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Chris Dark

President International, C2FO · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Chris Dark serves as President International at C2FO, a working capital marketplace backed by Union Square Ventures. Previously, he was a Vice President at Atomico and served on boards including Fab and Hailo.

12statements → 1claims → 1claims resolved → 4.25/5average certainty → 2.42/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources →

0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved. 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 Chris argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Chris Dark: Blockchain will fundamentally solve the $500B global remittance industry
“Whether it's Bitcoin or Stellar or whatever that, that, that will fundamentally change remittance around the world, and that's a half a trillion dollar industry or so. So that alone, it absolutely will solve.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 22:30 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO

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

4.1 / 5 directness 4.6 · coherence 4.1 · precision 3.7 · compression 3.4

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? →

300 words/min while actually speaking · 23.5 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,344 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 ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 45%

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

Opinion
Chris Dark: Arrogant venture investors ruin companies by micromanaging founders
“A lot of investors are Really screw up companies because they sit there thinking they know everything when they don't.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 4:47 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Raising venture funding is not an achievement in itself
“A lot of people think raising money is like the achievement, and it's not.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 11:19 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Founders should test investor promises by asking for help before closing
“Everyone's going to tell you, every investor's going to tell you how helpful they're going to be. They're going to introduce you to everyone in the world that you want to meet and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's really simple. You say, okay, that's fant…”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 15:16 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Great investors never leverage legal contracts to screw founders
“When the tough get going, they start looking at the legal docs and how they can screw the company and the founders. That's not cool, and no great investor does that in the long run.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 18:11 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Disclosure
Chris Dark: Bitcoin is irrelevant compared to the underlying blockchain technology
“I'm very long Bitcoin, so I have a bunch of Bitcoins, and not because I trade them or anything, it's just like, well, if the, look, the Bitcoin's irrelevant, right? What matters is the blockchain”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 22:12 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Chris Dark: Blockchain will fundamentally solve the $500B global remittance industry
“Whether it's Bitcoin or Stellar or whatever that, that, that will fundamentally change remittance around the world, and that's a half a trillion dollar industry or so. So that alone, it absolutely will solve.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 22:30 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Corporate acquisitions hinder innovation through excess process and regulation
“And anyone that's done that knows why it's difficult. You know, there's all of a sudden process and regulations and all sorts of stuff, which just makes it very hard to innovate.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 3:08 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Investors cannot know a startup better than dedicated founders
“There's no way you understand the business as well as the founders. You're very arrogant if you think you do. There are many people that think they do, but of course you don't because they work. 24, seven thinking about one thing only, and you're probably thin…”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 5:42 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Investors calling a startup 'interesting' means they will not invest
“If someone just keeps telling you it's interesting, that is, of course, the word of death. Interesting means they're not interested.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 13:58 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Valuation gaps like $40M versus $50M have minimal impact on founder equity
“People get very caught up on, oh, well, you know, I'm raising at forty million, maybe I think it should be 50. And actually, if you actually go and work out the difference To your ownership as a founder in those scenarios, it's very, very little. It's much mor…”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 14:58 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
What-if
Chris Dark: Skype's success depended entirely on its exact launch timing
“If they'd done it two years earlier, Wouldn't have worked. Two years later, it would have been too late.”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 19:21 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO
Insight
Chris Dark: Most prospective founders actually prefer being early startup employees
“A lot of people Think they want to be a founder, but they don't really. What they actually want to be is kind of the fifth, sixth employee have a little bit of infrastructure around them, and work in a kind of fast-paced startup. Very few people really want to…”
Chris Dark May 4, 2015 ▶ 23:29 20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris Dark, President International @ C2FO

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20 VC 033: The Pros and Cons of Venture Capital, Atomico and Entrepreneurship with Chris D May 4, 2015 18m
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