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Sitar Teli

Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Connect Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounder@sitar ↗LinkedIn ↗connectventures.co ↗

Sitar Teli is an early-stage venture capitalist focusing on product-led European startups across consumer internet, SaaS, fintech, and digital health. She co-founded Connect Ventures and earlier led Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures' Series A investment in SoundCloud.

15statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 3.53/5average certainty → 2.2/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources →

0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 1 assertion · 6 opinions · 4 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is 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 Sitar argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Teli: Knitten software will enable on-demand apparel manufacturing in retail stores
“In the much longer term, I can imagine walking into Azara and having them print me some clothes. Yeah. And it's the software that, that Knitten is developing that really enables that to happen at scale and at a way that's cost competitive with what people do n…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 26:50 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.6 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.7

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? →

258 words/min while actually speaking · 21.2 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,349 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 ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sitar Teli: Adtech is currently and will remain less interesting
“Advertising technology, although that's probably less interesting at the moment and probably in the future.”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 5:53 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Sitar Teli: Starting a VC fund is the worst kind of startup
“It's probably one of the worst startups you can think of.”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 9:12 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Insight
Teli: VCs should avoid detailed rejection feedback because founders debate it
“With, what I like to do is give just a couple of reasons for why, like, you know, the most important reason for why, but not too detailed, because the problem with giving really detailed feedback is I've rarely had an entrepreneur who didn't try to argue with …”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 16:00 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Teli: There is enough venture capital for all seed companies
“In seed, yeah, there's, there is probably enough capital for all the seed companies out there, but capital isn't just one giant bucket”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 19:08 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Teli: Knitten software will enable on-demand apparel manufacturing in retail stores
“In the much longer term, I can imagine walking into Azara and having them print me some clothes. Yeah. And it's the software that, that Knitten is developing that really enables that to happen at scale and at a way that's cost competitive with what people do n…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 26:50 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Teli: London Tech Ecosystem Lags Silicon Valley Despite Catching New York
“How London's sort of kind of catching up at New York, but it's still a ways away from where Silicon Valley is”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 4:29 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Insight
Teli: VC funds need partners with founder or early-stage experience
“If you're starting a fund, to have someone, or at least some of the partners, have started a company, or been very early in a company, because I think they can relate to founders in a very different way.”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 7:43 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Teli: VC firms should operate as partnerships rather than solo GPs
“I'm a big believer in VC partnerships, rather than working alone.”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 7:58 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Insight
Teli: Fast rejections are the most valuable service VCs offer founders
“So, so, so I think that actually the biggest thing that you can do to provide value is to say no as quickly as possible. Because you know, the, what's more valuable, right? It's the entrepreneur's time. That's like the most valuable thing. And so the longer th…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 13:46 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Teli: VCs giving 'maybe' responses unfairly string founders along with false hope
“A lot of times, VCs say maybe, which is, I think, just a very not nice way of saying no, right? Right, because it gives the entrepreneur hope, and a lot of times the entrepreneurs interpret them maybe as a not no, you know, and it's just keeping them hanging o…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 15:43 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Teli: Connect Ventures rarely invests without a strong UX focus
“If user experience is not at the core of that it's just not likely that we invest at all.”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 18:34 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Teli: Crowdfunding complements seed venture capital instead of threatening it
“No, I actually think it helps it. I mean, a lot of the best crowdfunding runs I've seen have been alongside a VC. One. And two I think, you know, there, there's a lot of businesses out there that frankly don't need venture capital. They need capital, but not v…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 20:49 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Opinion
Teli: Firm Twitter accounts are ineffective compared to personal VC branding
“A lot of them, so what I see a lot of is like VCs where the firm has a Twitter account, and I don't think that's very effective. Because I think for entrepreneurs, right, your relationship is with the investor, the specific person that you're going to be worki…”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 24:03 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Disclosure
Connect Ventures launched without an office, website, or business cards
“One of the things we had to deal with the first year is, People didn't take us seriously until we had business cards, because they didn't really believe we were a real fund. And so, like, we didn't have an office. We didn't have business cards. There wasn't a …”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 10:34 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures
Insight
Teli: Portfolio support is the best marketing for a VC fund
“For us, we've always played the long game in terms of marketing, which is the best marketing we can do is the companies we invest in, and working them really well, and if we do that right, that's how we build our brand, and that's how we build our reputation”
Sitar Teli Dec 30, 2015 ▶ 11:19 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What Yo Dec 30, 2015 20m
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