Paul English

Founder & CEO, Boston Venture Studio · 1 appearance on the record.

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Paul English is the co-founder and former CTO of travel search engine Kayak, as well as startups Lola.com and Moonbeam. He currently serves as the founder and CEO of Boston Venture Studio.

12statements → 1claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

0 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 assertion · 10 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is 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 Paul argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

269 words/min while actually speaking · 0.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Paul English: 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 25 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 6,586 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Paul English 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 ▾ 0/10

pushed back at the host 0/10

setup questions received 85%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 13:00“Where do you see many tech founders going wrong, maybe, in their hiring approach today?” ▶ 18:20“How do you eloquently and graciously reject it, so to speak, and pursue your own direction?” ▶ 34:15“How do you deal with the shit hit the fan moments?”

What they said12 What others said5 Episodes1

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

Insight

Paul English omits distracting board member suggestions from official meeting minutes

“I don't write down everything the board says, and maybe this is bad. I write down the things that are the most significant or things that I'm going to take action on. But if it's something someone mentioned about some side project that I think is Defocused, ev…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 19:28 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English argues interpersonal charisma and recruiting skills are fully trainable

“And a lot of these skills you can do in personal life transfer directly into business life. So I think it's absolutely trainable.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 12:45 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Arrogant founders fail by hiring subservient employees who avoid challenging them

“Well, I think either the tech founder lacks humility, and they're arrogant, and they only hire people that would be subservient to them, so they don't hire people that are daring enough, and they're going to challenge them and push them.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 13:05 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Philanthropists should fund non-profit leaders upfront without imposing bureaucratic reporting hurdles

“Find the leader that inspires you. Write them checks first, and ask the question second. And I know from being in the boards and helping start some non-profits, a lot of donors make the non-profit leader, like, jump through hoops, do so much work in reporting.…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 32:39 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English: Music arrangement requires coordination similar to software programming

“The coordination part of music arrangement, to me, feels similar to a lot of the coordination parts of programming, so I felt very comfortable in both areas.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 4:04 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Tech startup creativity requires problem empathy and relentless iteration

“In tech entrepreneurship, I think most creativity comes out of people who are empaths for problems, and when you see something that irritates you, rather than just say that's irritating and move on, you kind of focus on it, and you try to think about other peo…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 6:29 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English validates startup ideas by pitching collaborators before writing code

“What I like to do to validate the idea is I write up a SPAC or a design, and then I pitch it, and I might be pitching it to a family member, a friend, a colleague, and it's only when I get one person excited do I say, okay, maybe there's something here, and th…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 8:31 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Assertion Partly supported

Kayak raised $200M at an $800M valuation with only 39 employees

“So we had to raise like two hundred million dollars. I remember we had 39 employees. They had 130 employees. But we were able to raise an eight hundred million dollar valuation, which was crazy given that we're only 39 employees.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 22:36 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English argues customers do not care about venture funding announcements

“Your customers don't care who invested in you. And for the most part, your customers don't even care if you're a private company or a public company. I think these milestones are more internal ones. They're not ones important to the customers. So I would encou…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 24:04 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English rejects email deferral features because they force redundant reviews

“So I really don't like email applications that allow you to defer an email to look at later because that means you've looked at it twice.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 29:20 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Disclosure

Kayak co-founder Paul English discusses his experience with bipolar disorder

“So I'm bipolar, and one time early in my career, I was a young VP running a big team.”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 33:22 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

Insight

Paul English advocates for radical transparency with co-founders during startup crises

“I believe in radical transparency. So if something goes really bad at my company, I'll reach out to my co-founder first and maybe to my management team out of my board and just say, I just really screwed something up, you know, help me think this through. So w…”

Paul English Jun 8, 2018 ▶ 34:24 20VC: From Sequoia To Accel To General Catalyst: What Makes The Best Board Member & The Hiring Methodology To Attract World Class Talent with KAYAK & Lola Founder, Paul English

The other half of the tape: Paul English's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 3 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4 Neeraj Agrawal 1