Seth Sternberg
Co-Founder and CEO, Honor Technology. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@SethJS ↗LinkedIn ↗honorcare.com ↗
Seth Sternberg is the co-founder and CEO of Honor Technology, a tech-enabled eldercare platform that acquired Home Instead in 2021. Before founding Honor, he co-founded and served as CEO of the web messaging company Meebo, which was acquired by Google in 2012.
2shows
2appearances
19statements
3resolved
2supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Seth Sternberg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Sternberg: 80% of VCs detract value from board meetings
“I, more than anything, because I kind of have this theory, I think about 80% of VCs, frankly, detract from the value of the kind of board in the discussion. I think 10% are neutral, and I think 10% are really positive.”
Sternberg: Honor sets $15 company wage floor, $17 in Bay Area
“Their earnings potential right out the gate with honor will be in the Bay area for our pioneers, 17 dollars an hour, and we're creating a floor of 15 dollars for the company.”
Sternberg: Firing poor-fit employees quickly benefits the employee long-term
“If someone's not a good fit for a company, then it's actually bad for them too, right? And so if you figure that out really quickly You can point that out to them before having joined the company, even if it becomes a thing on their resume and they are better …”
Sternberg: Building a startup to flip leads to destructive short-term decisions
“If you're building to flip, you'll make short-term decisions, and that will come back to bite you.”
Sternberg: Average senior care provider earnings are $9.50 per hour
“The average Earnings for care providers today are nine 50 an hour.”
Sternberg: Open marketplaces fail families navigating sudden senior care crises
“Now marketplace is a kind of a loaded term because I actually think that the experience of a user who, you know, whose mom just fell. Is just getting, you know, discharged from the hospital. The last thing they want is to wade into a marketplace and try to fig…”
Sternberg: Senior care neglects social and emotional needs for physical ones
“There's a lot of focus in today's world on the physical needs of a senior, right? Like helping them get out of bed, helping them with, you know, breakfast, but there's not enough focus on the social emotional needs of the senior.”
Sternberg: Tech will shift from conscious interaction to background appliance-like utility
“I think that's an era that's going to come to a close pretty soon. Right, and I think we're going to go into an era where technology enables experiences, and it's kind of like using a toaster oven or a microwave.”
Sternberg: Profitable business models enable far greater and scalable human impact
“If we can make humans' lives better by creating a real business around it, you know, then we can make so many more humans' lives better because businesses have this nice thing that they're kind of perpetually in motion and perpetually growing.”
Sternberg: Mission-first startups force distinct operational and hiring choices
“When you start with a mission first, you make a lot of different choices, and you also end up with a very different kind of team”
Sternberg: Sales and marketing require distinct people, not combined roles
“I always wanted these kind of what I now call unicorn people to fulfill a unicorn role. Like, why do you need to pay for both a salesperson and a marketing person? Can't they just be one person? And second time around, you recognize that they're actually reall…”
Sternberg: Honor hires small, highly selective engineering teams of 10x talent
“We are building the tech teams in really similar ways, so there are a few different philosophies on how to build a tech team, but what we do is extraordinarily selective, but low numbers of engineers, so it's really hard to find engineers that we want to work …”
Sternberg: Great VCs offer strategic advice without trying to run companies
“They really understand that the company is run by the founders, and they understand the limits of their knowledge on what's going on on the inside, kind of tactically, and so they're really, like, the truly great VCs are really good at giving strategic advice,…”
Sternberg: Personality, vision, and tactical alignment are core investor selection criteria
“It's like, do we like each other? Do we agree on the vision? And do we agree on the tactics at a high level? And then from there, it's a lot of nice to have. But I think those three are the core.”
Sternberg: Split board votes signal poor governance
“If something actually comes to like a split vote in the board, or the board has to go through a formal process to make a decision that kind of everybody didn't already kind of agree on, that's probably a pretty bad sign.”
Sternberg: Retaining top executive talent requires true empowerment, not micromanagement
“Clearly both Larry and Sergey and then Mark did a good job of truly empowering really, really smart people, because you cannot keep really smart people if you kind of just tell them what to do.”
Sternberg: Honor will launch transformative home care products within five years
“Also within five years, for sure, we'll have introduced kind of new products and services into the homes that really changed the face of what home care is considered to be today, but will make it so much better for the kids and their parents.”
Sternberg: Honor caregivers are present when clients pass away
“Because, you know, we will literally be in the homes of customers who pass away when we're in the home.”
The other half of the tape: Seth Sternberg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Frank Chen 2Jeff Clavier 1Harry Stebbings 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 2
the a16z Podcast 2
2018 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Seth'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 and CEO, Honor Technology | 1 | 13 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
| a16zLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Honor Technology | 1 | 6 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |