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Samir Kaji

Co-Founder and CEO, Allocate · 2 appearances on the record.

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

founderexecutiveinvestorhost@samirkaji ↗LinkedIn ↗allocate.co ↗

After spending over two decades leading venture banking groups at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, Kaji founded Allocate to streamline private market investments. He is an angel investor and the host of the venture capital podcast Venture Unlocked.

32statements → 26claims → 18claims resolved → 56%fully supported → 3.62/5average certainty → 2.06/5average debate potential → 4.7/5argument clarity · the sources → 4said about them ↓

10 supported 6 partly supported 2 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 6 not checkable as stated how the 26 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 predictions · 15 assertions · 3 opinions · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 26 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 18 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 6 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 Samir 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

Prediction Held up
Kaji: Top 10% micro VCs will outperform, but vast majority won't reach 3x net
“And if you're investing in an index, you're going to lose. I think the top 10% of micro VC funds will do phenomenally Well, and will significantly outpace the returns of larger funds, but the vast majority of the micro funds are going to have a tough time retu…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 11:26 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Kaji: Active micro VC firms will drop to 100-150 by 2020
“Number one, I think we're going to see a contraction in this space. The number of active micro VCs I think is going to drop to close to a hundred to a 150 by the year, 2020.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 21:36 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
63% certainty 3
83% certainty 4
50% 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? →

4.7 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 5 · precision 4.7 · compression 4.2

answered every one of 20 assessed questions directly

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? →

242 words/min while actually speaking · 28.4 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,116 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 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 68%

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

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kaji: Direct VC investments by family offices will end badly
“The vast majority of high net worth individuals and family offices should not be doing direct investments. It's too hard. There's too many red flags that are sitting on the horizon. And I think it's going to end badly for a lot of people.”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 15:29 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Held up
Kaji: Top 10% micro VCs will outperform, but vast majority won't reach 3x net
“And if you're investing in an index, you're going to lose. I think the top 10% of micro VC funds will do phenomenally Well, and will significantly outpace the returns of larger funds, but the vast majority of the micro funds are going to have a tough time retu…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 11:26 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Opinion
Kaji: Early IRR metrics are meaningless when micro VCs raise Fund II
“Right now, Quite candidly, it's a little bit meaningless and it's more qualitative in function. So if we see a manager that's, you know, tracking at a 1.3 X, that's fine. But the reality is it means very little.”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 20:20 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Held up
Kaji: Micro VCs raising $15M–$20M Fund I cannot easily scale up Fund II
“I think people that raise that 15 to 20 will have to probably raise another fund of 15 to 20 when it comes to Fund two with the understanding that when it comes to fund three, if they've shown real traction, if they have a few distributions, and that's usually…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 21:10 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Kaji: Active seed funds will shrink to under 250 by end of 2019
“I think consolidation is, is the future. I don't see a lot of first time or second time funds raising their next fund. And it may not be a function of who they are, but rather a very different macro environment and a general understanding by LPs that we just d…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 26:54 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kaji: Only 10% to 20% of micro VCs will deliver expected returns
“I think a very few percentage of these micro firms are going to produce the type of returns expected. And I think it's going to hit sort of the normal distribution of which, you know, 10 to 20%, you know, have a nice return model. The rest are going to, you kn…”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 13:40 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
Kaji: $5M-$10M micro VCs will launch on AngelList over traditional funds
“The next generation of sort of these proof of concept funds that are, you know, five or ten million dollars are more likely to get down on Angelus than they are, you know, standalone LP funds”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 18:19 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Kaji: Active micro VC firms will drop to 100-150 by 2020
“Number one, I think we're going to see a contraction in this space. The number of active micro VCs I think is going to drop to close to a hundred to a 150 by the year, 2020.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 21:36 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Supported
Kaji: Micro VCs have 3x more female decision-makers than large firms
“And so we looked at the numbers in terms of female VCs relative to female partners at large funds and micro VCs by numbers. Have three times as many female investors in decision-making roles as a percentage of total partners than large life cycle firms.”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 10:26 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Opinion
Kaji: Micro VC firms should not hire placement agents
“I'm generally not in favor of a placement agent with respect to micro VC firms. I think managers should be able to sell their own story. The fundraising element of running a firm is probably one of the most important. Getting the feedback, pitching the story. …”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 23:51 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Insight
Kaji: Emerging VCs underestimate math needed to return 3x to 5x capital
“They underestimate the difficulty it is to actually run a successful venture franchise and return capital. It's not uncommon for me to see decks where there's proclamations that a certain fund will return a three to five X, but if you look at the math required…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 24:16 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Partly supported
Kaji: Series B and C valuations are less bloated than seed
“If you look at the valuations of B, C and D, I'm sorry, B and C companies, The valuations aren't, you know, overly bloated relative to what we see at the very later stage, D and above, and also at the seed level.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 16:16 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Partly held up
Kaji: AngelList tourist investors will pull back during market downturns
“A lot of people investing on Angelus are tourist investors, or they're investing during a very good time, but if the market turns and if there is a contraction at some point, A lot of those investors are going to retract.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 17:51 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Supported
Kaji: Over 80% of 1999–2009 VC funds generated subpar returns
“Over the past prior decade, you know, 99 to 2009, the performance of venture funds was, to say the least, subpar. And the vast majority of the funds, I'd say 80% plus, We're returning capital at a pace that was incredibly slow, and we're having returns that we…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 5:08 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Supported
Kaji: Startup origination costs dropped 100x between 1999 and 2009
“The cost of capital for starting a company is that come way down, almost a factor of a hundred X, start from 99 to 2009”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 5:40 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kaji: First-time fund managers without experience rarely raise institutional capital
“The likelihood of a first-time fund getting money from an institutional without any prior experience is next to zero.”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 13:25 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kaji: Family office co-investing in seed funds will persist for 6–12 months
“Direct investing has always been something that has been very front of mind, and the ability to invest in a seed fund and co-invest has been something that a lot of family offices have done, and I don't think that changes at least over the next six to 12 month…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 14:17 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Supported
Kaji: Average venture capital fundraise takes 18 months for new managers
“Yeah, so the average right now is 18 months. If you are a first time manager, i.e. Have never done it before, you're probably going to be in that 18 month time frame, if not longer.”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 17:35 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Insight
Kaji: Micro VCs must secure at least 30%–40% for initial close
“So what I usually counsel managers is if you have a target of X amount, the first close should be at minimum 30 to 40% of the fund. Raising less than that as part of the first close sends a bad signal, and I think it really, you know, questions the overall via…”
Samir Kaji Oct 11, 2017 ▶ 18:42 20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of Seed Financing & Why IRR No Longer Takes Centre Stage with Samir Kaji, Senior Managing Director @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kaji: $10M-$15M funds cannot support living expenses in major tech hubs
“Well, it's not. I mean, if you think about a 10 or fifteen million dollar fund that's putting out three to 400,000 dollars in fees, especially in certain markets, the Bay Area and New York, it's impossible to live.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 6:29 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Prediction Partly held up
Kaji: Micro VCs will shift toward 1% management fees and 30% carry
“I do think we will start to see some that are more carry focused . I don't know if we'll get to zero percent, but I think we will see some firms raise funds where it's more of like a one in 25, a one in 30. A one And perhaps even higher carry based on hitting …”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 7:57 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Supported
Kaji: Nearly 300 micro VC firms exist globally in 2015
“Today there's close to 300 you know, globally, of which 225 are here in the U.S. And there's another 50 to a hundred that are fundraising.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 8:48 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kaji: 48% of micro VC funds are $25 million or less
“Most of the micro VC firms, and about 48% are 25 and under in, in size. Those are, those typically have no endowments, very, have no pension funds, very rarely have any sort of institutional backing, but are primarily family office High net worth backed.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 15:00 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank
Opinion
Kaji: Returning capital to LPs is harder than raising funds
“Returning. I know, and I won't name anybody, but I know people that are incredible fundraisers but are terrible at actually distributing capital back.”
Samir Kaji Dec 2, 2015 ▶ 27:56 20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank

Show 8statements(8 left)

The other half of the tape: Samir Kaji's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3Fred Destin 1

Every mention by year

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: What Does It Take To Raise A Venture Fund Today, An Analysis of The Explosion of See Oct 11, 2017 21m
20 VC 093: Where Is The Micro VC Market Going with Samir Kaji @ First Republic Bank Dec 2, 2015 20m
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