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Ted Wang

Board Partner, Cowboy Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investoroperatortedwang.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Ted Wang created the open-source Series Seed Documents in 2010, standardizing early-stage startup financings. Prior to investing with Cowboy Ventures, he spent over a decade as a partner at Fenwick & West, serving as outside counsel to companies including Facebook, Twitter, and Dropbox.

11statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 3.73/5average certainty → 2.27/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

1 not checkable as stated how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 assertion · 2 opinions · 6 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 1 names 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 Ted argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

260 words/min while actually speaking · 2.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Ted Wang: 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 17 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 5,302 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Ted Wang 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 ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 75%

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

Insight
Lean startup methodology fails when trying to compete against Amazon
“There's no lean startup methodology that's going to get you into competing with something like Amazon”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 9:55 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Insight
Founders bear total accountability for failure, even if following investor advice
“You know, ultimately for founders, if you do exactly what you're told to do by your investors and the company fails, you're a failure. If you don't do what they say and it's successful, you're a success. So ultimately the decision is in the hands of the founde…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 17:42 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Opinion
Government can be a force for good despite Silicon Valley libertarianism
“I believe the government can work for us. Being here in Silicon Valley, there's a very strong libertarian ideology, and there's a very strong notion that, oh, government's just this terrible thing, and it can never work, and it's always screwed up, and I worke…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 28:18 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Insight
Startup risk cannot be mitigated or eliminated, only chosen
“So I think the biggest miscalculation people make about risk is that they think that there are ways to mitigate certain risks when actually it's just a matter of which risk you're going to choose to take.”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 6:28 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Opinion
First-time founders cannot execute Jet.com's hyper-capital-intensive playbook
“I don't think that, you know, a first time founder is going to be able to pull something like that off”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 10:35 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Disclosure
Wang admits he was "dead wrong" thinking VC ownership targets were stupid
“When I was a lawyer watching other venture capitalists amass their portfolios, I really didn't understand, you know, why they were so focused on percentage ownership. And I sort of thought it was, it sounded pretty stupid to me, to be honest with you. And now …”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 11:08 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Insight
VCs add value primarily through alternative perspectives and portfolio benchmarking
“Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think first thing is understanding the limits of what you know, and so I think there are really kind of two core value adds that venture capitalists can have for When, as they give advice, you know, one is sort of, Hey, here's a dif…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 15:03 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Insight
A founder's ability to learn is most highly correlated with startup success
“Yeah, well, look, I think if there's one factor that is most highly correlated with success of a Startup companies. It's the founder's ability to learn, and I just think it's the most critical thing, because ultimately, as they take on the company, as the comp…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 19:17 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wang estimates he has completed around 10,000 venture financing transactions
“Now, if we're talking about something like venture financing and, you know, I've probably done 10,000 of those, I may lean in a little bit more heavily, heavily on my advice and say, gee, you know, I hear what you're saying, but you really might want to listen…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 18:40 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Insight
Improving predictive skill requires breaking problems down and shortening feedback loops
“What that book says is if you want to, the first answer is yes, some people are better at predicting the future, and the people who are tend to take these complex problems and break them down into subparts, and then the best way to improve your ability to pred…”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 23:45 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
Disclosure
Wang evaluates venture deals using a 10-category spreadsheet scoring system
“You know, so I'm, what I'm trying to do is for companies that go into a longer process, I am recording all this data. So it's, when I say data, it's on a spreadsheet and it's 10 entries scaled on a scale of one to 10.”
Ted Wang Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 25:09 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures

The other half of the tape: Ted Wang's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jason Boehmig 1

Statements about Ted Wang, by other people (1)

Assertion Supported
Wang created open-source seed financing documents used by thousands globally
“And Ted also created The Series C documents, a set of open source financing documents posted on GitHub, and still used today by thousands around the world.”
Harry Stebbings Dec 17, 2018 ▶ 0:53 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112019episodesmentions
0112019episodes it came up in
000.50.5112019episodesmentions per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons Dec 17, 2018 21m
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