Kurt McMaster

Founder & CEO, Playtron · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutive@kynprime ↗playtron.one ↗

He is the former co-founder and CEO of Cyanogen Inc. and a co-founder of Boost Mobile USA. He currently leads Playtron, developing an open Linux-based operating system for handheld gaming consoles and PCs.

8statements → 7claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.75/5average certainty → 3/5average debate potential →

2 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 3 assertions · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Kurt argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
McMaster: Micromax surpassed Samsung as India's top smartphone manufacturer
“Last August, they surpassed Samsung as volume shipment sales in India. Last week, they passed Samsung as the number one smartphone manufacturer in India, right? They're now a top 10 global OEM, right?”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:45 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
McMaster: Apple faces margin pressure and negligible emerging market share
“I believe over time, Apple's even going to have products. You know, problems, because they're not going to be able to sustain these margins, and in these markets where Android is dominant, Apple's market share will be negligible. Right? As these markets contin…”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:43 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
0% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

264 words/min while actually speaking · 12.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Kurt McMaster: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 2,835 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Kurt McMaster said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
McMaster: Low-cost emerging market manufacturers will decimate tier-one OEMs like Samsung
“Emerging markets are going to lead to the decimation of tier one OEMs, because the Samsungs, et cetera, will not be able to compete at that level.”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:43 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Prediction Didn’t hold up
McMaster: Apple faces margin pressure and negligible emerging market share
“I believe over time, Apple's even going to have products. You know, problems, because they're not going to be able to sustain these margins, and in these markets where Android is dominant, Apple's market share will be negligible. Right? As these markets contin…”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:43 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McMaster: Expanding mobile market will enable a third or fourth OS
“And we think that as mobile computing goes from a couple billion users to well over six billion users, There's an opportunity on the global platform for definitely a third, maybe even a fourth.”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:20 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Insight
McMaster: AI startups cannot succeed as standalone sandboxed mobile apps
“These kinds of services can't really exist as applications. A, they don't get any traction. Anything that requires machine learning and AI requires massive user bases to start to build out their data sets so that they get all the more powerful, et cetera. So w…”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:05 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Assertion Contradicted
McMaster: Google's Android Wear contains no open-source components whatsoever
“If you look at Android Wear today, that is incredibly close. There is no open source component to Android Wear whatsoever, right?”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:15 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Assertion Supported
McMaster: Micromax surpassed Samsung as India's top smartphone manufacturer
“Last August, they surpassed Samsung as volume shipment sales in India. Last week, they passed Samsung as the number one smartphone manufacturer in India, right? They're now a top 10 global OEM, right?”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:45 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McMaster: $50 to $75 smartphones will rival iPhones within a year
“But next year, there's gonna be 50 dollar and 75 dollar phones that are just as good, almost as good as an iPhone.”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:31 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
Assertion Supported
McMaster: Under 200 apps account for 80% of global mobile data
“If you look at the app world, I would say probably less than 200 applications account for 75 to 80% of all global mobile data usage.”
Kurt McMaster Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:18 a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS Jan 2, 2019 12m
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