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Roger Dickey

Founder & Managing Partner, Untitled Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderinvestorexecutive@rogerdickey ↗LinkedIn ↗medium.com/@rogerdickey ↗

Roger Dickey created the Facebook game Mafia Wars at Zynga and co-founded Gigster, a software development marketplace acquired by Ionic Partners. He later co-founded the home remodeling service Made Renovation and has backed more than 120 startups as an investor.

16statements → 8claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.69/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 6 assertions · 3 opinions · 2 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 4 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 Roger 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
Gigster launched as a simple landing page with chat
“So Gigster itself was basically a landing page that said, hire a quality developer in five minutes. And then it had a simple chat application on the backend that you could use to chat with us and hire said developer.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 3:31 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Roger Dickey: Engineering job openings outnumber existing software engineers five to one
“There's a five to one ratio of job openings for engineers to engineers that actually exist.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 14:59 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

250 words/min while actually speaking · 3.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Roger Dickey: 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 23 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 4,239 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Roger Dickey 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 ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 45%

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

Opinion
Roger Dickey compares LPing in Sequoia or Andreessen to a mutual fund
“Like if you can LP with Sequoia Greylock, Kleiner, Andreessen, you're probably going to get your money back. You know, that's almost like a mutual fund.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 19:19 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Roger Dickey predicted in 2017 that most seed-stage AI investments would fail
“I think artificial intelligence is the wave. It's that's the trend right now that's forming new companies. So you have a lot of people that are investing in teams that probably aren't the best teams to be going after those opportunities. I think there are goin…”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 22:48 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Opinion
Roger Dickey claims Andreessen Horowitz adds as much value as a co-founder
“And I think, you know, one of the ways we think about it is in Andreessen Owen's Some large percentage of our company, let's say, 10 to 20% of the company, we think of them like a co-founder, and they actually have added the same level of value that a co-found…”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 11:20 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Insight
Roger Dickey prioritizes target market over team or product in angel investing
“Of all those things, market is the first thing I look at when I'm making an angel investment because I've actually seen, I've now been investing long enough that I've seen great founders pursue terrible markets and the businesses just don't go anywhere.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 14:08 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Insight
Roger Dickey warns most people shouldn't angel invest expecting financial returns
“It's the kind of thing most people shouldn't really be doing expecting a financial return.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 18:42 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Opinion
Roger Dickey claimed in 2017 that social app venture opportunities were dead
“I don't think there are opportunities in, in social or photo sharing apps right now.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 22:37 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gigster received $3M in project submissions within 24 hours of launch
“So we launched Gigster November, December, twenty-fourteen, pretty much the same week that we launched. Actually, it was, I believe, within one or two days, we had three million dollars worth of business submitted. Literally, I think it was the first 24 hours.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 4:53 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Disclosure
Andreessen Horowitz spent 15 minutes on founder backgrounds before Gigster's pitch
“When we went to the partner meeting, the final approval meeting for our investment with Andreessen, I think they asked us to talk about ourselves for about 10 or 15 minutes before the pitch”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 12:48 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Contradicted
Roger Dickey: Engineering job openings outnumber existing software engineers five to one
“There's a five to one ratio of job openings for engineers to engineers that actually exist.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 14:59 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Roger Dickey predicts a higher-level language will soon simplify software creation
“I believe that there will be a higher level language for software that makes software Easier to build. You know, we've gone from assembly to, you know, C++ to JavaScript, now to these web frameworks. I think there's going to be something even higher level than…”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 19:51 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Supported
Gigster launched as a simple landing page with chat
“So Gigster itself was basically a landing page that said, hire a quality developer in five minutes. And then it had a simple chat application on the backend that you could use to chat with us and hire said developer.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 3:31 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gigster's average project size grew from $20k to $150k between rounds
“Between our series A and our series B, which is roughly 20 15 to 20 16, we saw our average project size go up from 15 or 20,000 to about a 150,000.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 8:57 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Contradicted
Andreessen Horowitz employs 150 operating partners, according to Roger Dickey
“I think they have a 150 operating partners at the firm.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 10:16 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Disclosure
Roger Dickey admits over 50 of his angel investments haven't returned capital
“So in, in, in my case, I have 40 or 50 companies that probably, probably 50 plus companies that haven't returned yet.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 18:46 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Disclosure
Gigster's largest software development contract as of 2017 was $2 million
“You see you know, the Accentures and Deloitte's of the world picking up 50 to a hundred million dollar development contracts. Well, largest one we've worked on so far is about two million dollars.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 24:21 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun
Assertion Supported
Roger Dickey tested 25 business ideas before launching Gigster
“Before Gigster, we actually tried about 25 different ideas. We built prototypes, shipped them on Product Hunt or Hacker News.”
Roger Dickey Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 2:58 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun

The other half of the tape: Roger Dickey's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Statements about Roger Dickey, by other people (1)

Assertion Partly supported
Roger Dickey helped build Mafia Wars to $1B revenue and 100M users
“Prior to Gigster, Roger founded Mafia Wars, where he helped build the business to one billion in revenue and a hundred million users.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 29, 2017 ▶ 0:30 20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Adde Sep 29, 2017 18m
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