Kevin Thau

General Partner, Spark Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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Kevin Thau is a General Partner at Spark Capital, where he has led investments in Medium, LOLA, CTRL Labs, Aura, and Haven. Prior to Spark Capital, he spent seven years at Twitter.

12statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.67/5average certainty → 2.5/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

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

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 5 opinions · 5 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion 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 Kevin 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

Thau: OpenWave built the first mobile browser 10 years too early

“OpenWave, and we created the first mobile browser, and really we're selling the promise of the mobile internet. Well, that was a company that got a lot of hype at the time, but the market for, you know, true mobile data and mobile internet didn't come till muc…”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 8:30 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

How they sound: speaking style how? →

212 words/min while actually speaking · 0.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Kevin Thau: 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 12 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 3,511 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Kevin Thau 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 75%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 21:12“Do you think we're getting to a level where the cat for those small brands on those huge channels, though, is now out of proportion to their budgets and leaves itself only open to …” ▶ 17:34“Jeremy Conrad at Lemnos said the other day that consumer electronics is the hardest place to play today in venture. Would you agree with that assessment?” ▶ 7:58“How do you think about market timing, then, as a VC? With that in mind, Because obviously timing is always crucial. What are your takes on the importance of market timing and, and …”

What they said12 What others said1 Episodes1

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

Insight

Thau: Vertically integrated products succeed better in early markets

“The companies that do a vertically integrated product when the market's early seem to have a better chance, in my opinion, than trying to be one piece of technology in the stack of a market before the market is there.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 8:57 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Opinion

Thau: Amazon accelerates sales but does not build brands

“I don't know that I believe that Amazon does a great job of helping build brands. Like, I don't see brands getting built on top of Amazon. I think it's a great accelerator.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 19:09 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Opinion

Thau: No competitor has come close to disrupting Twitter's core use case

“And it's amazing to me that over all these years, they still own that use case. No one's even come close to disrupting them for the Twitter use case.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 5:01 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Opinion

Thau: Facebook lacks Twitter's strong brand persona

“Even a product like Facebook is one of the most impressive companies and products of all time. It doesn't really have as much of a brand persona as a Twitter does, and I think it's because of all those little, little things.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 15:50 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Insight

Thau: Consumer investing is harder than B2B due to adoption risk

“Anything in consumer is very, very hard because you're betting on a big market adoption versus, say, a B to B company with recurring revenue and enterprise clients.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 17:56 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Opinion

Thau: College brand association and academic pedigree do not matter much

“I don't believe in the over obsession of where someone goes to school, that this, like, brand association of where people go to college or in education is that important. I think people get too wrapped up and obsessed with that, parents, kids, and I just don't…”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 22:20 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Thau: Computing is shifting to ambient interfaces beyond phones and PCs

“I do believe that computing is moving from trapped in these little boxes, either a phone or a computer, and computing's moving to everywhere. It's everywhere around us, whether it's your Amazon Echo or different displays around your home, and who knows what's …”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 25:44 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Insight

Thau: Abundant capital makes growing companies lazy in prioritization

“Focus and prioritization becomes a big challenge, and I think when you grow very quickly and you are fortunate enough to raise a lot of capital, it can sometimes make you lazy in how you make those hard decisions.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 5:19 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Assertion Supported

Thau: OpenWave built the first mobile browser 10 years too early

Insight

Thau: VC approaches split into thesis-driven and founder-driven models

“You can either be a very thesis-driven venture capitalist like Fred, or you can be a very founder-driven venture capitalist like Bijan, and I think, you know, what fits better for my personality and the way I see things is being a founder-driven venture capita…”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 11:38 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Insight

Thau: Venture capital is fundamentally about manufacturing serendipity

“We're in the business of manufacturing serendipity, and that's very unclear to me how you do that.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 13:18 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Opinion

Thau: Diversifying venture firms and startup leadership is the ecosystem's best trend

“Making all of these venture capital firms, Boards, executive teams, employee-based, diverse. I think that is the best trend that could possibly happen to the whole ecosystem.”

Kevin Thau Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 25:04 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

The other half of the tape: Kevin Thau's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Statements about Kevin Thau, by other people (1)

Assertion Partly supported

Twitter had under 20 employees and 1M users when Kevin Thau joined

“When he joined, they had less than 20 employees and one million users”

Harry Stebbings Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 0:41 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach	Jan 3, 2018	17m

Kevin Thau

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Statements about Kevin Thau, by other people (1)

Appearances (1)

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