Roy Bahat
Head, Bloomberg Beta. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutivefounderacademichost@roybahat ↗LinkedIn ↗roybahat.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Roy Bahat leads Bloomberg Beta, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Bloomberg L.P. that invests in the future of work and artificial intelligence. He previously served as President of IGN Entertainment, co-founded video game console maker OUYA, and taught at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
1shows
2appearances
41statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
13said about them ↓ Everything Roy Bahat said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Bahat: Venture capital's greater fool dynamic will not survive a market downturn
“We do have this greater fool dynamic happening in our industry. And one of the challenges is if your strategy, nobody's explicit strategy is this, but if your actions reveal that actually your approach is making money on the greater fool, which is to say the l…”
Bahat: Many financially successful tech industry icons are awful role models
“I think many of the heroes that we have set up in the technology industry are... Awful role models in that the heroes that we have set up are often the people who have been the most financially successful.”
Bahat: Dollar-for-dollar, angel investors are more valuable to startups than VCs
“Angels dollar per dollar are the most valuable investors in the ecosystem, even more valuable than VCs, more valuable than us, especially angels who are themselves founders of venture backed companies.”
Roy Bahat argues the typical venture capitalist is disastrous for startups
“I think there are many wonderful VCs. I just think it's that the typical VC is disastrous.”
Bahat: VCs requesting early customer calls is a bad sign for founders
“VCs who ask founders to talk to their customers right off the bat, I tell the founder like, whoa, slow that down a minute. Like that's a bad sign about the VC that they want to go for the sanctum sanctum. Before they've even had a chance to build trust.”
Bahat: Very few multi-stage VCs historically produce top seed-stage winners
“We did an analysis looking at the top company performers. And what you see is that since the era that seed funds have existed and who funded them at the seed. And what you see is that some of them were funded by seed funds, first round true others funded some …”
Bahat: Startup valuation is primarily a mathematical function of VC fund size
“The way it works is your fund has a strategy and you say to yourself, do I want to invest in this company? And if I want to invest in this company, then I have a check size. And the check size is usually determined by the fund size, because again, back to our …”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta requires one partner for initial checks, unanimity for follow-ons
“In our first check, We invest where anybody can say yes, and that's designed to produce good accountability and independent decision-making and avoid groupthink. But the issue with the follow-on checks is then you're serving that company, you become emotionall…”
Bahat: A founder's personal financial situation heavily drives startup decision-making
“The founder financial situation is one of the most personal financial situation is one of the most important and under discussed aspects of the life of a company, because it's going to drive so much decision making.”
Bahat: Revenue is a better startup co-investor than traditional venture capital funds
“My favorite co-investor is revenue. My second favorite co-investor is the founder of a venture-backed company in which we invest, and then you get to VCs.”
Bloomberg Beta invests if a single partner says yes, ignoring consensus
“Any one person says yes on our team we do a deal.”
Machine intelligence will eat software while software eats the world
“Yes, I think machine intelligence will eat software. While software is eating the world.”
Big data produced valuable technologies but very few valuable standalone businesses
“The, you know, the quote-unquote big data thing Turns out to have produced a number of very valuable technologies, not that many valuable businesses and part of it is because the data on its own, as everybody knows, is, you know, it's just information.”
Proprietary data access is the primary bottleneck in machine intelligence development
“At least today, access to the data is the limiting factor. Which means, by the way, not only do companies like Facebook and Google have an advantage, but pretty much every old industrial incumbent, if it has a way of getting at its data and making use of it, a…”
Horizontal black-box AI startups face severe go-to-market challenges without consulting
“The warning is, if you're startup is, hey, I've got a black box that does machine intelligence. Let me try to apply it to a bunch of different situations. Then I think the going is very hard. You know, you probably have to start with some consulting services. …”
Future human employment will be defined by demand for handmade goods
“What jobs will human beings do? Well, they'll do the jobs when other people want to buy something specifically because it was made by a person. And we have a word for this, which is handmade.”
Bloomberg Beta backs founders who reject advice to step down
“If we thought that there was a better alternative than the founder for the business, we'd tell the person that. And then if they said, no, no, no, thanks. That's nice. That's your opinion, but I'm going to keep going. Generally, we would back them to keep goin…”
Bloomberg Beta encourages founders to shop term sheets without exploding deadlines
“When I give people a term sheet, I say, go shop it. It's not going to explode. I only want you to work with us because we're the best choice for you, not because I've put you under some time pressure.”
Bahat: Startup valuation does not reflect how highly VCs rate companies
“A lot of founders believe mistakenly, in part because VCs lead them on, that company valuation is some kind of a marker of how highly the VC rates your company.”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta never issues exploding offers and encourages shopping term sheets
“Our offers never explode, and we encourage founders to go shop our offers.”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta loses seed deals to multi-stage VCs at 2-3x valuations
“And when we lose on a two or three X price difference often because again, valuation is a function of fund size.”
Bahat: Asking VCs about pro rata is useless; ask about underperformance instead
“Founders often ask their investors, will you do your pro rata at the next round? It's, I think that's a dumb question because if there's a next round that's led by an outside investor, generally people are clamoring for their pro rata. To me, the better questi…”
Bahat: Formal seed-stage board meetings are ludicrous and distract founders
“And it's turned into this advice-giving, checking-in governance body, and at the stage at which we invest, where founders are making critical decisions daily, the idea of meeting once every month, or two months, or three months, and doing a PowerPoint presenta…”
The best startup ideas are highly polarizing, not consensus-driven
“The best ideas are highly polarizing, and so we've set up a model to try to harness their polarizing effect to make the best decision, which is to say we want to say yes when there is one person on our team who is very excited about it.”
The other half of the tape: Roy Bahat's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 6 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 11Matt Turck 1Brianne Kimmel 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 13
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Zoom From Series A to IPO, How VCs Can Provide CEOs with Additional Leverage and Why The Negative Effects of Signalling Are Very Real with Santi Subotovsky, General Partner @ Emergence Capital
- 20VC: Worklife Ventures' Brianne Kimmel on Why More Operators Should Start Their Own Fund, How To Structure Your Round for the Highest Signal Round & What The Multi-Stage Funds Playing At Seed Means For The Rest of The Asset Class
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
2016 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Greenfield Opportunities For Machine Learning, Why Massive Corporates Finally See It's Potential & Why VC's Investment Decision Making Process Needs To Change with James Cham, Partner @ Bloomberg Beta
- 20VC: Is Big Data Still A Thing with Matt Turck, Managing Director at FirstMark Capital
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Roy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Head, Bloomberg Beta | 2 | 41 | 100% 2/2 | full record on 20VC → |