Scott Cooper
2 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
0statements → 0claims → 0claims resolved → —average certainty → —average debate potential → 53said about them ↓
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Scott argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
How they sound: speaking style how? →
303 words/min while actually speaking · 15.6 um and uh per 1k words · 9.2 false starts per 1k · 34.5% of pauses land inside a clause
No argument clarity score for Scott Cooper: only 1 usable question→answer exchange 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: 33,775 words across 11 episodes 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 Scott Cooper said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
The other half of the tape: Scott Cooper's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 6 episodes on the a16z Podcast. 41 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Frank Chen 4Benedict Evans 2Ben Horowitz 2Sonal Chokshi 1Morgan Bender 1Jared Isaacman 1
Statements about Scott Cooper, by other people (41)
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 …”
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 …”
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…”
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,…”
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 …”
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.”
Cooper: Every founder wishes they hired a CFO six months earlier
“We found in, in a hundred percent of the cases that having done it, they all kind of now say, gee, like, had I done that six or 12 months earlier, it would have been better.”
Cooper: Market crashes always have visible precursor signs
“There are always signs
Nobody could foresee the crash, but there were precursors to problems.”
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 …”
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 …”
Kupor: Start with high pricing in pre-chasm markets and iterate
“The only way I've been able to establish pricing in a pre-chasm market is, is you start pretty high and then you let the salespeople shake it out.”
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.”
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% …”
Isaacman: NASA is launching 'NASA Force' talent exchange initiative
“With the immense support of OPM Director Scott Cooper, we are launching NASA Force. To rebuild NASA's core competencies.”
Cooper: Andreessen Horowitz frequently uses management carve-outs in acquisition deals
“And that's a perfectly fair and a reasonable thing to do. You know, we do it, you know, in many cases in that scenario.”
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 …”
Cooper: Understanding VC incentives enables productive founder-investor dialogue
“Venture capitalists are people too, and so they respond to the incentive structure they have, and the more you understand that, the more I think you can finally cut through and actually have a rational dialogue.”
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…”
Cooper: VC funds must deliver 2.5x to 3x returns to succeed
“To be successful in this business over the long term, you probably need to return two and a half to three times the money that the LPs give you over that 10 year period”
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…”
1X non-participating liquidation preference predominates in Silicon Valley deals
“Yeah, the most entrepreneur-friendly, and the one that I think generally predominates, quite frankly, particularly in Silicon Valley, is what you would call a one X non-participating liquidation preference.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 11 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
Appearances (2)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| a16z Podcast | From Data Warehouses to Data Lakes | Jan 2, 2019 | 5m |
| a16z Podcast | Software Programs the World | Jan 2, 2019 | 2m |