Brad Feld
Partner & Co-Founder, Foundry · 3 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
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Brad Feld is a partner and co-founder at Foundry and a co-founder of Techstars. He has backed companies including Fitbit and Zynga, and co-authored the book Venture Deals.
35statements → 7claims → 6claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4.17/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 223said about them ↓
4 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 5 assertions · 4 opinions · 19 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, and 1 names 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 Brad 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
Feld: 20x forward revenue B2B SaaS valuations will normalize
“Like, does anybody really believe that a B to B SaaS company should be valued at 20 times forward revenue? Maybe, I suppose, and the public markets value some that way, but that's not a logical construct long term. That's going to normalize.”
Their most notable contradicted claim
Foundry Group will never add junior staff or expand team
“When we started Foundry, a deeply held belief was that we would never grow. It would just be, you know, the initial partners. We'd never add any junior people, and that we would be the ones that were doing all the work with the founders versus, you know, havin…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
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? →
4.5 / 5
directness 4.8 · coherence 4.9 ·
precision 4.5 · compression 4
answered every one of 12 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? →
253 words/min while actually speaking · 40.5 um and uh per 1k words
Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,914 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 3 rated episodes:
host pushback ▾ 1.7/10
setup questions received 65%
host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 6:45“How did you deal with adopting that responsibility so much earlier than you thought you would?” ▶ 14:25“How do you guys think about that fear of transparency with these stakeholders who fund a lot of what we do in many respects?” ▶ 16:57“How do you think about the attachment of happiness to milestones?” ▶ 20:27“And with the many years of venture, Brad, do you not slightly look at some of the pricing today and just feel very uncomfortable?” ▶ 11:10“How did seeing that, having now kind of witnessed the time that you spent at SoftBank and also the dot-com, how did that really impact your investing mentality today, do you think,…” ▶ 17:26“How do you think about changing cadence of investing according to potential downturn and that mindset?”
Everything Brad Feld said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Brad Feld: There is zero correlation between achieving milestones and happiness
“There is no correlation. Zero. Between happiness and achieving a milestone.”
Brad Feld: Constant entrepreneurial striving is bullshit and causes struggle
“Stopping striving is pretty enlightening, because our programming as people, as entrepreneurs especially, Is that you must constantly be striving to achieve the next goal or the next outcome. What a load of bullshit. And the words themselves kind of make me sh…”
Brad Feld: Mega-cap valuations require underlying long-term profitability
“The idea that you'd be one of the world's most valuable businesses and your fundamental economic characteristics don't generate a long-term profit cycle, well, that's not going to work.”
Feld: 20x forward revenue B2B SaaS valuations will normalize
“Like, does anybody really believe that a B to B SaaS company should be valued at 20 times forward revenue? Maybe, I suppose, and the public markets value some that way, but that's not a logical construct long term. That's going to normalize.”
Feld: Founders and VCs waste time on performative 'fake' work
“CEOs spend a lot of time having fake CEO days, and I think VCs spend a lot of time having fake VC days. And if you really want to be successful, by the way, that translates to everybody on the leadership team, everywhere throughout a company, don't have fake f…”
Feld: A board's only real decision is whether to support the CEO
“I and my partners at Foundry like to carry around Sort of one decision we have to make at a board level. And we talk about it as the only decision we want to make is whether or not we support the CEO. And if we support her, our job is to work for her.”
Founder passion is ephemeral; investments require palpable obsession
“It's ephemeral. You know, my throwaway line is it belongs in the bedroom. Obsession, you know, obsession is a different thing and not an unhealthy obsession, but an obsession that's palpable.”
Brad Feld: Tech industry has long suffered from systemic substance abuse
“There has long been a drug and alcohol problem in tech, not just in tech, but in lots of different parts of business and society, acknowledging it and then understanding what's at the root cause of it, and then some set of people deciding to change, change the…”
Brad Feld: Early-stage TAM metrics are not helpful for VC investing
“And it was one of these things where the venture cliche of total available market, especially at the early stages is really not that helpful, especially when you're coming into a world with a product obsession, even if you're to Displacing an existing incumben…”
Feld: Individual macroeconomic forecasts are almost guaranteed to be wrong
“The interesting thing about where we are is it's very easy to prognosticate about what's going to happen with certainty, and it's almost guaranteed that those prognostications are going to be incorrect, and any one individual prognostication will be incorrect.”
Feld: 'Let's do a deal together' is a hollow VC cliché
“Hey, let's do a deal together someday is one of the most hollow statements in the world of VC, because that's so different than, Hey, I'm working on this thing that I'd really love to get you other VC involved in to help.”
Brad Feld: VCs excel at self-promotion, but crisis behavior reveals true quality
“Most VCs are really good at selling themselves. That's not where it matters. Where it matters is when things get all screwed up or when you're having tension or when there's exogenous pressures on the other person that have nothing to do with you or the compan…”
Brad Feld: VCs cannot have purely professional relationships with founders
“I don't actually think you can have a solely professional relationship with an entrepreneur in a startup”
Foundry Group will never add junior staff or expand team
“When we started Foundry, a deeply held belief was that we would never grow. It would just be, you know, the initial partners. We'd never add any junior people, and that we would be the ones that were doing all the work with the founders versus, you know, havin…”
Every fund raised by Foundry Group is capped at $225M
“Another corollary to that is that every fund we raised would be the same size. So we've raised multiple funds. Every one of them is two hundred and twenty-five million dollars.”
Subtractive laser printing is more versatile than 3D printing
“This is a product that does basically the same, but I think it's actually a much more versatile long-term technology than three D printing in terms of what it can do.”
Brad Feld: Mental health stigma creates a personal doom loop for founders
“Realized that there was an incredible stigma around issues of mental health in our society broadly, but especially in the context of entrepreneurship. And that stigma that existed actually made things much, much worse for somebody who was Depressed, and that o…”
Brad Feld: Pressure to present perfection inhibits personal effectiveness and success
“And this idealized state that our culture Has created where you have to carry yourself and present yourself in a certain way is actually a massive inhibitor of people being effective and successful.”
Brad Feld: Processing emotional issues comfortably makes him a more effective investor
“I think the ability to process that stuff in a way that is comfortable for me makes me a much more effective investor.”
Brad Feld: Tying your entire identity to your work is unhealthy
“Linking some of my identity, my work, totally healthy. But my entire identity, not healthy for me at all.”
Brad Feld: Great founding CEOs treat the company itself as the product
“The interesting trajectory of that is that early in the life of a company, the product does matter a ton. As the company starts to grow and develop, the great founding CEOs start to view the company itself as the product. So they evolved from being product foc…”
Feld: VCs who react fearfully in downturns harm portfolio companies
“When things change, you have to be pragmatic. If you're reactionary and fearful, and, you know, all of a sudden, everybody says, oh, my God, the world is ending. You know, you must do these things. As a VC, that's not that helpful. It's more helpful to have a …”
Brad Feld: The only way to know business partners is to work together
“The only real way to get to know someone is to do something with them. So the first of your evaluative criteria is a decision that you want to work with somebody else based on whatever external information you have. And then the second piece of evaluative crit…”
The other half of the tape: Brad Feld's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 214 times in 74 episodes on 20VC. 9 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 136Seth Levine 14Clinton Foy 6Semil Shah 4Philipp Moehring 4Neeraj Agrawal 4Arteen Arabshahi 4Ryan McIntyre 3
Statements about Brad Feld, by other people (9)
Clavier: Fitbit Would Have Died Without Brad Feld's Series A Investment
“Every single round of financing was either close to impossible, To raise, I had to beg Brad failed to invest in the Series A saving Fitbit, because without that investment from Brad, they would be dead, and even the Series B or the Series C were not easy, desp…”
Lindzon: VCs like Fred Wilson would have sold before 2001 crash
“In 99, 2000, I'm sure Fred Wilson and Brad Feld and a lot of the VCs wish they understood the stock markets because they would have sold, because they could have sold. Instead, they wrote everything to zero in 2001.”
Investors Make Money in Winners, but Friends in Losers
“One that's kicking around in my head recently is, you know, back in September, Fred Wilson, in his blog, he quoted Brad Feld, who said that, you make money in winners, but you make friends in losers. And, you know, it's absolutely so true, and it's been very t…”
Foundry Group's Brad Feld responds to every email within 15 minutes
“Brad was going to be the one who I said because he, you know, he responds to every email and he responds in like 15 minutes.”
Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are investors in 500 Startups
“Brad Feld and Fred Wilson have been sort of mentors and, you know, are small investors in our fund”
Arabshahi: Brad Feld has exceptional email response etiquette and speed
“Brad, Brad is like, I mean, the guy, his email response etiquette and ratio is just like tremendous.”
Tak Lo: Techstars originated from David Cohen and Brad Feld's open office hours
“Techstars was created actually between David Cohen and Brad Feld's open office hours.”
Stebbings: Fred Wilson and Brad Feld replied to cold email in 30 minutes
“I emailed Fred when I was 17 years old, and him and Brad Feld both responded to me within 30 minutes.”
Harry Stebbings: Calm has raised over $143 million from top investors
“To date, the company's raised over a hundred and forty three million dollars in financing from some of the best, including Lightspeed, Insight, TPG, and then some very cool names, including Ashton Kutcher, Harry Styles, Brad Feld, and Jason Calicanis.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 9 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- Semil Shah: Lessons Learned Scaling from a $1M to a $50M Fund | 20VC #951 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Logan Bartlett: WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? | 20VC #920 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Peter Singlehurst: The Most Powerful Investor You've Never Heard of | 20VC #907 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Biggest Lessons and Challenges Building One of the Most Successful Seed Funds, How To Manage Investor Psychology, Self-Doubt and Insecurity & The Secret to Truly Successful Venture Partnerships with David Frankel, Co-Founder @ Founder Collective
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 6 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Calm Founder Alex Tew on What It Takes To Build Viral Products Today, The Current State of Customer Acquisition Costs, What Makes The Best Brands
- 20VC: Sahil Lavingia on Rolling Funds and Their Impact on The Future of Venture, How To Evaluate Market, Team and Product, The Value of Party Rounds & The Pros and Cons of Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed
- 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Opendoor's Scaling Journey, How To Implement Systems for Growth & The Right Way To Structure Customer Discovery Processes with Julia DeWahl, Angel Investor
- 20VC: How To Solve The Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? How Important Is Differentiated Supply? How To Prevent Leakage? How to Create Marketplace Defensibility and more with Alyssa Ravasio, Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp
- 20VC: How Founders Should Think Through Distribution and Customer Acquisition Today, The Challenges of the Digital Advertising Duopoly Currently & How To Structure Company Post Mortems Effectively with Gabriel Weinberg, Founder & CEO @ DuckDuckGo
- 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 27 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures
- 20VC: AOL Founder, Steve Case on Why The Best Venture Investments of The Next 10 Years Will Likely Not Be In The Valley, Why The CEO Must Be The Shock Absorber For Company Morale and Why Vision Without Execution is Hallucination
- 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room
- 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture
- 20VC: Stride's Fred Destin on The Acceptable vs Non-Acceptable Risks When Investing, How Startup Founders Can Improve The Quality of Their Decision-Making and Must Play for Batting Average & Why Plans Do Not Matter and No Board Member Should Bash An Entre
- 20VC: a16z's Ben Horowitz on How To Create An Environment of Trust with Founders, How and Why Creating Shocking Rules Is So Impactful To Culture & What The Samurai, Shaka Senghor and Toussaint Teach Us About Company Culture Building
- 20VC: Benchmark's Bill Gurley on 5 Traits Benchmark Look For When Adding To The Partnership, Why The Abundance of Capital Is Today's Biggest Challenge in VC & The Right Way To Think About Market Size When Assessing Opportunities
- 20VC: First Round's Josh Kopelman on Why Price Is Both An Art and A Science, Why Ownership Must Be Built on First Check and The Negative Consequences of Attribution in Venture
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: The Metrics That Matter In Early-Stage Consumer, Why Moats Matter More Than Brand Today and How VCs Deal with S*** Hit The Fan Moments with Jason Stoffer, Managing Partner @ Maveron
- 20VC: Top 3 Considerations When Evaluating Consumer Businesses Today | 700 Meetings, 70 LPs, 2 Years, What It Takes To Raise a First Time Fund| The Power of The Female Network In Action Today with Anu Duggal, Founding Partner @ Female Founders Fund
- 20VC: Why Partners Are There To Save Each Other From Themselves, Why Effective Reserve Allocation Is The Hardest Question In Venture & What Makes The Truly Special Board Members with Jeff Fagnan, Founding Partner @ Accomplice
- 20VC: Why Process is Everything In Good Venture Firms, Why GPs Should Have More Empathy For LPs and Lessons from 32 Years In VC, Chairing Over 25 Boards with Peter Parker, Managing Partner @ Bioinnovation Capital
- 20VC: Andy McLoughlin on The Benefits of Backing Unsexy Businesses with Non-Obvious Founders, How To Distinguish Between A Good Bridge Round and A Bridge To Nowhere & Whether VCs Really Do Add Value?
- 20VC: Why Vulnerability Is A Strength In VC, 3 Core Components That Make The Most Successful VCs & How VCs and Entrepreneurs Can Build Meaningful Relationships Pre-Investment with Brian Garrett, Founding Partner @ Crosscut Ventures
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 26 mentions in 9 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: The Fundamentals To Creating A Successful Venture Partnership & The Optimal Investment Decision Making Process with Ryan McIntyre, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group
- 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group
- 20VC: Why Investors Have The Biggest Problem with Bias, Why Our Job Is To Maximise Risk & Why It Is Essential To Get Good at Losing with True Ventures Founder, Jon Callaghan
- 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
- 20VC: VC of The Year: Forerunner's Kirsten Green on 2 $Bn+ Exits in 1 Year, Why We Are In The Very Early Innings For Commerce & How Brand Has Fundamentally Changed Over The Last Decade
- 20VC: Tony Conrad on Straddling The Role Of Founder & Investor, What True Founder/Product Fit Looks Like & The Dangers of Party Rounds
- 20VC: Why Valuation Is Of Critical Importance At Seed, How To Understand Innovation Cycles & Having 3 CEOs and Burning $10m a Month with Lee Hower, Co-Founder @ NextView Ventures
- 20VC: The Radical Changes In Public Market Expectations, The Right Way To Assess Valuation & What It Means To Be A Disciplined & Diligent Investor with Randy Glein, Partner @ DFJ Growth
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2017 →
2016 71 mentions in 20 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: CEO Whisperer Jerry Colonna on How Investors Mimic Aggressive Behaviour To Cover Insecurity and Why Vulnerability is Key To Success In VC
- 20VC: How Entrepreneurs Should Manage Their Board & Why Time Constraints Are Always The Key To Progress with Paul Berberian @ Sphero
- 20VC: Why You Have To Be A Good Long Term Actor To Succeed in VC & How Owning An Esports Team Could Be A $Bn Outcome with Clinton Foy, General Partner @ Crosscut Ventures
- 20VC: Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson & Brad Feld and Why Fundraising Is An Art & Not Everyone Can Be An Artist with Howard Lindzon Founder @ Stocktwits & Managing Partner @ Social Leverage
- 20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid
- 20VC: Why Hardware Is Actually Software Wrapped In Plastic & "Of Course Hardware Is Hard, Everything Is Hard" with Ben Einstein, Founder & General Partner @ Bolt VC
- 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures
- Uber's First Investor, First Round Capital's Rob Hayes on How The Deal Of The Decade Originated and Why Product Orientated VC Is The Future
- 12 more episodes that year, every mention in 2016 →
2015 63 mentions in 15 episodes 4 per episode
- 20 VC 066: FOUNDRY GROUP WEEK 1: Seth Levine: 'VC Is Not A Scalable Business'
- 20 VC 069: Jeff Clavier, King of Seed Funding @ SoftTech VC on Brad Feld, Fitbit and Standout Startups
- FF 011: 'The Savviest Investors Don't Ask What If' with Ben Nader, CEO & Founder @ Butterfleye
- 20 VC 082: 500 Startups Week: Growth Hacking 101: How To 10x Your Conversion with Matt Lerner, Head of Distro Dojo London
- 20 VC 080: How VCs Can Differentiate Themselves with Patricia Nakache, General Partner @ Trinity Ventures
- 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget
- 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures
- 20 VC FF 021: From TechCrunch to Founder to TechCrunch with the legend, Steve O'Hear
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2015 →
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 20VC: Brad Feld, Jerry Colonna and Tracy Lawrence on Depression and Mental Health, The Dan | Jul 27, 2020 | 14m |
| 20VC: Brad Feld on Why Market Size At Early Stage Is Not Helpful, His Biggest Learnings Fr | Sep 30, 2019 | 37m |
| 20 VC 065: FOUNDRY GROUP WEEK 1: Brad Feld: Founders Should Be Obsessed, Passion Belongs I | Aug 24, 2015 | 24m |