Arif Jan Mohamed

Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Arif Janmohamed is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. He has been involved with investments in companies such as TripActions, Blend, Nutanix, AppZen, and MoveWorks.

12statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.92/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

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

4 assertions · 1 opinion · 6 insights · 1 disclosure · 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 Arif 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

Splunk reached a $20B valuation despite early VC doubts about market size

“If you look at a company like Splunk, which is a dominant player in the data space, That was a venture-backed company. That was a company that went public that a lot of people had written off due to questions around market size, and the executive team there is…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 14:54 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

How they sound: speaking style how? →

238 words/min while actually speaking · 0.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Arif Jan Mohamed: 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 28 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 4,370 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Arif Jan Mohamed 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 2/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 8:30“I wanted to start with that being, and I hope this isn't negative or cynical, but do you think enterprise investing is potentially past its peak today, given the hype and excitemen…” ▶ 10:03“I had another guest on the show recently, Matt Harris at Bain, and he said that Series A valuations don't matter anymore. Can I ask, how do you feel about that, and would you maybe…” ▶ 11:25“Have there been any changes in how you view price sensitivity yourself as an investor?”

What they said12 Episodes1

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

Insight

Market risk is the most dangerous VC risk; the market always wins

“I think market risk is the most dangerous risk to underwrite. Even if with the greatest teams, teams can't fight market. Market always wins.”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 11:50 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Opinion

Enterprise software companies can now reach $10B to $20B valuations

“I don't think so. I think that the word is out. It's become very, very sexy. I think that a number of other great investors are realizing that you can actually build companies worth 10 to twenty billion dollars in the enterprise space.”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 8:41 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Assertion Not checkable as stated

$1 trillion of enterprise software market cap is up for grabs

“I think we're in a magical time where the entire enterprise stack, from storage, cloud, networking, through the app tier, CRM, marketing service, etc., I think all of that's up for grabs, driven by a number of really interesting new technologies fueled by clou…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 8:53 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Enterprise tech was a contrarian VC focus in 2008

“In 2008, they had a strong point of view that enterprise would be one of the largest market opportunities, and this was almost a contrarian point of view back in 2008. Not a lot of people were looking at very closely at enterprise”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 7:21 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Insight

VCs should not haggle over valuation for exceptional teams in massive markets

“If it's a team that has shown ability to execute, that has clarity of vision, that has an incredible product or product vision, and can execute in a very, very large market, it's not worth trying to optimize on the edges for valuation.”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 12:06 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Assertion Supported

Splunk reached a $20B valuation despite early VC doubts about market size

Insight

Market timing succeeds by tracking dollar shifts between technology architectures

“And the way I think about it is market timing works in markets where there's dollars shifting from call it one technology stacker or legacy architecture to a new type of architecture. The most recent being cloud. If you can make an argument that cloud is up en…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 16:24 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Insight

Winning enterprise startups must align product design with go-to-market strategy

“What I've learned over time is the best enterprise companies, the winners, are those that marry amazing product design, which is a combination of technology architecture plus product, which translates into UI and UX, and marry those with a great go-to-market d…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 17:46 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Insight

Startups should land $75K enterprise deals and expand them to $5M

“Really, the reason they do that is mid-market customers move faster, but of course, you capture less value, but you can get some velocity and you can get some market signals about product market fit in the mid market. And meanwhile, you're executing on a longe…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 20:50 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Disclosure

TripActions manages $1B+ in corporate travel, growing 15% to 20% monthly

“They now manage over a billion dollars in corporate travel. They're growing 15 to 20% month over month.”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 28:08 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Assertion Supported

Series A pre-money valuations grew from $5M-$10M to $20M-$60M

“When I entered the venture market, Series A's were done anywhere between five and ten million dollar pre-money valuation. Now you're seeing them get into 20 to 50 to 60.”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 10:44 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Insight

VC feedback loops take five to ten years to evaluate investor judgment

“In the venture capital world, the feedback loop is slow. You can prove that you can win deals, but you, it takes time to really learn whether you're good at winning the right deals. In many cases, it can take five, maybe 10 years to know if your judgment is ri…”

Arif Jan Mohamed Oct 21, 2019 ▶ 26:34 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underw	Oct 21, 2019	20m

Arif Jan Mohamed

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Appearances (1)

Turn any episode into a week of clips.