StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Mark Suster

Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures · 3 appearances on the record.

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

investorfounderauthorexecutive@msuster ↗LinkedIn ↗bothsidesofthetable.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mark Suster is a Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, where he leads early-stage investments in software and emerging technology. Before becoming a venture capitalist, he founded and sold two enterprise software companies, including Koral, which was acquired by Salesforce.

76statements → 29claims → 14claims resolved → 36%fully supported → 4.04/5average certainty → 2.21/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 82said about them ↓

5 supported 4 partly supported 5 contradicted 5 not yet assessed 10 not checkable as stated how the 29 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

16 predictions · 13 assertions · 3 opinions · 23 insights · 21 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 29 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 14 are resolved, 5 are not yet assessed, and 10 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 Mark 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
VC fundraising will be harder from 2020 to 2025
“I suspect it's going to be harder to raise funds for the next five years than it was for the last five.”
Mark Suster Apr 20, 2020 ▶ 17:50 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Mark Suster: 2021 tech overvaluations were worse than dot-com bubble
“1998, 99, 2000 are nothing compared to the overvaluations of twenty-twenty-one.”
Mark Suster May 1, 2024 ▶ 0:00 Mark Suster: Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path | E1147 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
55% certainty 4
25% 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

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 4.6 · precision 4.5 · compression 3.8

redirected or did not address 4 of 38 assessed questions (11%). 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? →

228 words/min while actually speaking · 11.5 um and uh per 1k words · 4.8 false starts per 1k · 22% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 12,965 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 ▾ 3.7/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 45%

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

Disclosure
Upfront reserves roughly 60% of fund capital for follow-on investments
“So we're investing somewhere between 39 to say 42% Of our fund in first jacks, and we reserve the balance and then we pace ourselves.”
Mark Suster Apr 20, 2020 ▶ 25:34 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds
Disclosure
Upfront allocates 89% of fund dollars to Seed and Series A
“So we do 89% over the last several funds has been about 89% in seed and A. And of that 89%, two-thirds of it is A, one-third of it is seed. So we're actually pretty sizable seed investors, but we are, as you said earlier in the show, A investors. We do 11% of …”
Mark Suster Apr 20, 2020 ▶ 27:28 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds
Disclosure
Upfront Ventures targets $3M-$3.5M check sizes and 2-3 deals per partner yearly
“Our average check size is between three to three and a half million dollars. So what you're really talking about is, in terms of new investments, each partner doing between two to three deals per year maximum.”
Mark Suster Nov 4, 2015 ▶ 12:34 20 VC 085: Mark Suster @ Upfront Ventures on Being A Super Entrepreneur Driven VC
Insight
Mark Suster: Investors deploy peak capital right before market tops
“People invest the most amount of money when the market is just about to hit the peak. When markets fall, that's when everyone sells.”
Mark Suster May 1, 2024 ▶ 0:20 Mark Suster: Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path | E1147 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Mark Suster's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 77 times in 47 episodes on 20VC. 5 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 41Miles Dieffenbach 4Parker Thompson 3Kara Nortman 3Samir Kaji 2Sam Corcos 2Rob Go 2Nav Athwal 2

Statements about Mark Suster, by other people (5)

Opinion
Mark Suster's 'always be raising' advice distracts founders from execution
“There is a headset that has become the norm, which is always be raising. I don't know if that's always right. I think it's where we are, but I don't think that's necessarily the right thing for all founders. I think it's often very distracting and very, and ma…”
Micah Rosenbloom Feb 15, 2017 ▶ 18:00 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Focus On Top Line Valuation, Why Capital Efficiency Is Key To Returns And Investment Success & Why Despite Popular Thought, $100m Is An Exciting Exit For VC with Micah Rosenbloom, Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
Assertion Supported
Mark Suster Aggressively Sold Portfolio Stakes During the 2021 Market Peak
“Mark Suster, I give him all the credit in the world. He's been in the game for a long time and upfront. He saw 20, 21 as an insane period. And he strip sailed like majority of his portfolios and his funds. For a very good price. DPI in the pocket. Like I, all …”
Miles Dieffenbach Aug 4, 2025 ▶ 56:48 Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Kim: Party rounds are the absolute worst early-stage financing structure
“Now, the absolute worst scenario, and Mark Suster actually talks about it in his recent post on both sides of the table, are these party rounds. I don't think these party rounds are happening as often, but these party rounds are where 20 plus individuals, you …”
Michael Kim Jul 6, 2016 ▶ 8:23 20VC: What It Takes To Raise A VC Fund & Investing in First Time Fund Managers with Michael Kim @ Cendana Capital
Opinion
Mark Suster Is the Best VC at Social Media Branding
“You know who I always love is Mark Schuster. He's like, so when we first, first started getting going in, in Twitter, 2008, nine, he was crushing it then. He's now crushing it on Snapchat and doing really interesting stuff.”
Ryan Holmes Oct 28, 2016 ▶ 20:04 20VC: Hootsuite's Ryan Holmes on Optimising Productivity in Meetings, Creating An Ownership Culture & Lessons From Running A Pizzeria!
Opinion
Silicon Valley bias against LA startups is now a non-issue
“Fast forward to today, I think that's a non-issue with people like, you know, Mark Suster and Upfront Ventures and Snapchat in LA.”
James Borow Sep 18, 2015 ▶ 18:43 FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
002010402020152016201720182019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions
0102020152016201720182019202020212022202320242025episodes it came up in
0021042020152016201720182019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions per episode
2025 4 mentions in 1 episode
2024 10 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
2023 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2022 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2017 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
2016 38 mentions in 20 episodes 2 per episode
2015 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (3)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Mark Suster: Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path | E1147 · 20VC May 1, 2024 44m
20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What V Apr 20, 2020 35m
20 VC 085: Mark Suster @ Upfront Ventures on Being A Super Entrepreneur Driven VC Nov 4, 2015 20m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more