Alan Jones

Chief Growth Hacker, BlueChilli · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Alan Jones is the Chief Growth Hacker at BlueChilli and a Founding Investor and Mentor at Startmate. He actively invests in and advises startups through firms including Blackbird Ventures and Pollenizer.

13statements → 7claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.85/5average certainty → 1.85/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources →

3 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 4 assertions · 5 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, 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 Alan 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
Australia Will Produce Multiple $100M+ Tech Venture Funds by 2020
“In the Australian marketplace, there are now a number of funds in about that size, and all of us are looking to about 10 X the size of our investment capacity. So, I think we'll see in the next five years, I think we'll see a number of a hundred mil and greate…”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 21:10 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Blue Chili Aims to Back 500 Startups Globally by 2020
“For Blue Chili, obviously we're going to smash our hundred startup goal. But I think, you know, realistically in the next five years, we're going to be aiming for 500 startups across Asia, across North America, and across Europe.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 21:28 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% 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? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.5 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.9

redirected or did not address 1 of 20 assessed questions (5%). Watch them ▸

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? →

250 words/min while actually speaking · 30.9 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,954 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 →

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

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Australia Has an Abundance of Founders but Lacks Technical Co-Founders
“There's no shortage of entrepreneurs in Australia, but there's a real shortage of technical co-founders.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 4:34 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Insight
Pitching Requires Emotional Storytelling, Not the Standard VC Metrics Template
“So we need to become great storytellers, and that never, never, never Fits the templates that the VCs want to see. Why? Because the VCs want to punch all the metrics into a spreadsheet and judge you coldly and rationally. The best thing that we can do is grab …”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 16:01 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Prediction Held up
Australia Will Produce Multiple $100M+ Tech Venture Funds by 2020
“In the Australian marketplace, there are now a number of funds in about that size, and all of us are looking to about 10 X the size of our investment capacity. So, I think we'll see in the next five years, I think we'll see a number of a hundred mil and greate…”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 21:10 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
Blue Chili Will Exceed Its Goal of 100 Startups by 2016
“In fact, I'm pretty confident we're going to smash our goal of 100 by 20 16.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 4:03 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Insight
Experienced Product Builders Should Bootstrap Instead of Raising Capital
“If you're a great product person, so if you've spent five or seven or 10 years building tech startup products, then your greatest skill and your most likely path to market is to bootstrap and build your own product.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 7:23 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Insight
Non-Technical Founders Waste Time Seeking Co-Founders Before Validating Ideas
“Many non-technical entrepreneurs spend a lot of time going to meetups trying to find that potential technical co-founder. So that wastes a whole chunk of time, and then potentially when they start to build out their product team they might spend several 100,00…”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 7:45 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Insight
Recruit Technical Co-Founders by Framing Business Goals as Programming Challenges
“They don't see generally, they don't see business problems as nearly as interesting as great mathematical or logical or programming problems. And so I encourage people to break their business goal and their customer aspiration and the journey of their business…”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 11:50 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Insight
The Primary Purpose of a Startup Pitch Is Securing Follow-Up Discussions
“The purpose of a great pitch is to begin a discussion, right? So, even a Y Combinator Termsheets happen after the pitch, right? They happen in the discussion one-on-one, in the room when everybody's mingling, and more typically in markets outside of Silicon Va…”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 16:43 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Blue Chili Aims to Back 500 Startups Globally by 2020
“For Blue Chili, obviously we're going to smash our hundred startup goal. But I think, you know, realistically in the next five years, we're going to be aiming for 500 startups across Asia, across North America, and across Europe.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 21:28 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Assertion Supported
Blue Chili Built a Portfolio of 54 Startups in Three Years
“Over the past three years, Blue Chili has built a portfolio of 54 startups, and we're on track.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 3:56 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Disclosure
Alan Jones's Most Successful Investments Are Tools Built for Other Startups
“I think probably where I've been most successful is investing in startups that are solving problems for other startups. So building the platforms and the tools that you need as a startup founder.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 19:48 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Assertion Supported
Blue Chili Launched a $10.5M Venture Fund in October 2014
“Last October we started investing from our first venture fund, a 10 and a half million dollar fund that makes matching investments and startups graduating from our portfolio.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 20:50 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Blue Chili Employs 40 In-House Developers to Build Portfolio Startups
“We actually have our own product development team of nearly 40 people now, and they work simultaneously on five or six startups at a time.”
Alan Jones Jun 15, 2015 ▶ 4:44 20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20 VC 045: From Idea to Pitch with Alan Jones, Founding Investor @ Startmate Jun 15, 2015 18m
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