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Jeff Busgang

Co-Founder & General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderacademicauthorexecutive@bussgang ↗LinkedIn ↗jeffbussgang.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Bussgang co-founded Flybridge Capital Partners after co-founding Upromise and serving as an early executive at Open Market. At Harvard Business School, he teaches entrepreneurship and has authored books including Mastering the VC Game and Entering StartUpLand.

9statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources →

1 not checkable as stated how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 assertion · 2 opinions · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 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 Jeff 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? →

4.5 / 5 directness 4.8 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.4 · compression 4

redirected or did not address 1 of 22 assessed questions (5%). Watch them ▸

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? →

243 words/min while actually speaking · 9.7 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 2,890 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 55%

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

Opinion
Bussgang rejects requirement for day-one positive unit economics for startups
“I totally disagree with that VC, and I'll give you an example. So, and the reason I disagree is that there are cases where equity value creation is achieved through adoption-focused strategies. I'll give you two examples. One is in our portfolio, one is MongoD…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 14:58 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Opinion
Bussgang: Prior operating experience is not required to become a top VC partner
“I don't. I never believe there's one path to the final journey. Great examples of VCs who never have any operating experience, and I have one of them sitting next to me in my office, and Chip Hazard, who's an incredibly successful investor, was my co-founder h…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 4:58 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: Hypergrowth startups must reinvent organizational systems every 6-12 months
“The learnings I had from hypergrowth, and we went from Zero to a hundred million revenue in a couple years, and 600 employees, and a couple billion dollar market cap over the course of my five-year tenure, and so we experienced quite a bit of growth, and my ex…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 4:05 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: Maintain constant company culture while constantly discarding organizational structures
“If you have a consistent set of values and culture and hopefully a consistent mission and a consistent purpose that you're trying to achieve with your startup, hopefully centered around a big problem and a particular customer or customer persona that you're tr…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 6:01 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: Staging VC capital yields better decisions than large upfront checks
“What it net results in is that venture capitalists can dole out the money and mitigate the risk over time, and so if I put in 500,000 dollars into a firm, live with it for a year, and then I have another investment decision to make, That's going to be a better…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 11:31 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: Top pitches address more startup risks than VCs anticipate
“I think the most compelling pitches are when the founder articulates more risks than I can think of, and then lays out really thoughtful risk mitigation plans, and also articulates those plans in the context of the financing.”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 17:28 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: VCs evaluate startup risk as data-driven pattern recognition algorithms
“VCs, VCs are big data decision makers. Think about us as pattern recognizers and machine learning, deep learning algorithms that feed on data. And the more data we take every data point and make decisions and judgment based on those data points and signaling r…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 21:15 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Insight
Bussgang: VC partners can deeply evaluate only two or three deals simultaneously
“An individual investment partner can only focus on two or three new investment opportunities at any given time in a truly deep and proactive fashion. And if you're not one of those two or three, then you're not really in the investment process.”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 21:47 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bussgang: LPs expect venture funds to deliver 3x return and 15-20% net IRR
“Most investors look for something on the order of a three X money on money return, in a fund and a 15 to 20% IRR net to them, net of fees, net of carry, net of any compensation to the venture capitalist return to the investor. And if you can't achieve those me…”
Jeff Busgang Jul 18, 2016 ▶ 8:37 20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Big Data Decision Makers

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Flybridge's Jeff Bussgang on Why It Is Not All About Unit Economics & Why VCs Are Bi Jul 18, 2016 13m
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