Seth Bannon

Founding Partner, Fifty Years · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounder@sethbannon ↗LinkedIn ↗fiftyyears.com ↗

Seth Bannon co-founded Fifty Years, a seed-stage venture fund backing deep tech startups solving critical global issues across synthetic biology, climate, and frontier technology. A Y Combinator alumnus who previously founded Amicus, he has seeded companies including Solugen, Astranis, Upside Foods, and Substack.

15statements → 7claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.87/5average certainty → 2.67/5average debate potential → 4.6/5argument clarity · the sources → 9said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 5 assertions · 5 opinions · 2 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 2 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 Seth 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

Bannon: 83% of MBAs would take a pay cut for societal impact

“Net Impact did a study of MBA students and found that 83% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company that had positive societal or environmental ends.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 11:42 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet certainty 3

100% 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? →

4.6 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 5 · precision 4.5 · compression 4.1

answered every one of 31 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 · 6.3 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,907 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 ▾ 6/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 8:20“Can you really engage in profit maximization to the very max, whilst also having the very societal enhancement mindset?” ▶ 19:16“Are these not very much acquisition targets for existing incumbents to acquire very early on?” ▶ 16:52“How do you really tell?”

when Seth pushed back ▶ 2:38“Thank you for having me, Harry, and I just want to say thank you to Morgan Freeman for that lead-in.” ▶ 6:22“It is not. It is not fifty million.”

What they said15 What others said9 Episodes1

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

Opinion

Bannon: One-for-one impact models like Toms Shoes are inherently flawed

“We really don't like the sort of like one for one model companies. Right. So like the Tom's shoe or like for every shoe we sell, we're going to donate shoes to a country in the third world because then the good you're doing always has to be defended. When you'…”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 14:36 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2117

Bannon: Animal agriculture will be completely eliminated within 100 years

“I believe that animal agriculture will be eliminated from the face of the earth within the next hundred years.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 26:59 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Opinion

Bannon: The Friedman Doctrine is one of history's most dangerous economic ideas

“We think it's actually one of the most wrongheaded and probably dangerous doctrines in the history of the world, and I know it sounds a little Strange to say that an economic doctrine is very dangerous, but we think it's allowed a lot of businesses to pursue p…”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 7:41 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Disclosure

Bannon: Deep tech startups should shift to debt after three equity rounds

“So almost every single deep tech company that we've invested in has a clear path to growing off of equity for maybe three rounds, and then growing off of project or debt financing for the rest of their life.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 17:59 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Insight

Bannon: A 15-20 year fund lifecycle is VC's biggest opportunity

“I think the biggest opportunity in investing right now might just be a fund that has a 15 to twenty-year life cycle.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 21:55 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Opinion

Bannon: Impact investors lack tech skills, tech VCs only care about profits

“When we talked to investors, we found that they all basically fell into one of two buckets. Either you had the people who really cared about the why, or, you know, what are traditionally called impact investors, but who knew basically nothing about technology …”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 5:29 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Insight

Bannon: Solving societal problems gives startups a systemic competitive advantage

“I believe you can. And so, we get this question a lot, and one of, I think, the analogies that I like to give is, at some point, people thought the transition to the cloud was going to be a really big deal, and that cloud-based companies would have very real a…”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 8:29 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Bannon: Synthetic biology seed costs now match standard SaaS seed budgets

“There have been a number of changes over the last five years that actually allow you to get from idea to prototype product on the same amount of money you would need to raise for a seed round if you're raising for a SaaS company, right?”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 16:12 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Opinion

Bannon: Mission-driven funds get more technical diligence help than traditional VCs

“Given our fund's mission, people are willing to help us do that more so than they would be with a traditional fund.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 24:43 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Opinion

Bannon: Silicon Valley talent is largely wasted on trivial tech problems

“I think there's just such incredible talent in Silicon Valley, and I think it is largely going to waste. I think that way too many incredibly talented people are working on incredibly trivial things, and I see it around me a lot where people are going through …”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 27:37 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Assertion Partly supported

Bannon: Othellis blood diagnostic hardware costs $250 and $5 per test

“The Ethelus device cost 250 bucks, and each test Costs five dollars, and it gives you results in minutes, and it works.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 29:06 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Assertion Supported

Bannon: 83% of MBAs would take a pay cut for societal impact

“Net Impact did a study of MBA students and found that 83% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company that had positive societal or environmental ends.”

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Bannon: Fifty Years requires a clear path to $1B in revenue

“Our sort of like very high level filters are we want founders that are interested in building billion dollar businesses that have positive impact. Then we want to see ourselves a path to a billion dollars in revenue. And then we want to see ourselves the path …”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 13:48 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Assertion Supported

Bannon: 87% of millennials measure business success beyond financial performance

“Deloitte, for example, did a study of 7700 millennials across 29 countries. And 87% of the millennials they surveyed said that the success of a business should be measured in terms of more than just its financial performance.”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 9:49 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

Assertion Supported

Bannon: Y Combinator has heavily shifted focus to biotech since 2013

“Even if you look at something early stage like Y Combinator, right, they have invested way more attention and resources into attracting and helping synthetic biology and biotech companies than they did four years ago. Four years ago, they weren't doing it at a…”

Seth Bannon Aug 7, 2017 ▶ 18:53 20VC: Why We Will Continue To See An Explosion In Deep Tech Financing, Why Much of Silicon Valley's Talent Is Going To Waste & How Fund Cycles Need To Be Adjusted To Work With Deep Tech with Seth Bannon, Founding Partner @ Fifty Years

The other half of the tape: Seth Bannon's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 7 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 2 Delian Asparouhov 2 Chris Sacca 2 Michael Ma 1 Immad Akhund 1

Statements about Seth Bannon, by other people (1)

Opinion

Delian Asparouhov names Seth Bannon as the best board member he works with

“Probably have to be Seth Bannon from 50 years. I think he, you know, sort of Dives, you know, sort of deep into the companies that he's involved in and, you know, sort of ask some, you know, sort of pretty great pointed questions.”

Delian Asparouhov Jul 29, 2024 ▶ 1:14:17 Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings