Kevin Thau, General Partner at Spark Capital, responds to a question about what he would most like to change in the world of VCs and startups.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Making all of these venture capital firms, Boards, executive teams, employee-based, diverse. I think that is the best trend that could possibly happen to the whole ecosystem.”
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 Kevin Thau
Insight
Thau: Vertically integrated products succeed better in early markets
“The companies that do a vertically integrated product when the market's early seem to have a better chance, in my opinion, than trying to be one piece of technology in the stack of a market before the market is there.”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 8:5720VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
Opinion
Thau: Amazon accelerates sales but does not build brands
“I don't know that I believe that Amazon does a great job of helping build brands. Like, I don't see brands getting built on top of Amazon. I think it's a great accelerator.”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 19:0920VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
Opinion
Thau: No competitor has come close to disrupting Twitter's core use case
“And it's amazing to me that over all these years, they still own that use case. No one's even come close to disrupting them for the Twitter use case.”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 5:0120VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
Opinion
Thau: Facebook lacks Twitter's strong brand persona
“Even a product like Facebook is one of the most impressive companies and products of all time. It doesn't really have as much of a brand persona as a Twitter does, and I think it's because of all those little, little things.”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 15:5020VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
Insight
Thau: Consumer investing is harder than B2B due to adoption risk
“Anything in consumer is very, very hard because you're betting on a big market adoption versus, say, a B to B company with recurring revenue and enterprise clients.”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 17:5620VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
Opinion
Thau: College brand association and academic pedigree do not matter much
“I don't believe in the over obsession of where someone goes to school, that this, like, brand association of where people go to college or in education is that important. I think people get too wrapped up and obsessed with that, parents, kids, and I just don't…”
Kevin ThauJan 3, 2018▶ 22:2020VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
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.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.