Auren Hoffman
General Partner, Flex Capital. On 3 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderinvestorexecutivehost@auren ↗blog.summation.net ↗Wikipedia ↗
Auren Hoffman is an entrepreneur and investor who co-founded and served as CEO of LiveRamp and SafeGraph. Through Flex Capital and angel investments, he has backed companies including Coinbase, Vercel, and Flexport, and hosts the Summation podcast.
3shows
2appearances
52statements
6resolved
1supported
3contradicted
17%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Auren Hoffman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Hoffman: 10x hires almost certainly have glaring faults
“If you want to hire a 10 Xer, that person will almost certainly have glaring faults. Anyone that you could hire without glaring faults will be at best good. They will not be great.”
Hoffman: Leaders should delegate functions they are good at, not weak at
“Instead, delegate things that you're good at. This sounds really strange, so let me explain. The things that are the easiest to delegate are the things that you're already good at. You know how to do these things really well. You might already be an expert in …”
Hoffman: Most VC rejection reasons, especially TAM concerns, are lies
“The reason that most VCs give you a no is lies, and especially the reason of total addressable market in your TAM.”
Hoffman: Founders who exited 10 years ago lack modern tactical execution skills
“Almost everything in running a company has changed over the last seven years. So if you sold your company 10 years ago, you don't know anything about how customer success works, how new types of sales works, how product led growth works, how even like all the …”
Hoffman: Most successful startup founders have low emotional intelligence
“Well, most good founders have low EQ.”
Hoffman: Founder CEOs are paid 5x less than external CEO hires
“Founder CEOs are very undercompensated. Like the go forward comp for a founder CEO today, once you, let's say you're there for over four years, your go forward comp is probably five X lower than if they hired an outside CEO.”
Hoffman: Any time a CEO spends outside of work hurts the business
“I would say really any time a CEO is not spending on their company, it's bad for the business. But that's true. If you're dating, it's true. If you're being a spouse, if you're parenting kids, if you're working out, You're spending time with friends. If you're…”
Hoffman: LPs will cease re-upping with non-performing VC fund managers
“Well, I do think there were a lot of VCs with subpar returns that were still raising their third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh funds. That is very unlikely going to happen in the future. So I think you're the, sorry, VCs that were doing that from LPs. And so …”
Hoffman: Managing vendors is the top skill for the next 20 years
“The number one skill to have over the next 20 years is the ability to select and manage vendors.”
Hoffman: Seeking career optionality is a mistake
“Never do things to gain optionality. Optionality is bad. You need to really have a purpose-driven life.”
Hoffman: The top reason VCs reject early-stage startups is disliking the team
“And the number one reason why a VC will pass on your business is that they don't like your team. This is especially true for seed and series A deals.”
Hoffman: Investor legal fee caps dictate how fast a term sheet closes
“The most non-obvious clause to negotiate is the amount that you're supposed to reimburse the investor's legal counsel. You're actually doing your investors a favor by negotiating this. This is an actual win-win to negotiate. The time it takes you to go from te…”
Hoffman: Advanced AI models cannot overcome exclusive access to core data
“In that world, even the most advanced models, deep learning, and machine learning frameworks can't beat them because they have access to this kind of core underlying data.”
Hoffman: Venture capital firms will increasingly specialize team roles
“You're going to start to see different firms start splitting the stack a bit, and they're going to have certain people who are going to be good... You're going to start to see that much more so with investing, where if you're going to have a team anyway, and i…”
Hoffman: LPs should prefer venture funds led by active CEOs
“It is actually, they're generally not happy when someone in the fund is like also a CEO, but they should be because that fund's going to end up doing so much better. You're going to get into better deals, et cetera.”
Auren Hoffman: High employee impact strongly correlates with working the most hours
“The people I've worked with who have been the most impactful people, it is extremely high, highly correlated that they also put in the most hours.”
Auren Hoffman: Most companies get far less than 40 weekly productive hours per employee
“Most companies are not getting anywhere close to 40.”
Auren Hoffman: Employee Retention Rates Do Not Reflect Company Performance
“Just because everyone's leaving, like in Facebook's case, where so many of the first 25 people left early doesn't mean that's a bad company. It turned out to be an amazing company. Just because everyone's staying doesn't mean it's a good company.”
Hoffman: Venture capital is more competitive than any SaaS business
“Venture is just like, is incredibly competitive. It's way more competitive than any type of SAS business that's out there. It's one of the most competitive, you're basically selling a commodity. You're selling money.”
Hoffman: Board Oversight Matters Little Compared to Securing 10x VC Winners
“I also don't, I don't know how much oversight matters in the, if it's really power law driven, like the bad ones are bad. And, you know, so yeah, maybe you could have got a one X and you get a .5 X or something out of this thing. If you, if you're really in it…”
Hoffman: VCs should focus their time on mid-tier portfolio companies
“The winners don't really need you. So spending time with them doesn't really change the outcome. The losers don't really need you either. Cause they're going to lose. So it's actually kind of the people in the middle that probably need you the most”
Auren Hoffman: Fully committed founders never lose investor capital
“If you ever see a scenario where a founder is putting more than a hundred percent in, I have never seen that company do less than a one X ever. That company has always been successful.”
Hoffman: All great opportunities have big, obvious downsides
“Well, my simple heuristic Is that if the opportunity has very few downsides, it's almost certainly not a great opportunity. All great opportunities have very big and very obvious downsides.”
The other half of the tape: Auren Hoffman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Will Quist 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 2
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Auren's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | General Partner, Flex Capital | 1 | 18 | 0% 0/4 | full record on 20VC → |
 MADLEDGER | General Partner, Flex Capital | 1 | 18 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
 SAASTRLEDGER | General Partner, Flex Capital | 0 +1 | 16 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |