Balaji Srinivasan

Founder, The Network School · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderinvestorauthorexecutiveengineer@balajis ↗balajis.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Balaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur, investor, and author who previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase and a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Counsyl and Earn.com and currently leads The Network School.

12statements → 6claims → 0claims resolved → 3.5/5average certainty → 3/5average debate potential → 4.2/5argument clarity · the sources → 11said about them ↓

6 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 2 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 6 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 Balaji argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.2 / 5 directness 4.2 · coherence 4.5 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.7

redirected or did not address 1 of 12 assessed questions (8%). 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? →

247 words/min while actually speaking · 28.6 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 5,461 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 →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host 3/10

setup questions received 75%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 18:07“Do you really think that's the solution, then, in terms of carving out, uh, allocations for early adopters, or do you prefer the radical overhaul of potentially an archaic regulato…” ▶ 22:55“And then Tesla, is it going to be a market winner or are there too much capital requirements from the public market?” ▶ 20:13“The consumer education part is interesting for me, because I would say that is a more prominent barrier than actually regulatory problems. To what extent do you see consumer educat…”

What they said12 What others said11 Episodes1

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

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan: Regulatory unbundling will be as impactful as television channel unbundling

“And unbundling of regulatory, you know, regimes such that you don't have to buy them en masse, I think is going to be just as important as unbundling of, you know, television channels or what have you, such that you could just pick a la carte.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 14:52 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Opinion

Srinivasan: Gawker's business model was destroying individual reputations for cheap clicks

“Well, long overdue. I think that you know, without getting into a lot on that, like, They put a lot of people out of business. They attacked a lot of people. Their basic business model was to try to destroy somebody's reputation for five dollars in clicks. You…”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 27:04 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan predicts Uber and Airbnb will become multi-hundred billion dollar companies

“I think it's quite possible that those become multi-hundred billion dollar companies.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 9:43 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan: Uber and Airbnb have created one trillion dollars in societal value

“The rest of it is probably on the order of a trillion dollars in value that's being created if you were to compare it to what happened before.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 12:31 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan: The year 2030 will be decentralized like 1870, not 1950

“Especially because I think in many ways our future is more like our past. That's to say, you know, 20 30 I think will be more similar to 18 70 than it will to 1950. In many ways like 1950 was sort of a peak centralization point, and either side is like a mirro…”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 25:48 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Insight

Srinivasan: Venture capital creates a unique financial incentive for seeking truth

“VC has many, many faults, but there's a couple of things I think are really interesting about it, and one of the biggest is that a VC is very interested in whether they were wrong. You know, pass on a Series A company, and then it's successful, and it becomes …”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 28:12 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Insight

Srinivasan: VCs are financially incentivized to make founders wealthier than themselves

“VC is incentivized to build people up. You know, what I mean by that is as an investor, you want to invest in somebody and make them richer than yourself. Example, Peter Thiel investing in the young Mark Zuckerberg put 500,000 dollars into Zuckerberg. Thiel ma…”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 29:05 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan: 21's upcoming product will be digital currency's first mainstream application

“So we have something coming out. It's actually already in beta which I think will hopefully be the first mainstream application of digital currency.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 29:59 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Insight

Srinivasan: Excessive safety conservatism introduces systemic risk by blocking necessary innovation

“Being too conservative on safety actually leads to systemic risk because, you know, you stick with the current system, you stick with the current system, you stick with the current system, you don't take a risk.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 16:39 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Srinivasan: Uber is a more closely regulated marketplace than taxi medallion systems

“Uber is a more closely regulated marketplace than the taxi medallion system. It's harder to abuse it. Right. It's actually better at achieving the aims of the early twint century progressives than this antiquated system. Right. So it's not deregulated. It's re…”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 20:49 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Insight

Srinivasan: PhD students should size markets before picking research projects

“A little bit of market sizing at the beginning of their research could have you know, at least allow them to pick between two equivalently interesting research projects one of which had a higher market potential.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 5:42 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

Insight

Srinivasan: Regulatory changes should be proven in dedicated, isolated innovation zones

“You don't try to force the change on the entire system at once. Instead, you focus all your energy on carving out one sufficiently, you know, like it doesn't have to be huge, but sufficiently large zone where you can prove it out.”

Balaji Srinivasan Nov 25, 2016 ▶ 19:35 20VC: a16z's Balaji Srinivasan on Why There Is A Financial Incentive For Truth In VC & Why The Best VCs Invest In Founder To Make Them Richer Than Themselves

The other half of the tape: Balaji Srinivasan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 11 times in 8 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Shervin Pishevar 3 Luke Harries 2 Harry Stebbings 2 Albert Wenger 2 Avlok Kohli 1 Anish Acharya 1