Mike Smith

Co-Founder and General Partner, Footwork · 1 appearance on the record.

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

investorfounderexecutiveoperator@msmith492 ↗LinkedIn ↗footwork.vc ↗

Mike Smith is Co-Founder and General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage venture capital firm. He previously served as President and COO/CFO of Stitch Fix and as COO of Walmart.com.

6statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 4.17/5average certainty → 1.83/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 3 assertions · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 1 names 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 Mike 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

Smith: Stitch Fix hired a Chief Operating Officer as its fourth employee

“Katrina, the founder, and sort of the investor's early stage, said, this needs to be a core competency, because we're sending stuff out and getting stuff back, and I mean, it's shocking to me now, and I'm very grateful that they sort of hired a COO as employee…”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:15 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Smith: Amazon will restrict same-day delivery to groceries and next-day elsewhere

“I don't buy that there's a lot of product demand for same day. I think that Amazon will do same day for grocery because it makes sense on fresh. I don't, I believe they'll do next day on everything else.”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 41:25 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet 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? →

247 words/min while actually speaking · 29.3 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mike Smith: 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: 2,628 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 →

What they said6 Episodes1

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

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Smith: Amazon will restrict same-day delivery to groceries and next-day elsewhere

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 41:25 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Disclosure

Smith: Stitch Fix builds custom software because off-the-shelf tools fail

“I don't have, we're building it all ourselves, and so we use Zendesk for customer service but I'd say that the tie-ins to Zendesk are very proprietary in terms of, like, how tickets how we think about tickets related to customer segmentation, or how we think a…”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 50:42 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Disclosure

Smith: Stitch Fix caps fulfillment volume using inventory, styling, and warehouse limits

“At Stitch Fix, ah, we try to have quality be the foundation, and the three constraints being quality of inventory, how many stylists can pick the five things after the algorithm runs, and ops capacity, And that drives what we actually do.”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 55:31 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Assertion Not publicly verifiable

Smith: Stitch Fix scaled warehouse space from 500 to 450,000 square feet

“When I first started at the company, ah, we did pick, pack, and ship out of 505 hundred square feet. Which was half of our office. Then two months later we moved to a thousand square feet. Then two months after that, we moved to 9000 square feet, and now we're…”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:58 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Smith: Walmart.com had at least eight management layers above warehouse staff

“The, you know, sort of warehouse staff at walmart.com versus where I was in my position, there was at least eight layers”

Mike Smith Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:37 a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops