Josh Buckley

Founder & Managing Partner, Buckley Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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Josh Buckley is the founder and managing partner of Buckley Ventures, a venture capital firm backing early-stage technology companies. He previously founded and served as chairman of gaming studio Mino Games.

15statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 4.13/5average certainty → 2.33/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 32said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 7 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 2 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 Josh 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

Every digital ad platform update makes user acquisition more expensive

“There's never been a single update in digital advertising that has made buying cheaper. The advertising algorithms on these major platforms like Facebook and Google are getting hyper-efficient, and every update just makes them more expensive.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 19:10 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted

Digital advertising CPMs compound at approximately 40% per year

“The second force at play is essentially the market-wide, the CPMs are just compounding. The number we've seen is about 40% a year, and that's just because of a number of factors around the algorithms of new competitors coming into the market.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 16:35 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

0% certainty 3

0% certainty 4

100% certainty 5

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? →

259 words/min while actually speaking · 8.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Josh Buckley: 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 5,094 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Josh Buckley 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 2/10

setup questions received 80%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 12:14“And my question to you is in the plentiful funding environment that now we're currently in, why did you not raise big when it was clear that things were starting to change and all …” ▶ 18:54“What's Concentrated. I know that's a ridiculous question, but like, is 50% too concentrated?” ▶ 17:27“Would you agree with the pushback there, or would you say that actually placing a focus on CAC and LTV as a metric at pre-seed or in the very early seed days is Is too early.”

What they said15 What others said32 Episodes1

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

Assertion Contradicted

Digital advertising CPMs compound at approximately 40% per year

Insight

Pre-seed CAC and LTV metrics are meaningless without seven-figure ad spend

“In general, I would agree with you that both the data around CAC and LTV is far too early at the pre-seed stage. I think until you've started to kind of push more than seven figures of scale between both the CAC and LTV metrics, you really don't know those num…”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 17:43 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Assertion Supported

Every digital ad platform update makes user acquisition more expensive

Insight

Customer acquisition payback periods double for every $5M in ad spend

“The reason why your payback period grows as you spend more is essentially that you're exhausting the most relevant people or customers for your business... And benchmarks we've heard thrown around are roughly doubling every five million in spend.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 21:01 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Josh Buckley's most successful angel investments struggled to raise seed funding

“I was looking at my own portfolio and actually found that many of my most successful deals were actually not very hot at the seed stage. It was actually a struggle for them to raise their first rounds.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 24:28 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Mino Games became one of Andreessen Horowitz's best seed investments

“We became one of Andreessen Horowitz's best seed investments.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 7:20 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Disclosure

Mino Games raised $30M in debt to scale after validating unit economics

“A couple of months ago we did that. So we validated a new game. The unit economics were incredibly favorable to us, and we decided to bring on about thirty million dollars in debt to allow us to scale to the next stage of the business”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 13:17 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Insight

Easy funding environments create founders who act like spoiled rich kids

“Many new founders today only know the funding environment like this. It's almost like being a spoiled rich kid born into a rich family. Sometimes it can really help to go through the struggle of struggling to actually you know, make your payroll, et cetera. I …”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 14:18 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Insight

Founders should avoid angel investing before achieving product-market fit

“Generally, I would advise against doing so. I think it's great if you have opportunities to do so. And if you have the capital, when you have the deals in front of you, I think it's absolutely worth doing. What I'd advise against is splitting your focus too mu…”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 22:50 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Assertion Contradicted

Montreal's cost of living was 4-5x lower than San Francisco in 2016

“The cost of living was four or five times lower than San Francisco, and then we had these amazing tax credits from the government.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 10:25 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Insight

Most startup advice is highly contextual with a sample size of one

“Advice alone is just completely contextual. It's like a sample size of one person's personal experience of what worked or didn't work for them”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 25:36 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Insight

Top consumer app mechanics originate in video games 5-10 years prior

“A lot of the consumer mechanics we see today at the top of the apps Store or top of consumer businesses were started in successful games maybe five or 10 years ago.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 29:52 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Insight

The best investor updates are sent monthly on a rigid schedule

“Some of the best investor updates I see are in a monthly cadence. They really kind of keep it on a rigid schedule and they have the key numbers. They have the trends around those numbers and they have the goals. They also have the highlights and lowlights arou…”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 31:07 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Disclosure

Josh Buckley sold his teenage virtual world game for six figures

“I actually agreed one day to sell it to a company in Texas for six figures at the time.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 4:24 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

Disclosure

Mino Games spends tens of millions of dollars annually on marketing

“We spend tens of millions a year at Minnow on marketing, and the one thing that we've seen ourselves and other companies and investors underestimate is how CAC saturates.”

Josh Buckley Nov 25, 2019 ▶ 15:50 20VC: Why The Best Entrepreneurs Are Cockroaches, What Everyone Underestimates About Customer Acquisition & What You Don't But Need To Know About Payback Periods with Josh Buckley, Founder & Chairman @ Mino Games

The other half of the tape: Josh Buckley's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 32 times in 17 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 23 Fred Turner 4 Sahil Bloom 1 Peter Lacaillade 1 Jude Gomila 1 Alex MacCaw 1