Insight certainty 5/5 debate potential 2/5

Jerry Chen: Low-priced products cannot sustain complex direct sales forces

Jerry Chen · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · Apr 2, 2018 · at 17:23

Jerry Chen, Partner at Greylock, explains the necessity of matching product pricing and unit value with appropriate go-to-market channels.

0:00 / 0:09exact quote · 9.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“If you have kind of a small unit value, that's low price point and have a complex direct sales force, the economics would never work out no matter how hard you try.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Jerry Chen

Opinion
Jerry Chen: AWS is beatable in specific product areas and markets
“Given this VC podcast, I would say that a lot of founders, investors don't think you can beat Amazon's cloud, AWS, but I actually think AWS is very beatable in certain product areas in certain markets, so I'm still bullish in finding companies that can challen…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 26:41 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Prediction Held up
Chen: Autonomous vehicle winners will reach $100 billion valuations
“A large consumer outcome, or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes, are going to be a hundred billion plus or minus companies, right? Or tens of billions. If, you know, autonomous vehicles become a reality, that's going to disrupt a multi-trillion dol…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 11:31 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Effective startup board members require prior operator experience
“Without being on the other side of the table, without shipping product, hiring employees, firing employees, I was not going to be a great board member, a great advisor to these founders.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 5:55 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Venture risk divides into quantifiable probabilities and unquantifiable uncertainties
“There's really two or three categories of risk to think about. There's probabilities and uncertainties. I think probabilities are quantifiable risks, right? So the execution risk, the market risk, and you and I as investors can make an educated bet or guess on…”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 9:41 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Good venture investors must maintain relentless optimism
“To be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible Because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 4:18 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
Insight
Chen: Venture capitalists are advisors, never company decision-makers
“Part of venture you have to realize is you're an advisor, an influencer, you're a mentor and a coach, but you're actually never a decider, right? So I think a lot of ventures getting comfortable with a lot of things being out of control.”
Jerry Chen Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 5:42 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone"
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.