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Avidan Ross

Founding Partner, Root Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderexecutiveengineer@AvidanRoss ↗LinkedIn ↗root.vc ↗

Avidan Ross founded Root Ventures in 2013, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco dedicated to backing technical founders. Prior to venture investing, he worked as a software developer and network engineer before serving as Chief Technology Officer at The CIM Group.

9statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 1 assertion · 5 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 3 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 Avidan 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
Root Ventures avoids hardware startups relying solely on product margins
“We won't invest in something that relies just on margin alone. From our perspective, that's not a venture scalable business.”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 11:19 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R

How they sound: speaking style how? →

213 words/min while actually speaking · 1.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Avidan Ross: 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 23 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 4,469 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Avidan Ross 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 ▾ 6/10
pushed back at the host 2/10
setup questions received 55%

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

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Autonomous vehicle R&D dividends will transform all physical industries
“There's Going to be more value generated from the piece dividends of the autonomous car war. What I mean to say is that every industry in the world that needs to physically articulate the world around it is going to benefit from all of that technology stack, t…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 17:08 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Engineers with advanced degrees will inevitably replace MBAs as tech CEOs
“The timing as to why is it today that we're going to see more masters and PhD engineering degrees at the CEO helm of companies than MBAs is because of those things. And it's taken a while for engineers like myself to build out positions in the venture capital …”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 26:33 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Insight
Connected hardware value comes from cloud services, not commodity components
“And when you're connected, you now have the opportunity to sell services. You get to interconnect your componentry to the internet. So think, for example, about a low-cost sensor is sitting out in the field. Now it has unlimited free connectivity into the clou…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 10:03 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Prediction Held up
Root Ventures avoids hardware startups relying solely on product margins
“We won't invest in something that relies just on margin alone. From our perspective, that's not a venture scalable business.”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 11:19 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Insight
Root Ventures evaluates hardware investments fundamentally as software companies
“We look at our hardware investments as actually software companies at their core. The definition of These companies is often that the software is the differentiator, but we also make a lot of investments purely in software companies.”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 14:07 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Insight
B2B startups should land on immediate ROI, then expand via data
“The Trojan horse idea is you bring something into the customer that has a clear ROI, but once they've adopted it, Then you can start upselling them or taking advantage of the data you're collecting from being inside of that company or that industry.”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 21:15 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Insight
Silicon Valley must prioritize mental health with professional athlete rigor
“So I think we don't spend enough time talking about mental health. I think athletes are constantly working out. They're going to the gym and trying to hit peak performance. Silicon Valley is a world of people whose peak performance is around their mental state…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 28:16 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Insight
Startup board members must work for the company, not for prestige
“Board members have to remember that they work for the company, and you don't join a board with For the prestige or the addition to your resume, you join the board because you're ready to work. You become an extension of the organization. And if you're not read…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 28:58 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Smartphone wars created the low-cost component supply chain for consumer IoT
“Because of the smartphone wars, the war between Apple and Samsung and Google and Nokia and Blackberry, a lot of the components that you find in a... Everyone was trying to get a low-cost camera, low-cost accelerometers, low-cost Bluetooth chips and Wi-Fi chips…”
Avidan Ross Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 8:31 20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Autonomous Car Wars Will Generate More Value Outside of Transport & Why Old and Boring Industries Are The Most Exciting To Build In with Avidan Ross, Founding Partner @ R

The other half of the tape: Avidan Ross'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 Semil Shah 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112017episodesmentions
0112017episodes it came up in
000.50.5112017episodesmentions per episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why The Engineer Will Replace The MBA As CEO, Why The Peace Dividends From The Auton Nov 5, 2018 22m
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