Andy Pflaum

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

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Andy Pflaum is the Founder and CEO of Astro, a startup bringing email, calendar, and an AI assistant together. Prior to founding Astro, he spent 15 years in Silicon Valley, including serving as Chief Marketing Officer at Z.

12statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

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

1 prediction · 2 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is 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 Andy argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Astro will be a profitable, independent company within five years

“And in five years, we expect to be a thriving, profitable, independent company that's known for making its customers very focused, very productive, and happy.”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 26:07 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

How they sound: speaking style how? →

248 words/min while actually speaking · 2.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Andy Pflaum: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 22 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,159 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Andy Pflaum is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 4/10

pushed back at the host 1/10

setup questions received 75%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 18:29“Do you ever have concern over signaling on follow-on investments and what that might do into market perception?” ▶ 21:24“What did you not do well that you had changed in the way you presented the vision, in the way that you presented The team and the way that you kind of orchestrated the actual fundr…” ▶ 14:34“On the flip side, what's maybe increased in difficulty over the last decade?”

What they said12 Episodes1

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

Opinion

Young tech workers should join mid-stage growth startups like Stripe or Slack

“I think there's merits to all of them, but I would now lean more toward go to that medium-sized growth company. You know, if you can get in today at a company like Stripe or Slack, for example, I think you get incredible growth opportunities, and if you know, …”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 6:54 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Past McKinsey research claiming rapid corporate turnover was misleading

“I'd like to thank some somewhat misleading research that was put out 10 or 15 years ago by McKinsey and some other academics that suggested that the largest companies in the country were turning over at a very rapid pace. You can find a lot of articles, and yo…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 8:16 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Large tech incumbents tend to maintain dominance rather than face disruption

“In fact, the big companies tend to stay very strong Across most industries, there are some sectoral differences, like retail right now, for example, but this is especially true, I think, with the large tech companies. If you're very big, you have the ability t…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 8:40 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Insight

Paid user acquisition should remain a small fraction of overall growth

“We try to never let it go beyond a certain portion, a very kind of low fraction of our overall attainment of new users. If it goes too high For any brief period of time, then that suggests that we're out of balance and we're not kind of focused on the right ar…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 16:23 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Opinion

Workplace communications remain a chaotic mess for enterprise users

“We wanted to do it in the space of workplace communications, which we thought was still something of a chaotic mess, frankly, for most users in the workplace.”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 5:57 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Insight

Startup success demands extraordinary commitment compared to corporate jobs

“You're rarely going to get extraordinary outcomes from ordinary type work, and I think in a lot of the big companies, you can do relatively ordinary work in terms of your effort and in terms of your contribution and the leverage that your contribution has. In …”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 10:36 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Disclosure

Astro paid a contractor above market rate to stop their moonlighting business

“We found and recruited an excellent contractor to work with our team based outside of the Bay Area, and he worked with us as a consultant for a while until we hired him on full time, but we made sure when we hired him on full time that we were compensating him…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 11:29 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Insight

Founders cannot get good investor advice if forced to constantly pitch

“We know we can't get the best insights and the best advice. If I'm worried about with each conversation, having to sort of sell them or pitch them on the status of the company or what our next plans are, want to be able to have honest, open discussions about t…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 19:25 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Insight

Narrow pitch propositions outperform broad visions in startup fundraising

“I think that the primary thing that we would change is consistent with how you want to run your business, which is the more narrow you can have of a focus on what your proposition is, the better that people can understand it and give you feedback on it, and th…”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 21:36 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Opinion

Access to early-stage capital remains unfairly difficult for non-Valley founders

“Well, I think we really need continued improvement in access to early stage capital for first-time entrepreneurs especially the ones who don't come in with deep connections here in the valley where the plurality of VC investment comes from.”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 25:15 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Astro will be a profitable, independent company within five years

“And in five years, we expect to be a thriving, profitable, independent company that's known for making its customers very focused, very productive, and happy.”

Disclosure

Astro sourced its last two hires via Hired.com and Handshake

“Hiring services like hired.com and handshake. Our last two hires each came from those two services that previously we would have had to work through recruiter under a different and more expensive paid model.”

Andy Pflaum Feb 2, 2018 ▶ 14:10 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Wor	Feb 2, 2018	18m

Andy Pflaum

The record, in short

Their most notable contradicted claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Appearances (1)

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