Scott Cooper
41 statements across 11 episodes · 13 bullish · 6 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jan 2, 2019 by Scott Kupor · said 13 times in 6 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Scott Cooper's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Frank Chen (4), Benedict Evans (2), Ben Horowitz (2), Sonal Chokshi (1), Scott Cooper (1), Morgan Bender (1), Jared Isaacman (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
Everything said about Scott Cooper, oldest first
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Kupor: SaaS subscription economics mirror traditional cable and telecom business models
“None of this stuff is actually that new, this concept that we're talking about here, right? So if you think about, you know, a company like Comcast, right, or you think about AT&T, they'got this same problem, which is, you know, it costs a lot of money to acqu…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Kupor: Startups stretching on valuation should maximize capital taken
“If you're going to stretch for valuation, you better take as much money as you can possibly get at that valuation to give yourself way more running room than you ever think to kind of insulate yourself from macro changes that might kind of impact the financing…”
Jan 2, 2019
Cooper: Modern tech IPOs have $150M+ revenue versus $12M in 1999
“Coupled with four and a half year time to IPO for a company, so you've got kind of massive risk both on the public markets and the private markets, whereas now at least we have kind of much better distribution of funding, as you talked about, kind of only 20% …”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Cooper: Structural market shift concentrates tech returns among private investors
“It does illustrate, I think, a longer-term structural change, which is that the returns to many of these companies, you know, to the extent there are returns that can be much more likely concentrated among the private investor class versus the public investor …”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Cooper: Tech corporate M&A is surprisingly weak given incumbent cash balances
“I would have expected at this stage of the cycle to have a more robust M&A environment, which, you know, we've talked about in prior posts and others about, you know, whether it's activist shareholders or other things that potentially are making it more diffic…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Cooper: Secondary trading markets will emerge to supply VC liquidity
“I think the other thing that, you know, is potentially likely to happen over the next several years is potentially the establishment of a more, you know, fundamental secondary trading market for not just employees, which we see today, but potentially also earl…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Cooper: Startups should offer larger equity grants over longer vesting periods
“Maybe an answer is to think about, gee, people should get more options, you know, even more options they do today, but with the understanding that they vest over a longer period such that it ties more closely to when you think the liquidity happens.”
Jan 2, 2019
Kupor: Early sales hires must seek honest market feedback over superficial success
“So much of the early customer engagement should be like figuring out the product market fit. And so you really want market feedback that you can use. And if you have somebody that like, you know, every meeting is a good meeting and they're using relations, thi…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Kupor: Corporate proof-of-concept programs rarely connect directly to procurement
“Many large companies have outreach programs to start up. So like if you engage with a, you know, a finance company, like a large bank, they'll be like, listen, we work with startups all the time. They have whole groups that take these things and pock them. Tha…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Kupor: Aggressive early pricing filters out passive learning buyers
“One thing I really learned to appreciate about, you know, setting pricing aggressively early on is you start to get real market feedback. You can't delude yourself anymore. People aren't buying it to learn about it. They aren't doing this because you're super …”
Jan 2, 2019
Kupor: Startups must plan modular packaging early to prevent revenue cannibalization
“If you don't know you're going to do this beforehand, you may not have the flexibility to actually pull out independent bits of value. And so now you've got You know, on one hand, either you cannibalize yourself with like a, an over feature rich product for th…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Kupor: Low initial pricing devalues tech products and cannibalizes revenue
“What happens just in human psychology is actually like, we'll set the value on whatever they're getting based on how they acquired it. And so in early markets, nobody really knows how to value what you have. And so it's very important for you to establish the …”
Jan 2, 2019
Kupor: Inside sales models require mature markets and simple products
“The cost of like an ISR is going to be much less than a direct sales force, but only certain types of products or markets are amenable to an inside sales model, right? Like if it's a very mature market and the customer's educated is probably more amenable than…”
Jan 2, 2019
Kupor: Only direct sales feedback can accurately determine enterprise pricing
“When it comes to setting pricing and to understanding what the market will bear, like there's nothing that can do it except for sales. Like this is just my experience. It's not market research. It's not marketing. It's not the entrepreneur. I don't believe if …”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019
Cooper: Startups should artificially restrict budgeting below their raised capital
“One is if you start from the concept of, look, we need some constraints in the system, period, like, so we may have raised a hundred million dollars, but maybe the answer is, look, can we do what we said on seventy-five million dollars? Even if you end up lett…”
Jan 2, 2019
Cooper: Rational startup strategy requires setting milestones around fundraising or cash flow
“The only way you can actually have a rational strategy for what you're going to do for the next eight to 24 months is what your assumption is on when or if you're going to get that series C financing or if you're going to actually be cash flow positive at that…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Cooper: Expense cuts do not automatically cause revenue growth to decline
“The fallacy between a dollar reduction in cost spend and a dollar reduction in revenue growth, there may be some companies for which that is in fact true, but maybe you're just spending money where it just doesn't yield anything, or you've just gotten fat in o…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Cooper: Startup CEOs need a finance leader as soon as go-to-market begins
“As soon as you think about go-to-market, right, and you start to think, okay, now I'm going to spend marketing dollars. Do I understand what my lead generation costs? Now I'm going to hire sales. What's the throughput and conversion rate and quota and all that…”
Jun 14, 2019 positive
Founders should prioritize clean term sheets over higher valuations
“You know, kind of people are trying to balance off valuation with some of these other rights, and that's really a lot of what I try to point out in the book is that it's very hard to look at these in isolation because they all have some kind of economic value,…”
Jun 14, 2019
Departing founders practically bear the burden of proof in IP disputes
“And the challenge with these cases is you're kind of proving the negative, right? So in that case, you know, ah, you know, Anthony Lewandowski, who was the person, he had to prove that, you know, he didn't take anything, right? As opposed to them proving that …”
Jun 14, 2019
Founders must never use employer laptops for side projects
“So our best advice on this stuff is, look, if you've got a great idea number one, you know, don't ever use your work laptop for any of these things, right? So have some physical separation, and you know, when you really get to the point where you feel like, ok…”
Jun 14, 2019 negative
Participating liquidation preferences are fundamentally unfair to founders
“Fundamentally, you know, and I say this in the book, like, I think that's very unfair to the entrepreneurs and to the common shareholders, because liquidation preference is really intended to protect your downside, and so it's not obvious to me.”
Jun 14, 2019 positive
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019
Cooper: Top 10% to 20% of VC investments drive 90% of returns
“So basically what that means is the way this business works, the difference between success or failure in this business means you've got 10 or 20% left of your investments that need to basically generate, you know, 90% of your returns, and so”
Jun 14, 2019 neutral
Cooper: Capital scarcity defined venture capital from the 1970s to mid-2000s
“And that was kind of most of actually the first 30, 40 years of venture capital from kind of early 19 seventies to mid 2000, I think was characterized by that. You know, capital was scarce. The VCs had it and therefore You went to the BC to get the money.”
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019
Cooper: 40% to 50% of venture capital investments result in total loss
“The basic way to think about a venture portfolio is you know, about half, 40 to 50% of what we do, we're gonna get wrong. And there's this very euphemistic word that we have in this business, which I know you and I've talked about, called you have an impaired …”
Jun 14, 2019
Cooper: VC incentives conflict with founders aiming for moderate early exits
“There's, you know, there's no normative you know, kind of reason why you shouldn't do that, but that's probably not the kind of alignment of interest that you would have if you took venture capital. The venture capitals would probably be disappointed with that…”
Jun 14, 2019 positive
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 positive
Cooper: Recapitalizations must re-incentivize employees with underwater stock options
“So there's no sense in any of us putting more money in the company if it turns out all of your stock options are underwater and you've got no financial incentive, and then tomorrow everybody's going to walk away from the business, right? So this requires kind …”
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019
Cooper: CEOs build reputations by prioritizing employee outcomes during acquisitions
“And we like to talk about the price because, of course, it's a lot more fun and sexy to talk about money, but it's, I think, you know, managers and CEOs make their reputations, quite frankly, in these types of situations where, you know, they are thinking firs…”