Joe Fernandez
Co-founder & CEO, allUP. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@JoeFernandez ↗Wikipedia ↗
Joe Fernandez is the co-founder and former CEO of Klout, an online influence measurement platform acquired by Lithium Technologies in 2014. He later founded Joymode and launched allUP.
2shows
2appearances
16statements
2resolved
1supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
18said about them ↓ Everything Joe Fernandez said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Founders who blindly follow board advice will definitely get fired
“If you don't listen to the board, you might get fired. If you do listen to the board, you will get fired. And I think that's true.”
Raising too much money at high valuations is impossible to fix
“There was one mistake that was really basically impossible to fix, and it was raising too much money at too high of a valuation”
Joe Fernandez suggests $10,000 internal bounties to disprove major startup initiatives
“So offering like almost a bounty of, you know, let's say, 10,000 dollars to somebody who could concretely say why this is a bad idea and why we'd be better off Putting our resources somewhere else is like a small price to pay to avoid taking that wrong turn.”
Investor updates should make investors terrified, not comfortable
“It's not at all about spin. It's not at all about like making them feel comfortable that they put all this money in the company. I want them to be terrified that they put money in this company.”
Founders should publicly praise helpful investors to subtly shame unhelpful ones
“I always want to create competition between my investors. I want the folks who have helped me to be recognized, to subtly shame the ones that haven't, and show appreciation for the people who are constantly going out of their way and making introductions and h…”
The social identity space should support a multi-billion dollar company
“The opportunity, I still believe, is huge in that space. Like, there should be a foundational, multi-billion dollar, like, fabric of the internet level company, and Doing what Cloud was trying to do.”
Joe Fernandez argues serial entrepreneurship status is inflated
“And startups are just hard. And I don't think it matters how many times you've been through it. It's gonna going to be hard. And some of the serial entrepreneurship stuff, I think, is inflated, though I appreciate the benefit I get from it daily.”
Fernandez: Joymode will iterate on its membership model until the company dies
“Like, there are things in our business, for example, we have this notion of a membership, which is kind of controversial in our structure, that I'm willing to basically kill the company to prove It is right, and I believe so strongly that that is kind of a cor…”
Startups need one initiative that investors fear will kill the company
“I think you should always have an initiative that you are working on that a huge portion of the team and investor base is afraid will kill the company. Like, that is a good barometer of, like, are you being daring enough?”
Klout's early hiring bar was simply a willingness to quit your job
“The bar to get hired at Clout was like willingness to quit your current job. If you were basically willing to quit your current job, you were on the team.”
Board input consists of data points, not instructions for CEOs
“Our, you know, provides data points that can be really helpful, but it's your job to synthesize those data points with everything else and with your vision and make decisions.”
Klout API monthly volume grew from 100M to over 10B in 2011
“In January, we were doing a hundred million transactions a month on our API from about a thousand partners. In, ah, September, we did over ten billion from 5000 partners.”
Fernandez: Data startups can out-recruit tech giants by providing unique data
“Yeah, I think the diversity of skill set is critical, and the good news is if you're doing interesting things with data I know at least for us, like, I feel we have a shot at anybody, whether they're at Facebook or Google or doing, you know, wherever they're d…”
Joe Fernandez spends six to eight hours writing each investor update email
“I write really in-depth investor emails, like spend 6:08 hours on one, They're all archived on a Google doc that is like almost 200 pages long.”
Fernandez: Klout refreshes scores daily for 300M people
“When Cloud launched, we had data, we had scores on less than 2000 people when we publicly launched, and now we have scores on three hundred million people that we refresh every day”
The other half of the tape: Joe Fernandez's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 18 times in 12 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 11David Waxman 4Hunter Walk 3
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 18
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: The Biggest Mistakes Startups Make Hiring, The 2 Reasons Startups Fail and How to Avoid Them, Why Most Startup Equity Plans are F****** and Why You Should Scrap Titles From Your Company with Eddie Vivas, Founder & CEO @ Curated
- 20VC: Box's Aaron Levie on Why Founders Cannot Hedge Their Bets, The 2 Categories of Wrong Decision and How To Avoid Them & The Biggest Dangers of Being Over-Funded as a Startup
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 5 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
- 20VC: Why Speed Is The Biggest Differentiator a Founder Can Have, How To Hire Seasoned Tier 1 Talent To An Early Stage Startup & How To Start, Scale and Manage Remote Teams with Domm Holland, Founder & CEO @ Fast
- 20VC: Hiten Shah on The Right Way To Think About Depression, Control and Burnout, Why Nobody Really Knows What They Are Doing and How One Should Receive Advice As A Result & How To Gain Self-Awareness As A Leader
- 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Why Convertible Notes Are Ridiculous, Why Party Rounds Are Bad For Both Founder and Investor & Why Pro-Rata Rights Are A Mess with David Waxman, Founding Partner @ TenOneTen Ventures
- 20VC: Homebrew's Hunter Walk on Why There Is No Series A Crunch, How To Package Portfolio Companies For The Next Round & Why The Bridge Round Is Not Always A Negative Sign?
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Joe'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 & CEO, allUP | 1 | 13 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 MADLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, allUP | 1 | 3 | 0% 0/1 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |