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Hadi Partovi

Founder & Chairman of the Board, Code.org · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestor@hadip ↗LinkedIn ↗partovi.org ↗

Hadi Partovi co-founded the education nonprofit Code.org and served as its longtime CEO. He previously co-founded Tellme Networks and iLike, and has been an early angel investor and advisor to companies such as Facebook, Airbnb, and Dropbox.

18statements → 9claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 23said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 7 assertions · 1 opinion · 7 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 5 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 Hadi 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
Partovi: Microsoft earnings grew fantastically under Steve Ballmer's CEO tenure
“The Steve years were not great for Microsoft's stock price. They were fantastic for Microsoft's earnings and earnings growth.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 8:24 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

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

4.5 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.9 · precision 4.3 · compression 4

redirected or did not address 1 of 40 assessed questions (3%). 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 · 22.3 um and uh per 1k words · 11.9 false starts per 1k · 29.1% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: Persian). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 8,647 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 ▾ 5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Insight
Top Tech Founders Like Jobs and Musk Actively Micromanage Product Details
“If you think of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg Elon Musk, none of these folks are just trust that the team will get it done. They're getting very involved in little details. And it's much harder to point to examples of incredible consumer technology s…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 10:50 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Partovi: 'Move fast and break things' fails for multi-billion-dollar tech giants
“This works well, if you're small, the Facebook and you move fast and break things, you know, this idea of shoot first aim later that works well when the consequences are smaller or when you can undo the mistakes. Cause then you correct them. It doesn't work wh…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 30:06 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Partovi Predicts $10 Billion Public Company Axon Has 100x Growth Potential
“Axon's a ten billion dollar public company, but it still has 100 X growth potential.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 53:43 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Partovi Personally Competed Against Steve Ballmer to Recruit Harvard and MIT Talent
“Even while I was at Tell Me, we were fighting, I was personally fighting Balmer on recruiting Harvard graduates and MIT graduates. I would call a student, He would call a student. I would call them back. He would call them back. And he knew that this was happe…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 6:36 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Partovi: Steve Ballmer deserves far more credit for building Microsoft
“Steve Ballmer does not get anywhere near enough credit for having built Microsoft's into the powerhouse that it is right now.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 8:06 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Partovi: Convincing elite engineers to join is harder than VC fundraising
“It is far easier for a VC to write a check with somebody else's money than to get a stellar engineer who has a hundred options, but can only pick one of them to basically say, you're going to be the company that I'm going to make my bet on.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 20:39 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Stockpiling Cash Is a Bad Startup Strategy in High-Inflation Environments
“I don't think it's good to stockpile cash right now. A lot of people think, you know, in the old days, you'd say raise. You know, raise the largest amount you can when you can. That makes a lot of sense when inflation was zero and interest rates were zero. Whe…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 23:18 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Partovi: Only 5% of people use calculus in daily life, compared to statistics
“Everybody uses statistics in their daily lives and maybe five percent of people use calculus in their daily lives.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 43:27 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Partovi: Microsoft earnings grew fantastically under Steve Ballmer's CEO tenure
“The Steve years were not great for Microsoft's stock price. They were fantastic for Microsoft's earnings and earnings growth.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 8:24 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Facebook Had Nine Employees When Accel Offered a $100 Million Valuation
“Facebook at this time was nine people. It was a nine person company. They were in a hundred different colleges and it was called the Facebook, not, it wasn't yet Facebook. And we met the day they got their term sheet from Excel you know, for the a hundred mill…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 14:53 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Partovi Secured Early Facebook Advisor Equity at a $10 Million Valuation
“I ended up becoming an advisor, which was actually slightly better than investing because I ended up getting in at the, at a ten million dollar valuation rather than a hundred mil valuation”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 16:50 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Partovi: Startups conducting layoffs should cut deep and do it once
“I would definitely say that if you're cutting, cut deep and do it only once. Multiple rounds of cutting or like just dribbling it out destroys morale and it also destroys credibility.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 22:29 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Partovi: Internal execution poses bigger risk to seed startups than macroeconomics
“If you're a series Seed startup. The doom and gloom that exists is you screwing up your own startup in the next 12 months. That's like the higher order chance of total failure is just your relationship with your co-founders. Do you find product market fit? Can…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 24:46 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Partovi: Generative AI will enable higher-level programming commands
“So generative AI is going to make it possible to use much higher level commands than today's languages.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 46:42 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Understanding Code Remains Essential to Verify AI-Generated Outputs
“Understanding the code is still important. Think if you use generative AI to write an essay, You still need to read that essay. You don't just say, please write me a blog post and then, okay, it's done. Ship it. You want to read it and confirm it's the thing t…”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 47:18 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Partovi: Code.org targets $10 to $20 cost per high school CS student
“If we're impacting students at the high school level, the cost for teaching computer science to a student should add up to roughly 10 dollars, 10 to 20 bucks, not hundreds or thousands of dollars.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 32:31 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Partovi: Code.org has taught hundreds of millions of students computer science
“So code.org has taught hundreds of millions of students, computer science.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 55:29 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Partovi: Only five U.S. states mandate high school computer science graduation
“There's five states in the US that require every student must learn computer science to graduate high school.”
Hadi Partovi Dec 16, 2022 ▶ 57:48 Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Hadi Partovi's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 7 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 8Ali Partovi 5Drew Houston 4Emil Michael 3Dara Khosrowshahi 1Dan Lewis 1

Statements about Hadi Partovi, by other people (1)

Disclosure
Dan Lewis evaluated multiple business models with Hadi and Ali Partovi
“And I spent a lot of time actually with Hadi Partovi and Ali Partovi exploring some of these ideas early, my co-founder, Grant Goodale. And then we kind of came up with the right business model in addition to, you know, four or five other ones that we looked a…”
Dan Lewis Mar 23, 2018 ▶ 4:03 20VC: How To Strategically Build The Right Investor Base, Why Startup Timing is Like Surfing & How To Determine Whether Someone is Scaling with the Organisation or Not with Daniel Lewis, Founder & CEO @ Convoy

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00102203201820192020202120222023episodesmentions
023201820192020202120222023episodes it came up in
0031.563201820192020202120222023episodesmentions per episode
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 16 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
2018 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20V Dec 16, 2022 42m
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