Max Rhodes

Co-Founder and CEO, Faire · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveoperatorinvestor@MaxRhodesOK ↗LinkedIn ↗faire.com ↗

Max Rhodes is the co-founder and CEO of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace connecting brands with independent retailers. Prior to founding Faire in 2017, he spent nearly five years as a product leader at Square, working on initiatives including Cash App, Square Capital, and Caviar.

12statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.75/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 12said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 1 opinion · 6 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 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 Max 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

Rhodes: Faire launched with free returns and net 60 terms

“And so we realized in that moment, that was the core problem that we had to solve. And that's how we ended up launching fair with free returns, net 60 payment terms, basically like try before you buy.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 7:42 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet 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? →

238 words/min while actually speaking · 0 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Max Rhodes: 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 24 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 6,060 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Max Rhodes 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 40%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 30:57“Do you not lose that if you just focus on the professionals?” ▶ 21:52“If you think back to a decision you made that was wrong, is there one that stands out? And I guess, how did it change how you make decisions from that mistake or bad decision?” ▶ 29:22“if you get a 10 and a two, so two separate references, and one goes two and gives reasons why it's a two, and the other goes 10 and gives reasons why it's a 10, what happens in ver…”

What they said12 What others said12 Episodes1

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

Insight

Rhodes: Unsold inventory risk is the primary barrier for retail buyers

“The trade show solved like a really fundamental problem for retailers, which is when they are placing an order for a product, they need to know that it's going to sell. If it doesn't sell, they could go out of business. And so there's all this anxiety that's w…”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 7:03 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Insight

Rhodes: Keep conducting executive reference checks until you find negative feedback

“And then using references to round that out, and to make sure that, and doing a lot of references, like, for really senior roles, five, six, seven references, one of the pieces of advice I've gotten is keep digging until you find something bad, and then are th…”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 26:55 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Opinion

Max Rhodes: Interviewing candidates on childhood yields less value than recent work

“But I think the value of that time is a little less than the value of more recent professional experiences.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 31:27 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Assertion Partly supported

Rhodes: Etsy and Bonagora failed at wholesale by ignoring retailer demand

“Moving that online, people had tried it. Like Etsy tried this. There was this other website called Bonagora a while back that tried it. Everyone who tried it Would get a bunch of brands signed up, but then they couldn't get the retailers to order.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 7:22 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Assertion Supported

Rhodes: Faire launched with free returns and net 60 terms

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Faire requires annual CEO and pod-level written strategy docs

“Every year I write a strategy doc for the whole company. Every product pod writes its own strategy doc that kind of ladders up to the broader strategy doc.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 12:46 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Insight

Writing prevents sloppy thinking and forces strategic rigor

“Forces you to really think through your ideas and to connect your ideas together. You can't hide sloppy thinking. And so it forces rigor, and I also think it creates clarity.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 12:56 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Insight

Max Rhodes: In reference checks, 7/10 is poor and 9/10 is stellar

“And that one to 10, I also think is really revealing because you get calibrated on like, most people will say somewhere between seven and 10, and if you do six or seven references, you can create a composite score that like, if the person's consistently gettin…”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 27:55 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Insight

Rhodes: Early-stage startups should prioritize speed over financial forecasting

“When you're an early stage startup, speed is so important. And there's so many unknowns that you can easily waste time trying to predict what's going to happen. And a lot of times the best way to figure out what's going to happen is just to do it.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 32:23 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Faire's strategy drafting process grew from three weeks to three months

“Our first year, it maybe took me like two or three weeks to write it. Now it's, you know, a three month process.”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 17:04 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Disclosure

Early Faire hiring mistakes stemmed from falling in love with candidates

“The big mistake that I used to make is I would fall in love with candidates. I still have this problem. But I get enamored with candidates. All of a sudden, I move into confirmation bias mode. I totally ignore any sort of red flags, just focus on all the posit…”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 23:08 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

Insight

Max Rhodes: Frame candidate weakness checks around interview self-disclosures

“I say, this person mentioned this was one of their weaknesses in the interview. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And I pick out the weakness that I'm most worried about that might be the most likely to be a deal breaker. You know, when they say th…”

Max Rhodes Feb 18, 2022 ▶ 28:30 20VC: Faire's Max Rhodes on Three Steps To Hire the Best Candidates, Why Every Company Should Have a Strategy Doc and How To Do It & The Art of Referencing; How to Get the Most Out of Every Reference

The other half of the tape: Max Rhodes's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Keith Rabois 8 Mike Duboe 2 Delian Asparouhov 2