Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Kupor: VCs use "made up numbers" to size startup option pools

Scott Kupor · The Economics of Term Sheets · Jun 23, 2019 · at 15:20

This episode carries Scott Kupor's own address, with nobody on the show putting questions to them. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.

Scott Kupor, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explains how venture capitalists determine required option pool sizes during startup term sheet negotiations.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“In some respects, these are kind of made up numbers by the venture capitalists, ah, but the kind of heuristic that venture capitalists often use to determine what size they want Is they're trying to say, look, when I invest in this company, I want this option pool to be able to last you for all the hiring that you're going to do for at least until the next round of financing comes in.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Scott Kupor

Prediction Held up
Kupor: Federal workforce will shrink by 300,000 employees due to DOGE
“We've done a lot of work over the course of this year, a lot of which was catalyzed by Elon and the Doge team. As a result, we expect probably that we'll end up with somewhere around 2.1 million employees at the end of the year, so roughly about a 300,000 redu…”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 3:42 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Assertion Supported
Kupor: OPM introduces forced distribution, capping top executive ratings at 30%
“So one of the things that we're doing, we just put out guidance on this, at least with respect to what are called the SES, which are the most senior level people in government, is we are effectively doing a modicum of a forced distribution. And so we put out g…”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 13:42 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Scott Kupor: U.S. government is unprepared for rapid technological advancement
“Technology continues to advance rapidly and, you know, just to be blunt, the government is nowhere near prepared for it. We just don't have the right talent here.”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 0:12 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Insight
Kupor: Federal culture treats risk as binary while ignoring upside
“We've kind of just embedded in the culture, this idea that risk is like this pass fail thing. Like you either have risk or you don't have risk. And if you have risk, God forbid, like, you should ever go there, basically, and so that to me was like the most eye…”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 7:27 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Insight
Kupor: Political weaponization of failure prevents a portfolio approach to innovation
“There's no concept I would say of a portfolio. Everything is a one-off project. And when a one-off project fails, then whichever party didn't sponsor it says, those guys are idiots.”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 9:41 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Assertion Supported
Kupor: 99.7% of federal workers receive performance ratings of three or higher
“So fours and fives, so the very, very top, is roughly 65 to 70% of people get a four or five. 90, when you add threes, fours, and five, that's 99.7%, ok? So 99.7% are a three or higher. 0.3%, therefore, is a one or a two.”
Scott Kupor Oct 2, 2025 ▶ 13:10 The Person Who Runs HR For 2 Million Federal Workers
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.