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Jason Brown

Former Founder & CEO, Tally Technologies · 2 appearances on the record.

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

founderexecutive@SF_JCB ↗

Jason Brown is an entrepreneur who co-founded and served as CEO of Tally Technologies, an automated credit-card debt management platform. Prior to Tally, he co-founded Gen110 and Bask.

26statements → 6claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2.31/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 10said about them ↓

2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 5 assertions · 4 opinions · 12 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 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 Jason 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
Lending Club overtook Prosper by voluntarily shutting down for regulatory compliance
“Whereas a younger company lending club, they really leaned into the regulation. They actually shut down their platform for about six months So that they could comply, and then they started back up, and that was the point at which Lending Club really surpassed …”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 9:15 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally

How they sound: speaking style how? →

234 words/min while actually speaking · 3.7 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Jason Brown: 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 28 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 7,866 words across 2 episodes, but every recording we have of Jason Brown 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 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 2.5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3.5/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Insight
Brown: Founders should assume VCs offer zero baseline value
“My starting point is you have to have the mindset that VCs are going to provide no value. They will all go on and on about the value they'll provide, but what you're shooting for as a base starting point is zero value. And what you're trying to avoid is negati…”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 16:01 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Candidates sourced through executive recruiters suffer from adverse selection
“There's just a huge adverse selection out there. Any candidate that is coming to you through a recruiter is they might be good, but they're not the absolute best candidates. The absolute best candidates are never looking for a job. Those are the people that ge…”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 7:36 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Opinion
Jason Brown: Venture-funded companies are not as overpriced as perceived
“I would actually argue that given those constraints, venture funded companies aren't as overpriced as you might think.”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 13:01 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Jason Brown: Generic pattern matching by board members is unhelpful to founders
“When the company is facing issue X, do not say, oh, I saw another company that had a similar issue, and they did Y. And the reason is, is that that is not contextualized to your company, your industry, the resources you have, the capabilities, your knowledge, …”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 21:14 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brown: Top consumer fintechs achieve a 5:1 LTV-to-CAC ratio
“Five to one is a good number. Most fintech is below that because CAC is higher, but the best fintech firms are definitely in that five or higher ratio.”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 26:53 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Founder experience builds critical intuition for high-leverage moments
“What I believe first time founders really struggle with is sifting between, let's say that the half a million minutes that don't matter and the 10 that do in the year, and that 10,000 hours or 20,000 hours of practice of doing it over and over really gives you…”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 7:00 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Brown: Tally will never explicitly celebrate fundraising milestones
“We at Tally never have and never will explicitly have a celebration around the fundraise. It's always going to be around product and delivering value to consumers.”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 15:17 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Opinion
Brown: Venture capital is a commodity differentiated mostly by marketing
“Outside of the actual partner who's doing the investing, money is a complete commodity, and so the drive is to try to differentiate an undifferentiatable commodity through the quote unquote value add.”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 17:22 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Jason Brown: CEOs must formally adjourn board meetings before leaving the room
“Actually formally ending the board meeting. And that's actually important because you don't want to leave the board room as the CEO without formally ending the board meeting. Cause in a really adverse scenario, if the board meeting is still running, things cou…”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 19:03 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: 'Move fast and break things' fails in highly regulated industries
“So, so I think it's completely flawed for any business in a highly regulated industry. You know, this is obviously healthcare, a lot of FinTech. These are areas where the regulators have a huge say in what you can and can't do.”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 8:27 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Early-stage CEOs should adopt a bimodal time allocation strategy
“I want to comment specifically in the first couple of years of the startups, because maybe it's a different once you get further out there, but I adhere to a bimodal distribution of my time. So I try to pick one thing, one massive levered thing in the company …”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 14:03 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Pitch Series A by isolating the key unproven deal assumptions
“When we raised our series a for my last company and client air funded us, the entire pitch was I walked in, I put it on a whiteboard, five assumptions. I said, These are the five assumptions you have to a hundred percent believe in in order for this to be an i…”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 19:26 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Opinion
Brown: Bank of America's mobile app is confusing and overly complex
“Specifically in finance, you open up any big bank app, and I have an MBA in finance, and half the time I'm like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this thing? Like, I mean, especially the Bank of America app, like, literally, I have no idea what's going o…”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 21:49 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Opinion
Brown: There are no high-quality fintech blogs or newsletters
“There's nothing good on fintech, I gotta say. I mean, I read the Wall Street Journal, and Telus Demos usually hits a lot of the, but there's not a really good fintech one.”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 24:10 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tally maintains a 99% monthly user retention rate
“Our retention, we have a 99% monthly retention of our users”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 9:32 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Board members should highlight trade-offs rather than simply agreeing
“As a board member, when another board member says something, do not agree nor necessarily disagree, but try to point out either the other side of the probability distribution on what they're suggesting, because no matter what, there's no way that what they're …”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 21:43 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Disclosure
Brown: Tally's workforce is majority underrepresented minorities
“And Tally, it still has a lot of work to do, so we're by no means there, but I am proud to say that the company is majority and minority, and that hasn't been an accident.”
Jason Brown Nov 29, 2019 ▶ 24:06 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Recruiting is the single most important lever for startup success
“Assuming that you have a good market and a great idea, I believe that the number one lever you have to succeed is recruiting, meaning the quality of the people that you have on the team, how passionate they are about what you're doing, and their willingness to…”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 4:56 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Assertion Supported
Lending Club overtook Prosper by voluntarily shutting down for regulatory compliance
“Whereas a younger company lending club, they really leaned into the regulation. They actually shut down their platform for about six months So that they could comply, and then they started back up, and that was the point at which Lending Club really surpassed …”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 9:15 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Startups waste capital on perks instead of saving dry powder
“I've seen how you get money in the bank, and you just start spending on all this stuff, and when you really need that powder to burn, it's not there because you blew it on ping pong tables and bullcrap, right?”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 11:45 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Insight
Brown: Foster radical candor by praising employees who challenge you directly
“And you build it over time by encouraging and praising every time you get challenged directly and never defending yourself or asking necessarily for examples.”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 12:29 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Assertion Supported
Brown: Americans pay $11 billion annually in credit card late fees
“There are eleven billion dollars of credit card late fees every year.”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 3:07 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Assertion Partly supported
Brown: 40% of U.S. households hold $15,000 in credit card debt
“For 40% of American households, this is a huge problem because 40% of U.S. Households have 15,000 dollars in credit card debt, which is this astronomical number, right? It's like six hundred billion dollars altogether.”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 3:33 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
Disclosure
Brown interviewed 30 bank executives over four months for Head of Credit
“I spent four months. I personally talked to 30 directors and vice Presidents at Capital One, HSBC, Citi, all the big banks, and I kept pushing and pushing until I ended up finding a guy whose name is also Jason, and he's just this incredible genius, top of his…”
Jason Brown Apr 28, 2017 ▶ 6:07 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally

Show 2statements(2 left)

The other half of the tape: Jason Brown's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 7 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Mamoon Hamid 2Sean Flynn 1Nikhil Basu Trivedi 1Angela Strange 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
002142201620172018201920202021202220232024episodesmentions
012201620172018201920202021202220232024episodes it came up in
001122201620172018201920202021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether Nov 29, 2019 17m
20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Or Apr 28, 2017 18m
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