StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Wasim Daher

Founder & CEO, Pilot · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Wasim Daher is the Founder and CEO of Pilot, a startup that handles bookkeeping for businesses. He has raised over $58 million in funding for the company.

13statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 3.85/5average certainty → 2.08/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

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

1 assertion · 10 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 Wasim 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? →

269 words/min while actually speaking · 0.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Wasim Daher: 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 25 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 5,098 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Wasim Daher 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 ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 80%

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

Insight
Daher: Owning 100% of a $10M company is easier than 1% of $1B
“If your goal is wealth creation, I think it's much easier to make A hundred percent of the ten million dollar company than one percent of the billion dollar company.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 14:39 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Passion for a mission alone will not sustain founders
“If you have a mission you're really, really passionate about, that's great. And that's awesome. But that alone will not get you through the hard times of the company. It's kind of piece one. And then piece two is, I think, you really develop a passion for the …”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 10:33 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Founders want bookkeeping solved, not more accounting software
“No founder has ever said, I really would love some more accounting software. What business owners actually want is to have the problem solved for them.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 4:38 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Co-founder drama is one of the biggest startup risk factors
“One of the biggest risk factors to any company really is founder drama, founder relationships, tensions there.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 8:01 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Disclosure
Daher: Pilot acquired its first three customers on day one via cold calls
“On day one, we signed up our first three customers because I just called them up and I said, Hey, who's doing your bookkeeping today? Oh, you know, we can actually do it better. You should sign up with pilot. And the way that we provided the services, I just d…”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 13:01 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Optimizing solely for VC valuation terms is short-sighted
“If you're viewing it from a transactional perspective about, well, let me just optimize for the absolute best terms. I think you're being a bit short-sighted because you're going to spend so much time with your board member over the course of this company.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 15:35 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: A CEO doing tactical work bottlenecks startup growth
“At this stage of the company's life, if I'm doing a specific thing, that's actually a bad sign because it really means that I'm gating the growth of the company in some way. And my only job should be Attracting and retaining the best people, parting ways with …”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 21:12 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Any 'maybe' evaluation for a job candidate should be a 'no'
“If you debrief on a candidate, and your conclusion is, oh, I don't know, maybe, like, they might be able to do a good job here. Like, that should be a no. Like, you should only bring on board people that you're very, very excited about, because what is your cu…”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 23:19 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Mediocre interviews filter out bad candidates but fail to highlight top talent
“The best interview gives you a signal as to where the candidate spikes. A mediocre interview will let you say no for candidates that are bad, but don't really let you like good candidates really shine.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 24:52 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Indecision and waffling is the most toxic executive habit
“The most toxic thing you can do or kind of the most challenging thing you can do is really waffle because then people don't know, are we doing this thing? Are we not doing this thing? Last time I talked to you, it seemed like we were gonna, but then you talked…”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 28:05 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Daher: The US SMB bookkeeping and accounting market is $60 billion annually
“I think the back of the envelope math on this is something like sixty billion dollars a year or I spent every year on SMB bookkeeping and accounting in the US alone.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 29:42 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Disclosure
Daher: Pilot's lead investor Mark Goldberg previously worked with him at Dropbox
“I mean, for us, our investors were all people that we had already known. In other words, the lead investor from Index, Mark Goldberg, we worked together at Dropbox.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 16:24 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
Insight
Daher: Founders must engage in unrelated escapist hobbies to avoid burnout
“I think it's very, very important for founders in particular, but for anyone operating a company to be passionate about their work, but also to take time for themselves and something that is just like a Escapist and totally unrelated to startups.”
Wasim Daher Aug 2, 2019 ▶ 25:49 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As Aug 2, 2019 20m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more