Will Quist

Partner, Slow Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Will Quist is a Partner at Slow Ventures. Prior to joining Slow Ventures, he spent over eight years at Industry Ventures and worked in finance at Banc of America.

14statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.93/5average certainty → 2.29/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources → 3said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is 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 Will 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
Quist: Tiger Global will retrench and deploy less private capital annually
“I think they retrench probably at slightly smaller scale on the private side, the public book. I don't know. There aren't a lot of firm, not a lot of public books that have recovered from being down that far. But they're kind of an unprecedented institution in…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 1:01:23 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

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

4.1 / 5 directness 4.4 · coherence 4.2 · precision 3.8 · compression 3.7

redirected or did not address 1 of 31 assessed questions (3%). 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? →

271 words/min while actually speaking · 7.4 um and uh per 1k words · 21.9 false starts per 1k · 32.8% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 10,068 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 →

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

Opinion
Quist: Only 5% of venture capital funds classic early-stage venture bets
“Five percent of the industry or the capital of the industry, I think is really seeking out classic venture bets and the rest of it is piling on into growth”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 8:53 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Quist: Mid-sized VC funds will struggle to find alpha by 2027
“I think the pie gets bigger. But unfortunately it subsists less people. Goldman and Morgan are much more profitable than a lot of other investment banks. And so I think you'll see firms that have picked a quadrant and set up their organization and strategy wor…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 34:25 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: Accumulating top companies beats holding a diversified venture portfolio
“You're almost always better off accumulating stock in those companies over the first eight years of their life than you are in any diversified venture portfolio.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 54:42 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Quist: Tiger Global will retrench and deploy less private capital annually
“I think they retrench probably at slightly smaller scale on the private side, the public book. I don't know. There aren't a lot of firm, not a lot of public books that have recovered from being down that far. But they're kind of an unprecedented institution in…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 1:01:23 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: Effective TAM analysis focuses on past spending on inefficient solutions
“I think a lot of TAM analyses, like, starts off on the wrong foot. I like to ask, and I think the question you want to have about marketizing is, most products are built to solve a problem. Most problems are solved, but inefficiently. And so the question I hav…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 19:23 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: Underwriting startups with multiple novel theories is exponentially riskier
“Being novel, having a novel theory and being correct, having one of them in your life is a low odds proposition. There just aren't that many. Having two isn't linear risk or the odds of being right on two vectors is exponentially lower. And I think that there'…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 29:25 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Quist: Slow Ventures passed on leading Deel's seed round over valuation
“We were negotiating to be the lead of the seed, and I literally were like this far apart and decided that was too far apart.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 46:14 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: Venture capital exists to fund testable high-upside experiments
“I fundamentally believe the point of venture capital, right, is to allow a founder to run an experiment against a hypothesis that is knowable, testable, right? Where a true answer dramatically changes the enterprise value of the company.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 7:12 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: Venture capital follows the evolutionary path of private equity
“When I look at whether it's investment banking, mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity, and now venture, they've all followed a very similar curve where early on in the assets class lifestyle or business model lifestyle, it's really subscale and it's volati…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 11:34 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Quist: Slow Ventures avoids consensus seed deals to back non-consensus ideas
“I think we would say we concede the consensus game at the earliest stages. We think our job is to go a click out further on a belief system than in other people.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 16:48 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Quist: All competitive startup moats eventually erode over time
“I think as soon as you begin talking about a product, there's only a few ways people have ever created defensibility. And I know it all erodes. There's no sure thing modes, but there are higher walls than others, right? Around network effects, intellectual pro…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 20:42 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Quist: Industry Ventures returned 10-12x on LiveRamp's Series B acquisition
“There's a company called LiveRamp that Oren Hoffman founded, that I was lucky enough to lead the Series B. And this was at a time when ad tech related products were kind of written off, right? As hard to differentiate, hard to find novelty, hard to find defens…”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 43:20 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Quist: Slow Ventures will not pursue a multi-stage fund strategy
“I think the amount of human capital and what it means on a daily basis to be a competitive multi-stage firm is not what we do. It's not our strength. It's not our DNA.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 58:53 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Quist: Every venture capitalist should read Michael Mauboussin's The Success Equation
“Professionally, it's the success equation by Mike Mabusian. No, no, no, no full stop. Everyone in venture should read it. It's, it changed how I operate day to day.”
Will Quist Sep 12, 2022 ▶ 1:00:24 Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Will Quist's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Frank Rotman 3

Every mention by year

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Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Will Quist: Why 95% of Venture Capital is Not Really “Venture Capital” | 20VC #924 · 20VC Sep 12, 2022 45m
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