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Adam Leibsohn

Founder & COO, Giphy · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Adam Leibsohn is the Founder and COO of Giphy. He helped build the company and secure Series C financing from investors including General Catalyst and Lightspeed.

11statements → 9claims → 4claims resolved → 25%fully supported → 3.91/5average certainty → 1.64/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 3 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 5 assertions · 2 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 5 name 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 Adam 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

Assertion Supported
Leibsohn targeted VCs and tech journalists with vanity Google search ads
“I started taking out search ads against prominent VCs and reporters in tech so that when they Googled themselves, they'd get an ad from me and it worked astonishingly well.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 6:49 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
67% 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? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 4.5 · precision 3.7 · compression 3.5

answered every one of 13 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? →

273 words/min while actually speaking · 15.2 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,659 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 ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 85%

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

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Leibsohn spent a year homeless to self-fund his first startup
“I actually gave up my apartment, and I went homeless for a year, and instead of quitting my job, I kept my job, and I paid rent like I would pay rent, but I didn't have anything to rent, so I paid that rent into a savings account and built my own fund.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 5:07 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Prediction Partly held up
Giphy will expand GIFs into virtual reality, smart glasses, and paper
“GIFs in virtual reality, GIFs in your glasses, GIFs outside of computers, GIFs on paper. You know, a whole new kind of search engine that no one's ever seen before, where everything moves, which resembles all of life. Just think of what you look at in the worl…”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 25:18 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Assertion Supported
Leibsohn targeted VCs and tech journalists with vanity Google search ads
“I started taking out search ads against prominent VCs and reporters in tech so that when they Googled themselves, they'd get an ad from me and it worked astonishingly well.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 6:49 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Insight
Relying on too many 'what ifs' signals a startup is dead
“When you start dealing in too many what ifs, you probably know it's done. I think that's a good signal.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 9:38 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Startups attempting to turn personal data into currency will keep resurfacing
“I was not the first to try this. I've not been the last. I think it'll come around again and again and again.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 9:57 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Insight
Google succeeded because slow early internet speeds forced a text-based web
“Processor speed was also slow, and so again, imagery was hard to move, and that's why the initial web was very textual, and that's why Google was so good at indexing stuff, because it was all filled with words and not with images.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 11:46 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mobile channel fragmentation will drive GIF adoption for efficient expression
“As we are increasingly mobile and as we have More and more channel fragmentation. People are going to be looking for the most efficient way to express themselves maximally, and GIFs are really that amazing sweet spot of making a point, but having to do very li…”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 14:59 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Prediction Partly held up
Giphy plans to monetize GIF search intent via contextual paid search
“We're looking at the idea of turning gift search into something that can be contextual, that can be highly relevant, highly targeted, where you're getting delivered content against a query that is directly related to what you're looking for, but may have been …”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 20:41 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Assertion Partly supported
Giphy powers the native GIF buttons inside Twitter, Facebook, and Slack
“We actually power that button. We power the gift button inside of Twitter. We power the gift button in Facebook. We power gifts in Slack.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 21:27 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Leibsohn's early startup Voyeurl acquired 50,000 pre-launch signups
“So we got like 50,000 signups and then, you know, lo and behold, we turn the service on and it goes great.”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 7:33 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine
Assertion Not checkable as stated
A massive mainstream audience still does not know what GIFs are
“There's, you know, there's a giant group of people out there that don't know what gifts are still, that don't know how to use them. And our job is to make sure they can, and then make sure that it's easy. And so you want to make gifts as fluid as what, you kno…”
Adam Leibsohn Sep 9, 2016 ▶ 24:33 20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dollar Startup & The Challenges of Creating One of The World's Largest Search Engine

The other half of the tape: Adam Leibsohn's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112016episodesmentions
0112016episodes it came up in
000.50.5112016episodesmentions per episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Giphy's Adam Leibsohn on From Being Homeless To Founding a Multi Hundred Million Dol Sep 9, 2016 18m
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