Nico Laqua
Co-Founder & CEO, Corgi. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@nico_laqua ↗nicolaqua.com ↗
Nico Laqua is the co-founder and CEO of Corgi, an AI-native insurance carrier tailored for startups that raised over $100M. He previously founded Basket Entertainment, scaling its gaming titles to over 200 million monthly users.
1shows
1appearances
51statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Nico Laqua said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Laqua: Employees taking weekends off have no place at Corgi
“If your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every week, then you will not have a place at Corgi.”
Laqua: New York is a terrible startup hub, founders move there only to date
“That's why I think New York is not a good place to have a company at all. The people that, that move their companies to New York do so because they want to date. And they're, you know, that's the only reason, really real reason why they do.”
Laqua: Demanding seven-day workweeks filters for the right hires
“And if you want to win, then actually it's something that I think attracts the right type of person and absolutely repels the wrong type of person.”
Laqua: Google represents the worst of corporate employee pampering culture
“You know, I think I really dislike the culture of like pampering everyone or like taking care of them as if you're their parents. I think Google is like the worst of that.”
Laqua: Startups must hire more non-engineers to compensate for lower intensity
“So naturally there, there's roles, I think that, that creep in, you know, you get the, like a lawyer and accountant are not going to work in the same way that you know, a software engineer might. And that's just a fact of life. So, okay. So if they don't want …”
Laqua receives death threats over Corgi's intense work culture
“The death threats and the DMs you know, people, people think I'm nuts.”
Nico Laqua: Early-stage VCs are disrespectful in pitch meetings
“I've had people like, especially the first round, like the early stage investors are disrespectful.”
Laqua: Crypto VCs encouraged founders to accept criminal liability
“I think on the extreme you have, like, if you go back in time a couple of years, a lot of the crypto investors would encourage company founders to take on quite a lot of personal liability, including criminal liability in many cases. And, you know, basically t…”
Laqua: Learning online and with AI is superior to university professors
“You can learn all the material online, you can learn all the material with an LOM much better than you can from some professor.”
Laqua prefers measuring lifespan in victories rather than years
“I think I would rather like measure my lifespan and victories than years.”
Laqua: VCs should offer term sheets to founders working at 3 AM
“If you go there, you can go there at three AM and I'd recommend writing term sheets to everyone there because they're working hard.”
Laqua: US visa friction gives London a major opportunity in AI
“Given the whole like visa situation in the United States, I think there's actually a phenomenal opportunity for London to become like a center of AI and a center of tech.”
Corgi employs plenty of parents despite its intense work culture
“We have plenty of parents that work at Corgi, so life's about trade-offs and sacrifices.”
Laqua: Young men lack societal support before gaining credibility
“I think when you're a young person, particularly, I think young men, you know, don't have that much support within society. And I think it's something, of course, that like weighs on people, particularly if you don't have you know, a lot of external validation…”
Laqua: Corgi Insurance never accepts the highest valuation offered in fundraising
“So we never take the highest price ever. I think that that's just a good rule of thumb. Like we always go with like the second or third highest price.”
Laqua: Committee-based decision-making in business is nonsense
“Like every committee decision I think is like BS. Like sometimes you need to be able to take an unpopular stance and you just need to be able to plant your flag in the ground.”
Nico Laqua: Boards Cannot Prevent Unethical Executives From Committing Fraud
“If management is like unethical or unscrupulous enough to scam people or do illegal stuff, then they're going to do it anyways, probably with or without a board and that's a management problem.”
Laqua: Blaming Y Combinator for portfolio startup fraud is directionally incorrect
“I think that people blaming like, you know, YC or whatever for some of their companies being frauds is probably not like directionally correct because like internally it's not like any venture fund really wants to like invest in a fraud and people that are lik…”
Laqua sleeps an average of three to four hours per night
“I don't sleep a lot. I think the average night, probably three to four hours.”
Laqua: Attending university was a big mistake
“I think going to university, going to college, that was a big mistake.”
Laqua: Venture capital is no longer fungible
“What we're seeing with kind of the perception of funds and the idea of value add and tiers of investors is that perhaps capital isn't so fungible after all.”
Corgi Insurance mandates work trials for all job candidates
“We have everyone do work trials, so that, that scares them off.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Nico'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, Corgi | 1 | 51 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |