David Frankel
Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Founder Collective. On 2 shows, 6 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutive@dafrankel ↗LinkedIn ↗foundercollective.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
David Frankel is a co-founder and managing partner at Founder Collective, where he led investments in companies including Coupang, PillPack, and SeatGeek. Previously, he co-founded and served as CEO of Internet Solutions.
2shows
6appearances
171statements
19resolved
10supported
3contradicted
53%fully supported
69said about them ↓ Everything David Frankel said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Frankel: Microsoft Has Done a "Crappy Job" With AI
“So I think Microsoft have done a crappy job of AI generally.”
Frankel: Almost every company sale in my career was a mistake
“I look in the rear view mirror and I go, everything I've sold pretty much has been a mistake. So I'm a contrarian.”
Frankel: Tiger Global operated like a casino
“Those guys were just like a casino. One call to John at Tiger. Like, 20 on 80, no problem.”
Frankel: Backing successful second-time founders hasn't worked out due to hubris
“I would say generally founders who've had enormous, enormous success and exits come to the next opportunity with some degree of hubris. I speak about this personally. I sold my first business And I thought I could conquer anything. And they look at any vertica…”
Frankel: Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger should never have been allowed
“So Live Nation Ticketmaster, that merger should never have been allowed. But once it's allowed, we will occupy, monopolize that position all day long.”
Frankel: Aiming Exclusively for 'Unicorn or Bust' Seed Returns Is Insane
“I think it's insanity. I just think it's insanity. Like, I think when, I think you market those winners, and again, it's great PR fodder, it's great to, like, attract the investors in the next fund, but I think it's insanity to go, it's like that huge, you kno…”
Frankel: Multi-stage VC firms have no incentive to matchmake for startups
“Sequoia will, it doesn't matter, by the way, I don't want to single out Sequoia here, but it doesn't matter if you take your check from Andreessen, Sequoia, Axel, you name them, right? They will never, they have no incentive to matchmake. They have no incentiv…”
Frankel: Heavily Funded AI Startups Are Not Capital Efficient
“There's very little evidence yet that These hot, hot AI companies that are raising huge amounts of money are capital efficient, right? They're anything but capital efficient. There's, like, the jury's out on whether that's going to work still.”
Frankel: Uncapped Convertible Notes Suck at the Seed Stage
“I mean, the scale of how much you have to win, right, is different based on your price. It's pure math. So, uncapped notes suck at the seed stage.”
Frankel: Standard 10-Year Venture Capital Funds Now Take 18 Years to Mature
“You know, these ten-year funds are taking 18 years.”
Frankel: OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX Are Today's Metas and Googles
“And I think in, you know, OpenAI and Anthropic and SpaceX, we're seeing that already. Like these are the Metas and the Googles of our era, highly likely.”
Frankel: The jury is out on post-2020 venture fund DPI performance
“A little less since twenty-twenty. Like, if you look at the DPI analysis, like, the jury's out from twenty-twenty onwards.”
Frankel: Billion-Dollar Early Rounds Are Momentum Plays, Not Seed Value Investing
“I think that that's the momentum business, and I think knowing how and when to get out quickly with some of those really, really matters, and that's not really my business. So my business is value, is getting involved early, and trying to find value opportunit…”
Frankel: Sovereign wealth funds prioritize IRR over fund return multiples
“Sovereign wealth funds and public investment corporations are looking for IRR. They're not measuring this in how many times do you X the fund.”
Frankel: Post-2020 mega funds boast high TVPI but lag on DPI
“Subsequent to twenty-twenty, like the TVPI is there, and some, in some cases, they're on steroids. The DPI is less there, if you look at the actual stats.”
Frankel: Embedded, Mission-Critical SaaS Workflows Will Survive AI Disruption
“The more embedded you are, like the more difficult you are to dispense because real time, Thousands, billions of orders are being run in your system, or like mission critical biotech research is being run in your system. The more embedded you are, I think the …”
Frankel: Seed VCs Should Sell 20% of Winners Early to Generate DPI
“Even in your top names, sometimes taking 20% off the table, if you can return 25% of the fund, particularly if it's a newish fund, so if it's a, you know, if it's a twenty-twenty-four fund and you can give back 25%, like, why wouldn't you do that? And you're s…”
Frankel: Fund of Funds Are Liquidating Entire Billion-Dollar Portfolios via Secondaries
“By the way, we've seen fund of funds do secondaries of their entire fund, So we go, oh my god, you're in fund two, or you're in fund four, like, you should never sell, right? Like, this is what's, and it's like, it's not about you, right? Like, you're a roundi…”
Frankel: Moderately Successful Second-Time Founders Outperform Prior Massive Winners
“And I think overall we've done a little better on second time founders who didn't do that great up front. They didn't, they did okay, right? It's life changing. Like the first million dollars is so life changing. But they're really hungry. They've learned some…”
Frankel: The Tech Market Is "Definitely" Headed for Another Dot-Com Crash
“Are we headed for another dot com crash? Definitely. If, like, Is not a question. When? Nobody knows, right?”
Frankel: Angel networks can increasingly bypass traditional venture firms
“It may just be in, like, angels putting money all over the place, and some of those angels are going to know people that worked with them or for them, and they're going to, you know, I think you can bypass traditional venture to a great extent, and that's the …”
The other half of the tape: David Frankel's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 68 times in 15 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 44Eric Paley 13Fred Destin 3Chris Dixon 3Noah Glass 2Zachary Bookman 1Roger Ehrenberg 1Jack Groetzinger 1
Statements about David Frankel, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 68
2026 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2024 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 14 mentions in 1 episode
2020 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: CRV's George Zachary on His Relationship To Money and How it has Changed Over Time, Why The Best Founders Have Often Experienced Parental or Home Instability and The Stories Behind Investing in Unicorns; PillPack, Yammer and Udacity
- 20VC: Are VCs Still "Open For Business", How VCs Attitude To Risk Has Changed & The 2 Most Valuable Assets To Founders Today with Fred Destin, Founding Partner @ Stride VC
- 20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2018 10 mentions in 1 episode
2017 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Focus On Top Line Valuation, Why Capital Efficiency Is Key To Returns And Investment Success & Why Despite Popular Thought, $100m Is An Exciting Exit For VC with Micah Rosenbloom, Managing Partner @ Founder Collective
- 20VC: The Power Of A Concentrated Seed Portfolio, Why Operational Value Add Models At Seed Do Not Make Sense & Why We Will See A Shakeout Of Growth Stage Investors with Roger Ehrenberg, Founder & Managing Partner @ IA Ventures
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David'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 & Managing Partner, Founder Collective | 5 | 163 | 47% 8/17 | full record on 20VC → |
 SAASTRLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Founder Collective | 1 | 8 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |