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Rick Yang

General Partner, NEA · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investornea.com/team/rick-yang ↗

Rick Yang is a Partner and Head of Technology at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), having joined the firm in 2007. He focuses on fintech, consumer technology, and AI application investments, leading NEA's backing of companies like Robinhood and Plaid.

10statements → 9claims → 6claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 4.1/5average certainty → 1.3/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 18said about them ↓

3 supported 3 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

9 assertions · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, 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 Rick 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
Rick Yang: Robinhood spent two and a half years building tech before public launch
“This company spent two plus years prior to actually launching to the public of just building, just heads down building. And this was done during a time where Everybody was really adopting that lean startup mentality of like launch first and then build and iter…”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 11:09 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
70% 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

264 words/min while actually speaking · 0 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Rick Yang: 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 16 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 2,801 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Rick Yang 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 1/10
setup questions received 40%

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

Assertion Supported
Rick Yang: Robinhood spent two and a half years building tech before public launch
“This company spent two plus years prior to actually launching to the public of just building, just heads down building. And this was done during a time where Everybody was really adopting that lean startup mentality of like launch first and then build and iter…”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 11:09 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Partly supported
Robinhood had an 800,000-person waitlist during its closed beta
“We invested and led the series B and they were still in closed beta at the time, but there were some really Interesting signals at the time, right? They had built this amazing waiting list of over 800,000 people that wanted the product.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 6:37 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Disclosure
Rick Yang: NEA calculated $70B in brokerage market cap ripe for disruption
“Because we did have that sort of straight line base case, hey, look, there's seventy billion dollars of market cap that is ripe for disruption, and we see that.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 7:23 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Partly supported
Robinhood spent zero dollars on marketing for years after launching
“There were many, many years from the launch of this company where they didn't spend a dime on marketing and they just kept increasing that account number and engage customers.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 9:43 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Early Robinhood user cohorts achieved 30% to 40% DAU/MAU ratios
“And they were showing, you know, DaoMao in those early cohorts of 30 to 40%, you know, certainly above the benchmark of the average typical consumer app.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 12:33 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rick Yang: Robinhood founders were natively meme-driven before it became mainstream
“Both Beju and Vlad had it from the very beginning. They understood the consumer. They were part of that piece of consumer culture, and they were very natively meme-driven before it was mainstream and before it was cool, right? And they continue to be.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 21:27 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Supported
Robinhood founders built high-frequency trading software before Occupy Wall Street pivot
“So they had built software for high-frequency trading firms, and you saw sort of this shift in their founding story when they kind of realized that they were part of the problem that was starting to manifest itself at the time with Occupy Wall Street, really t…”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 5:04 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Partly supported
Rick Yang: Incumbent brokerages derived only 25% to 33% of revenue from trading fees
“You look at the incumbents and only about a quarter to a third of their top line revenue really came from these trading fees.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 10:00 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rick Yang: Early Robinhood users consistently increased deposits over time
“And we had already started seeing, even though it was starting from a smaller base than incumbents that yes, like the experience was superior enough that This demographic was still adding funds over time and deposits as they went on.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 13:01 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a
Assertion Supported
Yang: Robinhood was Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt's third venture together
“That's where I first spent time with Vlad, got really excited about what they were building and really hearing the founding story behind him and Beiju coming together for a third time, actually for Robin Hood.”
Rick Yang Jan 28, 2022 ▶ 4:23 20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, The Cost Structure of Robinhood in the Early Days and Why it is a More Efficient Business than eTrade & How Vlad Has Developed as a Leader Over Time with Rick Yang a

The other half of the tape: Rick Yang's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 17 times in 5 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 9David Rogier 7Zach Perret 1

Statements about Rick Yang, by other people (1)

Disclosure
Rick Yang rejected MasterClass's Series A before leading Series B
“Rick Yang, who led our B round and is in a fantastic board member I actually pitched him for the A, and Rick passed.”
David Rogier Apr 26, 2019 ▶ 21:31 20VC: Why Startup Founders Have One Core Job, How To Reduce Risk & Increase Probability In Your Startup & Why You Should Not Send A Pitch Deck Pre-Investor Meeting with David Rogier, Founder & CEO @ Masterclass

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0081152201920202021202220232024episodesmentions
012201920202021202220232024episodes it came up in
003162201920202021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2019 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: The Robinhood Memo: The Early Metrics That Showed Robinhood was a Breakout Company, Jan 28, 2022 12m
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