Alex Mittal

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

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

Alex Mittal is the Founder and CEO of FundersClub, an online venture capital platform supporting high-growth startups. His firm's portfolio includes companies such as Slack, Greenhouse, Shippo, and Flexport.

12statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.67/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 3said about them ↓

0 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 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 Alex argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
none yet 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 4.4 · coherence 4.6 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 8 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? →

227 words/min while actually speaking · 13.6 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,694 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 Alex Mittal said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Alex Mittal: Many AI startups promise what is fundamentally impossible
“The bad news is that I believe we're in a point in time where, and this is, you know, I think I mentioned that this is like blasphemy for me to say as a VC, given, you know, AI is sort of hot right now, but we're in an era where what is being promised by a lot…”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 13:56 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Alex Mittal: Current AI is fancy data processing, not true intelligence
“This is, like, more fancy processing of data that leads to more cases where you can automate things that previously were not automatable, but it's not intelligence.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 17:42 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Opinion
Mittal: Most tech VCs do not understand brand-based investing
“But I believe that most technology VCs don't understand that because we invest in technology and technology differentiation. And so I think you can get in trouble when you Start changing when your actions are separated from your strategy and knowledge base.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 23:15 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Prediction Partly held up
Mittal: Senate legislation will allow non-wealthy people to become accredited investors
“There's revolutionary almost legislative changes happening right now in the Senate, for example, that will, for the first time in history, in U.S. History, make it possible for people to qualify as accredited investors outside of just being wealthy.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 28:52 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Mittal: Every VC firm functions fundamentally as a marketplace
“Every VC firm is actually, to some extent, a marketplace. You've got limited partners. Those are typically institutional or very well-to-do investors. You've almost like the market makers in the middle. And then of course you have the founders, the entrepreneu…”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 3:47 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Mittal: Repetitive fundraising pitch shows distract founders from building their businesses
“The repetitiveness of the process. You're literally going through the same, I guess, pony show over and over again. And sometimes like as an entrepreneur, like you can get addicted to this. Like sometimes it's cause it's exciting to tell your vision and story …”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 7:12 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Mittal: Indecisive VCs who never give clear answers are top founder pain point
“And then the never getting an actual, like, yes or no.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 7:41 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mittal: Webvan had one of the highest Net Promoter Scores ever
“The MPS score for web band was always like ridiculously high, the highest of any product, I think.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 10:33 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Mittal: On-demand delivery failures stem from unit economics, not consumer demand
“It's never been about the consumer not wanting it. It's been about the unit economics and such and defensibility in some cases, although both of those things can be solved or solvable problems.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 10:40 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Insight
Mittal: Hard science startups cannot yet match software's speed and cost
“Everyone, founders, investors, everyone needs to recognize that we're not yet at the speed of software in the hard sciences. And so nor are we at the cost.”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 18:58 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Alex Mittal expects APIs to unlock complex compute power and data for developers
“The other is actually fundamentally, we're seeing the exposing complex, like computing capabilities and data that is inaccessible to most people through APIs. And so like by analogy, if you're at CES, like NVIDIA announced this cloud gaming service, which is n…”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 24:59 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club
Assertion Partly supported
Mittal: Brands like FAO Schwarz were acquired for over $100M alone
“FAO Schwartz, and I think recently the sharper image, like the brand alone's have been acquired for a hundred million dollars plus, right?”
Alex Mittal Mar 22, 2017 ▶ 22:58 20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Impossible & Entrepreneurs 3 Main Pain Points of Fundraising with Alex Mittal, Founder & CEO @ Funders Club

The other half of the tape: Alex Mittal's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 3 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: How Every VC Firm Is A Marketplace, Why A Large Amount of Promise in AI Today Is Imp Mar 22, 2017 22m
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