Phil Jacobson

Co-Founder, PumpUp · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Phil Jacobson is a Co-Founder at PumpUp. Prior to PumpUp, he held brand management positions at Unilever and PepsiCo.

12statements → 6claims → 2claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.58/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources →

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 assertions · 4 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 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 Phil 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
PumpUp raised a $2.4 million seed round led by General Catalyst
“So we raised a 2.4 million dollar seed round just under a year ago, led by General Catalyst partners Nico from General Catalyst led it.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 12:01 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp

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

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

4.4 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 4.9 · precision 4 · compression 3.7

answered every one of 14 assessed questions directly

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? →

253 words/min while actually speaking · 27.4 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,105 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 →

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

Insight
Motivation, not instruction, is the primary problem in health and fitness
“We're solving the problem of providing users direction, such as what do I do when I want to work out or when I want to be active, when we recognize that that was a secondary problem from talking to users, where the primary problem in health and fitness is, is …”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 2:36 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Not checkable as stated
PumpUp's community flags inappropriate content within 30 to 90 seconds
“If someone posts something inappropriate or someone posts a negative comment on someone's post, the community is so strong at this point that We'll know probably within, like, 30 to 90 seconds, and it will go straight to our community management team, and we'l…”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 9:22 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Disclosure
PumpUp acquired its two million users without buying any paid ads
“We don't buy ads. We haven't yet. We don't really believe in that.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 10:00 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Partly supported
Jacobson: No mobile app directly competes with PumpUp in social fitness
“When it comes to our category, most players, especially the successful ones, are utility products. You look at Fitbit or Fitness Pal or MapMyFitness or RunKeeper tracking apps or pieces of hardware. When it comes to social and community and the health and fitn…”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 10:50 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Insight
Founders should budget 18 months of runway plus a cost buffer
“You really have to do your best to build out how much money you think you're going to need for about 18 months, and that should provide you enough time to get, to hit the goals you need, or the milestones you need to raise the next round, and then assume every…”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 13:33 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Insight
Founders should seek advice from peers just 6 to 18 months ahead
“Talk to people who have been in your shoes recently in the last six, 1218 months, and it's fresh in their mind. They have a lot of lessons to learn, and they're more than often happy to share.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 14:01 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Insight
Jacobson: Non-growth startup tasks are a misallocation of founder time
“Anything that I'm doing that's not focused on growth or engagement is likely not the right spend of time.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 18:22 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Not checkable as stated
PumpUp generated 1,500 app downloads on launch day
“We had a couple of articles and on day one, we did a few I think about 1500 downloads on the product, which was pretty cool.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 4:55 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Not checkable as stated
PumpUp grew over 300,000 social media followers entirely organically
“We have over 300,000 followers across our social media channels, none of which we've purchased. They're all real and organic.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 5:52 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Supported
PumpUp raised a $2.4 million seed round led by General Catalyst
“So we raised a 2.4 million dollar seed round just under a year ago, led by General Catalyst partners Nico from General Catalyst led it.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 12:01 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
PumpUp's original custom workout app achieved approximately 80,000 downloads
“We did about 80,000 downloads on that product, and we learned a ton from it.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 2:21 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp
Disclosure
Jacobson manually collected 1,000 email signups on campus before launching PumpUp
“And I did a thousand signups that way. So when we launched our product we actually had a thousand people to send it out to immediately.”
Phil Jacobson Jul 10, 2015 ▶ 4:48 Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacobson, Founder @ PumpUp

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Founders Friday 003: 2m users, $2m Seed Round, 220,000 Instagram Followers with Phil Jacob Jul 10, 2015 14m
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