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James Borow

GM of Universal Ads, Comcast Advertising · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestorhost@JamesBorow ↗LinkedIn ↗comcastadvertising.com ↗

James Borow is the co-founder and former CEO of SHIFT, which was acquired by Brand Networks. He later built Snap's self-serve advertising platform and now leads Universal Ads at Comcast Advertising.

13statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 4.08/5average certainty → 2.15/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 1said 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 · 1 opinion · 9 insights · 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 James 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
Shift built ad tech for Facebook apps before direct ads existed
“So what we were doing is we built ad technology to go inside Facebook applications So when you're playing games on Facebook, we were actually serving ads there because you couldn't programmatically serve ads directly on Facebook yet.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 8:53 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet 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? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 4.5 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.6

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? →

260 words/min while actually speaking · 63.9 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,385 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 ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 60%

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

Insight
TechCrunch funding announcements have almost zero impact on startup success
“It's fun to get the tech crunch article, but in a lot of ways it doesn't really matter. It's like cool to show your friends at home, but it almost has no impact on your business.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 20:25 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Startup CEOs spend 95% of their time on administrative tasks
“When you're running a company, you basically spend about five percent of your time actually focusing on the things that you would deem important, and about 95% of the time working on things like, Fundraising and HR and hiring and all the things that, you know,…”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 24:08 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Product-focused startup CEOs must still hire a head of product
“If you're a product-focused CEO, still hire a head of product.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 25:39 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Founders must maintain full team transparency during hard times
“You definitely tell them you know, transparency is the key. I just, you know, and the reality is, is that, especially for these types of companies, you want people to know, it's like Headed into a storm. You want everyone to know what they're facing so they ca…”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 27:19 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Assertion Partly supported
Girls Guide To was the first website to integrate Facebook Connect
“It was it was actually the first Facebook connect website Pretty much ever.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 7:11 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Trying to learn without advisors wastes years of founder time
“There's absolutely no reason to reinvent the wheel on a lot of this stuff, and, you know, everyone's smart, you know, in terms of their own ability to learn these things, but you're gonna waste a couple years trying to learn it, and so, you know, I would not b…”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 14:34 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Owning 100% of a startup without key talent yields nothing
“I've seen other people who end up having a hundred percent of a company, but you know, don't really surround themselves with bright people and a hundred percent of nothing isn't really worth the bus at all.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 16:08 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Fundraising teaches founders more about their business than anything else
“You never learn more about your business than going out and try to raise money.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 17:44 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Opinion
Silicon Valley bias against LA startups is now a non-issue
“Fast forward to today, I think that's a non-issue with people like, you know, Mark Suster and Upfront Ventures and Snapchat in LA.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 18:43 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Startups should invest early in hiring a dedicated CFO
“You know, I think that's a hire that people often put off, because they may know someone who kind of understands finance. You know, I would invest early on that side.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 25:30 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Insight
Founders should test business ideas before quitting their day jobs
“I think in general, I think, you know, like anything, you just really don't know what sort of these businesses really are until you start doing them. So I think just sort of cutting the cord immediately is really, really tough.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 5:08 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Assertion Supported
Shift built ad tech for Facebook apps before direct ads existed
“So what we were doing is we built ad technology to go inside Facebook applications So when you're playing games on Facebook, we were actually serving ads there because you couldn't programmatically serve ads directly on Facebook yet.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 8:53 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Borow: Five years of law school deferments enabled my startup risks
“She ended up giving me five years of deferments which basically meant that I could do you know, take the entrepreneurial track but really kind of have a lot more appetite for risk than most people, because The reality was that I had law school waiting for me.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 3:57 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks

The other half of the tape: James Borow'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 Clark Landry 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112015episodesmentions
0112015episodes it came up in
000.50.5112015episodesmentions per episode
2015 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Net Sep 18, 2015 20m
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