Kevin Thau
General Partner, Spark Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Kevin Thau is a General Partner at Spark Capital, where he has led investments in Medium, LOLA, CTRL Labs, Aura, and Haven. Prior to Spark Capital, he spent seven years at Twitter.
1shows
1appearances
12statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Kevin Thau said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Thau: Vertically integrated products succeed better in early markets
“The companies that do a vertically integrated product when the market's early seem to have a better chance, in my opinion, than trying to be one piece of technology in the stack of a market before the market is there.”
Thau: Amazon accelerates sales but does not build brands
“I don't know that I believe that Amazon does a great job of helping build brands. Like, I don't see brands getting built on top of Amazon. I think it's a great accelerator.”
Thau: No competitor has come close to disrupting Twitter's core use case
“And it's amazing to me that over all these years, they still own that use case. No one's even come close to disrupting them for the Twitter use case.”
Thau: Facebook lacks Twitter's strong brand persona
“Even a product like Facebook is one of the most impressive companies and products of all time. It doesn't really have as much of a brand persona as a Twitter does, and I think it's because of all those little, little things.”
Thau: Consumer investing is harder than B2B due to adoption risk
“Anything in consumer is very, very hard because you're betting on a big market adoption versus, say, a B to B company with recurring revenue and enterprise clients.”
Thau: College brand association and academic pedigree do not matter much
“I don't believe in the over obsession of where someone goes to school, that this, like, brand association of where people go to college or in education is that important. I think people get too wrapped up and obsessed with that, parents, kids, and I just don't…”
Thau: Computing is shifting to ambient interfaces beyond phones and PCs
“I do believe that computing is moving from trapped in these little boxes, either a phone or a computer, and computing's moving to everywhere. It's everywhere around us, whether it's your Amazon Echo or different displays around your home, and who knows what's …”
Thau: Abundant capital makes growing companies lazy in prioritization
“Focus and prioritization becomes a big challenge, and I think when you grow very quickly and you are fortunate enough to raise a lot of capital, it can sometimes make you lazy in how you make those hard decisions.”
Thau: OpenWave built the first mobile browser 10 years too early
“OpenWave, and we created the first mobile browser, and really we're selling the promise of the mobile internet. Well, that was a company that got a lot of hype at the time, but the market for, you know, true mobile data and mobile internet didn't come till muc…”
Thau: VC approaches split into thesis-driven and founder-driven models
“You can either be a very thesis-driven venture capitalist like Fred, or you can be a very founder-driven venture capitalist like Bijan, and I think, you know, what fits better for my personality and the way I see things is being a founder-driven venture capita…”
Thau: Venture capital is fundamentally about manufacturing serendipity
“We're in the business of manufacturing serendipity, and that's very unclear to me how you do that.”
The other half of the tape: Kevin Thau's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Statements about Kevin Thau, by other people (1)
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kevin'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, Spark Capital | 1 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |