Jason Mendelson

Co-Founder, Foundry Group · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Jason Mendelson is a co-founder of Foundry Group, an investment firm with portfolio investments like Fitbit and MakerBot. He also co-founded SRS Acquiom and previously served as General Counsel at Mobius Venture Capital.

13statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 4.38/5average certainty → 2.85/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 27said about them ↓

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

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 5 opinions · 3 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is 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 Jason argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

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

4.4 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.9

answered every one of 23 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? →

278 words/min while actually speaking · 9.2 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,575 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 ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host 3/10

setup questions received 45%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 7:37“How do you detect BS in VC speak, do you think?” ▶ 17:27“To what extent do you think you agree with that in terms of price being a stopping factor?” ▶ 9:34“I recently interviewed a founder who said that he doesn't tell his VC anything because he knows the dangers of telling the VC too much. So I'm intrigued when you make an investment…”

What they said13 What others said27 Episodes1

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

Opinion

Mendelson: 50% of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, Only 25% Help

“In my opinion, at least 50% of them hurt entrepreneurs and 25% of them don't do any good. There's only really a quarter of the VC firms that I've worked with that really help the”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 8:00 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Opinion

Mendelson: Half of Board VCs Are Neither Respected Nor Transparent

“Just on the boards that I'm on, a good half of the VCs that I share these boards with, I don't respect. I don't think they're transparent.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 8:21 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Opinion

Mendelson: Claiming large startups must be in Silicon Valley is myopic arrogance

“And I think it's laughable that there are people on the coast and primarily in Silicon Valley who openly say you can't build a big business in the Silicon Valley. It is that myopic arrogance, which makes me, it makes me laugh because that gives us great opport…”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 14:40 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Opinion

Mendelson: Venture capitalists are lemmings who retreat in downturns

“Venture capitalists in general are lemmings, and when the times are bad, they get out of the market.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 20:01 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Insight

Mendelson: A thriving startup ecosystem requires a culture that respects failure

“More importantly, the pillar of having a culture of failure is super important. I'm from Detroit. And for many years, they had creative class, they had money, they had lawyers, they had people who could work there. They had great ideas, but they lacked the abi…”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 15:39 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Insight

Mendelson: Late-Stage Venture Investing Is Purely a Financial Exercise

“If we were late stage investors, totally different. It's a financial exercise at that point.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 17:43 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Disclosure

Mendelson: Foundry Group's highest returns come from downturn investments

“Some of the best deals we've ever done were with entrepreneurs in a down period where no other VCs would invest in them. We were able to, you know, invest in these great companies because we were the only people out there writing checks, and we had outsized re…”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 20:16 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Opinion

Mendelson: The Knot and WeddingWire are merely vendor lead-generation tools

“Right now you've got the knot, you've got wedding wires. All they are is lead gen machines for vendors.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 22:59 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Disclosure

Mendelson: Foundry Group Does Not Employ PR or Marketing Staff

“We don't have a PR firm. We don't have a marketing person. Our marketing is every once in a while we lose our brains and put up a music video or write a book.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 7:46 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Assertion Partly supported

Mendelson: Foundry Group Operates With Four Partners and Zero Associates

“There's four partners and there's no associates.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 16:46 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Mendelson: Foundry Group Will Never Chase Investment Deals on Price

“We're not going to chase deals on price. We're not going to chase deals because of some other term sheet.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 16:58 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Disclosure

Foundry Group maintains a steady investment pace regardless of market cycles

“We at Founder Group, we've been together 20 years as a team almost, and we consistently invest in the same number of deals every year because we want to be time diversified, and we don't care if the times are great or horrible.”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 20:05 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

Insight

Mendelson: Pre-board materials transform board meetings into strategy sessions

“When you give me information ahead of time, you as the entrepreneur should hold me accountable that I've read everything. I've digested everything. If I have any questions, I ask before the board meeting so that the board meeting becomes a strategy meeting, no…”

Jason Mendelson Jan 30, 2017 ▶ 12:16 20VC: How 50% Of VCs Hurt Entrepreneurs, How To Build A Relationship Of Trust With Your VC and How Entrepreneurs Can Detect VC BS with Jason Mendelson, Co-Founder @ Foundry Group

The other half of the tape: Jason Mendelson's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 27 times in 6 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 14 Seth Levine 4 Ryan McIntyre 4 David Cohen 2 Brad Feld 2 Tracy Lawrence 1