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Harley Miller

Founder & Managing Partner, Left Lane Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Harley Miller is the Founder and Managing Partner at Left Lane Capital. Prior to founding Left Lane, he spent over nine years investing in growth-stage companies at Insight Partners.

21statements → 8claims → 1claims resolved → 3.95/5average certainty → 1.9/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 8said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 5 assertions · 5 insights · 8 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 6 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 Harley 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

Prediction Held up
Left Lane will not increase check sizes despite raising $1.4B Fund II
“It's not like we're going to all of a sudden start doing investments that are double or triple the size, right? We want to keep doing more of the same.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 23:33 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital

How they sound: speaking style how? →

284 words/min while actually speaking · 0.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Harley Miller: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 30 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 8,454 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Harley Miller is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. 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 ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Disclosure
Left Lane Capital faced widespread LP rejections at its 2019 launch
“We did not, contrary to popular belief, we did not walk in and sort of get resounding yeses across the board from the world's foremost institutions. In fact, we got a lot of no's. Right. And a lot of rejection. And that was summer of 2019 that we left to start…”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 7:25 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Insight
LPs value process adherence as much as investment returns
“Doing what you said you would do, that process and adherence thereof, can be measured in the here and now, and I think that is as, if not more important, right, for allocators”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 10:02 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Insight
Deal picking cannot be taught and relies on innate pattern recognition
“You can't teach picking. I think that's something that's innate and comes with pattern recognition.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 14:08 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Harley Miller fought to invest in HelloFresh when meal kits were dismissed
“I remember pounding my fist to invest in HelloFresh and still not too shabby at a ten billion dollar market cap, right? It was a lot more six months ago, but nonetheless, it's company and it was space that was still nascent.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 16:24 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Left Lane Capital aims for 4x to 5x net MOIC across funds
“Ownership stake relative to cost base is what ultimately drives and governs a portfolio construction. Otherwise, you have to create two hundred billion dollars of enterprise value aggregate across your portfolio of what you would have as de minimis ownership s…”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 28:33 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Insight
Product-market fit is readable earlier in consumer startups than enterprise software
“All the hallmarks of product market fit can actually be ascertained and deduced at a much earlier point in that company's evolution as compared to a infrastructure software enterprise security company that it's at a Million of ARR with half a dozen or a dozen …”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 30:14 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Insight
Evaluating consumer startups purely through spreadsheets is definitionally impossible
“There's so much more variability, and I think it can never be plugged into a spreadsheet with like a thumbs up or thumbs out. That just will be definitionally impossible in consumer”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 32:16 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Other VC funds have reused Left Lane's diligence work dozens of times
“We've had our work come back to us with other funds Dozens of times”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 35:54 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Left Lane Capital held 2,500 LP pitch meetings for $630M Fund I
“We earnestly did about 2500 pitch meetings for our first fund, which To get to that fully subscribed fund of six hundred thirty million over the course of a year.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 9:21 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Every Left Lane investment team member is trained in SQL and Alteryx
“Every single person that works with us at Left Land on the investment team is trained on how to use SQL, how to use Alteryx.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 12:19 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Many Left Lane investments are bootstrapped, profitable, and do not need capital
“A lot of the deals that we do are proprietary or bootstrap. They don't need money. They're profitable.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 14:25 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Insight
Harley Miller decides whether to back a founder within ten minutes
“In general, I feel like I know within five or 10 minutes of meeting an entrepreneur, whether I would work with him or her.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 15:54 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Left Lane Capital mandates bottom-up deal generation by junior team members
“It's a prerequisite that we have junior people who push up the curve. It's a bottoms up lead motion.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 20:58 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Prediction Held up
Left Lane will not increase check sizes despite raising $1.4B Fund II
“It's not like we're going to all of a sudden start doing investments that are double or triple the size, right? We want to keep doing more of the same.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 23:33 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Left Lane raised $630M for Fund I and $1.4B for Fund II
“So when I talk about the fund size, our first fund of six hundred thirty million, our second fund at 1.4 billion, it's more than double the size.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 27:43 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Left Lane Capital targets 15% to 20% initial ownership in deals
“We want to achieve 15 to 20% ownership out of the gate and keep position building from there.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 27:58 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Insight Partners pioneered institutional analyst programs in venture capital
“And there was this firm Insight Partners who was, I'd say, arguably the group that pioneered this concept of kind of an institutionalized analyst program.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 4:14 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Left Lane canceled vacations to close proprietary Masterworks deal in ten days
“Masterworks, that deal was proprietary. He wasn't out in market in earnest. This was last summer, July or thereabout of, you have, we dropped everything. We canceled our vacations in sort of early August to drive at this deal before it got out to market. That …”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 12:42 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Left Lane Capital speaks with approximately 1,000 companies per month
“We probably speak with a thousand companies per month, right?”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 25:19 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Left Lane conducts custom consumer demographic and behavioral diligence surveys
“We're running pretty rigorous, robust surveys, tying back self-inputed consumer demographic data with their behavior economically, their self-reported behavior. We're trying to really drive these Third and fourth derivative insights based on above and beyond w…”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 32:55 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital
Disclosure
Harley Miller considers missing Airbnb in 2011 to be his biggest miss
“If I had to say it was probably Airbnb circa, 2011, 2012, right as I was getting my footing in this industry and having done some deals.”
Harley Miller May 2, 2022 ▶ 40:11 20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetings & What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time with Harley Miller, Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital

The other half of the tape: Harley Miller's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Fabrice Grinda 2Nico Wittenborn 1

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Scaling to $2BN AUM in 3 years, Fundraising Lessons and Tactics from 2,500 LP Meetin May 2, 2022 33m
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