StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Sean Flynn

Managing Partner, Shasta Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Sean Flynn is a Managing Partner at Shasta Ventures, where he led investments in Dollar Shave Club and Whisper. Before joining Shasta, he worked at Yahoo focusing on growing its communication and messaging products.

12statements → 6claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.58/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → 4.6/5argument clarity · the sources → 7said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 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 Sean 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
Flynn: Major tech providers will adopt voice to extend their brands
“Ultimately, I don't think it's going to be just these unique applications for voice, but I think, you know, many of the large technology providers today that are on mobile, that are on the web will want to use voice as a way to extend their brand with their cu…”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 22:05 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% 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? →

4.6 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 5 · precision 4.4 · compression 4

answered every one of 19 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? →

244 words/min while actually speaking · 32.4 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,632 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 ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 35%

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

Insight
Flynn: A Nine-to-Five Work Mentality Rarely Yields Greatness
“The first is, if you're just showing up to work, and your career is a nine-to-five activity, you're very unlikely to do something great. You're very unlikely to do something special.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 4:11 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Insight
Flynn: Tech and VC investors follow market sentiment like lemmings
“You know, it's interesting in the venture world and the technology world the pendulum can swing fast and people tend to follow oftentimes like Lemmings.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 11:47 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Opinion
Flynn: Conversational bot hype serves platform defensibility over user value
“I think this one is probably more hype than reality, at least at this stage. It makes a ton of sense why the big messaging platforms, Facebook, Kik, and others would want to, you know, turn their ecosystem into a development platform, right? I totally get why …”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 16:02 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Opinion
Flynn: Messaging platforms suit peer communication over single-player utility tasks
“The one use case that I find more compelling, at least in the near term, is around these applications that are really native to the communication experience, right? It's not booking a taxi or booking an Uber that I think is native to that experience, but it's …”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 18:21 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Insight
Flynn: Startups Must Excel in One Area Before Expanding
“But until you've got product market fit, until you're excellent in one area, really nail that first before trying to expand beyond that.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 5:20 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Insight
Flynn: Marketing and sales cannot fix core product deficiencies
“In my view, it's not, it doesn't really matter how great you are in marketing, at sales, at BD. You know, being great in those areas obviously is important, but can't make up for deficiencies as it relates to, you know, the core product experience that you're …”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 6:02 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Flynn: Pokémon Go proves massive mobile opportunities remain
“I think all you have to do is look at the success of what Pokemon Go has had literally over the last week to realize, hey, there's still massive opportunities to deliver magical experiences to end users by leveraging these devices.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 12:29 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Flynn: AR/VR apps need time before building substantial businesses
“And it'll probably be some time before those applications really emerge. There'll be some time before you get enough of an installed base to build you know, big enough business. There'll be some time before those enabling technologies mature and harden such th…”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 14:32 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Flynn: Largest AR/VR returns will come in deployment phase
“I think ultimately that's where the really big wins will come in the longterm. Absolutely. Yeah.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 15:03 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Prediction Held up
Flynn: Major tech providers will adopt voice to extend their brands
“Ultimately, I don't think it's going to be just these unique applications for voice, but I think, you know, many of the large technology providers today that are on mobile, that are on the web will want to use voice as a way to extend their brand with their cu…”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 22:05 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Prediction Held up
Flynn: Cross-platform voice developer tools will create significant value
“For those developers, I think being able to very seamlessly develop once and then distribute across multiple platforms has the opportunity to create lots of value.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 22:19 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures
Assertion Supported
Sean Flynn: Outstanding Consumer Credit Card Debt Exceeds $700 Billion
“There's over seven hundred billion dollars of credit outstanding out there.”
Sean Flynn Jul 27, 2016 ▶ 26:43 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures

The other half of the tape: Sean Flynn's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 6Jason Brown 1

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justi Jul 27, 2016 21m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more