Chris Paik
Co-Founder and General Partner, Pace Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounder@cpaik ↗cpaik.com ↗
Chris Paik co-founded New York-based early-stage venture firm Pace Capital alongside Jordan Cooper, raising $400 million across its first two funds. Before Pace, he spent eight years as a partner at Thrive Capital, where he invested in companies such as Twitch, Unity, and Patreon.
1shows
1appearances
29statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Chris Paik said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Paik: Taxing carried interest as ordinary income would redistribute tech talent
“You probably should tax carried interest like income tax. That would write, that would like break that structurally different incentive mechanism, and then it would defuse talent elsewhere.”
Paik: Companies that can be described in one sentence lack ambition
“If everything that a company is doing and building can really be accurately described in a single sentence, it's probably too one dimensional. It's probably not Ambitious enough.”
Paik: A company's virtuousness is inversely related to its enterprise value
“This is, like, probably contentious but one of my frameworks is, I think that the, like, virtuousness of a company is inversely related to its enterprise value.”
Paik: Most direct-to-consumer brands are not suitable venture investments
“I would say the vast majority of direct-to-consumer brands, not suitable venture investments.”
Paik: A 51/49 venture partnership split feels like 80/20
“I mean, like, the distance between a 51 49 split is way more than two percent. Like, it might as well be like 80%.”
Paik: Venture capital is not an asset class meant to scale
“We think that venture isn't an asset that is meant to scale. It's pretty hands-on.”
Paik: DoorDash and Instacart succeed by price-discriminating consumer laziness
“The genius behind Instacart and DoorDash and other companies like that is that they, Perfectly price discriminate laziness and the value of like a leisure hour.”
Paik: Social graphs are becoming obsolete compared to content recommendation engines
“The social graph works and worked because of the idea that who people select for in their social graph is a proxy for their interest. And so in some ways you are using somebody's social graph as spark notes for the integral, the fully like, you know, my new in…”
Paik: Market selection matters far more than founders in venture capital
“I tend to agree. I think that markets are significantly more markets are huge, huge, huge input into outcomes, particularly in venture.”
Paik: Excess venture capital subsidizes businesses unfit for VC
“With the glut of venture capital and dollars chasing returns, I think that venture capital Perhaps intentionally, maybe unintentionally subsidizes business building of companies that should never have been venture capital targets.”
Paik: VC is only for companies that cannot exist without it
“I think that is almost certainly like if the company Literally could not exist without venture capital. That probably is the area where venture capital is a suitable, like, spitballing this in real time. That's probably a good criteria to suggest that it is wi…”
Paik: Multi-billion dollar bloated VC funds will unwind over a decade
“I don't think all, I almost, like, definitionally, I don't think all of them make it. I think we're gonna see over the next, here's the thing, like, it's gonna take a long time, it's gonna take a decade plus for this stuff to unwind, but they're gonna get lost…”
Paik: Poaching creators from rival platforms using minimum guarantees never works
“On navigating competitive environments, I think seeing Twitch firsthand gave me one of my mental frameworks, which is, are like companies or platforms that start with the explicit strategy of poaching, like economically incentivizing supply from another platfo…”
Paik: Substack faces margin compression as top creators negotiate down take rates
“And I would expect that business model to have a leaky bucket at the top or at best get margin compressed at the top. So you have the best, like the people that have the most distribution that are the best for the platform from marketing perspective, dramatica…”
Paik: Founders cannot create market waves, only surf them
“I think that great founders are incredible at putting themselves in the position to surf waves, but I don't think anybody can make waves themselves.”
Paik: Senior startup executive hiring succeeds at best 50% of time
“I feel like in startups, right, like senior hires at best, Is a coin toss of whether or not it works out and that's okay.”
Paik: Investors break the most rules on their highest-conviction investments
“The highest conviction things that you get comfort with are the ones that you break the most number of rules on.”
Paik: All human behavior is driven by the seven deadly sins
“I actually think the seven deadly sins are really core motivators. They describe why people do things. And I would go far as far to say, like, honestly, They're the only reasons why people do things. I think it's possible to distill down any individual behavio…”
Paik: Startup moats are intentional and embedded in product from day one
“So if you were to look at the system design behind companies that ultimately developed modes at scale, it's not something that like happens magically overnight once the company's up and running. It's like embedded in the core product from day one. And so I thi…”
Paik: TikTok could not exist before Twitter due to bandwidth constraints
“There's a very clear reason why the order of founding went from Twitter first, to Instagram, to Snapchat, to TikTok. And it is because mobile as infrastructure and bandwidth in its earliest stages, supported the lowest packet size, text. And then next compress…”
Paik: Misalignments peak when venture participants play final-round games
“I think the Mac, the areas of maximum misalignment are when it feels like the reputation does not carry over in between iterations of the game, or that's the final iteration of the game that any one participant is playing for. Because then people are incentivi…”
Paik: Thrive Capital backs young talent better than venture peers
“One of the things that Thrive does really, really, really well In my opinion, maybe even better than anyone else in the industry is it leans into people's potential regardless of their age, regardless of their credentials.”
Paik: Pace Capital hits 20% ownership in 70% of portfolio companies
“We've been successful at hitting our ownership target in 70% of the companies we invested in.”
The other half of the tape: Chris Paik's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4Phin Barnes 2Nicholas Chirls 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 7
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Chris's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and General Partner, Pace Capital | 1 | 29 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |