts lack of differentiation will kill food delivery startups
“Food delivery space is a great example. Massive fucking market, don't get me wrong, like, massive market opportunity, but at the end of the day, there's not a lot of differentiation. All these guys are gonna be battling on price, and they're not all gonna surv…”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 15:14 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Opinion
Hirschhorn argues standard sharing economy background checks are highly imperfect
“They've become table stakes for the sharing economy. Between you and me, and I guess all of our listeners, I think they're far from sufficient to really tell you that background checks are highly imperfect. They only look at a certain time frame. They only loo…”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 20:20 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Disclosure
DogVacay scaled to hundreds of thousands monthly within three months
“Three months in, we were doing a few 100,000 dollars a month.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 4:30 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Insight
Competition is the best lever to get hesitant VCs to invest
“There is nothing like competition to get people to write a check that they might otherwise be hesitant to write.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 9:07 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Insight
High-trust marketplace platforms must build proprietary vetting systems
“I think every business where trust is important needs to develop something of their own that's proprietary.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 20:37 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Supported
US dog population stands at 83 million, outnumbering children
“There's eighty-three million dogs in the U.S., which is more than there are kids, by the way.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 2:54 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Contradicted
US pet services is a fragmented $15B market with no dominant player
“The pet services market is fifteen billion dollars in the U.S. And completely fragmented, where nobody has even a couple points of market share, so it's a wide open opportunity.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 3:00 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Disclosure
DogVacay approves only 15% of dog sitter applications
“We approve only about 15% of our dog sitter applications.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 3:40 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Supported
DogVacay costs 40% less on average than traditional kennels
“And then, of course, selfishly, I'll put a dog vacay in that category, where we offer a far better experience than the kennel, and at about 40% less, on average, of cost.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 14:17 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Partly supported
DogVacay leads the pet services market with under 1% penetration
“We're the leader in the space, but have a market share of, you know, 50 basis points, less than one percent.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 16:01 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Supported
DogVacay hosts nearly 30,000 active pet sitters on its platform
“Now we've got about 25,000, close to 30,000 sitters on our platform who are earning income, millions of dogs who are not in cages.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 24:15 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hirschhorn personally hosted over 100 dogs in 2011 as DogVacay's first host
“I had actually watched over a hundred dogs in my home over the course of 20 11 being the dog sitter, being the very first dog vacay sitter.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 5:51 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay
Disclosure
DogVacay pitched 30 VC firms during its Series A raise
“For the series A, I probably did 30 pitches.”
Aaron Hirschhorn May 13, 2016 ▶ 11:30 20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member with Aaron Hirschhorn, Founder & CEO @ DogVacay

The other half of the tape: Aaron Hirschhorn's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3Peter Pham 2

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0031522016episodesmentions
0122016episodes it came up in
001.312.522016episodesmentions per episode
2016 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Creating A Competitive Process Between VCs & Having Bill Gurley As A Board Member wi May 13, 2016 18m
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