The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Neumann: Startup founders should establish a board of directors from day one
“I think they should have a board from day one, and I know that's not a popular opinion, especially with founders”
Neumann: Startups almost always perform worse after removing their founders
“When you remove the founder from a company, the company almost always does worse.”
Neumann: Top seed funds like USV outperform when market prices are low
“If you look at the best performing venture funds in history, at least seed stage, like things like USV, you will find that they started investing in a market where the market price was below the indicated discounted price. When the market is above where the in…”
Neumann rejects Jason Lemkin's view that VC is just packaging startups
“I don't look at it that way. If you say it that way, it makes it sound like you're trying to gild the lily, right? You're trying to sell them something that's not actually true. I do think that you need to know what the company needs to look like to raise more…”
Neumann: Spray-and-pray VC strategies fail without active lead investors
“If you're making a hundred investments where you're the lead or there is no lead and nobody is helping the entrepreneur, then I think that's not going to work.”
Neumann: Early-stage startups without active board members perform significantly worse
“My experience is the companies where there is nobody involved from the beginning on the board helping the entrepreneur tend to do a lot worse than the companies where there is somebody involved.”
Neumann: Seed entry pricing matters despite Silicon Valley binary outcome beliefs
“I don't believe in the binary outcome that Silicon Valley has been sort of talking about for the past 10 years. You know, it doesn't matter what the entry price is because the outcome is either going to be huge or nothing. I think that even if that were true, …”
Neumann: Always secures pro-rata because follow-ons are superior investments
“I always insist on getting pro rata in a company because I think that the second investment is a much better investment than the first investment.”
Neumann: Power law dynamics make larger VC portfolios yield higher returns
“With a power law, the more investments you make, the higher your average.”
Neumann: VCs should limit portfolio size to what they can actively support
“You can only have as many companies as you can actively help.”
Neumann: Josh Koppelman challenges founders effectively without creating defensiveness
“Because he had been an entrepreneur. He could challenge Founders on their premises from a base of experience, and also because when he did so, he didn't do it in a way that the founder would have a hard time, except he'd never made the founders defensive. He c…”
Neumann allocates twice as much capital to follow-ons as initial checks
“So I have twice as much money in second rounds as first rounds.”
Neumann: $500K pre-seed startups almost certainly need $1M+ before Series A
“So if you raise a pre-seed round of 500 K, you're almost certainly going to need At least another million to get to the series A.”
Neumann always re-invests if a portfolio company secures an outside lead
“So if they have a lead for the second round, I will, I think I have always invested. I don't tell them I always will, but I have always, but that means they have to convince somebody else that the company is worth investing in.”
Neumann: NYC ranks second only to SF Bay Area in major companies
“If you look at the number of big companies, New York is well ahead of any other place except for the San Francisco Bay Area”
Neumann: Half of early-stage investors enter venture capital by accident
“So I think half of the early stage investors out there did it on purpose, and the rest of us got into it by accident.”
Neumann tracks hundreds of enterprise software exits to set seed pricing
“As to determining price, the way that I keep close track of exits in the markets that I'm in, so I have a spreadsheet of hundreds of exits in enterprise software, and I kind of have a feel, having done all that research, for what the sweet spot for an exit is,…”