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Parker Thompson

Partner, AngelList · 1 appearance on the record.

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Parker Thompson is a Partner at AngelList and the creator of the Startup L Jackson Twitter account. Prior to AngelList, he was a Partner at 500 Startups and co-founded PlaceSite.

11statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.64/5average certainty → 2.45/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

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

2 predictions · 1 opinion · 7 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names 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 Parker 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
ICOs and token marketplaces will not replace traditional venture capital firms
“When we talk about disruption, I'm very skeptical that where we're going to be in 10 years is, you know, everything is initial coin offerings, and there's no VCs, and, you know, there's just sort of marketplaces like AngelList and Bitcoin, right? Like, I don't…”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 22:51 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?

How they sound: speaking style how? →

250 words/min while actually speaking · 1.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Parker Thompson: 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 20 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 5,251 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Parker Thompson 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 2/10
setup questions received 80%

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

Prediction Held up
ICOs and token marketplaces will not replace traditional venture capital firms
“When we talk about disruption, I'm very skeptical that where we're going to be in 10 years is, you know, everything is initial coin offerings, and there's no VCs, and, you know, there's just sort of marketplaces like AngelList and Bitcoin, right? Like, I don't…”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 22:51 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
VCs citing 'lack of traction' are usually just politely dismissing founders
“Yeah, I mean, just to speak to that response for a second, that drives me insane, right? Like, let me say you don't have enough traction, right? You're either not able to articulate something actionable, or you're just trying to be nice, and you really don't l…”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 9:20 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Opinion
Bridge rounds offer strong risk-adjusted returns due to flat valuations
“So my personal opinion is bridges are a great way to make money because these are strong companies. And actually a lot of risk has been taken out of the business with Very little valuation bump”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 18:26 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
Pre-product startups should raise as much capital as possible
“So if I'm talking to a pre-product company, right, typically my advice to them would be raise as much money as possible because you have no idea where you're going to be in a year.”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 20:04 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Disclosure
Founders who optimize primarily for minimizing dilution are a negative signal
“And I think anybody who's optimizing for dilution, first of all, if, like, that That's your mentality, and we're having a conversation, I'm already biased against investing.”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 20:42 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
Wireless last-mile ISPs possess asymmetric cost advantages over legacy cable incumbents
“You're competing against incumbents that people hate who are digging ditches to every house, and so if you can solve this last mile problem with wireless, I think you create a fundamentally asymmetric cost structure”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 29:58 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
Traditional VCs scale by adding partners rather than building operational infrastructure
“VCs who typically are scaling by adding a partner and then doing a few more deals a quarter or a year.”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 5:41 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
Qualitative customer value matters more than early revenue for nascent startups
“Like, I'm more interested in the value that you're delivering than, for example, how much money you're making, because you're not making real money anyway.”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 11:04 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
Founders should multiply their calculated capital requirements by 1.5
“I tend to talk to founders about focusing on how much money you need and what you think you can accomplish, and my general rule is figure out what you think you need and multiply by 1.5, because something's going to go wrong”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 20:27 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Top-tier Series A firms like Sequoia and Benchmark won't change models
“I think if you are a traditional series A and beyond VC, you're probably going to do okay if you're really value-add to the Sequoias and the benchmarks of the world. I don't really see them changing their model much at all, because it works really well.”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 23:21 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
Insight
A founder's velocity of learning strongly predicts early-stage startup success
“How fast do these people learn is something I focus more and more on. So I try to ask people questions that give me insight into their learning process and their velocity of learning. Cause I think at the early stage, that seems to be a strong predictor of suc…”
Parker Thompson Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 7:46 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?

The other half of the tape: Parker Thompson's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4

Statements about Parker Thompson, by other people (1)

Assertion Supported
Parker Thompson created the Startup L Jackson Twitter parody account
“Now, Parker is a partner at AngelList, And creator of popular Twitter parody account Startup L Jackson.”
Harry Stebbings Dec 21, 2016 ▶ 0:25 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0021422017episodesmentions
0122017episodes it came up in
0011222017episodesmentions per episode
2017 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To S Dec 21, 2016 23m
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