Sam Corcos
Co-Founder & CEO, Levels. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorauthor@samcorcos ↗LinkedIn ↗corcos.io ↗
Sam Corcos is the co-founder and CEO of Levels, a metabolic health company. He previously co-founded Sightline Maps and the Y Combinator-backed startup CarDash.
2shows
3appearances
71statements
7resolved
4supported
1contradicted
57%fully supported
Everything Sam Corcos said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Corcos: Founders Should Turn Down Capital From Unengaged Investors
“If it is a really an expectation of you that your investors will be engaged and respond to your emails and participate to some degree, you should set that as a clear expectation and say, this is what we expect from our investors. If that's not you, Totally. Ok…”
Corcos: Levels Has Extracted Value From Over 110 a16z Operating Partners
“I think our team has extracted value from, I think more than a 110 of the operating partners. From the Andreessen team.”
Corcos: Most VC Platform Services Fail, but a16z Is the Best
“I think part of the answer is that most firms are not good at it. It's sort of the short answer. I think most firms, they understand when they talk to founders, they say that it's the thing that they want, but they're not very good at delivering on the value. …”
Corcos: Pre-Meeting Rejections Are Wins Because Founder Pitch Time Is Finite
“The number of investors available is effectively infinite, and the amount of time that you have to pitch people is finite. And so if you can get them to say no before you have to spend any time with them, that's actually a win, not a loss.”
Levels found early post-IPO company employees were their highest-ROI investors
“When we did some analysis on who our most ROI positive investors were, one of the biggest categories was early employees at post IPO companies. And these are people who have some amount of capital that they want to deploy, but maybe, you know, five, 10,000 dol…”
Levels tracks investor engagement and has investors who ignored 17 requests
“We keep track of all of these things on how many emails we send, what the, Conversion rate is on those requests. And like, we have several people on the list that I've sent them 17 requests and they've converted on zero of them.”
Corcos: Roughly 80% of Couples Report Worse Marriages After Having Kids
“Something in the range of 80% of people say that their marriage is worse after having kids.”
Corcos: Dating Is a Matching Problem, Not a Sales Problem
“I think the biggest mistakes that people make is they treat Dating like it's a sales problem rather than a matching problem.”
Corcos: Six Months Provides Enough Data to Judge Romantic Fit
“Usually you have enough data points within about six months to know if it's the right fit.”
Corcos: Equal Equity Splits Are Not Required for Co-Founders
“As a rule, I would say, no, it's not required. I think it depends a lot on subject matter expertise. It depends a lot on also how you view the definition of what a co-founder is.”
Corcos: Prioritizing engineers is better than expanding product management
“Our product org got much too large, and I've learned that having more engineers is better than having more people in product.”
Corcos cancels 1-on-1s with direct reports if no agenda is prepared
“If I have one-on-ones scheduled for all of my direct reports, but I've made it very clear and everyone's on the same page that a one-on-one calendar hold is not an entitlement. It is a hold so that I don't double book myself. And if there's nothing on the agen…”
Corcos: Software product quality deteriorates when leadership is detached from building
“I think when you have a software product, I think having leadership who knows how to build software is really important, and the further away you get from the actual building of what it is that your product is the worse your product is ultimately going to be.”
Corcos: Co-founder CEOs must be 80% good at almost every business function
“And so I think the nature of being a co-founder CEO is you have to be 80% good at basically everything. It's kind of a strange role. You have to be able to write a passable growth strategy and a passable clinical strategy and a clinical, you have to be able to…”
Founders should eliminate to-do lists and schedule tasks directly on calendars
“The biggest thing to do is to get rid of your to-do list and put all of your action items on your calendar. Block off the amount of time that you think it's going to take. You have a to-do list. Everyone has a list of things that they want to do, and just tran…”
Founders should delegate tasks they dislike to avoid executing them unreliably
“Really, if you don't like doing a certain thing, like writing investor updates, it means that you should probably have somebody else do it because clearly you're not a reliable person on this specific type of task.”
Corcos: Founders Mistakenly Treat Early Investor Contacts as Precious Gems
“I think one of the major mistakes that people make early on is they treat investor contacts like precious gems.”
Corcos: People Become More Afraid of Failure as Their Reputation Grows
“The more reputation you have, The more afraid you are of failure, which is ironic because it should be the opposite, but this is, this seems to be just a default state of human nature.”
Corcos: Keeping Performance and Compensation Secret Created Distrust at Levels
“And the two exceptions that we made were compensation and individual performance. So we kept those two secret. So one-on-ones were secret. If somebody was failing, it was secret. And when somebody would depart, they would write their own definition of why they…”
Corcos: Health tracking retention relies on accountability over learning
“The people who stay the longest They value the accountability of the tool more than they value the discrete learnings of each step.”
Corcos: Most founders treat fundraising as isolated events, not trend lines
“I think most founders treat each fundraise like a dot rather than a trend line.”
Corcos: VCs Have Far Greater Market Exposure Than Founders
“The reality is that VCs or investors broadly just have way more exposure than a founder does. If you're a founder and you're working on your one company for five years. You don't know what's going on outside of your company. You don't have the capacity. You're…”
Corcos: Founders fail if they don't maintain explicit lists of investor asks
“The first and most important thing is you need to know what you need. If I say, how can I help? And you say, I don't know, you've already failed. You need to have a list of things that your, you and your team need help with, because you'd be surprised at how o…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sam'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, Levels | 1 | 51 | 50% 3/6 | full record on 20VC → |
 FOUNDER'S JOURNALLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Levels | 2 | 20 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Founder's Journal → |