Rachel Drori

Founder & CEO, Daily Harvest · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Rachel Drori is the Founder and CEO of Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumer brand providing unprocessed frozen foods. Under her leadership, the company has raised over $43 million in funding.

14statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 4.36/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 5said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 2 opinions · 5 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 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 Rachel 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
Daily Harvest delayed building proprietary tech by starting with off-the-shelf software
“Things like team growth to be able to build our own proprietary site, you know, that's something that we didn't prioritize. We knew we could use Kind of an out-of-the-box solution, which was very not out-of-the-box by the time we were done with it, but an out-…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 5:23 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest

How they sound: speaking style how? →

230 words/min while actually speaking · 4.2 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Rachel Drori: 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 3,069 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Rachel Drori 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 →

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

Disclosure
Drori rejected Series A term sheets to write her own
“So I actually decided to blow up the entire round and basically wrote my own term sheet and sent it back to everybody. And I said, Hey guys, little untraditional here, but this is how it's going to be. And I sent back the term sheet and I said, do you want to …”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 11:01 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Opinion
Drori: Early male VCs failed to understand Daily Harvest's frozen food concept
“And the reason why is because I started speaking to people early on and I found that they just didn't get the business. It was mostly middle-aged men who I was talking to, and they would taste one of our first collections, which was smoothies, and they'd be li…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 8:27 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Daily Harvest raised Series B in two weeks pitching six VCs
“I actually went out for the round. I only went out to six VCs, and I'd already had relationships. I already knew that I wanted to work with them, and I ran a true process, but in such a short period of time. First, instead of that six weeks that the other two …”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 13:19 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Opinion
New York tech ecosystem lacks conviction investors at the early stage
“I would absolutely agree. So, you know, if you rewind to my story about raising my series seed, it was not easy. It's really hard to find people at such an early stage that will invest in a concept or an idea.”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 16:28 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Insight
First-time founders must project confidence and fake a track record
“If you've never done it before, you have to pretend that you know exactly what you're doing because you really don't earn points for being a rookie, so, you know, people are looking to invest in people who have a proven track record. Well, guess what? If you d…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 17:22 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Insight
Work-life balance is impossible and founders must accept trade-offs
“I think before I had kids, there was this idea that you can have it all at some point, and I realized that that is just It's not possible, you know, and I think that it's an idealized vision that a lot of people have, like, oh, you know, I'll be able to do eve…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 20:19 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Disclosure
Daily Harvest avoided hiring six months ahead of projected growth
“As I built Daily Harvest, I really looked at building it very capital efficient, not hiring six months ahead of growth, and just some learnings from the record speed Hit a peak and went down from there.”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 3:57 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Insight
Drori: Capital constraints force startups to be selective and methodical
“Being Capital Light allowed us, or not only allowed us, it forced us to kind of be very selective with things that we went after and to be methodical about how we did it.”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 4:56 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Insight
Empathetic board members can act as co-founder sounding boards
“Both Alex and Carl be the type of people that I can call. I can be a little vulnerable with, you know, I can, I will get that empathy, but they're also just wonderful sounding boards. So the decisions that one would usually make with a co-founder, I find that …”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 14:41 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Disclosure
Drori bootstrapped Daily Harvest while pregnant and unable to travel
“I had to bootstrap the business. You know, I was in a position where I wasn't actually able to fly. I was very pregnant. And I only had the New York city community, so I had to make it work”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 16:42 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Drori: Early Daily Harvest investors urged against expanding beyond smoothies
“When I started getting traction with our first collection, which was just smoothies, I had some investors who were really, really hesitant for me to go outside of smoothies.”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 18:38 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Assertion Supported
Daily Harvest delayed building proprietary tech by starting with off-the-shelf software
“Things like team growth to be able to build our own proprietary site, you know, that's something that we didn't prioritize. We knew we could use Kind of an out-of-the-box solution, which was very not out-of-the-box by the time we were done with it, but an out-…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 5:23 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Insight
Drori uses stoic worst-case analysis to handle startup crises
“And for me, the thing that I always go back to is stoicism or stoic philosophy. And I always ask myself, what's the absolute worst thing that can happen? So, you know, in that moment I said, okay, well, worst case scenario, people don't get charged. It's one w…”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 6:31 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest
Disclosure
Daily Harvest doubled its revenue run rate in six weeks during Series A
“What we saw was this incredible growth over that six weeks. And what happened was the run rate that I originally deemed like the one to raise the Series A at had doubled in that six weeks”
Rachel Drori Mar 30, 2018 ▶ 9:55 20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fundraise & The Benefits of Capital Constraints in The Early Days with Rachel Drori, Founder & CEO @ Daily Harvest

The other half of the tape: Rachel Drori'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 4Alex Taussig 1

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Tearing Up Term Sheets and Writing Your Own, Why Founders Must Do "VC Dating" Pre-Fu Mar 30, 2018 14m
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