Josh Elman

Partner, Andreessen Horowitz · 1 appearance on the record.

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investoroperatorexecutive@joshelman ↗LinkedIn ↗a16z.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Josh Elman is a consumer tech executive who led early product and growth initiatives at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Robinhood, and later worked at Apple. As a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, he invested early in platforms such as Discord, Musical.ly, Medium, and SmartThings.

6statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 4.17/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 22said 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 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · 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 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

Elman: Global video game spending exceeds movies and music

“The amount spent on games as an entertainment, it's actually bigger than movies worldwide, And it's certainly bigger than music.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 23:22 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

How they sound: speaking style how? →

292 words/min while actually speaking · 4.2 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Josh Elman: 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 20 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 4,257 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Josh Elman 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 ▾ 1/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 12:51“How do you address retention in these, uh, often very, uh, excitable industries where you get huge amounts of users, and then the retention slowly slides off following PR and launc…” ▶ 9:52“what's your take on, on the consumer mobile, uh, ecosystem itself? Why do you, do you think it's so hard? And as hard as he said, um, what are your thoughts on this?” ▶ 6:01“And he said, I want Josh to, to answer, what would you do with Twitter today? What would you change about the product?”

when Josh pushed back ▶ 11:29“So I don't believe we're in a downturn. I just believe we're, we have some markets that are very well served by ways that we can connect and talk to our friends and family, and you…”

What they said6 What others said22 Episodes1

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

Opinion

Elman: Consumer mobile is not in a downturn, just well-served

“So I don't believe we're in a downturn. I just believe we're, we have some markets that are very well served by ways that we can connect and talk to our friends and family, and you have to tap into something new and something very different in order to get big…”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 11:29 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Disclosure

Elman reveals he was kicked out of Twitter during product restructuring

“And then, you know, I honestly got kicked out of Twitter. You know, I in some of the turmoil of Twitter, they were restructuring the product team and asked me not to go to work the next day.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 4:07 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Opinion

Elman: Twitter Should Let Users Follow Broad Topics Instead of Accounts

“Most people cannot figure out how to get their Twitter tuned. I call it tuning your Twitter feed in the same way that I have. And so I really think what they can do to make Twitter much, much easier is help people tune it much more broadly.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 6:47 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Insight

Elman: Great founders treat fundraising as hiring an investor

“I see a lot of founders try to engineer a process instead of necessarily figure out who they really want to team up with and work with. And the great ones I think actually have in their mindset I'm going out to hire an investor.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 18:50 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Elman: 10% of early Discord users spent 10 hours daily on app

“There were 10% of the users were using, you know, had it on and were interacting with it for 10 hours a day.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 22:48 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

Assertion Supported

Elman: Global video game spending exceeds movies and music

“The amount spent on games as an entertainment, it's actually bigger than movies worldwide, And it's certainly bigger than music.”

Josh Elman Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 23:22 20VC: Greylock's Josh Elman on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, The Next Wave Of Social and What Twitter Should Do Next

The other half of the tape: Josh Elman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 6 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 18 Kelly Peeler 3 Sarah Guo 1