Mark Peter Davis
Founder & Managing Partner, Interplay. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Mark Peter Davis is the founder and managing partner of Interplay, an early-stage venture firm and startup platform based in New York City. He authored the guide The Fundraising Rules and hosts the podcast Innovation with Mark Peter Davis.
1shows
1appearances
14statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Mark Peter Davis said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Davis: Interplay prioritizes investing in founders he wants to hang out with
“I am very much focused on people I want to hang out with, right? Taking it to a new level, a personal relationship,”
Davis: Founder-VC personal relationships are a high-beta strategy favoring high EQ
“I think it's a dangerous zone. It's a higher beta scenario. It's either going to make you worse off or far better off. If you've got high emotional IQ, integrity and pretty good social skills, you're almost always going to be better off.”
Davis: VCs calculate valuation backward from runway needs and target ownership
“We ask ourselves, how much of the company are we gonna be able to buy, ah, for the investment that they need? And the investment they need is 12, is 18 to 24 months of runway. So, you do the financial model, you say, we need a million dollars to take this 18 m…”
Davis: Standard venture capital equity target is 20 percent per round
“I think in the kind of well-developed venture markets, the fat part of the bell curve is sitting around a 20% buy at every round. And, you know, for very hot deals, you're looking at something as low as five percent, and for less attractive deals, as high as 3…”
Davis: Raising VC for small businesses destroys founder returns
“There are a lot of companies out there, founders who could build very small, successful businesses but take venture capital because thinking it's the only option, and basically destroy their return.”
Davis: Entrepreneurship is a mentorship sport requiring key advisors
“There's a tremendous amount of knowledge required to be a successful entrepreneur. It is truly a mentorship sport. And if you don't have the right advisors around you, the right people to support you can fail for things that are very avoidable.”
Davis: Startup success requires high decision accuracy on small choices
“In my perspective, it's not a marathon. It's And each step represents one simple, small, usually easy decision. The key is being able to make a pretty high, have a pretty high hit rate of making a good set of decisions against those small decisions. And if you…”
Davis: Startup ecosystems are uniquely non-zero-sum and collaborative
“Uniquely the startup community, unlike most of the other business worlds I have experienced, people benefit, are actually motivated and incentivized to help each other. In the startup world, we're not fighting over zero-sum games, like, you know, three compani…”
Davis: Founders can hack mentorship networks using top-tier service providers
“I think the way to hack all of it, if you don't have either of those available to you, is to surround yourself by Tier A service providers.”
Davis: Founders fighting during pitch meetings is a frequent red flag
“So I'll add one thing that's an easy one that you'd be surprised how often it happens, is founders fighting during the meeting.”
Davis: Basic organizational skills separate the best startup operators from the worst
“Increasingly in my career I'm finding that to be a pretty high bar that filters out a lot of folks. And it's shocking because it's some of the easiest stuff to get right, but it's separating a lot of the best operators from the worst.”
Davis: Large VC firms average 10 people and hire existing contacts
“The VCs don't always have extensive recruiting departments like a big company. You know, a big VC is usually a 10 person firm. So when they decide they're going to need another person, they're going to usually, especially the smaller firms, just look for someo…”
Davis: Aggressive valuation asks reduce competitive bidding in startup fundraising
“So I think starting with aggressive asks can get people turned off pretty quickly and you can reduce the, you can change the dynamic and take bidders away. Whereas if you get a whole bunch of people bidding at an average valuation You may end up with a very hi…”
The other half of the tape: Mark Peter Davis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mark's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Interplay | 1 | 14 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |