Rick Heitzman
Founder & Managing Partner, FirstMark Capital. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Rick Heitzmann is a venture capitalist and the founder of FirstMark Capital. He focuses on venture investments, including the economics of funding startups at the artificial intelligence application layer.
2shows
2appearances
41statements
9resolved
1supported
4contradicted
11%fully supported
Everything Rick Heitzman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Heitzman: Circular revenue deals between AI giants are a warning sign
“Well, it depends on who you are, and that kind of goes to the recycling or the circularness of some of these things. Obviously, the OpenAI, Microsoft, or OpenAI Oracle, goes back to the OpenAI Oracle deal. And, you know, I'm gonna give you money that you're go…”
Heitzman: FirstMark sees no sustainable consumer AI startups, only ChatGPT wrappers
“So we've found sadly, that, you know, we haven't seen this wave of startups that we believe are sustainable. So there's actually been a handful of startups that are Wrappers on ChatGPT that are maybe a little bit better at travel. They might be a little bit be…”
Heitzman: AI will replace 80% of routine legal associate work
“Probably 80% of all legal work is, this is Rick, he needs a will. This is, you know, here is a first mark company that's going through a series A financing. Can you just reproduce documents given these are the founders, these are the issues, and here's the ter…”
Heitzman: An unnamed AI actress sparked a major talent agency bidding war
“There's this now famous AI Based actress who is it's in a bidding war to be represented by the major talent agencies that you can't tell. And that person is almost as good as a human.”
Heitzman: Hyperscalers will not stop AI infrastructure buildout
“So I think this is not going to stop, and I also think the hyperscalers, all of their ambitions are so big and so broad, and they're all so pot committed, I don't think anyone's going to stop.”
Heitzmann: Thousands of startups needing capital will fail by late 2024
“There's thousands of companies that are going to need capital between now and the end of 24. The investors at almost every stage have generally been hurt by the macroeconomic environment. The purse strings are pretty tight. But the amount of companies that may…”
Heitzmann: The 2008 financial crisis was incredibly good for New York tech
“And in a very strange way, the financial crisis, which was very bad for New York, was incredibly good for New York Tech.”
Heitzmann: Most products people label as AI are not actually AI
“Most of what people call AI we consider not AI.”
Heitzmann: FirstMark has been generally unimpressed by recent consumer AI startups
“We're looking at some things in AI. We've been generally under impressed by some of those things recently.”
Heitzmann: Crypto games compounded risk by stacking tokens onto gameplay mechanics
“Axie famously worked until it stopped working. Some of that was tied to people's inherent tie-in with crypto. So they were compounding their bets by saying, hey, I'm going to have crypto, and therefore you have to get in with ETH, and then we're going to have …”
Heitzmann: Widespread public adoption of VR helmets is not happening anytime soon
“I don't see a world where everyone's going to walk around with a helmet that's telling you everything you need to know in a hyper-extended hyper-reality anytime soon.”
Heitzman: Proprietary datasets enable vertical enterprise AI to win
“We had a company, Evolution IQ and Insurance, there's Harvey and Legal, there's Henry and Commercial Real Estate, and they all have, A very discreet and sometimes private data set that enables them to build a better model, enables them to deliver a better end …”
Heitzman: US lawyer headcount quadrupled since advent of word processors
“Since the IVAN word processors, there's four times more lawyers in America than there was at the time.”
Heitzman: Last year was worst job market for college grads since 2008
“It was the worst year last year since the financial crisis for recent college graduates.”
Heitzman: Social media will increasingly shift to semi-private group chats
“I think you're going to see you're going to see more, more social media move to semi-private that look more like group chats, and it can be around, you know, sports or music or technology or relationships just because I think that people might be a little bit …”
Heitzmann: Distressed investing is a knife fight over a shrinking pie
“At the same time, I realized distress was oftentimes a knife fight over a shrinking pie.”
Geographic focus and capital efficiency enable new venture capital firms to launch
“So if you get involved in the earliest stages in capital efficient businesses that you know really well in a geography that you think you could have some leadership in, that's a fine enough point and a focused enough strategy that you're able to raise some mon…”
Heitzmann: It is currently the best time ever to invest in NYC
“And it's probably been the best time to invest here that I've seen ever.”
Heitzmann: NYC engineers remain cheaper than SF as Bay Area costs surged
“So engineers, despite the challenge of Wall Street, were always at a discount to the Bay Area. The cost of living in San Francisco became much higher than New York in the last five to seven years.”
Heitzmann: Extreme venture returns require executing on multiple non-consensus theses simultaneously
“If you're doing multiple non-consensus things and you're able to execute, that's how you create the Grand Slam home runs, the Shopify's, the Pinterest's, the Riot Games of the world.”
Heitzmann: Top founders now seek hands-on investor help over pure capital
“The interesting part of this phase of the market, whereas maybe in the 2020 to 20 22 time, folks just wanted the money with the least amount of dilution. If you don't want to take a board seat, great. I don't really need it. I just want the money. I think the …”
Heitzmann: Two-thirds of global unicorns have FirstMark Guild members
“So I think two thirds of all unicorns in the world have a member of the guild and most companies in New York, but there's companies in China and there's companies in Europe.”
Heitzmann: VCs should treat pro-rata rights as options, not obligations
“We look at our pro rata as our option to fund. So we don't view it as an obligation and therefore There's a negative signaling around that or some obligation that we have that unfairly biases our opportunity fund.”
Heitzmann: Closeness to founders makes early directors poor growth-round arbiters
“Oftentimes a company that you've been involved with for years, that you're very close to the CEO, you're very close to the team, you're very proud of how far they've come, might not make you the best individual arbiter of how much do you invest in this growth …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Rick's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | 1 | 31 | 17% 1/6 | full record on Capital Allocators → | |
 BIG TECHNOLOGYLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, FirstMark Capital | 1 | 10 | 0% 0/3 | full record on Big Technology → |