Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Paley: Startup Execs Should Compare Real Financials Against Valuation Hype

Eric Paley · Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Sep 20, 2023 · at 0:00

Eric Paley, Managing Partner at Founder Collective, cautions executives evaluating startup job offers to audit the company's real metrics instead of trusting CEO funding announcements.

0:00 / 0:21exact quote · 21.9s
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“If you're coming into a company as a senior executive and you have a CEO is bragging to you about how big their last round was in dollars and how big the post money was, ask to see the financials and compare those financials to what they're claiming in the vanity of financings. When you see that massive disconnect, you're in a pretty tough place. That is a place that is probably not going to play out the way you want it to.”

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Opinion
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Disclosure
Founder Collective avoids pro rata rights due to founder misalignment
“We don't do a lot of Parada for a bunch of reasons, including we don't think In most cases, in many cases, Parada's aligned to the founder, because the problem with Parada is you're always a net buyer of the founder's company, and they're always a net seller.”
Eric Paley Nov 18, 2015 ▶ 10:50 20 VC 089: Eric Paley @ Founder Collective on Outliers, Inspirational Founders and Pro Rata
Insight
Exercising pro rata rights repeatedly dilutes seed fund returns
“The other thing you're doing when you're exercising parada over and over again is Is your dollar averaging down your returns, or otherwise you could say your dollar averaging up your cost basis?”
Eric Paley Nov 18, 2015 ▶ 11:35 20 VC 089: Eric Paley @ Founder Collective on Outliers, Inspirational Founders and Pro Rata
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Paley notes very few former-founder VCs achieved $250M exits themselves
“Very few of the VCs who were once entrepreneurs have had two hundred and fifty million dollar exits.”
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