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Vince Hankes

Partner, Thrive Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investor

Vince Hankes is a Partner at Thrive Capital, where he has led investments in companies including OpenAI, Melio, and Airplane.dev. Before joining Thrive Capital, he served as an investor at Tiger Global.

29statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 3.69/5average certainty → 2.62/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources → 9said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 3 assertions · 7 opinions · 14 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 4 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 Vince 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
Hankes: OpenAI Delayed GPT-4 Release by Five Months for Safety Testing
“On GPT four, we saw the demo in the fall. They didn't just release the product then they took, I think four or five months To test and learn about safety in the edges of the model and then ultimately released it to the world.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 34:26 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

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

4.1 / 5 directness 4.1 · coherence 4.6 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.6

redirected or did not address 5 of 42 assessed questions (12%). Watch them ▸

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? →

280 words/min while actually speaking · 5.3 um and uh per 1k words · 3.8 false starts per 1k · 36.5% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 9,211 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 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 2.5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2.5/10
setup questions received 48%

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

Insight
Hanks: Betting on startups directly competing with fast-moving incumbents is risky
“If you're going toe-to-toe right now with an incumbent on their home turf and their shipping, I think it's a hard bet to take the opposite side of, you know, in our business.”
Vince Hankes Jun 2, 2023 ▶ 9:24 20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
Disclosure
Hankes: Many Venture Capital Firms Passed on Investing in OpenAI
“Well, you know, I think there's a lot of people that said no. So at the end of the day, I, you know, there, as much as I like to think we want a really competitive deal, I do think It was not obvious to everybody, and even now I don't think it's still obvious …”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 16:04 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: Disrupting Google Search Is a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity
“We're not talking about building the next unicorn or decacorn. We're talking about disrupting search or Google. I mean, that's a trillion dollar opportunity.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 17:02 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hankes: AI Moats Will Be Ecosystems, Not Model Outputs, Within Five Years
“I do think, again, the dimension by which people are going to think about this in five years from now, looking back, isn't going to be about The commoditization of the model and the raw output, it's going to be, oh, the ecosystem around the model has become mu…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 23:29 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: AI Startups Will Struggle to Compete With Fast-Shipping Incumbents
“And so if you're a startup, I get that you have the advantage of speed, but you need a multi-year execution window to be able to take advantage of all that product you can ship quickly. If these big companies are able to ship this quickly, they've got so much …”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 26:29 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Bet on Startups Creating Novel User Experiences Over Incumbents
“Yes, if you're going toe to toe right now with an incumbent on their home turf and their shipping, I think it's a hard bet to take the opposite side of, you know, in our business. But if you're creating something that's totally a different user experience that…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 28:45 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hankes: Most AI Value Will Accrue to Applications, Not Infrastructure
“I have to believe it's gonna accrue mostly to the application layer. I think if you think about infrastructure companies as platforms, you know, if you think about the software market as the relatives, the value of AWS and Microsoft and Google cloud versus the…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 29:48 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Thrive Separates From Quantitative Rigor for High-Upside Bets
“We're able to kind of separate ourselves from the kind of quantitative rigor that, you know, we rely on for a lot of investments we do and hold the tension of what could go right.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 37:14 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Waiting for Clear Proof in Tech Means Getting Priced Out
“The scalability properties of what they have built are so good that, you know, we'd rather bet on the compounding upside of that scalability Than sit on the sidelines because once it's clear, it'll get priced up very quickly.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 37:51 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hanks: Top AI talent remains heavily concentrated in big tech
“If you think about where the best talent in AI is right now, I think it's open AI. And then I think everyone would tell you it is Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon. And maybe there are folks that have kind of dripped their way into the startup ecosy…”
Vince Hankes Jun 2, 2023 ▶ 8:03 20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
Insight
Hanks: Startups creating entirely new user experiences will beat incumbents
“But if you're creating something that's totally a different user experience that no incumbent has today, I'd bet on a startup 10 times out of 10 in that case.”
Vince Hankes Jun 2, 2023 ▶ 9:33 20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really Matter For Startups Today?
Opinion
Hankes: Early AI Startups Were Thin Wrappers Around Underlying Models
“Many of these companies and we spent a bunch of time with them and we kind of kept coming back to the fact that they were thin user experiences on top of this cool thing, which was this model”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 14:40 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Hankes: Sam Altman Pitched OpenAI Round With Closed GPT-4 Demos
“The way we kicked off the round was he did almost like a closed demo with lots of investors on a couple of calls of the technology they're working on and ultimately in GPT-IV.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 14:58 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: AI's World-Transforming Impact Equals iPhone, AWS, and Google
“But the technology, if you really think about it and the zeitgeist it's captured, I mean, it is of that elk, in my opinion, of the transformation it can have of the world.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 18:34 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Resource-Constrained Startups Shouldn't Build Open-Source AI Infrastructure
“And some companies will choose that path, but by and large for the vast majority of companies, particularly ones that have scarce resources, which are many of the ones I work with, you know, I don't want you spending time building infrastructure and scaling op…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 21:49 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hankes: Best AI Talent Remains Heavily Clustered in Big Tech
“If you think about where the best talent in AI is right now, I think it's OpenAI, And then I think you'd, everyone would tell you it is Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon. And maybe there are folks that have kind of dripped their way into the startup…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 25:18 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: VCs Should Withhold Capital Until AI Product Value Becomes Clear
“If you're really answering that question, you're struggling because you think in two weeks from now, there's a chance that the customer doesn't care or the product won't have any value. Well, that's hard to build a company around. And so in any of those enviro…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 32:50 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Hankes: OpenAI Delayed GPT-4 Release by Five Months for Safety Testing
“On GPT four, we saw the demo in the fall. They didn't just release the product then they took, I think four or five months To test and learn about safety in the edges of the model and then ultimately released it to the world.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 34:26 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: Regulators Have Successfully Brought Themselves Up to Speed on Crypto
“Regulators, I've been impressed with how up to speed they've gotten on crypto, and they've really taken time to learn about it.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 35:28 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Iconic Companies Always Get Priced Ahead and Look Cheap Later
“No iconic company, you know, at least that we've been a part of, was it clear and obvious in the early days of that technology, they always get priced well ahead. And they look cheap in hindsight because they defy the gravity of the model.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 39:01 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Hankes: Many VC Firms Lack Structure for Massive, High-Risk Investments
“And frankly, I think there are a lot of firms that Could not have done this because their organizations are not set up to make these kinds of big decisions.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 40:40 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Hankes: Tiger Global Passed on Canva by Misapplying Enterprise Software Metrics
“When I was at Tiger, I flew out to Sydney and spent a bunch of time with the Canva team in person. And, you know, it's obviously now people know about it. It's a remarkable company at the time. It was much smaller than it is now. And At the same time, we were …”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 46:05 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Only Customer and Product Questions Matter for Any Company
“There's only two questions that matter for a company. Who is the customer and what is the product? And you'd be shocked at how many folks can't really answer that question with clarity.”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 0:00 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Hankes: Asking Operator-Level Questions Fosters Deeper Founder Empathy
“The way we'd ask that same question is, if I'm a SDR on your sales team and I'm trying to qualify a prospect, you know, what am I looking for? At the end of the day, it's really the same question. You could even argue that the way we do it at Thrive is less ef…”
Vince Hankes May 3, 2023 ▶ 4:18 Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner | E1009 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Show 5statements(5 left)

The other half of the tape: Vince Hankes's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 9 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 9

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
004283202320242025episodesmentions
023202320242025episodes it came up in
001.31.52.53202320242025episodesmentions per episode
2025 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Vince Hankes: Why We Put $300M into OpenAI; Sam Altman's Pitch; Lessons from Josh Kushner May 3, 2023 41m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Vince Hankes was played rather than Vince taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
20VC: Who Wins the AI Race; Startups or Incumbents & Does Having Proprietary Data Really M Jun 2, 2023 1m clip played
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