James Currier

General Partner & Co-Founder, NFX · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderanalyst@JamesCurrier ↗LinkedIn ↗nfx.com ↗

James Currier is a co-founder and partner at seed-stage venture firm NFX, known for his frameworks analyzing startup growth and network effects. Prior to NFX, he founded several companies including Tickle and was an early angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon.

18statements → 8claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.44/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 37said about them ↓

2 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 5 assertions · 1 opinion · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 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 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

Currier's four venture-backed startups never lost any investor money

“And so that's why we haven't really failed yet. And we haven't ever lost anyone, any money, When we've been entrepreneurs and building companies.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 4:39 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Currier in 2017: Bitcoin will exceed $4,000 by December 2018

“It will be above.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 26:36 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet certainty 3

0% certainty 4

83% 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

240 words/min while actually speaking · 5.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for James Currier: 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 25 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,697 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of James Currier 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%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 4:53“How do you balance between vision and stubbornness and the ability to kind of move on when it's maybe too early and when it's the right time to push on?” ▶ 8:29“Can I ask, is language enough?” ▶ 14:58“Is there ever too much data?”

What they said18 What others said37 Episodes1

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

Insight

Currier: Speed, quality, and hiring drive giant tech outcomes, not timing

“And that formula of speed, quality, and then hiring in a superior way, that's what makes your giant sort of outcomes in these tech spaces. And I, and first mover isn't typically correlated with that.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 6:17 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Founders should use a number in every pitch sentence

“What I say to all the founders is when you're pitching the deal, especially for investors, you want to use a number in every sentence you speak. If you say a sentence without using a number, then you have wasted that sentence.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 14:38 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Currier: Future digital growth will mostly come from paid acquisition

“So what's happening is we're moving into a world where much of the growth, at least digitally, is going to be coming from paid, and so we are becoming necessarily more fans of paid and just doing it right.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 23:09 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Consumer viral growth is harder because psychological needs are satisfied

“What I say is the psychological and emotional needs of the consumer are largely being met, and it's more difficult Of those emotional and psychological needs that you could tap into to generate that viral storm, to build a new network, to build a new identity …”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 25:14 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Currier in 2017: Bitcoin will exceed $4,000 by December 2018

“It will be above.”

Insight

Currier: Education should teach future prediction and leadership over history and sports

“We need to be teaching kids to ask the right questions. We need to be teaching kids to predict the future, not study history. We need to teach people to communicate and to lead, not to play soccer.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 27:18 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Assertion Supported

Currier's four venture-backed startups never lost any investor money

“And so that's why we haven't really failed yet. And we haven't ever lost anyone, any money, When we've been entrepreneurs and building companies.”

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Currier: Google was 8th to market and Facebook was 156th

“You know, then you look at your next great success, Google, they were the eighth to market. You look at Facebook, they were the 156th to market with the same five features.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 5:57 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Opinion

Currier: Yahoo grew massive primarily due to its brand name over technology

“An example would be, I mean, certainly in naming, you watch a company like Yahoo you know, 20 years ago, they had such an incredible name that was different from every other company's name, and so the press wanted to talk about them all the time. The consumers…”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 7:05 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Founders should design product language before building product features

“We believe that often you need to identify a problem Figure out the language that addresses that problem, and then from that language, build a product that fulfills on the language.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 9:02 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Assertion Supported

Currier: Network effects drove 60% of tech value created since 1994

“We did a large study of companies that were, have been formed since 1994, 337 companies worth over a billion. And if you look at the market caps, the combined market caps of all these companies and identify, you know, which of them had network effects at their…”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 16:06 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Assertion Partly supported

Currier: Trulia achieved a $3.5B acquisition with zero marketing spend

“Pete Flint, my partner, he grew Trulia to a, you know, three and a half billion dollar acquisition with zero marketing spend.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 18:22 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Founders should pivot or shut down when out of excited experiments

“For me, it comes down to, do you have a list of experiments you still want to do and you're excited about. So you've had a vision, you've had an interest in a particular market space, and you've gotten fired up about it, you've started a company, you've tried …”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 5:08 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Assertion Not publicly verifiable

Currier: Changing CTA from 'store' to 'share' grew users to 47M

“We had an experience years ago where, you know, we were storing photos on a website, and we said, store your photos here, and it didn't really grow very much, so we just switched it to say, share your photos, and that switch of Change the product flow and chan…”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 7:26 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: A founder's primary job is telling stories

“Yeah, you know, I feel like the CEO and the founders are, that's their main job, is to tell stories.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 11:06 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Founders fail by pitching features instead of impact or money

“They most get it wrong because they talk about the solutions. As opposed to the impact on the people, or the amount of money that can be made.”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 12:03 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Insight

Currier: Peer KPI transparency drives higher founder growth targets

“So by cross populating information between companies so that it's real, it's not just James telling you should have a higher benchmark. It's you seeing others have achieved that higher benchmark and they are just like you. That really helps to let people calib…”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 21:03 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Currier predicts software will triple or quadruple the RV rental market

“And we think that not only, this is one of those sectors that while it's only a few billion dollars today, you have a huge demand overhang, and it's going to transform the industry that they're in, and triple it, and quadruple the size of it, but with the pres…”

James Currier Dec 13, 2017 ▶ 28:09 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX

The other half of the tape: James Currier's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 37 times in 9 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 24 Rick Marini 8 Iman Abuzeid 3 Darius Contractor 1 Andy Pflaum 1