StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

David Wu

General Partner, Maveron · 1 appearance on the record.

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

He joined Maveron as a General Partner in 2012, focusing on consumer web companies. He sourced and led investments in Eargo and Darby Smart and coaches entrepreneurs at Bay Area incubators.

11statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 3.73/5average certainty → 2.09/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 5said about them ↓

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

3 assertions · 2 opinions · 4 insights · 2 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 David 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
Series A deal volume remains flat despite the seed funding explosion
“There's so many seeds getting funded out there, but at the end of the day, the A's are still happening, and they're happening later in larger figures, but there's not that many more Series A deals getting funded.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 5:14 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
50% 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? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.8

redirected or did not address 1 of 22 assessed questions (5%). 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? →

227 words/min while actually speaking · 9.4 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,310 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 1/10
setup questions received 70%

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

Opinion
New York's rational financial mindset limits growth compared to Bay Area ambition
“One of the big differences between the financial mindset of New York is and in the Bay Area, New York starts off with, well, you know, this is as big as you possibly can get, and this is what's rational for, you know, what could happen in the Bay Area is still…”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 7:01 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Insight
Consumer startups offer minimal IP differentiation compared to founder execution
“There's less and less differentiation on the IP of consumer deals and much more around how well the team understands how to connect with end consumers.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 13:25 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Insight
Revisionist history is one of the most common traits among successful CEOs
“I think on the entrepreneur side, I almost, I often tell people that one of the most common traits in successful CEOs and successful entrepreneurs is revisionist history.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 18:46 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Assertion Partly supported
Maveron exclusively invests in direct-to-consumer startups
“Every investment we make is something that is direct to consumer, so no enterprise, infrastructure, and hardly even B to B to C.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 3:16 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Opinion
Unprecedentedly favorable conditions for founding a company in the Bay Area
“It's probably never been a better time to start a company in the Bay Area if you're a founder.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 4:45 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Assertion Supported
Series A deal volume remains flat despite the seed funding explosion
“There's so many seeds getting funded out there, but at the end of the day, the A's are still happening, and they're happening later in larger figures, but there's not that many more Series A deals getting funded.”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 5:14 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Easy seed funding creates peak competition in startup recruiting
“On the right team side, I think the recruiting environment's getting as competitive as it's ever been, and that's sort of the downside to how easy it is to get seed funding, and not only in terms of the talent”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 8:09 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Insight
Founders should reference check VCs with their least successful portfolio companies
“Do that same amount of diligence. And, you know, go talk to, Portfolio companies, probably the most successful and the least successful portfolio companies in some of the investors that you're thinking of taking money from, and really understand, you know, how…”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 10:36 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Insight
Non-startup achievements predict success for first-time founders
“Past success is often indicative of future success, and so even a first-time founder, you know, maybe a nineteen-year-old coming out of the UK has had some body of work of things they've accomplished in their life, whether it's winning awards in sports or scho…”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 15:15 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Disclosure
David Wu passed on investing in Stitch Fix, Instacart, and Dollar Shave Club
“But from an investor perspective, I would probably say that, you know, the biggest mistakes have to be, you know, my personal portfolio to date. Or anti-portfolio. And three that come to mind are all for different reasons where companies that I passed on that …”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 19:04 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron
Disclosure
Maveron evaluates potential CEOs using a 10-trait scorecard reviewed post-investment
“We, we've kind of put together a list of 10 key traits that we believe are kind of the key success traits for a Maveron consumer successful founder, and we actually score all our potential investments CEOs against this scorecard, and we often look back six mon…”
David Wu Jul 29, 2015 ▶ 13:46 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron

The other half of the tape: David Wu's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0031522016episodesmentions
0122016episodes it came up in
001.312.522016episodesmentions per episode
2016 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maver Jul 29, 2015 17m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more