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Seth Sternberg

Co-Founder and CEO, Honor Technology · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutive@SethJS ↗LinkedIn ↗honorcare.com ↗

Seth Sternberg is the co-founder and CEO of Honor Technology, a tech-enabled eldercare platform that acquired Home Instead in 2021. Before founding Honor, he co-founded and served as CEO of the web messaging company Meebo, which was acquired by Google in 2012.

13statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.15/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

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

1 prediction · 2 assertions · 1 opinion · 8 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 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

Prediction Held up
Sternberg: Honor will launch transformative home care products within five years
“Also within five years, for sure, we'll have introduced kind of new products and services into the homes that really changed the face of what home care is considered to be today, but will make it so much better for the kids and their parents.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 22:18 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor

How they sound: speaking style how? →

239 words/min while actually speaking · 2.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Seth Sternberg: 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 24 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 3,194 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Seth Sternberg 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 75%

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

Opinion
Sternberg: 80% of VCs detract value from board meetings
“I, more than anything, because I kind of have this theory, I think about 80% of VCs, frankly, detract from the value of the kind of board in the discussion. I think 10% are neutral, and I think 10% are really positive.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 13:42 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Firing poor-fit employees quickly benefits the employee long-term
“If someone's not a good fit for a company, then it's actually bad for them too, right? And so if you figure that out really quickly You can point that out to them before having joined the company, even if it becomes a thing on their resume and they are better …”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 5:34 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Building a startup to flip leads to destructive short-term decisions
“If you're building to flip, you'll make short-term decisions, and that will come back to bite you.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 15:35 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Mission-first startups force distinct operational and hiring choices
“When you start with a mission first, you make a lot of different choices, and you also end up with a very different kind of team”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 3:56 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Sales and marketing require distinct people, not combined roles
“I always wanted these kind of what I now call unicorn people to fulfill a unicorn role. Like, why do you need to pay for both a salesperson and a marketing person? Can't they just be one person? And second time around, you recognize that they're actually reall…”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 4:38 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Disclosure
Sternberg: Honor hires small, highly selective engineering teams of 10x talent
“We are building the tech teams in really similar ways, so there are a few different philosophies on how to build a tech team, but what we do is extraordinarily selective, but low numbers of engineers, so it's really hard to find engineers that we want to work …”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 6:35 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Great VCs offer strategic advice without trying to run companies
“They really understand that the company is run by the founders, and they understand the limits of their knowledge on what's going on on the inside, kind of tactically, and so they're really, like, the truly great VCs are really good at giving strategic advice,…”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 9:50 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Personality, vision, and tactical alignment are core investor selection criteria
“It's like, do we like each other? Do we agree on the vision? And do we agree on the tactics at a high level? And then from there, it's a lot of nice to have. But I think those three are the core.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 11:37 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Split board votes signal poor governance
“If something actually comes to like a split vote in the board, or the board has to go through a formal process to make a decision that kind of everybody didn't already kind of agree on, that's probably a pretty bad sign.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 12:06 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Insight
Sternberg: Retaining top executive talent requires true empowerment, not micromanagement
“Clearly both Larry and Sergey and then Mark did a good job of truly empowering really, really smart people, because you cannot keep really smart people if you kind of just tell them what to do.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 18:29 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Prediction Held up
Sternberg: Honor will launch transformative home care products within five years
“Also within five years, for sure, we'll have introduced kind of new products and services into the homes that really changed the face of what home care is considered to be today, but will make it so much better for the kids and their parents.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 22:18 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sternberg: Honor caregivers are present when clients pass away
“Because, you know, we will literally be in the homes of customers who pass away when we're in the home.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 8:19 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sternberg: Honor's exec team holds three-hour decision meetings twice weekly
“And the way we make most decisions is we kind of lock ourselves in our room for three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then everybody has their role.”
Seth Sternberg May 18, 2018 ▶ 8:56 20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Great VCs & Why 80% of VC Detract Value From Board Meetings with Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO @ Honor

The other half of the tape: Seth Sternberg'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 Jeff Clavier 1Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112015201620172018episodesmentions
0112015201620172018episodes it came up in
000.50.5112015201620172018episodesmentions per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2015 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: 3 Questions Founders Must Stress Test VCs with, What Separates the Good From The Gre May 18, 2018 14m
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