Steve Cheney

Co-Founder, Estimote · 1 appearance on the record.

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

founderexecutiveoperatorinvestorauthor@stevecheney ↗stevecheney.com ↗

Steve Cheney is a Co-Founder of Estimote, where he served as SVP of Business and Operations commercializing Bluetooth beacon technology. Previously, he led business development at GroupMe through its acquisition by Skype and Microsoft.

5statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.8/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 1 assertion · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 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 Steve 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

Prediction Held up
Steve Cheney: GPS signals will not penetrate building walls by 2024
“In five years, I can guarantee you that the phone will still not understand it's in the building because of a new GPS signal that can now penetrate walls. It will not physically happen.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:52 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Cheney: Starbucks will be entirely barista-less by 2024
“I would likely suggest that Starbucks will be like barista-less in five years.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:10 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% certainty 3
none yet 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? →

276 words/min while actually speaking · 17.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Steve Cheney: 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: 2,298 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 Steve Cheney 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
Cheney: Starbucks will be entirely barista-less by 2024
“I would likely suggest that Starbucks will be like barista-less in five years.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:10 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cheney: Mobile devices could become proactive 'first brains' for users
“The phone the watch and these devices, right, it's now an extension of us as a human being. So to some extent we think about this as like it could become the first brain. It could be something that it decides what's going on before you sort of tell it to.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:08 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cheney: Mobile tech lacks indoor contextual intelligence despite 80% indoor time
“There's a missing link there where there's still no layer of context in physical and indoor environments, which is where we spend, what, 80% of our time?”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:56 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile
Prediction Held up
Steve Cheney: GPS signals will not penetrate building walls by 2024
“In five years, I can guarantee you that the phone will still not understand it's in the building because of a new GPS signal that can now penetrate walls. It will not physically happen.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:52 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile
Insight
Cheney: Indoor location progress is stalled because calibrating venues is extremely difficult
“And a lot of this comes down to, it's just super challenging to calibrate an indoor venue.”
Steve Cheney Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:55 a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Location, Location, Location -- and Mobile Jan 2, 2019 9m
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