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Linda Lian

Co-founder & CEO, Common Room · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveoperatorinvestor@LindaMLian ↗commonroom.io ↗

Linda Lian is the co-founder and CEO of Common Room, a customer intelligence platform acquired by Zoom. Prior to founding the company in 2020, she evaluated software investments at Madrona Venture Group and led product marketing for serverless computing at Amazon Web Services.

16statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.81/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

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

2 predictions · 3 assertions · 8 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, 1 is not yet assessed, 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 Linda 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
Lian: Common Room will hire exclusively senior talent through year end
“Yeah, so it's definitely not a perpetual plan. It is our near-term plan and our plan so far, so probably until the end of this year we'll be looking to bring on board folks who are experienced”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 16:25 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
50% 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? →

214 words/min while actually speaking · 0.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Linda Lian: 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 26 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 5,387 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Linda Lian 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%

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

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lian: Common Room bans the 'shit sandwich' method of giving feedback
“One of the things that I'm not a huge fan of is the shit sandwich. Which is this notion that you want to say something nice, and then, you know, give a direct piece of feedback, and then say something nice again. That's not really how I want to communicate, an…”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 15:12 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Common Room's true competition is inertia, not rivals
“I genuinely don't think for what we're trying to do, any company at all is the competition. I really see our competition as inertia, as the way that companies are already doing things, as human nature.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 31:28 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Linda Lian: Startup aha moments unfold over years, not single instances
“Aha moments aren't really a moment, and for me, I think there were really three ingredients to my aha moment in building common room that happened over the course of probably years.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 3:08 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Linda Lian: Company values serve as a framework for constructive disagreement
“I always saw Amazon's values as a way, a framework for disagreement. It enables employees to lean on the values to advocate for what they think is right, even when it is counter to what their leadership may think.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 8:19 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Disclosure
Common Room considers changing two company values rarely used in daily operations
“So right now we're actually thinking about changing two of them because we don't use them very much in our day to day life.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 11:02 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Transparently speaking truth is an act of workplace compassion
“One of the most compassionate things you can do in life or in work is to speak the truth and to speak it transparently.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 13:29 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Prediction Held up
Lian: Common Room will hire exclusively senior talent through year end
“Yeah, so it's definitely not a perpetual plan. It is our near-term plan and our plan so far, so probably until the end of this year we'll be looking to bring on board folks who are experienced”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 16:25 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Intuition is the summation of logical reason and subconscious signals
“And so, to me, intuition is the summation of that hard, logical reason, plus a lot of subconscious things that you may not really fully understand in the moment.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 26:23 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Intuition should override resume credentials when evaluating job candidates
“The example with the candidate that I'll give is someone who looks amazing and perfect on paper, but then when you talk to them, there's a whiff of ego, or there's just something that's not quite right about how they're Speaking about their experience, and the…”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 26:33 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Assertion Supported
Common Room operated without a website or marketing until Series B
“We didn't have a website. We hadn't updated our LinkedIns. We had done zero marketing up until we announced Our Series B.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 27:29 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Never ask customers for features, only for their problems
“We never ask our customers for features. We ask them to tell us their problems, and that's how we always start.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 30:06 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Disclosure
Common Room sends candidates company values ahead of dedicated values interviews
“So we do a core values-based interview where we send the candidate our values, and we say, we're going to ask you questions as part of this interview process that map directly to figuring out whether or not you have these values, whether or not you share these…”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 9:52 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Disclosure
Lian: Common Room co-founders initially ignored her cold LinkedIn outreach
“I reached out to Francis and Baraj on LinkedIn, and they ignored me. I didn't hear back from them at all.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 19:29 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Lian: Dylan Field of Figma was Common Room's first angel investor
“I think the first angel was Dylan Field at Figma.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 32:32 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Insight
Lian: Today's startup crises become tomorrow's happy hour stories
“The horrible situations of today will be the kind of happy hour stories of tomorrow”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 36:08 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
Assertion Partly supported
Linda Lian: AWS launched its developer community programs around 2017
“This was around 2017 when we really started building all of the developer community engagement programs that AWS still has today, including our developer Slack, our Reddit engagement, our Stack Overflow engagement, open sourcing product roadmaps on GitHub.”
Linda Lian Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 5:50 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom

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

Statements about Linda Lian, by other people (1)

Assertion Supported
Common Room raises over $50M from Index, Greylock, and 20VC
“To date, Linda has raised over fifty million dollars with Common Room, from the likes of Danny Reimer at Index, Sarah Grew at Greylock, Dylan Field at Figma, Dick Costolo, and of course, TwentyVC Fund.”
Harry Stebbings Apr 1, 2021 ▶ 0:35 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How T Apr 1, 2021 27m
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