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MZ Zaveri

Partner, Audacious Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderengineer@mzaveri ↗LinkedIn ↗mzaveri.com ↗

MZ Zaveri is an early-stage investor and a partner at Audacious Ventures. He previously co-founded Proxino and held investing roles at Tencent, Kleiner Perkins, and Google's Gradient Ventures.

15statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 3.67/5average certainty → 2.27/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, 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 MZ 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
Zaveri: Chinese-style native in-app commerce will expand to Western markets
“You're seeing, so, for instance, like there's news reading apps there, like Tatiao, which integrate sort of commerce-like functionality in the news app, and you can actually conduct commerce there natively, and I think you were going to see this theme sort of,…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 22:23 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
none yet 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? →

252 words/min while actually speaking · 6.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for MZ Zaveri: 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 22 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,913 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of MZ Zaveri 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 ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 50%

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

Insight
Zaveri: Deal heat is often manufactured by early investors over-socializing rounds
“In many ways, actually, I've seen that if you kind of peel back the onion, you can kind of find The root node or sort of the creator, there's sort of individuals that, you know, may have feel sort of have put some early dollars into a financing and have a stro…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 15:13 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Value in AI comes from vertical applications, not infrastructure
“I look at it from a vertical application standpoint, not from just Hey, we want to have the best models, the best sort of, you know, technology, and we're just going to sell enabling technology, you know. No one buys programming languages. And in the same way,…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 16:58 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Outbound sourcing is how venture works, not inbound deal flow
“I fundamentally learned that outbound is the way venture works and inbound is rarely the way it should work.”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 4:50 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Out-raising competitors starves rivals and yields a distribution advantage
“Particularly sort of in sort of markets where there might be four or five competitors, if one can raise more than the others, you can suck out, suck the oxygen out of the room and have an advantage on customer acquisition and distribution in general.”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 8:01 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Opinion
Zaveri: Seed capital excess mainly threatens undifferentiated new venture funds
“So I don't over worry about the excess of capital. I think it can be problem. It can be problematic if you are trying to start a new fund where what's your differentiation, right?”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 20:26 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Dismissing founders or ideas as just a feature is dangerous
“I'd say, like, huge market, and then the other pet, you know, pet peeve is, oh, this is a feature or something like that, right? It's like, you know, companies evolve and change, and I'd say there might be sort of folks that may sort of poorly phrase things, a…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 21:18 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Capital is commoditized, making early relationship-building essential for VCs
“Capital is pretty commoditized today , and so, in essence, if you are selling something that's, like, partially a commodity, you should get to know, sort of, the founders, or the founders should get to know you also, particularly, sort of, if they have multipl…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 6:03 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: VC operational help works faster in enterprise than consumer startups
“On the enterprise side where you can do customer introductions, maybe add value to the top line revenue side. I'd say even on the consumer side, there's a lot one can do, but it's probably much more explicit or sort of much more, you know, you can realize it s…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 7:21 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zaveri: Most startup financings do not involve multiple competitive term sheets
“You know, not in reality is not most financings, the most financings are probably not, you know, sort of like 10, 50, 10 plus, like, you know, eight to 10 term sheets in, in motion. Most financings take time, you know, you want to get to know each other. There…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 12:08 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zaveri: Institutional seed investors target 7% to 15% startup equity
“There's a number of institutional seed investors and, you know, they're sort of positioned to want to take anywhere from like, I don't know, seven to 15%, right? With probably 15 being kind of the ceiling.”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 13:41 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Zaveri: Seed party rounds with dozens of investors have declined since 2013
“Anecdotally speaking, you're seeing less of these rounds from like, 2012, 2013, where there's like, 12, 13 people on a cap table, and you've thrown the financing together, and you might have two to three million bucks on a note where, and I mean, it could stil…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 14:01 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Insight
Zaveri: Broad themes like frontier tech are marketing labels needing sub-themes
“Themes have sub-themes. So, you know, if you are sort of a, hey, we're frontier tech, You know, we're frontier tech investors, or, you know, we invest in machine intelligence. That's very broad at that point. Is it autonomous driving? Is it smarter application…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 18:50 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Prediction Held up
Zaveri: Chinese-style native in-app commerce will expand to Western markets
“You're seeing, so, for instance, like there's news reading apps there, like Tatiao, which integrate sort of commerce-like functionality in the news app, and you can actually conduct commerce there natively, and I think you were going to see this theme sort of,…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 22:23 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Disclosure
Kleiner Perkins leverages dual venture and growth funds to defer risky deals
“We're very fortunate where we have two funds within one firm, and, you know, we invest across the stages, so If we, on the venture side, feel something's just not clicking here, and we think there's an, you know, excess, you know, there is some weird form of r…”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 10:50 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed
Assertion Supported
Zaveri: Tencent generates 50% of its revenue from microtransactions, not ads
“Tencent, for instance, historically continues to not monetize just through ads. 50% of its revenue comes through microtransactions”
MZ Zaveri May 29, 2017 ▶ 22:18 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can Manage Deal Heat & Is There Too Much Venture Dollars At Seed

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Kleiner Perkins' MZ Zaveri on Why Success In Venture Is About The 3 F's, How VCs Can May 29, 2017 16m
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