Matt Williams

Founder & CEO, Pro.com · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Matt Williams is the Founder and CEO of Pro.com. Prior to Pro.com, he served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz, CEO of Digg, and spent 12 years at Amazon.

12statements → 8claims → 8claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.92/5average certainty → 1.58/5average debate potential → 4.2/5argument clarity · the sources → 5said about them ↓

6 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

8 assertions · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved. 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 Matt 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

LiveBid built the first real-time engine for physical online auctions

“And we decided to focus you know, the entire company on the auction space and built the first real time the real, you know, first real time engine for competing in a physical auction for online bidding.”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 4:06 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

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

4.2 / 5 directness 4.3 · coherence 4.4 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.5

answered every one of 17 assessed questions directly

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? →

242 words/min while actually speaking · 72 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,154 words across 1 episode 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 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 1/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10

setup questions received 70%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 13:51“How did you, how did you attempt to kind of turn this round, and was there anything you would have done differently?” ▶ 13:54“And was there anything you would have done differently there?” ▶ 17:31“And how is a entrepreneur in residence different to your standard investment analyst at a VC firm? What do you guys do differently?”

when Matt pushed back ▶ 3:07“Yeah, 20, 23 actually, but yes.”

What they said12 What others said5 Episodes1

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

Insight

Matt Williams: First-time founders should bootstrap until achieving clear product-market fit

“So if it is a if it's a relatively new founding team that's never founded another company my advice is quite simple, which is to bootstrap as long as you can until you see some very clear traction, some very clear product market fit For the offering that you h…”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 8:49 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

LiveBid built the first real-time engine for physical online auctions

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 4:06 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Partly supported

LiveBid amassed $100M in inventory before acquisition interest from Amazon and eBay

“And in about a year we're able to amass close to a hundred million dollars in inventory that was, you know, being offered through auction through our website, which at the time was quite a bit, and we then had, had interest from eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon for acq…”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 4:52 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

Matt Williams: Most acquired founders leave within three years; he stayed twelve

“Very few founders ever kind of last longer than two or three years at most startups that get, then get acquired. I, you know, I think there's, there are very few, I happen to be one of the rare, you know, kind of rare ones that I was at Amazon for about 12 yea…”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 13:21 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

Matt Williams laid off 40% of Digg staff in his first six weeks

“It was a really hard, you know, kind of first six weeks, which included laying off about 40% of the staff”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 14:54 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

What-if

Matt Williams: Digg turnaround needed fresh outside talent sooner after v4 launch

“That probably would have more quickly brought in some additional talent that that, that hadn't kind of lived through the pain of, you know, kind of the V four launch and brought in new blood more, kind of more quickly to really help not only carry new perspect…”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 15:52 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Insight

Matt Williams: EIR roles range from passive holding desks to active support

“I think it's different for every VC, and I think it's, it is what you make of it. I think in some VCs, it is a it's a desk, you know, for you to just have and figure out what you want to do next. And I think for on the other kind of end of the spectrum, you re…”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 17:40 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

Matt Williams: LiveBid delivered a 10x return when acquired by Amazon

“I started a company called LiveBid that was founded back in 96 and sold to Amazon in 99 for about a 10 X return to investors”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 2:49 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

Matt Williams: LiveBid sold an official movie Batmobile online in 1998

“We in fact sold the Batmobile online. Wow. Through our platform, you know, from the from one of the Batman movies.”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 5:54 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Disclosure

Matt Williams funded LiveBid employee salaries with his personal credit card

“You know, I was already at the point of starting to put, you know, salaries on my credit card for those employees that had families.”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 7:27 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Supported

LiveBid broadcast the OJ Simpson estate sale as an online auction

“And we had one of the largest auction events kind of on that's ever been broadcast online, which is the OJ Simpson estate sale.”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 8:07 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

Assertion Partly supported

Matt Williams: Digg reached over 40 million monthly unique visitors at peak

“It was, in fact, one of the top, I think, three traffic news websites at one time in its history with forty-plus million monthly unique visitors”

Matt Williams Jul 31, 2015 ▶ 14:16 FF 006: Acquired by Amazon, CEO @ Digg, EIR @ a16z and now Founder @ Pro.com with Matt Williams

The other half of the tape: Matt Williams's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3 Brian Wong 2