Brian Wong

Co-Founder & General Partner, Ascii Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestorauthor@brian_wong ↗LinkedIn ↗brianwong.me ↗Wikipedia ↗

Brian Wong is the co-founder and former CEO of mobile rewards platform Kiip, which he founded at age 19. He is also an investor and the author of the 2016 book The Cheat Code.

14statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 3.93/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → 3.9/5argument clarity · the sources → 2said about them ↓

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

3 assertions · 1 opinion · 7 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 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 Brian 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

Kiip Generates Eight Figures in Revenue With 60 Employees

“Generating eight figures in revenue. We're at 60 employees. I'm still CEO. Five years later, pretty, pretty darn proud of what we've accomplished as a whole team.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 25:06 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet certainty 3

100% certainty 4

100% certainty 5

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? →

3.9 / 5 directness 3.5 · coherence 4.2 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.2

redirected or did not address 3 of 13 assessed questions (23%). 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? →

240 words/min while actually speaking · 49.2 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,109 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 ▶ 12:44“how difficult, though, this, this question's actually from Chris Redliss, um, who I actually spoke to before the interview, and he wondered, how difficult have you found it to rais…” ▶ 19:07“At this stage, you obviously have a board of directors, so how have they helped you, or hindered you even, along the Keep journey?” ▶ 22:08“how are you addressing the growing competitive market, and how are you navigating Keep into the new social media channels?”

when Brian pushed back ▶ 25:28“You know, I always like to say I don't necessarily want to follow or emulate someone because what worked for them may not work for me.” ▶ 14:42“You should not use my reference point at all, because that was five years ago. Things have changed massively.”

What they said14 What others said2 Episodes1

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

Assertion Not checkable as stated

True Ventures Originated the Founder-Friendly VC Movement in Silicon Valley

“The philosophy was actually, thanks to True given to me because of their philosophy, which was seeking founder-friendly venture capitalists, and that was really kind of their contribution to the ecosystem, was how do we find, how do we be the most founder-frie…”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 7:48 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Opinion

Despite the Branding, Very Few VCs Are Truly Founder-Friendly

“And then, yeah, and then, and even now there's not that many founder-friendly VCs.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 8:12 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Struggling Companies Need Founders to Step In and Restore Original Vision

“There was also sort of this need for a founder to come in and reinstate their sort of the reasons why the company was started in the first place and kind of bring things to this original vision.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 11:05 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Board Meetings Should Review Pre-Discussed Items, Not Introduce New Decisions

“The board meeting is really kind of a review of everything that's already been talked about. It's not supposed to be a place where you talk about brand new things That require a lot of heavy decision making. It's just a place for people to convene once those d…”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 21:37 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Founders Cannot Truly Judge a VC Until Working With Them Directly

“It's been so noisy in the past five years since I've started doing this. It's been five years now that it's almost so hard to know if a VC is truly someone you want to look up to or respect until you actually know them.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 6:01 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Founder-Friendly VCs Avoid Taking Too Much Equity in Early Rounds

“Well, practically speaking, it's not gobbling up so much of the company in the first chunk that you have zero incentives to stick around as a founder.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 8:24 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Raising Mega Growth Rounds Requires Triple-Digit Year-Over-Year Revenue Growth

“It's really hard to raise growth capital, ah, especially off of revenues, ah, primarily because unless, and especially in this environment, and the reason is because as much as it sounds there's tons of growth money being thrown out there, like a hundred milli…”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 15:23 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Disclosure

Kiip Raised Most of Its Later-Stage Capital From Strategic Corporate VCs

“Pretty much most of the new capital we've raised from new funds in our latter rounds have been pretty much only strategic, ah, corporate VCs.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 17:10 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

Founders Should Prioritize Revenue-Generating Investors Over Cool or Prestigious Ones

“I care less about investors that are generally cool, Right? And I care more about investors that can help us generate more revenue.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 18:18 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Insight

A CEO's Primary Job Is Sparking Strategic Ideas, Not Direct Execution

“Making sure that you have some bandwidth as a CEO to keep your head above the water to sort of see what's going on and really understand what you could try doing and knowing that it is part of your job to go out there and think of very strategic ideas that peo…”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 22:43 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Assertion Supported

Kiip Generates Eight Figures in Revenue With 60 Employees

“Generating eight figures in revenue. We're at 60 employees. I'm still CEO. Five years later, pretty, pretty darn proud of what we've accomplished as a whole team.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 25:06 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Disclosure

Kiip Has 60 Employees and Nearly $30 Million in Venture Funding

“And we're, you know, now 60 employees across the country, and we've raised now almost thirty million in B.C.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 4:35 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Disclosure

Kiip Integrated Its Platform Into Connected Cars and Breathalyzers

“We caught on to it quite early, and we ended up integrating Keep into connected device companies, like connected cars, and most recently connected breathalyzer, which is hysterical of an example, but we kind of learned about this area and started dabbling in i…”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 22:16 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Assertion Supported

Kiip Launched Its Loyalty Platform With MasterCard as Its Lead Client

“We released our loyalty platform a few months ago with MasterCard as our lead client, and we've got a bunch more announcements in the coming month.”

Brian Wong Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 28:46 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

The other half of the tape: Brian Wong's own voice is left out of every number here. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Statements about Brian Wong, by other people (2)

Disclosure

Craig wrote the very first check into Wish.com

“I wrote Probably the first, the very first check into a company back then known as context logic, which is now wish.com. And they're a very large e-commerce play now, billions of dollars that came from an introduction from Brian Wong of keep.”

Paige Craig Mar 30, 2016 ▶ 17:01 20VC: 'The Best Seed Investors Hunt' with Paige Craig @ Arena VC

Assertion Supported

Brian Wong Graduated College at 18 and Launched Digg's Android App

“He skipped four grades in school and graduated university at just 18, at which point he moved to the States on his own, and within months Was working alongside tech legends Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson at Dig, where he launched their Android mobile app.”

Harry Stebbings Oct 23, 2015 ▶ 0:20 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24	Oct 23, 2015	21m

Brian Wong

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Statements about Brian Wong, by other people (2)

Appearances (1)

Turn any episode into a week of clips.