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Ed Cooke

Co-Founder & CEO, MindMax · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveauthorathlete@tedcooke ↗LinkedIn ↗mindmax.it ↗Wikipedia ↗

Ed Cooke is a Grand Master of Memory and author who co-founded the language-learning platform Memrise. He was prominently featured in the bestselling book Moonwalking with Einstein and is currently the co-founder and CEO of MindMax.

11statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4.36/5average certainty → 1.91/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 1said about them ↓

2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 4 opinions · 1 insight · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed. 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 Ed 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
Cooke trained journalist Joshua Foer to win the US Memory Championship
“I trained him for a year. And he actually won the American memory championships the year after.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 5:09 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% certainty 3
50% 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? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.3 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.8

redirected or did not address 4 of 23 assessed questions (17%). 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? →

251 words/min while actually speaking · 22.7 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,220 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 ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 45%

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

Opinion
Many Silicon Valley leaders are superficial, self-conceived philosopher kings
“And contrast that with the sort of rather superficial sort of self-conceived philosopher, philosopher kings you see in other parts of the valley where there's a much lower quality and depth and diversity of thought, but it might highly do your confidence.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 24:26 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Opinion
Competitor language apps relying entirely on text are inherently boring
“You look at other language learning apps and it's all text and it's just obviously boring.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 6:48 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Opinion
Competitor language apps focus too heavily on discipline and daily streaks
“Other language learning apps are very academic, they're all about discipline and like, you know, keeping up a daily streak, and, you know, it's this very, very niche kind of mentality, where we want to create something which is, like, authentically joyful, hil…”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 15:14 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Disclosure
Increasing gamification features directly boosts user retention at Memrise
“Yeah, in a word, yes. So we see the more we gamify, the more our intention improves. Of course, it's tied in with lots of other things. You need the content and the learning tech as well. But yeah, we see a big boost because of that.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 16:34 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Assertion Supported
Cooke trained journalist Joshua Foer to win the US Memory Championship
“I trained him for a year. And he actually won the American memory championships the year after.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 5:09 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Insight
Students learn more from their peers than from formal school instruction
“You know, you learn most at school, not from your school, but from your friends.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 5:55 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Assertion Partly supported
Structuring information into a narrative increases memory retention fivefold
“Narrative is like one of the fundamental principles of memory. You know, it turns something into a story. It's five times more, more memorable.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 15:56 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Memrise achieved profitability as a consumer language learning business
“You know, I have to say, by the way, we're now profitable.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 19:47 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Assertion Supported
Cooke memorized 16 decks of shuffled cards in one hour
“Wound up being able to learn, you know, 16 decks of shuffled cards in an hour or what have you.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 4:03 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Disclosure
Memrise sent a bus across Europe to record 20,000 native-speaker videos
“We've just sent a bus around Europe to go collect 20,000 short videos of native speakers in context.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 6:41 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory
Opinion
Quizlet Live successfully turns classrooms into focused social learning environments
“I'm a big admirer of what Quizlet are doing at Quizlet Live. So this is like a live classroom game, which actually kind of turns the classroom, turns that social space into a more focused learning environment.”
Ed Cooke Nov 18, 2016 ▶ 10:31 20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integration Of AI & Education Look Like & The Core Pillars Of Optimising Memory

The other half of the tape: Ed Cooke's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112025episodesmentions
0112025episodes it came up in
000.50.5112025episodesmentions per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Ed Cooke, Grandmaster of Memory on What Is Missing In EdTech? What Does The Integrat Nov 18, 2016 17m
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