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Zal Bilimoria

Founding Partner, Refactor Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderoperatorhostexecutive@zalzally ↗LinkedIn ↗refactor.com ↗

Zal Bilimoria is the solo GP at Refactor Capital, a seed-stage venture fund investing in hard tech, climate, biology, and health. Before founding Refactor, he led mobile product at Netflix, worked as an operator at Microsoft and Google, and was an investing partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

17statements → 8claims → 5claims resolved → 40%fully supported → 4.12/5average certainty → 1.88/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

2 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 6 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 3 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 Zal 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
Solugen Produces Hydrogen Peroxide Using Only Air, Water, and Plant Starch
“And so Soligen figured out how to eliminate petroleum for the production of hydrogen peroxide using only air, water, and plant starch.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 21:42 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Refactor Capital Plans to Invest in 40 to 50 Companies Per Fund
“If we're going to invest in 40 to 50 companies in this fund, one of them has to be the breakout winner, and a few of them have to be able to, you know, cobble together another one X, let's say.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 12:13 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
50% 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

How they sound: speaking style how? →

250 words/min while actually speaking · 5.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Zal Bilimoria: 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 23 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 3,294 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Zal Bilimoria 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 ▾ 4/10
pushed back at the host 1/10
setup questions received 75%

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

Opinion
Zal Bilimoria Believes Engineered Biology Is Eating the World
“We believed, Biology is eating the world. Literally every portion of it.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 20:15 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Engineered Biology Will Replace Petroleum in Consumer and Industrial Products
“We're going to really be able to remove petroleum, which is the key input into a lot of these products, and use engineered biology to create a much safer, healthier, and really, really a long-term planet for us.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 20:49 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Supported
Solugen Produces Hydrogen Peroxide Using Only Air, Water, and Plant Starch
“And so Soligen figured out how to eliminate petroleum for the production of hydrogen peroxide using only air, water, and plant starch.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 21:42 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Andreessen Horowitz Sent NPS Surveys to Every Founder Who Pitched
“So all founders that interacted with A-Six-Z in a pitch setting, so regardless of us investing or not, would receive a short survey with one important question. Would you recommend A-Six-Z to friends and colleagues based on the interactions you had with this p…”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 5:03 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Insight
Zal Bilimoria Says Extreme Curiosity Is the Most Important Investing Trait
“And then the second thing I learned at A-Six-Z is how to be an insanely curious person, and why that's the most important thing about investing.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 5:29 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Insight
Refactor Capital Prefers Scientific Founders With Clear Go-To-Market Strategies
“These founders who are scientists, especially that we spend time with in biology, especially need to have strong answers on these go to market questions. We of course help our founders in these areas as well, but we'd much rather see founders go from one to a …”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 8:14 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Insight
Scientist Founders Must Be Great Storytellers to Build Enduring Companies
“I think the scientist founders we meet have to be incredible storytellers. They need to be able to tell amazing stories to investors, which reduces financing risk, but they also have to be able to tell amazing stories To customers, to talent that they want to …”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 8:45 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Disclosure
Refactor Capital LPs Support Alternative Funding Structures for Deep Tech
“We're lucky enough to have some very wonderful LPs who are open to different funding structures to finance these companies.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 11:23 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Partly supported
Average Time to Exit for Seed-Backed Startups Exceeds Ten Years
“The typical tenure fund life cycles are pretty hard, especially for seed investors that are writing those super early seed checks and time to exit time to IPO is maybe sometimes greater than 10 or 11 years now on average.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 11:30 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Insight
More Than Half of Hard Science Startups Will Go to Zero
“You have to assume that more than half of your companies are going to go to zero, and that's no different when it comes to biology and other harder science companies.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 12:24 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Insight
Bio-Industrial Startups Reach Product Launch Much Faster Than Therapeutics
“The idea of being able to actually create value in these companies can actually be much more rapid. They have the ability to launch products within the first few years after receiving seed funding versus a therapeutics company, which might take much longer.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 13:56 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Very Few Dedicated Seed Funds Lead Rounds in Deep Tech
“Yeah, there's certainly a lot more capital and deep tech at the venture and the growth stages of investing. So let's say series a and beyond, which is really fantastic news for us at refactor, but we haven't seen many dedicated seed funds in these areas, espec…”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 15:20 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Supported
Series A Investors Demand Far More Traction Than Five Years Ago
“Some of these larger series A's as we've been seeing really do require quite a bit of commercial traction nowadays versus maybe even five or seven years ago.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 17:07 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Assertion Partly supported
Andreessen Horowitz's Early Investment Team Was Mostly Product Managers
“What I loved about A-Six-Z is that everyone had operating experiences of different kinds, especially on the investment team, which was mostly made up of PMs at the time.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 4:27 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Refactor Capital Plans to Invest in 40 to 50 Companies Per Fund
“If we're going to invest in 40 to 50 companies in this fund, one of them has to be the breakout winner, and a few of them have to be able to, you know, cobble together another one X, let's say.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 12:13 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Disclosure
Refactor Capital Uses Delighted to Track Founder Net Promoter Scores
“So we adopted it at Refactor, and we actually used this really great, inexpensive tool called Delighted to do all that.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 5:23 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital
Disclosure
Refactor Capital Hired an In-House Scientist for Deep Tech Diligence
“We also recently hired an in-house scientist who, helping us as well, lead a lot of the evaluation of these technologies.”
Zal Bilimoria Apr 16, 2018 ▶ 14:41 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity I Apr 16, 2018 14m
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