Alex Taussig
Board Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorauthor@ataussig ↗drinkingfromthefirehose.substack.com ↗
Alex Taussig has invested over $600 million into category-defining marketplace and software platforms, leading or managing investments in Vinted, Faire, Whatnot, and Zola. He authors the newsletter Drinking from the Firehose and previously spent nearly seven years as a partner at Highland Capital Partners.
1shows
2appearances
34statements
12resolved
9supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
24said about them ↓ Everything Alex Taussig said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Taussig: Higher interest rates benefited Vinted against discounting competitors
“The end of zero interest rates benefited us a lot. I remember when, early when I joined the board, it was still, we're still in this era of like insane discounting by some of our competitors in various regions. And we had to make these hard choices. Like, do w…”
Taussig: High-margin eBay is losing market share yearly to Vinted
“Usually the highest EBITDA margin businesses have the lowest growth, right? And so it's this kind of funny thing where You know, the business like eBay has a great EBITDA margin. It hasn't really, it's not really growing and it's kind of losing market share ev…”
Taussig: Lightspeed risks losing most capital for small chance of unbounded upside
“Lightspeed is really a Silicon Valley firm founded in Silicon Valley, but we invest globally, but everywhere we invest, we bring that Silicon Valley mentality and technological optimism. And what I mean by that is we're definitely willing to take risk, perhaps…”
Taussig: U.S. retail saw more store openings than closings in 2017
“There were actually more store openings than closings across the retail sector in 2017.”
Taussig: Frozen food startups operationally outperform fresh delivery businesses like Blue Apron
“Frozen has some inherent advantages over fresh food. Namely, the operations of manufacturing are more similar to consumer packaged goods than the complex cooking operations you might find inside of a blue apron or freshly. Moreover, customers who don't consume…”
Taussig: Vinted is no longer raising venture capital
“We're not raising venture capital anymore. We're looking at our cash flow and saying, how do we want to invest that cash flow next year?”
Taussig: Post-COVID consumer cohort degradation caused 2022 cash burn spikes
“If you look at any consumer company, in 2020 and 20 21 their cohorts look fundamentally different than they did in 2022 and 20 23 they just performed different people were adopting new behaviors a lot of those behaviors did not stick and a lot of projections a…”
Taussig: Retail is not dying, only specific visible formats are failing
“It's not that retail is dying. It's that there's a few formats of retail that are no longer working, but those formats are highly visible.”
Alex Taussig: Digital brands need offline strategies at $100M-$200M revenue
“We typically start to see once you breach a 100,000,200 million in revenue, you need to start going and figuring out some offline strategy.”
Taussig: Google and Facebook capture ~90% of recent ad growth
“Something like 89 or 90% of growth in advertising dollars
In the last year or so was inside of Google and Facebook.”
Taussig: The average consumer downloads net zero new apps per month
“The average consumer downloads net zero apps each month.”
Taussig: MBAs created tens of billions in startup market cap since 2008
“The counter argument that an MBA disqualifies you from participating meaningfully in the startup ecosystem is just not true. And there's actually just in my class in business school, Harvard business school, 2009, you had rent the runway, thread up cloud flare…”
Taussig: Non-founder CEOs can drive critical refounding moments in startups
“And I believe that Companies can have these refounding moments where, where a really outstanding individual comes in with the right set of skills for a given moment in time and takes a company on a different trajectory.”
Taussig: Fashion resale projected to reach 20% of apparel market by 2030
“It's actually a lot of people think resale could be 20% of all apparel by 2030.”
Taussig: Vinted was already profitable in France during 2018 fundraising
“Because it was very clear they had won France at that point in time. And it was, and France was like, it was a profitable region, right?”
Taussig: Recommendations are more critical in resale than traditional retail
“Recommendations are even more critical in resale than they are in, in, in new.”
Taussig: Vinted achieved social media-like engagement levels in 2019
“When we looked at Vinted in 2019, it had social media like time spent. In the app.”
Taussig: Temu and Shein directly compete with H&M and Zara
“I mean, they're really competing against H and M and a lot of fast fashion Zara, like the fast fashion companies.”
Taussig: Marketplaces cannot grow arbitrarily fast without destroying equilibrium
“The tricky thing about marketplaces is that you cannot grow arbitrarily fast. There is an efficient frontier. That, that you want to hit where you can balance supply and demand and fulfill a high quality experience for both sides of the marketplace.”
Taussig: Marketplace inventory expansion faces diminishing returns per user session
“One of the fundamental things like never changes across all marketplaces is that more liquidity generates higher and more inventory generates higher conversion rates, but there's diminishing returns on that, right? Because the user can only see so much invento…”
Taussig: Lightspeed evaluates market opportunity by surface area, not dollar TAM
“At Lightspeed, when we think about addressable market, we don't really think about it in dollars first. We think of it as surface area. We think of it as like, how, what is the surface area we're gaining access to here uniquely in our strategic wedge? Because …”
Taussig: Silicon Valley VC culture incentivizes fair treatment as a repeat game
“Silicon Valley has this like weird risk loving kind of culture. And we also know that it's a repeat game. We know that we're going to be playing the game with these people for decades. And so we got to treat everyone right.”
Taussig: Return on capital deployed compounds businesses better than margin metrics
“What's your return on equity? Like what is your, when you make a hundred million dollars in investment, you know, in the coming year, well, what do we expect the return on that hundred million dollars to be over the ensuing five years? And that's a hard thing …”
Taussig: Highland and Lightspeed reject VC superstar culture for service mindset
“In both firms, both at Highland and Lightspeed, there's no superstar culture. Neither are firms where we really like to go in front and be the star of the show. We prefer to think of venture capital as a service business, and that it's our job to remain behind…”
The other half of the tape: Alex Taussig's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 13 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 14Nicole Quinn 5Mike Mignano 1Jeremy Liew 1Jana Messerschmidt 1
Statements about Alex Taussig, by other people (2)
Empathetic board members can act as co-founder sounding boards
“Both Alex and Carl be the type of people that I can call. I can be a little vulnerable with, you know, I can, I will get that empathy, but they're also just wonderful sounding boards. So the decisions that one would usually make with a co-founder, I find that …”
Jeremy Liew averages two board meetings and seven portfolio calls weekly
“And so on average, I have two board meetings per week. And then seven, I just did a analysis of my calendar for a couple of months as did Alex Taussig and Nicole Quinn. And so, so this, these numbers are sort of top of mind, but two, two board meetings per wee…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 22
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Doug Leone, Bill Ackman, Bill Gurley and Orlando Bravo on "Does Price Matter"; When to Pay Up vs When to Stay Disciplined, The Biggest Lessons on Price Discipline from 8 of the World's Best Investors
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 5 mentions in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: How Founders Can Gain Leverage in Fundraising Negotiations, The Metrics You Need To Raise Your Series A in Consumer & What We Have To Change About Cap Table Construction with Jana Messerschmidt, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on Why It Is More Important To Be Right Than Contrarian, The Most Common Mistakes Made By Hyper-Growth Companies & 3 Characteristics That Make An Individual Incredible At Sourcing
- 20VC: Why The Current VC Financing Mechanism For Consumer Brands Is Broken, Why The Infrastructure To Power Emerging Brands Is Broken and What The Re-Platforming of Retail Means For The Next Decade in Consumer with Adam Pritzker, Chairman & CEO @ Assemble
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: What It Takes To Found and Scale A Global Venture Firm Like Lightspeed, 3 Ways Firms Do Not Succeed in Generational Transition & What Makes The Truly Special Board Members Like Jim Goetz with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partn
- 20VC: USV's Rebecca Kaden on Whether Venture Returns Can Be Made At Scale In Consumer Today & How To Navigate Consumer Investing In A World of Amazon
- 20VC: 3 Core Considerations When Investing In Physical Product Co's, Are We In A Direct-To-Consumer Bubble & Why Many Sub $100m Funds Are Moving Earlier and Earlier with Nick Brown, Managing Partner @ Imaginary
- 20VC: Lightspeed Partner Adam Goldberg on Why There Remains No Mass Market Crypto Consumer Product, The Future For The Token Economy, The Good and Bad of Telegram's ICO and Why The Rate of Founder Learning is The Most Important Element A VC Can Assess
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Alex's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Board Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners | 2 | 34 | 75% 9/12 | full record on 20VC → |