Rory O'Driscoll
General Partner, Scale Venture Partners. On 2 shows, 75 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investor@rodriscoll ↗LinkedIn ↗scalevp.com ↗
He is a veteran venture capitalist who focuses on enterprise software, cloud platforms, and applied AI, having invested with Scale Venture Partners since its inception. He is widely recognized for leading early and growth-stage investments in category-defining SaaS companies such as Box, DocuSign, BILL, WalkMe, and ExactTarget.
2shows
75appearances
1,384statements
315resolved
227supported
30contradicted
72%fully supported
99said about them ↓ Everything Rory O'Driscoll said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
O'Driscoll: Anthropic Will Pass OpenAI in Scale and Profitability Shortly
“Within a couple of quarters, Anthropic will be visibly and obviously ahead. Profitable, growing more quickly, and bigger.”
O'Driscoll: Displacing Overeducated Young Elites Triggers Major Political Instability
“You can have dispossessed urban poor forever, and nothing happens, but if you piss off the twenty-something-year-old middle class, the overeducated elites, they tend to cause trouble.”
O'Driscoll: Oracle will lay off 20k to 30k employees over AI capex strain
“The only person that's even struggling slightly to cover their nut is Oracle, right? Because they had the weakest balance sheet and the least compelling use case, which is why at some point they're going to throw 20 or 30,000 people over the side to make the P…”
O'Driscoll: Nearly all 2020–2021 venture investments will yield 1x or less
“Because if you think everything in 20, 21 was either priced wrong and makes a one X or early and just totally wrong and makes, you know, less than one X, let's just say, right? Other than a few companies that were the early precursors of AI”
O'Driscoll: AI reverse acqui-hires are regulatory shams leaving dead target companies
“We actually, in both of those cases, that's a pure pretense to get the government off of us, right? Everyone knows both of these companies are toast because in the case of Scale AI, in theory, Meta owns 50% of it, and in theory, their business is selling to ev…”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI misses next year's revenue target by 40% if growth matches Google
“If all OpenAI is, Is just as good as Google, then it's going to miss its number next year by about 40%.”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI will IPO later and lower than Anthropic
“The rank, the most, the big picture fact is the ranking has changed, and you're now number two. So you will go out later then and a lower price than the other guys, unless you change the trajectory massively.”
O'Driscoll: Anthropic's $30 Trillion TAM Target Is 'Delusional'
“I just say on Tropic and the Wall Street Journal, they believe their TAM is 30 trillion. And I, and then I say to myself, oh, I remember everyone when they're doing really well gets slightly delusional. Your time is, you know, the entire US GDP.”
O'Driscoll: Defense tech venture returns will suffer from market consolidation
“I think an area where, despite it being amazing for America and important for the world, I think the venture returns of the March might be tough will be defense, not because we don't need all these products, but because I think there's an element of that busin…”
O'Driscoll: GitHub is now a trailing edge product
“And the fact that they've lost that connection with developers, that GitHub is now a trailing edge product, is to me, over the medium term, a pretty significant loss.”
Anthropic will IPO soon after pulling ahead of OpenAI's ChatGPT
“They will go public because this is peak brass ring moment, and you know, you could argue the trends in 27 are tougher. You've pulled ahead of ChatGPT, so just put a nail in the entropic pit, right? You've pulled ahead of ChatGPT comfortably, OpenAI, to a poin…”
O'Driscoll: Anthropic is pushing policies to de facto ban open-weight models
“While they're not saying they want to ban these things, they're advocating a series of steps that would add up to de facto banning or at least slowing them down.”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI is lobbying in Washington for AI regulation alongside Anthropic
“They're signing this publicly while at the same time lobbying in Washington right alongside Anthropic for a regulatory process.”
O'Driscoll: Restricting Western AI Cyber Capabilities Drives Reliance on Chinese Models
“Taking away advanced capabilities from U.S. And European corporations such that their only recourse is to use a Chinese open weights model seems a little like, you know, Jason said it right, shutting the barn door after the horse is bolted.”
O'Driscoll: Open-weights models do not have open-source software's security benefits
“The reality is when you're getting open weights, you're not getting, it's not the same thing because all you get is the fixed weights that allow you to run the model. What you don't know is the black box inside those weights and how they work.”
O'Driscoll: AI infrastructure spend hits $900B while AI apps struggle past $50B
“Zooming out a million miles, you know, my mental model is, I divide the AI world up into three buckets. It's the making AI, the infrastructure layer, right? And you're right, the spend there is eight, nine hundred billion dollars a year. Then there's the two f…”
O'Driscoll: Major Startup Breakthroughs Rely on Boundary Pushing Legalized Upon Success
“So many breakthroughs rely on a little bit of pushing the boundaries. I mean, Uber did with taxi regulation. Airbnb did with regulation. You're right. Polymarket did in terms of how they're regulated. So I'm actually going to get off my high horse and say you …”
O'Driscoll: Microsoft and OpenAI Are in a Stale Marriage Looking for Divorce
“Microsoft owns 30% of OpenAI. If ownership stake resulted in besties, they'd be besties. They're not besties. They're in a stale marriage looking for a divorce, but can't quite pay, you know, pay the tax, right?”
O'Driscoll: Meta and SpaceX rented compute after failing to build AI assets
“Two companies Have done the same thing, which is buy a load of compute to build proprietary assets, fail to build those assets, and then bring that, and then decide instead to sell that compute to others, and both of them have had a very positive market recept…”
O'Driscoll: Microsoft lacks compelling proprietary AI products beyond OpenAI stake
“So when you zoom out a million miles, Microsoft, which is in the software business, unlike Apple, and therefore can't afford to stay apart from the great AI wars, other than its equity ownership in open AI doesn't have anything compelling to bring to the table…”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI and Anthropic rely on $300B spent by other companies
“The whole reason the OpenAI and Entropic models work is because other idiots have spent the three hundred billion dollars on their behalf.”
O'Driscoll: Adobe operates like a PE firm milking its users
“My vent on that company is they have milked their users for so long that it just feels a piece of financial engineering interacting with the product. It's always the login are crap. I don't even understand the licensing model. I don't even know what I can use …”
O'Driscoll: Revolut's valuation stems from fat, inefficient European banks
“Because the European banks, unlike the American banks in general, are so crappy. There's a reason that Revolut's worth a hundred and fifteen billion, because the incumbent European banks were fat, dumb, and happy, and making margin off their customers.”
The other half of the tape: Rory O'Driscoll's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 92 times in 40 episodes across the shows. 7 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 61Jason Lemkin 18Mark Suster 2Matt Murphy 1Kyle Parrish 1Amelia Ibarra 1
Statements about Rory O'Driscoll, by other people (7)
O'Driscoll: Elon Musk's death would instantly erase $2 trillion in market value
“We are one horrible car crash away from two trillion dollars worth of value destruction.”
O'Driscoll: 80% of Tesla and SpaceX value is the Elon Musk premium
“My mental model is on SpaceX and Tesla. About 80% of the value is the Elon premium and 20% of the value is the actual business is worth.”
Rory O'Driscoll: Competition persists because no founders or investors will step away
“Everyone complains about competition, and everyone's prepared to do anything to solve the problem except the one thing that will solve the problem, which is step away from the table yourself, Harry.”
Stebbings: I invested in Palantir momentum over beaten-down SaaS
“Rory O'Driscoll, who we do the show with every week, has done that, and I put my money into Palantir and said, I'm a momentum surfer. I did better.”
Lemkin: Scaling $1M to $10M ARR in five quarters is S-tier growth
“One to 10 and five quarters or less is S tier. One to 10 and five quarters or less. And so that's, I think I copied that with attribution. I used that as my investing yardstick for years, right?”
Great board members focus on granular work and difficult budgets
“The things that really matter are people who turn up, roll up their sleeves, have a point of view, will do the detail work, actually read spreadsheets. And be thoughtful and be one step ahead of the game on things that are harder that people don't like to do, …”
Lemkin: Box, HubSpot, and Shopify IPO'd at roughly $800M valuations
“When Rory invested in box with Aaron, when Rory's invested in HubSpot, those are pretty good ones. Shopify. These guys all IPO'd around a hundred million in revenue growing really fast off in 50, 60, 80% at like eight hundred million valuations.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 65
the Official SaaStr Podcast 27
2026 38 mentions in 15 episodes 3 per episode
- Aaron Levie: Everyone is Wrong; We'll Have More Developers in 5 Years · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Agents Didn't Kill Sales. They Just Exposed It with SaaStrAI CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg: How to Make Mega Deals | Lessons from Rabois, Halligan & Grady · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Will Open-Source Threaten Anthropic's Business & Do Margins Matter in a World of AI | Matt Murphy
- a16z, Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead? Do Margins Still Matter? Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin
- The AI Boom Will Create Enormous Roadkill: Who Wins & Loses? | David Frankel
- Why Now is the Time for the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Mike Mignano, USV · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 43 mentions in 19 episodes 2 per episode
- What Happens When AI Kills Your SaaS Growth? Live Q&A with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- Benchmark's GP, Everett Randle on Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- BVP Partner, Byron Deeter: The Future of Venture - Why Chanel vs Walmart is BS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Bucky Moore @ Lightspeed Venture Partners: Why You Cannot Do VC If You Do Not Do Pre-Seed · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Turing CEO Jonathan Siddharth: Who Wins in Data Labelling & Why 99% of Knowledge Work Will Disappear · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
- 20Product: How AI Changes Product Design | Does the Design Phase Become Irrelevant in a World of Vibe Coding | The Five Pillars of Truly Great Product Design with Carl Rivera, Chief Design Officer at Shopify
- General Catalyst CEO, Hemant Taneja: Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 11 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 9 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP
- 20VC: The Power Of A Concentrated Seed Portfolio, Why Operational Value Add Models At Seed Do Not Make Sense & Why We Will See A Shakeout Of Growth Stage Investors with Roger Ehrenberg, Founder & Managing Partner @ IA Ventures
- 20VC: The Radical Changes In Public Market Expectations, The Right Way To Assess Valuation & What It Means To Be A Disciplined & Diligent Investor with Randy Glein, Partner @ DFJ Growth
- 20VC: SaaStr's Jason Lemkin on The 3 Things You Want From Your LPs, Why Most VCs Do Not Add Value & Why The Best VCs Know How To Package Startups For The Next Round
- 20VC: DFJ's Josh Stein on Why VCs Must Adapt To Their Founders, The Major Transition Points For Aaron Levie @ Box & Why SaaS Startups Are Growing At A Rate Never Seen Before
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Rory'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, Scale Venture Partners | 74 | 1,363 | 72% 226/313 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | General Partner, Scale Venture Partners | 1 | 21 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |