Rick Zullo

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Equal Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorfounder@Rick_Zullo ↗LinkedIn ↗equal.vc ↗

Rick Zullo is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Equal Ventures, a thesis-driven early-stage venture capital firm investing in legacy industries. Previously, he led technology investments at Lightbank and worked with firms including Foundation Capital and Bowery Capital.

19statements → 10claims → 2claims resolved → 3.58/5average certainty → 2.95/5average debate potential → 4.2/5argument clarity · the sources → 2said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 7 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 predictions · 4 assertions · 6 opinions · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 7 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
Zullo: Institutional LP capital for emerging VC managers has largely dried up
“All the emerging managers that have come to the game over the last couple of years, like we were all fighting for so much capital with each other. Like a lot of those doors are now closed.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 36:16 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Zullo: Venture market will see more startup busts than bridge rounds
“I think there's gonna be more busts than down rounds and bridges.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 20:16 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
25% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
none yet 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? →

4.2 / 5 directness 4.5 · coherence 4.2 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.6

redirected or did not address 1 of 10 assessed questions (10%). Watch them ▸

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? →

286 words/min while actually speaking · 8.5 um and uh per 1k words · 11.3 false starts per 1k · 30.3% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,333 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 Rick Zullo said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Zullo: VC board governance degraded into 'patty cake' over founder NPS scores
“We really moved away from that over the course of the last five, 10 years, because, like, just like you were talking about, like, there's a lot of incentive to sell sell a founder, a lot of incentive to be all about the NPS score, and everyone's trying to, you…”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 13:12 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Secondary offers will reduce peer fund returns from 7x to 1x
“I've definitely heard some secondary offers on some big, big companies that I know that are going to turn Some of our peers from seven X funds to one X funds.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 28:41 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rick Zullo says he hasn't taken a startup pitch in eight years
“I haven't taken a pitch in eight years because I think pitching is bullshit because I think it's all about sales, salesmanship and rather than actually like me understanding your understanding of a company.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 39:57 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Rick Zullo: Asset management is a better business than traditional venture
“The asset management business is a better business than the venture business. You know, fees are guaranteed. Carry isn't.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 1:46 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Downturn will force founders to listen to boards or be fired
“And I think as you go and see a bunch of bridge rounds, down rounds, and all this other stuff that's going to happen in the next couple years, like, The reality is founders are going to have to listen a lot more to their board and because of the board doesn't …”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 18:51 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Zullo: Venture market will see more startup busts than bridge rounds
“I think there's gonna be more busts than down rounds and bridges.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 20:16 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Zullo: Mega funds have no financial incentive to salvage struggling startups
“The salvage value and loss management really doesn't matter at those funds.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 20:50 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Top $2B+ funds won't invest in non-decacorn, lukewarm startups
“If it's not super hot or not going to be a deco core company, my guess is, you know, most of those top 10 venture firms that are over two billion are not going to be knocking on your door.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 21:53 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Zullo: Institutional LP capital for emerging VC managers has largely dried up
“All the emerging managers that have come to the game over the last couple of years, like we were all fighting for so much capital with each other. Like a lot of those doors are now closed.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 36:16 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Zullo: Venture Investors Should Apply Discounting to AI Company Valuations
“Everything in AI, you should probably be taking some discounting on those rounds.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 38:00 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Zullo: Funds Can Achieve 10x Returns Without Decacorn Exits
“There are plenty, 10 X funds that haven't ever been in a deck accord. And like, I think Roger probably has a couple of mucker has a couple, you know Tim Connors has some monster funds that like, you know, certainly some big drivers in there.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 52:46 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Many multistage VC partners will leave their firms within 3-5 years
“I think the reality is the broken incentives that venture firms have of all these zombie VCs that are Series A, Series B, Series C at multistage funds, a lot of those venture investors may not be there three to five years from now. If you are building a compan…”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 1:07:04 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Zullo: VCs misdirected founders by promising perpetual capital availability
“And I think a big part of this is the investor steering in the wrong direction and saying that money is going to be there.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 10:12 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Zullo: VCs and Founders Lost Financial Acumen Chasing Revenue Multiples
“Founders and investors, both we've kind of slipped away from financial acumen as investors, where it just became really focused on revenue multiples.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 24:12 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Many Consumer and FinTech Startups Died Cutting Back Growth
“I can point to a ton of consumer companies, a ton of FinTech companies that move the opposite direction that, you know, despite You know, trying to cut back their growth, you know, went through the floor and those companies are largely dead right now.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 24:42 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Rick Zullo: No correlation between seed fundraising skill and business success
“We just haven't seen a lot of correlation between the folks who are like really great at raising money at the seed stage and the folks who are really great at building a business and the people who are really great at building a business, they get pretty good …”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 44:02 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zullo: Venture capital will transition to asset management model
“But I think it's splintering off of professionalization of turning into asset management is really going to happen in venture in the next couple of years.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 7:49 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Zullo: Founders want 'personal trainer' board members like Roger Ehrenberg
“Founders, they want a personal trainer. They don't, you know, they want someone who's going to make them better. And yeah, I think there's folks like Roger Ehrenberg are great personal trainer.”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 16:54 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Zullo: Missing Archer Aviation showed the risk of rigid thesis investing
“Honestly, I'm incredibly thesis driven, and I've missed a lot of amazing companies because of that. I told the story around investing in the guys from Vetteri, and then, like, they started a public company in our office, and we did invest. You know, that compa…”
Rick Zullo Aug 23, 2023 ▶ 1:08:51 Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Rick Zullo's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jake Saper 2

Every mention by year

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Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC w Aug 23, 2023 29m
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