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Chad Fowler

General Partner & CTO, BlueYard Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorexecutiveengineerauthorentertainer@chadfowler ↗LinkedIn ↗chadfowler.com ↗

Chad Fowler is a General Partner and CTO at BlueYard Capital. He previously served as the CTO of 6Wunderkinder, creators of Wunderlist, and authored The Passionate Programmer.

12statements → 8claims → 6claims resolved → 83%fully supported → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.92/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources →

5 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 6 assertions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 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 Chad 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
Wunderlist will become Microsoft's core task layer and spread its startup culture
“Ah, so for me and Wunderlist, it is integrate deeply into, to Microsoft, be the layer that connects things in terms of tasks, things you need to get done, and continue to both learn from one of the largest, most important technology organizations ever, but als…”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 24:15 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
88% 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? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.7

answered every one of 14 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? →

228 words/min while actually speaking · 33.6 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,217 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 ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Insight
Enterprise software bloat is driven by buyers negotiating on missing features
“And it's all about the historical war between customers and suppliers of enterprise business software, where it's like this self-defeating fight for features and complexity. It's all driven on fear and it's driven on, you know, fear based negotiation tactics. …”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 8:26 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wunderlist CTO Chad Fowler wants to never add another feature
“No, no, I don't want to add any features and that's not to say we won't, but personally, I would like to never add another feature to this piece of software. I think it's done.”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 12:03 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Prediction Held up
Wunderlist will become Microsoft's core task layer and spread its startup culture
“Ah, so for me and Wunderlist, it is integrate deeply into, to Microsoft, be the layer that connects things in terms of tasks, things you need to get done, and continue to both learn from one of the largest, most important technology organizations ever, but als…”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 24:15 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Supported
Berlin is significantly cheaper to operate in than comparable US cities
“And compared to most of the cities, or in contrast to most of the cities in the US that have the same sort of international footprint, it is incredibly cheap to live and operate in. That's not a Europe wide advantage, but that is something very special about B…”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 5:32 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Partly supported
Wunderlist easily recruited US West Coast talent to Berlin
“So with that in mind, it has been very easy for us at Wunderlist, for example, to attract international talent from Almost all over the world, and certainly even the west coast of the United States, because it's a nice destination for people and a place where …”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 6:53 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Insight
Avoiding complexity is the key to building habit-forming products
“And that's the core of how you can make something habit forming. You know, if you have a product that is complicated to work with and not a joy to work with, Then it's going to be harder to get yourself into a habit of using it, even if you want to use it.”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 16:06 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Insight
Human user testing yields greater insights than purely data-driven metrics
“We have recently made quite an investment of time and energy into user testing of features sometimes even before we develop them so that we can get features into the hands of real people who aren't inside our heads and see what makes sense to them. And that's …”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 18:13 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wunderlist maintained complete operational autonomy in Berlin after Microsoft acquisition
“Really nothing has changed. We're operating in Berlin. We're a solid team making decisions the same way we did before. Like I said, we, you know, we have freedom to do things exactly as we did in the past, but we have more help when we need it.”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 20:16 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Insight
Founders should evaluate potential acquirers like interviewing a prospective employer
“I guess I can say that what we did was we evaluated whether there would be a fit in the same way that you would evaluate an employer when you're being interviewed and essentially interviewing them for a job. At least that's the way I looked at it, and I think …”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 21:24 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Supported
Wunderkinder killed Wunderkit due to excessive complexity before refocusing on Wunderlist
“With Wunderlist, for example, you know, we, the team before I joined had created something called Wunderkit, and the DNA of the company was very much exactly what I'm talking about, this simple consumer-first approach, but Wunderkit was their experience of Goi…”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 10:40 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Supported
Wunderlist delayed adding folders for four and a half years
“Ultimately, we decided that folders really were an essential part of the experience for power users. And we added, added it later this year, but I think it had been on the request list since the initial launch, like four and a half years ago.”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 14:45 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013
Assertion Supported
Wunderlist never paid for advertising to acquire users
“So with Wunderlist, we literally never paid for advertisement.”
Chad Fowler Oct 9, 2015 ▶ 16:48 FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
FF 016: Chad Fowler, CTO @ Wunderlist, App Of The Year 2013 Oct 9, 2015 17m
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