why aren't all 9 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
Insight
Hower: $100M exits return seed funds but fail multi-stage fund thresholds
“If you own 10% of a company that exits for a hundred, hundred fifty billion dollars with a 40, 50, 60, seventy-five million dollar fund, you can still return a meaningful portion of that fund with a, you know, a 102 hundred million dollar exit. Obviously, the …”
Prediction Held up
Hower: Autonomous Vehicles Won't Be Everywhere in Two to Three Years
“I happen to be of the opinion that we're not going to have self-driving autonomous vehicles everywhere in a very, you know, in the next two years or three years, but I do believe that there's a massive opportunity in transforming transportation, which is a hug…”
Insight
Hower: No 'subprime model' exists in venture capital due to power laws
“There's no subprime model to venture capital investing, right? You can't invest in the mediocre companies at a cheap price and produce a good outcome because the distribution of outcomes is a power law. It's not a normal distribution.”
Opinion
Hower: Standalone chatbot and messaging AI companies are overhyped and unsustainable
“I think not sustaining, there's a lot of emphasis on Sort of chatbots and messaging AI happening at a messaging layer. I think that's actually going to be critical in many, many ways to a broader array of applications, but I think undue emphasis has probably b…”
Assertion Supported
Hower: PayPal went through three CEOs and burned $10M+ monthly in 2000
“During my first year working there in 2000, you know, we had essentially three different CEOs over the course of that year. You know, at our worst point, we were burning, you know, more than ten million dollars a month.”
Insight
Lee Hower: High valuations without progress create severe overhangs
“At any point in, in the life cycle, You can create a valuation overhang where if a company raises capital at an exceptionally high valuation and can't hit value accretive milestones along the way to merit that, that valuation, they put themselves at a challeng…”
Assertion Supported
X.com and Confinity completed a 50-50 merger in spring 2000
“The two companies ended up merging a fifty-fifty merger of equals in the spring of 2000.”
Assertion Supported
Hower: Average seed funding rounds were $1M in 2010
“When we started investing in 2010, you know, your average seed round was about a million bucks or slightly larger.”
Assertion Supported
Hower: Dedicated seed funds were scarce in Boston and NY in 2010
“And at the time that we started in 2010, you know, there were relatively few seed funds here in the New York area and the Boston area. Fast forward to today, you know, 2017, there's obviously been a proliferation of seed investors.”