Jamin Ball
Partner, Altimeter Capital. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investoranalystauthor@jaminball ↗LinkedIn ↗cloudedjudgement.substack.com ↗
Jamin Ball is a Partner at Altimeter Capital focusing on cloud, data infrastructure, and enterprise AI investments, having previously spent five years at Redpoint Ventures. He is also the author of Clouded Judgement, a weekly newsletter providing valuation and data analysis on software companies.
2shows
2appearances
29statements
6resolved
4supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
15said about them ↓ Everything Jamin Ball said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ball: Mega-funds incentivize VCs to prioritize deploying capital over founder success
“And so now there's a path where investors, GPs get rich, where the outcome of the founders and their companies is irrelevant. Not to say they are aligned in opposite directions, but they're no longer aligned. And now, as a rational actor, you could say, why no…”
Ball: Startups with excess capital inevitably dilute focus across too many initiatives
“Every founder and every company and every board will tell you if we raise money, we're not going to spend it. We're going to stay frugal. That never happens. And instead of focusing on, you might ask a founder, what are the three things that matter most this y…”
Ball: Most 2021 mega-round startups will never reach their peak valuations
“I think there's the vast majority of companies who raise these mega rounds in 2021. Will probably never be worth at any point in time, right? The valuation that they were given in the public markets.”
Ball: ZIRP-era funding rounds lacked ratchets blocking down-round IPOs
“The reality of the moment we live in today is a lot of these zerf rounds, they didn't have ratchets. It was the opposite. They were very light on terms and they were very light on structure. So you don't have this Dynamic of super heavy ratchets, anti-dilution…”
Ball: Down-round IPOs will become normal despite the current taboo
“I think kind of down rounds or down round IPOs will be the same thing. There'll be a taboo on them, but they'll be normal.”
Ball: Raising $100M too early eliminates moderate exit outcomes for founders
“There are companies that could be sold for a 102 hundred million dollars that results in life-changing outcomes for founders and early employees. If you raised a hundred million dollars too early, that exit path is no longer on the table. You can't sell the bu…”
Ball: Regulatory opposition will block large-scale tech M&A in 2024
“From a regulation standpoint, it is really hard to see any large-scale M&A.”
Ball: Software venture funding fell 90% from peak to 2016-2017 levels
“Really, twenty-twenty-one and probably the first half of twenty-twenty-two, and now in twenty-twenty-three, we're down 90% from where we were at the peak, but we're really just back to the 2016, 20 17 trend line, right?”
Ball: True founder-friendliness requires investors to have hard conversations
“To be a truly founder friendly investor and board member. It is about having those hard conversations. It's not about shying away from conflict.”
Ball: Founders should raise smaller, milestone-based rounds to minimize cap table risk
“And like the way that we talk about it internally is don't make the cap table a risk to your business, right? Build a business the old fashioned way, raise smaller amounts of money, right? More frequently that are more milestone based. Where, when you raise a …”
Ball: Public-caliber SaaS companies must sustain 30% to 50% growth at $100M+ ARR
“And when I say public market type company, what does that mean? It's you are sustaining growth at a 102 hundred million plus of ARR, right? Sustaining, meaning you're growing, call it 30, 40, 50% plus. The universe of companies that can do that is Very small, …”
Ball: Overestimating growth durability was my biggest investing mistake
“The mistakes that I made right when I reflect back was that middle category, right? It was forecasting wrong. It was saying, Hey, I think I'm identifying a good market and a good business, but I had an expectation for growth durability. That just didn't happen…”
Ball: Public market scrutiny forces tech companies to build long-term endurance
“Like that will force companies to get fit. That will force companies to talk about their path to profitability. It will force companies to think about why are we an enduring business over the next 10 years? And while it may seem scary, it's actually like a goo…”
Ball: LPs should select core managers rather than attempting to time vintages
“And I would say picking vintages from the LP side is, is really hard. The, you know, the, in my opinion, right? Like the right approach is pick a manager and pick managers and manager selection right now is more important than ever and invest across those kind…”
Ball: The 2024-2025 VC vintage sits at the valuation bottom
“I think the setup for this year for next year is that we're in the bottom half, or maybe the bottom third of the valuation reset, and in the first third of a massive technology shift that's going to create a ton of creative destruction.”
Ball: Venture capital shifted from cottage industry to institutional asset class
“The venture markets have transitioned from a high margin cottage industry to a institutionalized lower margin industry, and that has a lot of implications.”
Ball: Services markets are usually 10x larger than software markets
“Services markets are usually 10 X bigger than software markets.”
Ball: Software startups crammed five years of funding into 18 months
“If I had to summarize that 20, 21 period, it really was, we crammed five years of fundraising into an 18 month period.”
Ball: Complex VC exits take 12 to 18 months due to investor alignment
“This is why these processes end up taking 12, 18 months is because it's not 12, 18 months of negotiating with an acquirer or figuring out how to do a dividend back to the preferred, right? It takes 18 months because these are really hard decisions that are oft…”
Ball: Public software companies average 7x to 8x forward revenue multiples
“You know, on average, software companies trade around seven and a half times forward revenue, right? You can ignore that 20, 20, 21 period when interest rates went to zero. And so companies on average are going to exit at seven to eight times forward revenue, …”
Ball: In 2021, startups were funded indiscriminately as future public companies
“In 20, 21, everyone was funded indiscriminately as you are going to be a public company. You're in a market that's big enough. You have a product that's differentiated enough to support a public market type company.”
Ball: SaaS startups stall at $50M ARR when failing to penetrate enterprise
“The market just wasn't that big, right? There were some early adopters, maybe in Silicon Valley, that were using your product But the reality is, is you never really broke into the enterprise, right? You never really broke into where the big dollars were, and …”
Ball: Transitioning from point solution to platform drives top SaaS success
“And you see some of the most successful public companies today, the crowd strikes of the world, the data dogs of the world, right? And it's exactly what you just said. It's moving from a point solution to a platform. Like that's really hard.”
Ball: Recycling proceeds from modest exits can rescue difficult fund vintages
“And so I think what you do have is a lot of investors who are thinking now, Hey, Is that a good thing? Should we be doing that? And I think that can be a way of finding returns for investors in funds that were more challenging vintages. But I think the wrong a…”
The other half of the tape: Jamin Ball's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 14 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Brad Gerstner 8Harry Stebbings 3Jason Lemkin 2Ravi Viswanathan 1
Statements about Jamin Ball, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 8
BG2 Pod 6
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 8 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- Ep7. The Great IPO Debate, Tesla Robotaxi v Uber, Tech Check | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner · Bg2 Pod
- Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ep9. GPT-4o, Astra, Multi Modal, China Tariffs, Tech Earnings | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner · Bg2 Pod
- Ep8. AI Models, Data Scaling, Enterprise & Personal AI | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner · Bg2 Pod
- BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner | MANG VC Gone Wild, Can You Trust AI Valuations? & More | E01 · Bg2 Pod
- Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2022 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jamin's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner, Altimeter Capital | 1 | 24 | 67% 4/6 | full record on 20VC → |
| BG2LEDGER | Partner, Altimeter Capital | 1 | 5 | — | full record on BG2 Pod → |