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Rob Moffat

Partner, Balderton Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investoroperator@robmoff ↗balderton.com ↗

Rob Moffat is a London-based partner at Balderton Capital, having joined the firm in 2009 and gained promotion to partner in 2015. He focuses on early-stage European venture investments across fintech, mobile consumer, marketplaces, and gaming.

15statements → 7claims → 1claims resolved → 3.6/5average certainty → 1.87/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 5 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 5 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 5 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 Rob 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
Zendesk disproved the $1,000/month minimum pricing rule for enterprise software
“Five years ago, it used to be the case that You enterprise products had to be something you could sell for at least a thousand dollars a month. Otherwise you couldn't sell them economically. And then Zendesk comes along and completely rips that apart.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 5:29 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital

How they sound: speaking style how? →

244 words/min while actually speaking · 51.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Rob Moffat: only 4 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 4 raw tape exchanges is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,042 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 →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host 2/10
setup questions received 80%

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

Opinion
AngelList syndicates pose a direct competitive threat to traditional VCs
“I think AngelList are more directly competing with VC.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 17:11 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bitcoin will succeed, but adoption will take longer than expected
“Fly, but it's going to take a lot longer than people think.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 21:57 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Insight
VC investing is about tracking lines over time, not single dots
“Normally it's investing in lines, not dots.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 23:00 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Insight
Moffat: Great VCs challenge assumptions rather than relying on pattern recognition
“In terms of finding interesting deals, I think the ability to keep challenging your assumptions. I think it's easy to get a VC to talk about pattern recognition and you have a bunch of sort of simple shortcuts in your brain on what a good entrepreneur should l…”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 5:02 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Assertion Supported
Zendesk disproved the $1,000/month minimum pricing rule for enterprise software
“Five years ago, it used to be the case that You enterprise products had to be something you could sell for at least a thousand dollars a month. Otherwise you couldn't sell them economically. And then Zendesk comes along and completely rips that apart.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 5:29 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Insight
Junior VCs must start as hunters before trading or farming deals
“So I think when you start in VC, you have to be a hunter because you've got nothing to trade with. Farming hasn't had any results yet. And so, yeah, I think you always start off as a hunter and you're kind of chasing what you think are interesting new sectors.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 7:56 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Disclosure
Moffat: Forced deal trading with other VCs does not come naturally
“I don't think I'm a very good trader. That doesn't come naturally to me, this kind of idea of forced trading deals and maintaining a kind of a balance of payments with other VCs.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 9:47 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Moffat: Startups are being funded earlier and with less data
“And what you're now seeing is good companies are getting chased by VCs. They're getting funded before they were thinking about doing a funding round. They're getting funded on less sort of traction, less data than would have been the case a few years ago.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 10:51 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Insight
Moffat: VC firms must commit to a distinct organizational model
“And I think all three of those models are valid. And I think every VC has to look at those and work out what makes sense for them, but they do need to make a clear decision on what their approach is going to be.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 14:17 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Prediction Not checkable as stated
VCs will launch separate seed arms to leverage AngelList
“I think a lot of this will be VCs probably having some sort of separate Seed funding arm, which probably uses AngelList alongside to help to do that early stage investing.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 18:17 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rob Moffat: Most venture capital recruits are headhunted
“Most people who get recruited into BC get headhunted so sort of chasing it is unlikely to work”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 19:54 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Disclosure
Balderton Capital invested around £4 million in Crowdcube
“As we did on CrowdCube, we invested four million or so pounds”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 16:25 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Google doubled its London headcount from 250 to 500 in 2006
“So when I interviewed in 2006, they had 250 people in London. And when I joined three months later, it was more like 500.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 2:38 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Disclosure
VCs in 2009 sought candidates with Bain consulting and tech backgrounds
“Yeah, so I was lucky enough that in 2009 I sort of started looking elsewhere and for some reason that combination of Bain, so the consulting plus a big internet company was a profile that a few VCs were looking for.”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 3:51 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Portfolio support grows from 10% to 50% of a VC's time
“The longer you spend in VC, I've been doing it for six years now, and started off with probably 10% of my time on portfolio companies and now it's probably more like 50%,”
Rob Moffat Jun 22, 2015 ▶ 6:48 20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Capital

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

Who brings them up most James Wise 1Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00111120152016episodesmentions
01120152016episodes it came up in
000.50.51120152016episodesmentions per episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode
2015 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20 VC 047: 4 Ways Investors Find Great Startups with Rob Moffat, Principal @ Balderton Cap Jun 22, 2015 15m
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