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Jerry Chen

General Partner, Greylock Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorexecutiveoperator@JerryChen ↗jerrychen.com ↗

Jerry Chen focuses on venture investments in enterprise software, AI, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure, having backed companies including Docker and Chronosphere. Prior to joining Greylock in 2013, he spent nine years at VMware, most recently serving as Vice President of Cloud and Application Services.

12statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 4.08/5average certainty → 2.33/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

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

2 predictions · 1 opinion · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions 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 Jerry 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

Prediction Held up
Chen: Autonomous vehicle winners will reach $100 billion valuations
“A large consumer outcome, or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes, are going to be a hundred billion plus or minus companies, right? Or tens of billions. If, you know, autonomous vehicles become a reality, that's going to disrupt a multi-trillion dol…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 11:31 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"

How they sound: speaking style how? →

242 words/min while actually speaking · 4.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Jerry Chen: 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 24 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 4,637 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Jerry Chen 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 ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 60%

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

Opinion
Jerry Chen: AWS is beatable in specific product areas and markets
“Given this VC podcast, I would say that a lot of founders, investors don't think you can beat Amazon's cloud, AWS, but I actually think AWS is very beatable in certain product areas in certain markets, so I'm still bullish in finding companies that can challen…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 26:41 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Prediction Held up
Chen: Autonomous vehicle winners will reach $100 billion valuations
“A large consumer outcome, or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes, are going to be a hundred billion plus or minus companies, right? Or tens of billions. If, you know, autonomous vehicles become a reality, that's going to disrupt a multi-trillion dol…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 11:31 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Effective startup board members require prior operator experience
“Without being on the other side of the table, without shipping product, hiring employees, firing employees, I was not going to be a great board member, a great advisor to these founders.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 5:55 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Venture risk divides into quantifiable probabilities and unquantifiable uncertainties
“There's really two or three categories of risk to think about. There's probabilities and uncertainties. I think probabilities are quantifiable risks, right? So the execution risk, the market risk, and you and I as investors can make an educated bet or guess on…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 9:41 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Good venture investors must maintain relentless optimism
“To be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible Because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 4:18 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Venture capitalists are advisors, never company decision-makers
“Part of venture you have to realize is you're an advisor, an influencer, you're a mentor and a coach, but you're actually never a decider, right? So I think a lot of ventures getting comfortable with a lot of things being out of control.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 5:42 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Enterprise startups must address a buyer's top three priorities
“If you're not the top three priorities for your customer as a founder or executive, you either have to hit one of those top three priorities or convince her this should be a top three priority. Because it doesn't matter if you're the fifth or sixth wishlist on…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 6:59 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: VCs fail when investing outside their strike zone
“People get in trouble when they start swinging outside the strike zone, if you will, and do things that are not comfortable with or not good at. And then that's when things kind of fall apart.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 13:58 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Jerry Chen: Low-priced products cannot sustain complex direct sales forces
“If you have kind of a small unit value, that's low price point and have a complex direct sales force, the economics would never work out no matter how hard you try.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 17:23 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Jerry Chen: Budget-additive enterprise software requires a bottoms-up sales strategy
“If you're budget additive to a company, you probably want to be bottoms up selling motion and a small unit value. These new CIO or CFO is going to wake up saying, I need your new widget. So you have to be a small unit value and kind of bottoms up and that's in…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 19:20 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Jerry Chen: Early founders should prioritize adoption over non-linear value
“Don't overthink about nonlinear value. Just make sure you're getting your product used by customers. And then after you get some adoption and kind of the later second act or third act of the company, then be a lot more conscious about bending that curve to cre…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 21:41 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jerry Chen: Greylock aims to make one or two investments annually
“But the truth of the matter is our goal is to find one or two great investments a year, not five or 10 good investments a year.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 27:20 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"

The other half of the tape: Jerry Chen's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sarah Guo 2Nima Gamsari 1Moisey Uretsky 1

Statements about Jerry Chen, by other people (1)

Disclosure
Uretsky: DigitalOcean favored Jerry Chen and Peter Levine during Series A
“The two investors that we loved the most was Jerry Chan from Greylock and Peter Levine from Andreessen Horowitz.”
Moisey Uretsky Oct 14, 2016 ▶ 21:10 20VC: How You Can Learn To Be A Great Business Leader & Why All Successful Business Must Be Loved or Needed with Moisey Uretsky, Founder @ Digital Ocean

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Inve Apr 2, 2018 20m
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