Li Jin
Co-founder and General Partner, Variant. On 2 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderauthorhost@ljin18 ↗li-jin.co ↗
Li Jin is a venture capitalist who focuses on the creator and passion economy. She is a co-founder and general partner at Variant and was previously an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
2shows
4appearances
35statements
11resolved
9supported
0contradicted
82%fully supported
Everything Li Jin said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Li Jin: Mental health startup Basis uses unlicensed community coaches as therapists
“So one startup based in San Francisco is called Basis, and they're using unlicensed but trained people in the community to basically serve as therapists.”
Jin: Play-to-earn economies require net-spending whales to avoid Ponzi structures
“There needs to be another contingent of players, which does exist in most games. It's the whales who are spending more money than they earn out. And that is the only way that the economy of the game can be in balance without necessarily relying on the poncinom…”
Jin: ISAs force education providers to shorten programs and focus on employability
“And the result of that business model is that The programs themselves then are changing to sort of drive that positive outcome for everyone. So the programs are getting shorter because they're incentivized to get that payback sooner. They're incentivized to ac…”
Jin: Top business schools like Harvard and Stanford face declining MBA applications
“The number of applications is shrinking across the board, and the institutions that historically were thought of as immune to this, so Harvard Stanford, GSB, Wharton, the top, top business schools, They're now experiencing this, too, where they're seeing year …”
Jin: Academic accreditation will erode as a quality signal for employers
“But I think with the internet and now with all of these programs and like the availability of reviews and the availability of like various assessments and other measurements of a student's competency and mastery of a subject, I think the era of accreditation i…”
Li Jin: Top marketplace companies face constrained supply rather than demand
“One of our observations about the best marketplace investments and the best marketplace companies are that they tend to be marketplaces that have more constrained supply than demand. So the biggest marketplace outcomes that we've seen, or the biggest marketpla…”
Li Jin: Regulated services are the next major marketplace category
“And so in other words, we're looking for categories where there's a lot of demand that is being unfulfilled today. And so that leads us to what we think is next, which is regulated services and marketplaces that address regulated services.”
Jin: Multi-year token lockups are virtually universal for crypto VC funds
“So usually I would say in the deals that I've been a part of lockups are very, very common, if not just Universally present. And furthermore, those lockups are really long like multi-year lockups. And for venture firms, I mean, venture firms are structured as …”
Li Jin: Next cycle will produce a sustainable play-to-earn game
“I think in this next cycle, someone is going to crack that and design a game economy that is actually sustainable and functions.”
Jin: Simple games will figure out Web3 before AAA studios
“I think you can get there with pretty simple game dynamics like what Neopets had. Neopets was literally playable on a dial up modem. And so I think those are the games that are going to figure it out first in advance of the AAA games that probably will take fi…”
Jin: Only 50% of university presidents say college is for job placement
“And I think that same question was posed to university presidents by Pew Research, and I think only 50% of them said that the purpose, the main purpose, was to get a job.”
Jin: Lower-tier colleges are prime targets for edtech disruption
“I think brand is a huge piece of what's protecting traditional institutions from being disrupted. And I think brand is very closely coupled with exclusivity. So at the lower levels where the brand is less strong, I think that is a prime target for disruption a…”
Jin: Liberal arts degrees function as high-cost luxury consumer products
“Liberal arts education, and things that perhaps aren't as practically useful. But I think they are somewhat luxury goods, like they're very expensive products that some people want to pay a premium for, and maybe they're not completely useful, but like there's…”
Jin: Liberal arts education unfairly gets a bad reputation in Silicon Valley
“Well, I think liberal arts education unfairly gets a bad rep in Silicon Valley, which I don't agree with.”
Li Jin: Uber and Lyft required unlicensed drivers to reach scale
“And without that kind of unlock, without expanding it to the unlicensed pool of potential drivers there's no way that Uber or Lyft could be anywhere near the size they are today.”
Li Jin: Neopets served as an early dial-up metaverse
“Neopets was the metaverse, but on a dial up internet connection.”
Li Jin: Crypto enables users to earn project ownership alongside income
“Crypto was this new way for people to earn an income online and not only could they earn an income, they were actually earning ownership in the projects that they were participating in which I thought was so interesting and something that had never been possib…”
Li Jin: Web2 platforms excluded contributing users from equity value accrual
“A lot of the value came from the equity value of these companies and that accrued to very, very small group of people, investors, founders, early employees, executives, et cetera. And notably who's missing from that is the participants on the platforms themsel…”
Jin: DeFi protocols remained resilient and operational throughout the crypto crash
“All of the DeFi protocols are still working, but they've been incredibly resilient during this period of broader turmoil. And I think it's really important to note that because in those instances and in the DeFi world, users know exactly what is happening with…”
Jin: 80% of UCLA students say college is for getting a job
“I think UCLA ran a survey a few years ago, surveying their students as to, like, what is the purpose of college for you? And 80% of them said to get a job.”
Jin: Alternative education programs are shifting from tuition to ISAs
“So in the past few years, the nature that these programs are monetizing has really shifted from upfront tuition payment, which has been the traditional higher ed business model to now more and more programs are offering income share agreements or ISAs.”
Jin: Coding bootcamps have not yet produced large venture capital exits
“To date, there haven't been large outcomes in this space, so we're keeping tabs on it, but wondering if there can be a large exit or a large outcome here.”
Jin: Traditional alumni donation models are Income Share Agreements on steroids
“I think of that business model as like income share on steroids, where instead of just monetizing for this fixed window for the student's life when they first get out of school, you're actually potentially capturing the upside as they grow their income through…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Li's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 a16zLEDGER | Co-founder and General Partner, Variant | 3 | 26 | 80% 8/10 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Co-founder and General Partner, Variant | 1 | 9 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |