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Dave McClure

Founder & Managing Partner, Practical Venture Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderexecutiveoperator@davemcclure ↗LinkedIn ↗practicalvc.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Dave McClure is the co-founder and former CEO of the global accelerator and seed fund 500 Startups, following earlier roles at PayPal and Founders Fund. He has backed breakout tech companies including Twilio and Credit Karma, and currently leads Practical Venture Capital.

14statements → 2claims → 0claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → 4.6/5argument clarity · the sources → 44said about them ↓

2 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 1 opinion · 3 insights · 8 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 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 Dave 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? →

4.6 / 5 directness 4.8 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.6 · compression 4

answered every one of 22 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? →

241 words/min while actually speaking · 24.6 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,184 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 ▾ 4/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 4/10
setup questions received 41%

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

Insight
Venture math should focus on probability distributions, not ownership percentages
“But the point that I was making with Michael is that ownership really isn't the math that we use to kind of think about how we invest. We really think more in terms of number of investments and the likely probability distribution of finding large outcomes. And…”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 8:56 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Opinion
Sam Altman's advice to wait for YC is selfish and poor
“I think that's kind of laughable and actually probably really poor advice for entrepreneurs. Usually I think Sam and YC in general is an amazing program, and they offer lots of benefits and advice. In this particular case, I think they were being a little bit …”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 17:11 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Insight
Predictably hitting unicorns requires investing in 200 to 500 startups
“If we find, you know, unicorn only two percent of the time, or heaven forbid, one percent of the time, our portfolio size needs to be a minimum of 50 to a hundred to really have a shot at that, and I would argue, actually, we are aiming for more than one unico…”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 7:47 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Early rounds for Lyft, Credit Karma, and Twilio were uncompetitive
“When we invested in Lyft out of FB Fund, I guess it was called Zimride at the time, and when we invested in Credit Karma and Twilio they were not really that competitive rounds, even though, you know, the founders were compelling most of the time.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 5:33 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Insight
Overemphasis on venture signaling indicates underlying company performance issues
“My perspective on this is typically that if the founder or other investors are more worried about my investment decision than the baseline performance of the company, there's already likely some kind of problem there.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 13:53 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
500 Startups has invested in over 100 Y Combinator companies
“We've been investors through our seed investment program in a bunch of YC companies, over a hundred. I think we're actually one of the top three or four investors in YC companies over the years.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 17:32 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
McClure passed on investing in Uber multiple times, starting at seed
“Clearly Uber was the deal that I totally fucked up. Travis gave me the opportunity to invest in June of... The reality is I didn't invest multiple times, not just in the seed realm, so it's probably my mistake multiple times over.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 23:30 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
McClure's angel portfolio returned 3x without any unicorn exits
“So in my angel investment portfolio, I made about 13 investments. I did some advisory work for a few other companies, but let's say it's maybe 15 companies. There were no unicorns in that group of companies, but I had three What we would call centaurs or a hun…”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 6:30 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
500 Startups targets 1% to 5% ownership in seed rounds
“The typical ownership that we hold in most of our seed round investments is probably between one to five percent. Maybe a little bit higher in some of the international geographies where valuations are lower. For Accelerator, it might start at around five to s…”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 8:32 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
McClure turned $300K across 13 angel deals into three $100M+ exits
“Started doing angel investing as I was leaving PayPal in 2004, kind of doing that part-time recreationally, I guess, but invested in about, I guess, about 13 companies over the next four years, put about 300,000, maybe total, and got a few wins out of that, I …”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 2:45 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Assertion Not checkable as stated
SlideShare and Mashery seed rounds were not competitive
“SlideShare and Mashree certainly were not, like, super competitive rounds although, you know, strong team and capable founders.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 5:12 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
McClure invested $25,000 into Mint.com's Series A round
“Mint.com, I guess, was probably a little bit competitive Certainly by the time the A round happened, I put about 25 K into the A round, but I'd already been, you know, helping the company here and there a little bit.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 5:22 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
500 Startups accelerator terms include a $500K follow-on option
“With our accelerator companies, we have a kind of fixed structure that we invest into and we ask for a 500 K option to invest in the follow on round where we don't exceed 20% of the round.”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 10:33 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing
Disclosure
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”
Dave McClure Aug 15, 2016 ▶ 24:05 20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing

The other half of the tape: Dave McClure's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 42 times in 13 episodes on 20VC. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 22Matt Lerner 10Marvin Liao 4Parker Thompson 2Jason Calacanis 2Philipp Moehring 1Mike Duboe 1

Statements about Dave McClure, by other people (2)

Opinion
Calacanis: 500 Startups would be twice as successful doing half as many deals
“I think if they can maybe, I think they would be twice as successful if they did half as much. That would be my, that is my advice to Dave. Do half as many deals, but do them twice as well”
Jason Calacanis Jun 1, 2015 ▶ 48:31 Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
Opinion
Calacanis: Accelerator cohorts of 120 companies harm participating startups
“I do think that a 120 companies at Y Combinator and whatever Dave's doing is, it's just, it's not good for the startups.”
Jason Calacanis Jun 1, 2015 ▶ 49:16 Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00133256201520162017201820192020202120222023episodesmentions
036201520162017201820192020202120222023episodes it came up in
004386201520162017201820192020202120222023episodesmentions per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2016 12 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
2015 24 mentions in 3 episodes 8 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & W Aug 15, 2016 19m
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