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Topher Conway

Co-Managing Partner, SV Angel · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Topher Conway is a Co-Managing Partner at SV Angel, where he works closely with portfolio companies like Gusto, GitHub, and Lookout. Before joining SV Angel, he worked at EQAL, Inc. and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2015.

12statements → 2claims → 2claims resolved → 4.17/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 4said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 1 opinion · 2 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved. 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 Topher 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
SV Angel Refuses Board Seats to Maintain Founder Alignment
“We also don't take board seats. We think that, you know, we always want to align ourselves with founders and be the advocate for them. We think that at some point in the business boardroom will get contentious and founder will, and the board won't agree on som…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 14:17 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% 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? →

4.4 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 4.7 · precision 4.1 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 12 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? →

260 words/min while actually speaking · 12.8 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,525 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 1/10
setup questions received 65%

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

Prediction Held up
SV Angel Refuses Board Seats to Maintain Founder Alignment
“We also don't take board seats. We think that, you know, we always want to align ourselves with founders and be the advocate for them. We think that at some point in the business boardroom will get contentious and founder will, and the board won't agree on som…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 14:17 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Is Valuation and Ownership Insensitive at the Seed Stage
“So we don't really think about it That much at all. Unless it's something totally out of whack or, you know, out of line with where the company is in the founder's background, that's probably the only time that it'll really play into our decision. Other than t…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 16:20 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Flags Deals if Valuation Talk Exceeds Five Minutes
“You know, if we spend more than, you know, we've always had this kind of internal rule is if, You know, if we spend more than five minutes talking about valuation with a founder, then something's wrong. Something's awry there.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 16:46 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Sees a 40% Portfolio Failure Rate
“We have about 40% of our portfolio goes out of business and that's fine.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 9:14 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Insight
Startups Should Wait Until Post-Seed to Construct Formal Boards
“You can always bring on angel investors and advisory board members earlier on in the life cycle of the company, but when it comes to really constructing a board, you know, doing that post series seed going into the series a, you know, that's probably when it's…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 15:42 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Insight
Valuation Caps Do Not Matter for Breakout Venture Hits
“You know, if the company's, if it's going to be a big, successful company, you know, if you're investing at a six million cap or an eight million dollar cap, it doesn't really matter.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 16:35 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Opinion
The Series A Crunch Was Overall Healthy for the Startup Ecosystem
“And, you know, one of the byproducts was it really forced companies to focus on their core metrics. What really happened in the, over the last couple of years is, you know, series a investors and B started really focusing on, you know, is this a good business?…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 17:58 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Receives 8 to 15 Referred Deals Daily
“We see on average eight to 15 companies per day referred to us all from within our network.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 5:37 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Writes $100K–$200K Checks and Never Leads Rounds
“Like I said, our checks are smaller. They're a hundred to 200 K checks. So we rely on all the other investors to participate in the round. We never lead rounds ourselves.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 11:14 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Assertion Supported
Conway Claims eCal Created YouTube's First Real Episodic Content
“We made shows for YouTube. It was the first real episodic content on YouTube.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 3:46 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
SV Angel Intentionally Reduced Its Fund Size to Write $100K Checks
“And for us, that's our latest fund. We actually reduce the size of it so that we have the flexibility to invest whether it's pre-seed or seed, you know, so we can make that 100,000 dollar investment where it's really just the founders that we, that we're inves…”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 7:38 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel
Disclosure
Conway Made His First Angel Investment in Napster in Eighth Grade
“My first angel investment was when I was in eighth grade. It was in a company called Napster.”
Topher Conway Feb 13, 2017 ▶ 3:02 20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel

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

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 3Max Altman 1

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The E Feb 13, 2017 14m
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