startup
also referred to as: startups
123 statements across 90 episodes · 36 bullish · 29 bearish · 67 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2017 by Benedict Evans · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Ryan Hoover (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about startup, oldest first
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017 positive
Dixon: Startup success is 90% recruiting top product and engineering talent
“What startups really are is a dynamic process that probably, you know, 90% of it is frankly recruiting a great product and engineering team, and What we find is only, just empirically, is it only great Product engineering people are able to recruit those peopl…”
Jul 15, 2017 positive
Andreessen: Early startups require five years of 18-hour days to succeed
“There is no substitute. The big takeaway, and this applies to everything we fund, and it's what we work on all the time, there is no substitute to the first five years of people in the office, 18 hours a day, six days a week, grinding away. And it's grinding a…”
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Jul 16, 2017 negative
Cranny: Omitting long-term options creates sales friction in enterprise deals
“In, in a lot of startup situations, we're so focused on the initial deal, we forget that we're going to create friction if we don't give them options and a proposal what it's going to look like over time, because, and it really costs a lot of people a lot of t…”
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 bullish
Rampell: Fintech startups are unbundling banks category by category like Craigslist
“Along have come many, many startups, and what the startups have done is, one by one, they've picked off a particular category. They've taken this broad horizontal marketplace, kind of like Craigslist, and category by category, they've attacked these different …”
May 4, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 positive
Jun 11, 2018
Dec 21, 2018
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Wertz argues operational distraction is the key risk of offline events
“And, you know, it's, cost is the one thing. I think distraction to the businesses is, is the other one. You know, having people continuously travel. It was never kind of putting on expensive, shiny events. You know, it can be a quick get together for drinks so…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Johnson: Delightful retail experiences are increasingly created by startups, not incumbents
“And increasingly, they're not coming from the large companies improving their business. They're coming from the startups that are really working really hard to take a set of values and to honor those and execute those every day with every customer.”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019
Duke: Startups can negotiate enterprise supplier terms by pitching long-term vision
“If you just take the time to get the right people in the room, and actually kind of talk through your vision, you can ask for what the big guys get, and you'll be surprised, and it doesn't take much time, And you'll get significant payback in terms of margins …”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Duke: Startups evaluating metrics monthly are driving blind at high speed
“So if you're looking at, let's say you're looking at your metrics monthly, and you're a startup you're moving so quickly, that's like driving down the road at 90 miles per hour and only looking in your rear view mirror. You know, you've really got to look at t…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Dan Shapiro: Hiring enterprise sales leaders into early-stage startups often fails
“And at least in a startup, most people, like, the thought process that we've seen is, you know, okay, we're at 50 people. We need to be at 500 people. Who has managed a 500, been a manager in a 500 person org? Okay, great. Let's go bring them into our org. Oka…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019
Startup executives are completely exposed with nowhere to hide
“The unique thing about a startup, there is nowhere to hide, right? I mean, there's nowhere to hide. You know, you can't crawl under a desk, like, you're completely exposed as an executive in a young company, because everything's your fault.”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
McGurk: Pre-product startups under a year old should avoid corporate development
“And, you know, the meme was out there that, as Sonal mentioned, that you know, don't engage with the corp dev. And we agree with that at certain points in a company's life. If you're less than a year old if you're really kind of pre-product that we generally a…”
Jan 2, 2019
McGurk: Corporate development teams hold a significant negotiation advantage over founders
“Keep in mind also that these are professional negotiators. So, you know, the a startup and they go through their life, they may raise money, you know, a handful of times if they're doing very well, maybe, maybe several times they will probably, and hopefully o…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Weil: Corporate Pilots With Startups Should Target Localized Scopes
“Startups can't always ingest your entire business or footprint or do exactly what needs to be done. So have in mind maybe a sub product that you can trial with a company or say two geographic locations that you're going to do a pilot rather than the entire ent…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Andreessen: Aggressive university patent licensing can kill spinoff startups in the cradle
“I have seen cases, and I've lived through cases, where the universities take a very draconian view on this, and the university licensing office has this just highly inflated view of the value of what they're going to be licensing, and they can kill companies i…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Chokshi: Startup valuations have grown too large for corporate acquisition strategies
“These big companies, which before could have quickly acquired startups to help them do some of these things, now those companies get too big. They reaches a point where their market cap is too big. We've observed this for them to even consider affording the ab…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Ries: Large corporations make terrible partners for startups
“Most big companies are terrible partners. They don't understand how to pilot things. They don't understand how to work with startups in a way that don't kill them. They spend way too much time on contract negotiations, and they just, they're unreliable.”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Babayan: London media companies exchange ad reach for startup equity
“I think there's also an emerging trend in, in media for equity deals. Big media companies based here that have huge reach but feel maybe they're not playing a part in innovation and in some of the new ways that information is being spread and using some of the…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019
Andreessen: Startups must build scale to overcome busy, entrenched customers
“What the startup founders don't understand is how big the world is and how busy people are and all the existing investments people have made and all the existing time people are spending on things, you know, so in a world of seven billion people, if you really…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Mougayar: Banks struggle to integrate startup culture into corporate environments
“Yeah, but then the real task is to bring the animal home and see if you can domesticate them or not. That is the real task because a startup is wild. And so can they bring something wild into the domesticated environment and let them thrive or not? Or will the…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Excessive government compliance standards lock startups out of innovation
“Because we do worry sometimes that if you put too many standards in place, it stagnates both innovation and you're not allowing startup companies to get into that innovative cycle because it sheds them out because their costs get so high on trying to meet a”
Jan 2, 2019
Schiltz: Startups must raise discounted salaries to market rates by Series B
“Once you start approaching your B round or two to three years into it, everyone gets brought up to market. So like you only get a discount for a certain amount of time before everyone comes to market because people cannot afford to live on a discounted cash in…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Srinivasan: Crypto crowdfunding will become a viable startup financing alternative
“I think there's a very interesting experiment and something which will probably be relevant for you guys, not, not this year, not next year, but in maybe five to 10 years in terms of potentially an alternate way to get financing for something.”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Cranney: Startups always pay for go-to-market execution one way or another
“You're paying for it either way, right? You're paying for it by giving everything away for free. Cause you're not investing in sales and marketing, or you're going to have a channel partner do it, which you're giving your margin away. Somebody's paying for it.”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Milosevic: Startups facing strong incumbents should delay PR until establishing traction
“I see that happen more often when a small company is in a very, very competitive space with big incumbents who are innovating and could very quickly squash them if they wanted to. So it makes sense for some of those folks to really build the base, get the vira…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
D'Amico: Involving Analysts in Product Roadmaps Builds Stronger Startup Relationships
“What the analysts actually really appreciate is when you acknowledge, yeah, you know, we're aware of that and we're working on that. And what advice would you have for us? Because they love being a part of building your company. They really do. I mean, they li…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019
Andreessen: Startups have a five-year fuse to hit critical mass
“When you start a company, you basically, basically starts a five-year fuse. If the idea doesn't hit, if the idea doesn't hit critical mass sort of in society with the customers in the first five years, you basically lose the company, and then somebody else pic…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Pande: State healthcare flexibility will force startups into heterogeneous markets
“What we're going to see is a lot of disparity between whether you're in California or whether you're in Texas and so on. This will be an interesting challenge for startups because they're going to have to deal with a Much more heterogeneous system.”
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019 negative
O'Reilly: Exit-driven startups are financial products, not real companies
“And there was a time when the goal of a startup was to build a real business. You know, you think about you know, the founders of Silicon Valley, they didn't have any idea that they were going to get acquired. They had the idea that they were going to build a …”
Jan 2, 2019
Sinofsky: Startups overreact to product announcements from big tech competitors
“I think that that's really important, especially in the startup world, because there's this tendency, you know, if you're a startup and you work in a particular space, and then you just hear an announcement from a big company, that they're working on something…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Sinofsky: Startups shouldn't copy big hardware firms' redundant strategies
“Right, which is, for startups, a super interesting point, because it means, like, if you take the lead from the big companies in what to do, you'll see that all of them, they have the resources to, like, do everything five times.”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Hawk: Startups do not need expensive consultants for GDPR compliance
“Startups can do it themselves. I think they have a lot of smart people. There are tools out there that you can use. Eventually you will need a lawyer to draft some contracts, but I do think there are practical things you can do without engaging a really expens…”
Jan 2, 2019
Sinofsky: Startups must treat data breaches like server downtime with response runbooks
“So I think that, that, you know, for any startup, a key thing is there's probably a good chance that, that the company has a process around the service going down, and the reality is they need the same kind of checklist, process, call list, pagers, alerts, in …”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Sinofsky: Startups have a major advantage over big companies in GDPR compliance
“Yeah, I really agree with that, because, like, when you're at a big company, and you're hit with GDPR, like, you, I know exactly how this is going to work. Like, you've got all the subsidiaries, and you know, too. Well, you're paralyzed, because you have to, y…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019
Gil: Founders should hire executives for 12 to 18 month horizons
“You should always be thinking of the person as the right person for the next 12 to 18 months, not the person for the next five years, and so I think a common mistake is that people will end up hiring, you know, they'll have a twenty-person engineering team, an…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Brayton: Early startups should leverage PR agencies to build their narrative
“I think an agency to come in at the very beginning and talk about the company's narrative and what are your value props, what are your market fit, and who are the people running this company? Super, super valuable to have an agency help you do that. Without ha…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019
Dixon: Competition is a race between startup distribution and incumbent innovation
“My partner, Alex Rampel, I'm going to butcher the phrase, but it's something like startups try to find distribution for their innovation faster than the incumbents attach innovation to their distribution or something, something like that.”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 17, 2019 bullish
Jan 21, 2019 negative
Ni: Level 1 wages for equity-heavy senior startup roles trigger USCIS issues
“So, you know, you have a very senior role with very senior job duties, but because you're a startup and you're, you know, kind of paying people more in equity you only, you can only have a wage level One salary. So for that reason, you choose a level one wage.…”
Jun 14, 2019 neutral
Cooper: Startups will continue staying private 10 to 12 years before IPO
“I think the other phenomenon we've seen, which I think is going to continue, is this idea of companies staying private much longer. And so it used to be that companies would go public six, six and a half years after they were started. Now it's 1012 years. I do…”
Dec 9, 2019
Oct 9, 2020 bullish
Armstrong: Nearly every startup will integrate cryptocurrency within ten years
“And now, you know, I think the same thing is going to happen with cryptocurrency where in five or 10 years, pretty much every startup that gets created, it's going to use the internet, it's going to use AI, and it's also going to use some form of cryptocurrenc…”
Nov 18, 2022
Power: Startups should industrialize existing tech rather than invent fundamental science
“So, you know, the job of the startup is to industrialize, you know, research or existing technology and apply it to a new domain. It's not good. It's not sit there with You know, try and create something that's like high risk. That is like the science pipeline…”
Feb 9, 2023 bearish
May 9, 2023 positive
Yoo: Cures Act incentivized new wave of medical record startups
“Now there's a whole, you know, this is a great example of a, an act that actually incentivized a whole bunch of startups to come out of the woodwork and create Apps that allow you as a patient to basically collect all your medical records from multiple provide…”
Jun 10, 2023 negative
Andreessen: Incumbents push AI regulatory capture to create cartels and block startups
“And then quite honestly, also, you know, a set of people who I think are trying to take advantage of this and trying to go for, you know, regulatory capture and try to basically establish a cartel and, you know, try to basically choke off innovation as startup…”
Sep 25, 2023 bullish
Field: History shows tech platform shifts favor startups over incumbents
“Basically every platform shift that's happened, people have claimed that and then it hasn't been the case. And so I think that if you're a startup, this is a pretty good time to basically pick the area that you think could really benefit from the technology an…”
Nov 14, 2023
Akhund: Early-stage startups should hire sales ICs before a head of sales
“I mostly think of these things as like, I think it's a mistake when startups go and hire, like the first hire shouldn't be ahead of sales. Like, I think you should just go hire some salespeople and see if there's a repeatable process that you can come up with …”
Dec 16, 2023 bullish
Lai: Startups, not AAA incumbents, will build the most innovative AI games
“So I think in, in that same vein, I think the most innovative AI native experiences are more likely to be created by startups and teams that are just getting going and are bringing that fresh perspective, I suppose to coming at it with a lot of history and bag…”
Mar 5, 2024 negative
Casado: Traditional AI has been difficult for startups to build around
“The AI learnings of the last couple of decades is not that the technology can't be built, or even that we can't monetize it, we're actually good at all of that, is that this is very hard for startups to build businesses around.”
Mar 5, 2024 positive
Mar 20, 2024
Apr 2, 2024
Andreessen: Tech monopolies only innovate when forced to compete with startups
“It's just that there is something in the nature of monopolies where they just, they have a, you know, if they no longer have to compete and if they're no longer disciplined by the market they basically go bad. And then, you know, how do you prevent that from h…”
Jun 19, 2024 positive
Andreessen: a16z launched an ambitious political program to defend startups
“We've launched a sort of a really ambitious political program in the last year, because we've just had it with people basically taking free shots on goal on startups, and so we're trying to support a lot of the politicians on the right side of these issues”
Jun 19, 2024 bearish
Andreessen: Big Tech is aggressively lobbying for regulatory capture against startups
“Quite honestly, I mean, part of what's happening is big tech is against us. There, there's a, there's basically a lot of the political issues now are a civil war inside the tech industry where, The big tech companies are lobbying very aggressively for what the…”
Jun 28, 2024 positive
Oct 17, 2024 positive
Lisa Su: Large enterprises are increasingly open to working with AI startups
“I think even large, large enterprises who typically used to be, let's call it much more conservative in working with startups are also, becoming much more open because again, this is back to the disruption I talked about. Nobody wants to be behind in AI.”
Jan 3, 2025 negative
Mar 18, 2025 bullish
Acharya: Corporate risk aversion stops big tech from shipping opinionated voice AI
“Corporations, sort of committees, lawyers, like, these big companies have a hard time shipping opinionated products, at least opinionated in the way that many of these voice models may need to be, and startups have no problem doing that.”
Jul 14, 2025 bullish
Levie: AI agents unlock startup opportunities in non-digitized sectors
“For startups in the AI world, the equivalent of that is I think there's a lot of categories now where there is no actually software incumbent in that category where AI agents all of a sudden let you go build software for that category. Legal, healthcare, educa…”
Aug 1, 2025 neutral
Balaji Srinivasan: Startups need only one primary storyline creator
“There's two kinds of creators. There's those who are at the storyline level, and you probably only need, like, one of those per company, you know, because if you have too many very strong will personalities in a company, like, you can only have one Steve Jobs …”
Aug 15, 2025 negative
Aug 25, 2025 bullish
Sep 4, 2025 negative
Casado: Most startups fail from indigestion rather than starvation
“Most companies fail from indigestion, not starvation, which is they just raise too much money too easily. They don't listen to the actual market, which is, you know, the customer base. And as a result, they just have a bunch of bad practices and end up running…”
Sep 4, 2025 neutral
Sep 4, 2025 neutral
Sep 8, 2025 neutral
Sep 10, 2025 bullish
Sep 24, 2025 negative
Levie: Pricing H-1B visas allows big tech to capture most talent
“I think that you'd have a situation where the Amazons and Googles would probably actually capture the vast portion of the talent in this situation. So it's not clear to me that, like, startups sort of are come out ahead or better off from this particular imple…”
Sep 24, 2025 positive
Sep 24, 2025 positive
Casado: Replacing H-1B lottery with pricing helps startups beat big tech
“This system has been gamed for a very long time. It's very hard for startups. To hire because of the lottery system. It's locked up by the large companies, the consultants, Amazon and Google and like that has to change, and I think a very reasonable way to do …”
Oct 15, 2025
Dec 3, 2025
Rampell: Platform incumbents will copy successful startup features within five years
“These companies, if they get their act together, they will marshal a lot of resources to go compete with you. It might take them five years, but they will 100% do it. You have to backfill your feature with a product, and you have to have a moat for that produc…”
Dec 31, 2025 bullish
Kim: AI startups beat incumbents by creating net new user interaction models
“AI brings a net new user interaction that may be difficult to replicate and may not natively live in the platforms of the product. And insofar as there are net new user interaction models, insofar as there is net new creative outlets and atomic units that look…”
Jan 7, 2026
Mar 13, 2026 neutral
Apr 8, 2026 bearish
Sinofsky: Enterprise AI security fears will let startups outpace big companies
“Part of what's going to happen is you're, we're going to go through this phase where like the enterprise customers are just going to like close everything off. Until there's some sense of sanity in all of this, and then, but in the meantime, the individual, an…”
Apr 8, 2026 neutral
Sinofsky: J.P. Morgan will be slowest to adopt autonomous AI agents
“JP Morgan is gonna be the slowest, At doing this, and the startups are going to be the fastest, but the delta is huge, but even the startup one is a little far off, because even startups do need some systems of record at some point.”
Apr 8, 2026 negative
Jul 29, 2026 neutral
Rampell: Incumbents can innovate much faster in the AI era
“So I kind of think the same rules apply, you know, the battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets the distribution before the incumbent gets the innovation. But with many changes, one change is the incumbent can get the i…”
Aug 20, 2026
Strange: Scaling past $50M requires recruiting sales leaders from mature markets
“One of the tougher things of getting ecosystems going, is you can have very, very smart people, you can land your customers, but then when you look around for who's my sales leader that's gonna take me from fifty million to five hundred million, You probably h…”
Aug 26, 2026 bearish
Acharya: Google Is Culturally Incapable of Launching Edgy AI Companions
“I think there are a set of products that labs are just culturally not set up and big tech not set up to go after. You think about launching, you know, a companion product at Google that may disagree with you, that may have sexual innuendo in it. Like these are…”