Samir Vasavada
Co-Founder & CEO, Vise. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@samir_vasavada ↗LinkedIn ↗vise.com ↗
Samir Vasavada co-founded Vise at age 16 alongside Runik Mehrotra, building an AI-powered portfolio management platform for financial advisors. He raised $128 million from investors including Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund, leading the company to unicorn status.
2shows
2appearances
61statements
11resolved
4supported
3contradicted
36%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Samir Vasavada said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Vasavada: GPs expensing private jets to investment funds is a scam
“And then what a lot of GPs do or a lot of managers do is they actually expense these planes or the operating costs from their fund. Which is, I feel like a complete scam, but you can basically deduct The cost of operating an aircraft from the actual fund, whic…”
Vasavada: Decisions that make employees happy are usually wrong for the business
“The decision that makes someone happy is usually the wrong decision for the business.”
Vasavada: VC incentives to burn capital contradict founder ownership interests
“An investor's incentive is to get you to burn money because they believe it'll help you grow faster. And if it grows faster that you can always raise more money and burn more money and they can put more money in. So for you to burn, So they can deploy more cap…”
Vasavada: Vise Leadership Meetings Were Consumed by DEI and Infrastructure
“When we went into our leadership meetings, we weren't talking about we weren't talking about that. We were talking about making infrastructure decisions that will matter in 2026 and rewriting our code to better position ourselves four or five years down the li…”
Vasavada: Big Tech Executives Lack Product-Market Fit Experience
“None of these people had to go out and find product market fit. They came into companies where there was already product market fit, and they just had to operate their little part of that company, or big part of that company, where they were kind of keeping it…”
Vasavada: 99% of Startup Advice Given to Founders Is Bad
“You don't get enough advice, and then you start getting capital, and you have stakeholders, and you get too much advice, and the problem is a lot of this advice is either bad advice, 99% of the advice is bad advice, and then the rest of the advice is contradic…”
Vasavada: Tech billionaires' 'all-cash' mega-mansions are actually financed by margin loans
“So like when you read those stories of like, I'm sure you've, Read a bunch of them of like, blah, blah, blah. Tech billionaire buys fifty million dollar house, a hundred million dollar house, all cash paid. They're not paying in all cash. What they're doing is…”
Vasavada: Vise should have bought legacy asset managers instead of hiring
“I think there was a tremendous opportunity to buy kind of legacy asset management businesses that had a tremendous amount of distribution and transform them with technology that we could have done if we raised a lot more money. Rather than going and hiring a b…”
Vasavada: Managers are incentivized to overhire to boost their resumes
“Their LinkedIn's are going to say scaled an organization from 20 people to 200 people. And like people think associate their identities with how big of an organization they have or how big of a of an org they were able to scale and over what time. So there's t…”
Vasavada: Raising $130M in 18 Months Was Bad for Vise
“So we raised something like a 120, hundred and thirty million dollars in an 18 month period. And that was a bad thing.”
Vasavada: Concentrating Board Ownership in One VC Suppresses Healthy Debate
“You want multiple voices in the boardroom, and I think the challenge is when you have One investor that owns 30% of the company and, you know, has piled in, you know, close to fifty million bucks, then you're going to have that investor's perspective as, you k…”
Vasavada: Scaling Headcount From 6 to 100 Slows Startups Down
“We had gone from, like, six people to, like, a hundred people overnight, basically, and A hundred people don't actually make your business move faster. It actually slows you down.”
Vasavada: Businesses Built Overnight Lack Defensible Competitive Moats
“If a billion dollar business is built overnight, it means someone else can go build that same billion dollar business overnight, and you don't actually have a moat.”
Vasavada: Premature Unicorn Status Attracts Corporate Recruits Over Builders
“The type of people you recruit when they see that you're a billion dollar business aren't focused on, we have a value advice called burn the boats. They're not focused on burning the boats. They're focused on a stable career and growing within an organization …”
Vasavada: Early-Stage Startups Should Not Be Run Remotely
“I don't think startups should be run remotely. Like, you can't build culture when, you know, people are, you know, all on Zoom all day. Like, you build culture at those water cooler moments and in the team”
Vasavada: Vise's Entire Executive Team Turned Over Within 12 Months
“And we did this, like, five, six, seven times over with the executive team that fully turned over in, like, 12 months.”
Vasavada: Vise Skipped Interviewing Early Execs and Only Pitched Them
“And we weren't, we didn't even interview them. Like, we were just in sell mode the whole time. We got We got our investors in sell mode. We were just trying to convince them to join.”
Vasavada: Big Tech Managers Lack the Ruthlessness Required for Startups
“A lot of managers, especially ones that come from bigger tech companies, where there are these, like, kind of legacy HR policies you know, they're just not as ruthless with headcount and personnel decisions as they should be”
Vasavada: All Asset Managers Will Transition to Personalized Software Platforms
“All asset managers will have to become platform companies, right? Investment advice will no longer be delivered through people and investment products. It will be delivered through platform in a personalized way at scale for Every single investor.”
Vasavada: Incumbent Asset Managers Lack the DNA to Build Great Software
“The DNA of these incumbent asset managers is not to build technology. It's not to build great product. It's not to build great software. And I know that because I spent times with these senior leadership teams at every single large asset management company. Th…”
Vasavada: Top VC Backing Can Attract Employees Seeking Quick Exits
“So it's a double-edged sword. And the reason why it's a double-edged sword is because on one hand, you've got all this great credibility by association. You have all of this social capital and that social capital allows you to hire people. It allows you to get…”
Vasavada: Modest Secondary Liquidity Is Critical for Founder Decision-Making
“It was, I think, for a founder to get a little bit of liquidity is really, really important in terms of long-term decision-making. Because from an incentives perspective, if you're a founder and you've got a hundred percent of your, you know, net worth in, in …”
The other half of the tape: Samir Vasavada's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ravi Gupta 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Samir'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, Vise | 1 | 42 | 50% 3/6 | full record on 20VC → |
 SOURCERYLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Vise | 1 | 19 | 20% 1/5 | full record on Sourcery → |