Jeremy Liew
Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners · 3 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
investorexecutive@jeremysliew ↗LinkedIn ↗jeremy.liew.vc ↗Wikipedia ↗
Jeremy Liew joined Lightspeed in 2006 as its first consumer specialist and is best known as the first institutional investor in Snapchat. A nine-time Forbes Midas List honoree, he also led notable investments in Affirm, The Honest Company, Bonobos, Stitch Fix, and Ripple.
51statements → 17claims → 10claims resolved → 90%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.92/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 47said about them ↓
9 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 17 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 16 assertions · 3 opinions · 26 insights · 4 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 17 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 10 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 6 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 Jeremy argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
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? →
244 words/min while actually speaking · 3.7 um and uh per 1k words
No argument clarity score for Jeremy Liew: 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 31 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 14,067 words across 3 episodes, but every recording we have of Jeremy Liew 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 3 rated episodes:
host pushback ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1.7/10
setup questions received 67%
host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 17:36“How do you think about that, and am I wrong to be negative in that perspective?” ▶ 28:13“How does one think about the value of product vision when you can have teams at Facebook and Instagram copy you and spin up the same product in a day?” ▶ 14:09“In your mind, did it need to unlock the broader swathe to be the massive outcome, or could it have been its own standalone and super exciting company just with the core?” ▶ 12:25“How do you prevent yourself from doing this? And be cautious around supplanting your ideas to make something good, great.” ▶ 25:49“Should founders always be raising?” ▶ 5:33“So with Snapchat, one of your portfolio companies, being the last of the truly maybe needle-moving consumer axis, would you agree with the pessimism surrounding consumer investing,…”
when Jeremy pushed back ▶ 20:57“So to be fair, I think that there's been a history of social networks and social media largely being founded by people who were relatively earlier in their career.” ▶ 17:40“I think you have a couple of different things going on, and it really depends on the product.” ▶ 16:38“And this is where, you know, I would sort of Push back against this idea that if you're smart enough and experienced enough as a VC, you can turn a good company into a great compan…” ▶ 20:18“I think it's dangerous to sort of draw lessons from what I did, because what I did worked for me because of who I am.”
Everything Jeremy Liew said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
The Dominant VC Narrative in 2012 Was That Consumer Social Was Dead
“And I think you also have to bear in mind that in 2012, the dominant narrative was that social was dead. Facebook and Instagram had run the table like there were no more new opportunities in social anymore.”
Outlier Social Apps Require >50% DAU/MAU and 30-40% D30 Retention
“In messaging and social networks, you would want to see at least a DAU to MAU ratio of north of 50%, and you would want to see at least a D-thirty of, say, 30 to 40%. For, you know, for something to really be working, to be sort of at that outlier level.”
Lightspeed Passed on a Snapchat Follow-On Investment at a $13M Valuation
“If we'd invested, I think that if we'd done that round, I think the terms were three on 13 or something like that. It would have been a great outcome for the company and for Lightspeed.”
Liew: Former operators turned VCs are most prone to over-steering founders
“People who used to be operators are most prone to, because they're actually used to making the key decisions, and if they had senior roles in their operating companies in the past, they might actually be used to, quote unquote, overruling the team when their j…”
Liew: Largest e-commerce outcomes are multi-brand retailers competing with Amazon
“The biggest outcomes in the space had been in companies that were multi-brand retailers, and in some sense competing with Amazon and doing so successfully.”
Liew: Pessimism around consumer tech investing is unwarranted
“I actually say that the evidence suggests that there's actually a lot of breakthroughs happening on the consumer side. You know, HQ Trivia is having a moment right now. TBH, Saraja, Marco Polo, Musical.ly, as we mentioned, Cheddar, Prisma, Pokemon Go, all on t…”
Jeremy Liew: Young women and Black youth predict future consumer tech trends
“If you follow what young women and young African Americans do today, you'll get a window into what we'll all do in the future. I think they're the really, the early adopters of popular culture, and so we always look for apps and services that over-index to tho…”
Snapchat Raised Seed Capital When Server Costs Exceeded Spiegel's Credit Card
“Frankly, I think the thing that probably changed the most was that they finally had a need for financing. You know, at that first meeting, they ran us through some of the metrics of the business, and it looks tremendous. And we said, well, is there anything we…”
Snapchat Stories Became the Dominant Format Across All Social Networks
“And with that one insight, starting from first principles, thinking about how people interact with each other, he has changed the course of all social networks, because you can't find, you know, whether it's Twitter, or LinkedIn, or, you know, obviously, Whats…”
Social Software User Culture Is Much Harder to Change Than Features
“Social software, there's two key components. There's the features and functionality, but then there's also the user culture, and user culture is very, very, very hard to change.”
Instagram Stories Is Restricted by the Platform's Highlight-Reel Culture
“Stories on Instagram, the culture of Instagram is still, look at how great my life is. You know, it's still highlight real type, you know, use case and culture, and that then propagates into stories.”
Lightspeed Invested in Snapchat's Seed Round at a $4.25M Valuation
“At the seed at four and a quarter pre, and, like, here we are looking at 13, and just thinking, well, you know, that's three times higher.”
Liew: Distinguishing bad startups from good ones is easy for investors
“If you're a reasonably intelligent, reasonably quantitative person who has some domain expertise, and I would probably put, like, most aspiring venture capitalists into this category, it's not hard to tell bad from good. That's actually a pretty easy filter.”
Liew: Investors cannot make a good company great through investor value alone
“Folks who believe that they can take a good company and make it great by sheer value being an investor, I think in general, maybe being a little bit too optimistic.”
Liew: Founders pick VCs for standout strengths, not absence of weaknesses
“Entrepreneurs who choose to work with you will choose to work with you because you're the best at something, not because you're not terrible at something else.”
Liew: Cap table math is irrelevant to founders selecting a VC
“No one cares about cap table mathematics. Like that's not a dimension on which people choose their venture capitalists.”
Liew: VCs have an obligation to respond to every entrepreneur
“I know that that's not a perspective that's shared for by everybody, but I think that we have an obligation to respond to every aspiring entrepreneur, even if, you know, their ideas are not well thought through or their ask is unreasonable. We have an obligati…”
Consumer Social Apps Lack Context Without an Active Friend Network
“If you start using Snapchat without having other friends who use Snapchat, you lose all context. You don't sort of understand what it's for.”
Evan Spiegel Met Liew Because of His Obama Facebook Profile Photo
“At the time, I had as my profile a picture of me at Obama from a fundraiser that I had attended. During his first election campaign, and he said, well, you know, you had a picture of you and Obama there, so I figured you must be a decent person. So I figured I…”
75% of Snapchat's Early Users Were High School and College Women
“When we met Snapchat, one of the things that really caught our attention was that 75% of the user base were young women in high school and college”
Young Women Are the Primary Early Adopters for Social Platforms
“Whether it be Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or Vine or Tumblr back in the day or TikTok, you know, it's always been young women who've been that first set of early adopters”
Black Americans Are Core Early Adopters Driving Consumer Software Trends
“At least in the US, the African-American population has also been one of the core early adopters that has, again, sort of propagated pop culture across apps and more broadly.”
The other half of the tape: Jeremy Liew's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 47 times in 23 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 29Barry Eggers 4Steven Galanis 3Mike Mignano 3Jana Messerschmidt 3Mo Koyfman 2Hans Tung 2Alex Taussig 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 8 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- Mo Koyfman: The Secret to Winning in Venture; Why Small Funds Outperform Large Funds | 20VC #915 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kirsten Green: The Biggest Challenges Scaling Both Teams and AUM | 20VC #912 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Parker Conrad: How I Got Ousted from Zenefits and Came Back with a Vengence | 20VC #932 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Lieb: How I Founded Google Photos & Bump; Why I Left Google | 20VC #927 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Sheel Mohnot: Lessons from Investing in Flexport and Missing on Robinhood | 20VC #917 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Keith Rabois: The End of Woke Capitalism; Time Allocation Tips; Silicon Valley vs Miami | 20VC #891 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation
- 20VC: The Pinterest Memo: Bessemer's Jeremy Levine on The Secret To Success within User Generated Content Plays, Where Most Investors Make Mistakes When Analysing Consumer Social and How The Pinterest Deal Wouldn't Have Happened without a Diverse Partners
- 20VC: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon on How To Approach Effective Decision-Making in Leadership, When Is The Right Time To Hire Recruiters and Heads of People, Balancing the Expectations of Wall St with Long Term Vision and What Truly Successful Board Management
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
- 20VC: The Implications of a Biden vs a Trump Administration on Venture and Startups, How The Rise of Rolling Funds, SPACs and Solo Capitalists Will Impact Venture & What We Can Do To Swing the Race Pendulum in VC with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Ligh
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 14 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: How Founders Can Gain Leverage in Fundraising Negotiations, The Metrics You Need To Raise Your Series A in Consumer & What We Have To Change About Cap Table Construction with Jana Messerschmidt, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners
- 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
- 20VC: Haystack's Semil Shah on Whether Founders Are Bypassing Seed Funds in Favour Of Less Dilutive Multi-Stage Funds, How Fund Strategy Changes With Fund Scaling & Why The Hardest Challenge is Price Discipline
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise
- 20VC: Stride's Fred Destin on The Acceptable vs Non-Acceptable Risks When Investing, How Startup Founders Can Improve The Quality of Their Decision-Making and Must Play for Batting Average & Why Plans Do Not Matter and No Board Member Should Bash An Entre
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 12 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: What It Takes To Found and Scale A Global Venture Firm Like Lightspeed, 3 Ways Firms Do Not Succeed in Generational Transition & What Makes The Truly Special Board Members Like Jim Goetz with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partn
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
- 20VC: Why This Is Just The Start for Consumer Mobile, 3 Lessons China Taught About How To Invest Better In The US & How To Think About The Opportunity Cost of Capital Deployment with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- 20VC: Why Founders Must Use VCs as a Barometer, How to Make Distributed Teams Work Successfully & The Biggest Mistake People Make Early In Their Career with Dylan Serota, Founder @ Terminal
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 20VC: The Snapchat Memo: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on The 4 Key Elements To Consider When E | Feb 24, 2021 | 27m |
| 20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Why It Is More Important To Be Right Than Contrarian, Th | Apr 22, 2019 | 21m |
| 20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Being The First Investor in Snapchat, Why The Pessimism | Feb 19, 2018 | 13m |