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Mike Jones

Co-founder & CEO, Science Inc. · 2 appearances on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestoroperator@mjones ↗LinkedIn ↗mjones.la ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mike Jones is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Science Inc., a Santa Monica startup studio and venture investment firm. He previously served as the CEO of Myspace and founded Userplane.

21statements → 13claims → 8claims resolved → 63%fully supported → 3.95/5average certainty → 2.05/5average debate potential → 4.0/5argument clarity · the sources → 30said about them ↓

5 supported 1 partly supported 2 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 predictions · 7 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, and 5 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 Mike 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
Jones predicts Bitcoin's price will exceed $4,000 by August 2018
“I'm confident it will be above.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 25:28 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Jones predicts traditional LPs will move capital into crypto by late 2017
“And I believe that we're seeing, within months, this third phase of wealth moving into crypto, which will be traditional LPs and investors finding managers they trust, like us, to basically move large amounts of exposure into crypto. And that will, you know, c…”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 12:01 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% certainty 3
70% 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

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

4.0 / 5 directness 4.1 · coherence 4.3 · precision 3.4 · compression 3.1

redirected or did not address 1 of 10 assessed questions (10%). 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? →

246 words/min while actually speaking · 31.8 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,334 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 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 1.5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 0.5/10
setup questions received 83%

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

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Jones predicts traditional LPs will move capital into crypto by late 2017
“And I believe that we're seeing, within months, this third phase of wealth moving into crypto, which will be traditional LPs and investors finding managers they trust, like us, to basically move large amounts of exposure into crypto. And that will, you know, c…”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 12:01 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jones: Most ICOs will fail, but surviving tokens will be extremely valuable
“I don't think it's going away. I certainly believe there will be tons of these ICOs that will fail, and their token value may also fail, but I think there'll also be winners, and those winners will be really valuable.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 15:17 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jones: Tokenization and ICOs will fundamentally change early-stage venture capital
“It is going to change venture. I mean, it has changed venture. It's just, if I look at my investing activities over the last six months since we've been participating in this, it's changed the way I think about equity and the way I think about early stage comp…”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 15:46 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Prediction Held up
Jones predicts Bitcoin's price will exceed $4,000 by August 2018
“I'm confident it will be above.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 25:28 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Prediction Held up
Science Blockchain token holders directly receive tokens from incubated startups
“If you're a qualified US investor, and you happen to own or buy one of our tokens, and you have it then sitting in your, you know, Ethereum qualified wallet, what that means is over time, as we incubate businesses, and if those businesses also run their own to…”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 7:31 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jones: A Filecoin ICO failure will not destroy the broader crypto market
“I don't believe in that binary nature. I think that the ICO slash irrevocable token transfer vehicle that we're witnessing right now has applicability in lots of areas... If they aren't successful, I don't believe that will pull down. I mean, it may have a fin…”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 21:48 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Assertion Partly supported
Jones: 80% to 90% of ICO capital originates outside the US
“80 to 90% of these ICOs are raising more capital internationally than they are in the U.S.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 22:34 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Assertion Contradicted
Jones: Daily utility ICOs in 2017 raise between $10M and $500M
“There is basically a giant token sale, at least one happening every single day, to the tunes of Ten million dollars up to five hundred million dollars.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 5:59 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Assertion Supported
Jones: 65 registered hedge funds are raising for crypto allocations in 2017
“In fact, I believe this week there was an article released that showed there were 65 pending registered hedge funds that were in the process of completing their raises to move dollars into the crypto market,”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 11:33 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Disclosure
Jones: Core crypto developer discourse occurs in hard-to-find private Telegram groups
“I'm very engaged on Telegram, and there's a ton of very hard-to-find groups where the miners and the core blockchain developers and Bitcoin enthusiasts share ideas. I spent a lot of time in those Telegram groups.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 25:41 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Insight
Science Inc. focuses on startups that can scale through paid media
“Unlike maybe, you know, certain investors or venture groups where they invest in a whole wide variety of different industries, I look for things that we expressly have in, you know, internal information on how to build. So for me, that typically means companie…”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 7:02 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Insight
Science Inc. seeks young, feedback-receptive startup founders
“We need incredible CEOs and entrepreneurs that are both, you know, young and eager enough to want to jump into starting a new company, but also receiving enough that they'll take constructive feedback and hopefully guidance provided by our team.”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 7:54 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Insight
Science Inc. requires clear downstream funding and M&A pathways before incubating
“We also look for businesses where we have, you know, direct connections with the funding groups and in the M&A environment. So I prefer businesses where if they're doing really, really well, I know who to go to get them financed. And I know who to go to when t…”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 8:11 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Insight
Inspirational leadership is essential to offset below-market startup compensation
“You're typically kind of underpaying the market. You've got to have leadership that inspires people that makes the one, you know, that makes the best people want to work with those individuals.”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 9:28 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Insight
Startup incubators should stay secondary to portfolio CEOs and their teams
“Science fundamentally needs to fall into the background. The stars in our building are the CEOs and the teams that run these great operational businesses. And my team and any cultural, you know, thesis that, that science brings to it really needs to be, you kn…”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 11:28 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
MySpace rebuild team accomplished with 200 engineers what previously took 2,000
“Being able to do with a 200 person tech team what previously they had done with a 2000 person tech team”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 16:31 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Communicating the studio model to investors is Science Inc.'s greatest challenge
“But when you're launching a, an incubator or a studio that, in essence, holds equity in various degrees of a whole portfolio of different companies, it's a very different entity. So honestly, one of the most challenging parts has been Conveying the strategy an…”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 19:11 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.
Disclosure
Science Inc. operates crypto mines and holds cryptocurrency long-term
“We originally had set up mines, we had invested in a few companies, and we're kind of long-term holders of crypto.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 3:57 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Assertion Supported
Jones: Blockchain Capital pioneered legally compliant tokenized venture funds
“Where blockchain capital raised a portion of their venture fund through a token sale. And they were one of the first groups that figured out the legal process of setting this up and tokenizing their investment vehicle.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 6:47 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Assertion Supported
Jones: 11 crypto tokens exceed $1 billion valuations in August 2017
“There's 11 tokens now that have greater than a billion dollar value with a substantial amount of daily circulating liquidity within the token sale marketplaces.”
Mike Jones Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 16:19 20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture As We Know It & How The M&A Market Will Respond To ICO's with Mike, Jones, Co-Founder @ Science Inc
Opinion
Venture capital and proximity to Silicon Valley drive LA tech growth
“Well, listen, I think that, you know, whether you know, what drives the growth is venture capital, and we're fortunate in that we are a close proximity to Silicon Valley.”
Mike Jones Aug 5, 2015 ▶ 15:06 20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Science Inc.

The other half of the tape: Mike Jones's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 30 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 19Peter Pham 6David Pakman 3Aaron Hirschhorn 2

Every mention by year

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: The First ICO Blockchain Incubator Ever, Why ICO's Will Change The World of Venture Aug 28, 2017 19m
20 VC 060: 12 Acquisitions, $1bn In Exits, Mike Jones, Former MySpace CEO on Life At Scien Aug 5, 2015 15m
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