Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Galston: Poker startup CardRunners grew to 15,000 customers in 18 months

Ezra Galston · 20 VC 063: What It Takes To Standout In A Crowded Market with Ezra Galston @ Chicago Ventures · Aug 17, 2015 · at 4:08

Ezra Galston, investor at Chicago Ventures, details the early customer growth of poker training platform CardRunners.

0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.6s
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“When I joined him, I think I was, like, the second employee. He had maybe 500 customers and, like, 500,000 dollars a year in revenue. Like a very small startup. And 18 months later, we had 15,000 paying customers.”

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 →

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Prediction Held up
Galston predicts in 2015 that Bitcoin will succeed long-term
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Assertion Contradicted
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Assertion Not checkable as stated
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Disclosure
Chicago Ventures avoids leading SF and LA rounds without local proximity
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Insight
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Insight
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