Mamoon Hamid
General Partner, Kleiner Perkins · 3 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
investorfounderengineer@mamoonha ↗LinkedIn ↗kleinerperkins.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Mamoon Hamid is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who co-founded Social Capital before joining Kleiner Perkins as a partner and managing member in 2017. He is best known for leading early-stage investments in software and technology companies, including Slack, Figma, Rippling, Box, Glean, and Netskope.
67statements → 25claims → 13claims resolved → 69%fully supported → 3.93/5average certainty → 2.18/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 122said about them ↓
9 supported 4 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 25 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
11 predictions · 14 assertions · 7 opinions · 16 insights · 18 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 25 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 13 are resolved, 6 are not yet assessed, and 6 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 Mamoon 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
Hamid: FTC and Lina Khan did not block the Adobe-Figma deal
“I don't think, ah, a lot of us put a lot of the blame on Lena Khan, poor Lena Khan because, you know, in our own experience, that's not, that was not the issue for Adobe Figma. It wasn't Lena, ah, or the FTC, ah, there were other issues. So I think it's broadl…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
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
Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →
4.3 / 5
directness 4.4 · coherence 4.4 ·
precision 4.2 · compression 3.8
redirected or did not address 3 of 38 assessed questions (8%). Watch them ▸
This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →
How they sound: speaking style how? →
261 words/min while actually speaking · 27.4 um and uh per 1k words · 18.1 false starts per 1k · 34.2% of pauses land inside a clause
English is their second language (first language: German). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.
Measured by listening to the audio itself: 12,574 words across 2 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →
How the interview went all their pushback → series average →
Across 3 rated episodes:
host pushback ▾ 2.3/10
setup questions received 60%
host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 4:22“How do you think about differentiation in this world when there are 10 transcribers note-taking apps for doctors?” ▶ 24:48“When the market is giving you signal like that, why do you do it?” ▶ 16:01“Is it actually a good business?” ▶ 13:49“How do you think about optimizing reserve allocation with the new fund, and what's the thinking around that?” ▶ 19:44“Am I right to be concerned by this round compression timeframe element, and how do you think about that?” “Has there been a moment to you where maybe it stretched a little bit outside of that band that stands out in your career, and where you really evolved your thinking as a result of …”
Everything Mamoon Hamid said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins avoids backing great founders in bad markets
“Bad markets, the structure of industries where margins are compressed and customers are bad, life's just too hard that way... Probably not.”
Hamid: Invested in Slack at a $250M valuation on $500k ARR
“It was 500 K of ARR at the time... Two hundred fifty million post.”
Hamid: Data-driven VC sourcing platforms are mostly BS
“I think it's mostly BS. Yeah. Yeah. I think many have tried and failed at using the very data oriented approach to investing in startups, when at the end of the day it's about the founders and-”
Hamid: Incumbents and VCs are over-investing in AI due to FOMO
“Everyone's over-investing right now into this cycle, and because none of us can miss, whether it's the large incumbents, Or us as venture investors back in companies.”
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins reserves a 'YOLO bucket' for rule-breaking deals
“And in some ways we have a, what we call like a Yolo bucket in our funds and where you just have this extreme conviction around the founder and the company where you're sort of willing to break the rules.”
Hamid: AI middleware is overinvested and its value will be fleeting
“There's a lot of time being spent on a lot of the middle layer between the foundation models and the applications. And I think in the middle layers, middleware, things that allow you to use those models better, faster, cheaper and build applications on top. So…”
Hamid: OpenAI will figure out gross margins and become highly profitable
“Today it's not a great business, but, you know, I think they're smart enough to figure out how they can get to a gross margin that will allow them to be a highly profitable business over time.”
Hamid: LLM token prices will fall another 10x-20x within two years
“So, will it go down to the next two years? I don't know, but it will probably go down by 10 X or 20 X”
Hamid: Tech sector will gain $10 trillion in annual spend within decade
“So, 10 trillion of annual spend will get created for technology companies over the next decade.”
Hamid: AI revenue will justify CapEx by expanding into global labor markets
“I think the revenue will be there for, because again, we're not just tackling software, linear software, as I call it. We're tackling Like labor, and labor shortages, and things that humans can do, but it's the worst part of their job, or we don't have enough …”
Hamid: Venture capital is a business that does not scale with headcount
“It's, we think it's a business that doesn't scale, actually.”
Hamid: FTC and Lina Khan did not block the Adobe-Figma deal
“I don't think, ah, a lot of us put a lot of the blame on Lena Khan, poor Lena Khan because, you know, in our own experience, that's not, that was not the issue for Adobe Figma. It wasn't Lena, ah, or the FTC, ah, there were other issues. So I think it's broadl…”
Hamid: Valuing early-stage startups on revenue multiples is a mistake
“Yeah, I think it's really a mistake to look at revenue multiples at like half a million.”
Hamid: Current AI ground-floor value creation will never be repeated
“We will not see this sort of like, At the ground floor level value creation in our lifetimes ever again.”
Hamid: VCs Return More by Holding Winners for Decades
“And in many cases, you don't even want to distribute in those eight years because think about how much you would have made if you would have stayed in, in, in Amazon or Facebook or Google over the course of time it probably would have been much better for thos…”
Hamid: Airbnb Will Become a Property Manager and Housing Platform
“I think over time, Airbnb is probably going to take over, like, where people just live. Like, they will become the property manager for people who own homes, and it will become the place, like, the Craigslist for people who want to find a home.”
Hamid: AI cycle is 10x larger than the 1997 internet boom
“We're in the midst of a super cycle like none we've seen before. The AI super cycle, as you know, and it reminds me of the time when I first came to Silicon Valley in 1997. I was 19 years old, and it was all just roses all around me. It was the rise of the int…”
Hamid: AI applications will create trillions in value over next decade
“There are so many things to build on top of this infrastructure, all these frontier models that is going to create so many trillions of value over the next decade.”
Kleiner Perkins focuses AI investments on co-pilots for top-earning professions
“We've invested in a lot of application layer companies, and that are solving very specific pain points. And the way we've looked at it pretty simply is, if you think about, we took actually the top 20 jobs in the US, and who makes the most? Simple. And it's do…”
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins needs 15-20% ownership on $5M-$10M early-stage checks
“Because as you know, Harry, you know, we have to get our ownership at the early stages where you're investing five to ten million dollars for 15 to 20% for the math to work for our funds.”
Hamid: AI SaaS startups command $300 to $500 monthly per seat
“What we're seeing right now is that you have seat-based pricing that was like, 30 dollars a month, 40 dollars a month, and now you're getting 300 dollars a month, 400 dollars a month, even 500 dollars a month for the software.”
Hamid: LLM token prices dropped 200x over the last 18 months
“In the last 18 months the price of a token has gone down by 200 X”
Hamid: Aaron Levie's Box IPO dilution led VCs to re-up founder equity
“Aaron has done a great PSA for founders with his equity stake at the IPO, where I think we as investors, board members have done a way better job making sure that our founders get re-upped when, especially when they dip below a certain threshold.”
Hamid: Avoid founders who rely on top-down market mapping
“I don't like the, we looked at the landscape, and we discovered that this is a great place to build a business. Like, we did a whole market mapping exercise, And the TAM is going to be X billion dollars and, you know, we've got yeah, it is that sort of like th…”
The other half of the tape: Mamoon Hamid's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 118 times in 40 episodes on 20VC. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 71Jason Lemkin 10Rory O'Driscoll 7Everett Randle 5Pat Grady 3Michael Eisenberg 3Josh Stein 3Eoghan McCabe 3
Statements about Mamoon Hamid, by other people (4)
Lemkin: Chamath Palihapitiya has been sued by all his former partners
“Chamath, all his ex-partners have sued him. Mamoon sued them. The Grok guys he sued.”
Swisher: Mamoon Hamid was the best Series A SaaS investor
“I think the thing, the gift that Mamoon hasn't, I think from the SaaS era, Mamoon, my view is he was the best Series A investor in the SaaS era, period.”
Moore: Mamoon Hamid is not metrics-driven, relies on taste in people
“I think Mamoon is known as someone who is very metrics driven, and I think that could not be more false. He has this incredible taste in people.”
Grady: Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid is an exceptional deal picker
“Somebody who I really admire is Mamoon at Kleiner. I think Mamoon has an exceptional track record of investing in companies that are not at all obvious at the time. And I think about the series B in Figma, which is a round that we looked at and passed on. I th…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 28 mentions in 9 episodes 3 per episode
- Insights from Coatue's Growth Investor Lucas Swisher · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Why You Need a $1B Fund To Do Series A | SpaceX at $2TRN & Data Centers in Space | Groq's $20BN Deal · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic's Fable Banned by US Government | Wix & Adobe Hit All-Time Lows | Mistral Raising at $20BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
- Why OpenAI and Anthropic Won't Win the App Layer | Glean Founder · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 25 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
- Benchmark's GP, Everett Randle on Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Bucky Moore @ Lightspeed Venture Partners: Why You Cannot Do VC If You Do Not Do Pre-Seed · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- How LP Deployment to Venture Will Change in 2025 & Are Endowment Funds in Trouble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
- Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA - Why? & Why VC Will Hit $1TRN and The Opening of Retail · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Why VC Today is Worse than 2021 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: The Daily Deal: Coreweave IPO | Scale Hits $25BN on $2BN EOY Revenue | Sequoia's 25x Return on Wiz | Tech Stocks Tank with Tariffs | Cursor: Defensible or Dangerous Example of Lost Moats in Tech
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 28 mentions in 7 episodes 4 per episode
- Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mark Goldberg: Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | E1219 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Eoghan McCabe, CEO @Intercom: Freedom of Speech, Censorship and Government Control | E1213 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Pat Grady: Sequoia Partner on Investing Lessons from Doug Leone, Roelof Botha and Alfred Lin | E1174 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Michael Eisenberg: How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race | E1167 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Shaun Maguire: Why Iran is the World's Greatest Evil & Trump is the Only Hope for Peace | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2022 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Geoff Lewis: Why I Put $200M into Rippling; Uncapped Notes; "Compound Startups" | 20VC #933 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires with Jason Lemki
- How I Bought 12% of Google for $12M; How VC is Fixing Climate Change | John Doerr Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2020 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Biggest Lessons from Working with John Doerr, How Founders Can Have Discussions of Vulnerability with Their Board and Investors & Marrying Another Founder; The Pros, Cons and Ways To Make it Succeed with Alyson Friedensohn, Co-Founder & CEO @ Modern
- 20VC: Slack Founder Stewart Butterfield on Leadership Styles, Decision-Making, The 3 Levels of Wealth, IPOs vs Direct Listings & Why Effective Entrepreneurship is Like Parkour
- 20VC: Intercom Founder, Eoghan McCabe on How To Deal with the Weight of Expectation, Having Your Identity Tied To Your Company, How To Be Your Authentic Self Even with Stakeholders & Why There Are No Rules
- 20VC: Figma Founder, Dylan Field on How Leadership Needs To Evolve with Scale, The Transition from Application to Platform & The Future of Remote Work, Education and Digital Spaces
- 20VC: Craft Ventures' David Sacks on How To Assess Founder Psychology, How To Accurately Evaluate CAC, Burn and Churn & What Makes The Very Best Startup Boards
- 20VC: Matt Mochary, Coach To Silicon Valley's Leading VCs & Founders on How To Deal with Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt, How To Manage Fear and Anger & Why Board Seats Are The Death of Investors
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Kapwing Founder Julia Enthoven on Why Marketing Innovation Is As Important As Product Innovation, Why Every Company Is Becoming A Media Company & The Benefits Of Not Raising Money Too Early
- 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
- 20VC: Figma Founder Dylan Field on The Biggest Mistakes Young Founders Most Often Make, How To Go Slow To Go Fast With Venture Dollars & How The Design Process Will Fundamentally Change Over The Next 5-10 Years
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2017 3 mentions in 1 episode
2016 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Why Every Employee Should Re-Apply For Their Job Every Year & The Strategies To Prepare For A Successful Fundraise with Kyle Hill, Founder & CEO @ HomeHero
- 20VC: The 3 Things LPs Want To See From VCs & Why The Table Stakes For VCs Is Higher Than Ever with Judith Elsea, Co-Founder @ Weathergage Capital
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Mamoon Hamid: AI - Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws | E1217 · 20 | Oct 21, 2024 | 42m |
| 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on The Strategy Behind The New $600m "Back To The Futu | May 13, 2019 | 20m |
| 20VC: Social Capital's Mamoon Hamid on Disrupting The Venture Model & Advancing Humanity B | Oct 31, 2016 | 18m |