David Sze
General Partner, Greylock. On 1 show, 1 appearance, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutiveoperator@davidsze ↗LinkedIn ↗greylock.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
David Sze joined Greylock in 2000, serving as senior managing partner from 2012 to 2017 while leading investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, and Roblox. Previously, he worked as an executive and SVP of Product Strategy at Excite and held product roles at Electronic Arts and Crystal Dynamics.
1shows
1appearances
27statements
3resolved
2supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
19said about them ↓ Everything David Sze said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
David Sze: VCs should back category leaders over second-best alternatives
“If you think that the best company is Is this other company, and you believe that the economic rents and returns will accrue to that winner, then you should really go and back that company.”
Greylock's $500M Facebook valuation check faced intense internal and external criticism
“Facebook was very controversial, both internally and externally at Greylock when it was announced, because we invested at a five hundred million plus pre and wrote one of the biggest Checks that Gerlach had ever written at that time, and that was considered in…”
Senior venture capital partners must actively aim to become obsolete
“And the partners who are senior, one of their biggest goals is to get out of the way, to become obsolete, because that is the definition of success for the next generation, and it'll be the definition of success for Greylock in the long run.”
Digg failed because its community became toxic while Reddit successfully evolved
“That was part of his success, but I think that that group of individuals actually became pretty trollish, quite honestly, by the end of it, and navigating how to succeed through that was very hard for Digg and for Kevin, and you watched someone like a Reddit c…”
Sze: Valuation flexibility is justified for winner-take-all markets with great leadership
“So I do think that you need to have price discipline, and so you need to think about, does this have the ability to run to a huge outcome? Does this Show the potential to be a winner takes most or winner takes all kind of business. If that's the case, and you …”
David Baszucki predicted early on that Roblox would surpass Minecraft
“I remember him saying, we're going to be bigger than Minecraft someday, and at that time, that was like the most laughable statement in the world, but Dave was convinced, and I just remember I'd check in with him, and he'd chip away at it, and eventually it be…”
Investors doing aggressive preemptive rounds will get burned when the market turns
“On the flip side, I think it's very dangerous, and I think there's going to be people that get extremely burned when the music stops, and the music will stop.”
Sze: Walking away after conditional deal approval builds maximum partnership trust
“The most powerful moment is when the partnership gives the conditional yes. And when the partner who owns the deal goes away and thinks about it, when they come back in those cases, when they come back and they go, you know what? I took the feedback. I did som…”
David Sze: Founder-friendliness isn't blindly backing whatever founders say
“I came in early on, like I said, believing that founder-friendly meant you backed the founder, whatever they said you did and whatever they said you backed. And what I learned is that's not always the case, that you need to help founders be better. You need to…”
Greylock passed on Baidu at a $14M valuation over travel requirements
“I looked at Baidu at fourteen million pre. And because we had this rule of thumb that said we had to be boots on the ground all the time at that time, it was that narrow a definition again back in those days, I was told that I was going to be going to China ev…”
David Sze: Domain-focused VC investors must be stage-agnostic
“The business was becoming very specialized and much more focused, and so I was pushing to say, we need to have people that have expertise in a domain, and as a result, if you're going to narrow down your domain focus, we need to have to give them the freedom t…”
Sze: Greylock partners can pass almost any deal if they push hard
“The reality is, at Greylock, if you do your work, you can get most deals through the partnership if you really believe in it, and the way we are. You'll get challenged, but if you do the work, and you push, and you believe in it, most of the cases, and the vas…”
Experienced board members should speak less and communicate more quietly
“The more confident you are, the more experienced you are, the less you should say, and the more quiet you should say it.”
Sze: Board members should empower founders rather than impose decisions
“The most powerful thing I can do is to both empower, support, encourage, also help educate with perspectives my founders, rather than trying to make something happen myself and impose it.”
Sze: Ignoring team feedback is a fast failure mode for VC partners
“I mean, we've had folks fail because they didn't understand how to navigate the dialectic between team and individual. Usually more too individual in the sense of like running over people or not listening to feedback or not learning. That's something that I th…”
Sze: Analytical VC partners fail if they cannot make decisive investment calls
“So there's so much uncertainty prospectively, and one of the most important things for a young partner is to have the ability to do the work, but then make the call, to put down some bets. And one of the other failures we've seen in a partner is they can be re…”
David Sze: Venture investment decisions require a three-step heart-head-heart process
“I tend to start with the heart, which is, I have to, like, sort of fall in love with the idea, or fall in love with the founder, or some combination of that, and what it could be. Then you go to the head, and you do all your work, and you crunch all the number…”
David Sze: VCs only truly control investment journeys and team selection
“The two things you do control are what journeys you go on and who you go on them with. So make sure that the journeys you go on are ones that you really want to be on through the bad times and the good times, whether it works out or not, that you don't say, oh…”
Sze: Investors underestimate how platforms age up with young users
“One of the reasons that I was overcome some of the downside potential on, say, roadblocks around age, and I still believe this, is we underestimate that those kids that are nine, 10, 1112, and 13 today are the kids that are 1415, 1617, 18 of tomorrow.”
Sze: Bonding with Reid Hoffman in China led to LinkedIn investment
“We sat at the back of the bus each time on every stop on this tour through China, and we just mind melded. It was great. We got along so well. We were fast friends, and that led to the investment in LinkedIn and me inviting him to come to Greylock”
Sze: Roblox would have failed if Baszucki followed outside advice
“If he'd done all the things, if he'd taken the thousands of pieces of advice and gotten all mixed up and twisted around, there's no way Roblox would have succeeded”
Sze: Founders scaling to multi-billion-dollar companies must continuously evolve
“You can't be the same person That is doing that small physics engine project test at the School of Science Fair that now leads the forty billion dollar public company. You just can't be that same person, so you need to evolve and always be curious, but you als…”
The other half of the tape: David Sze's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 18 times in 5 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 9Josh Elman 5Sarah Tavel 1Sarah Guo 1Reid Hoffman 1Mattias Ljungman 1
Statements about David Sze, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 18
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 10 mentions in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 5 mentions 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 | General Partner, Greylock | 1 +1 | 27 | 67% 2/3 | full record on 20VC → |