Steve Vassallo

Everything Steve Vassallo said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.

20VC Opinion

Vassallo: Most VC firms superficially view design as 'drapes and drop shadows'

“I think the vast majority of firms do not understand design fundamentally. I think most folks in the venture industry still think about design as sort of a, you know, as sort of the drapes and the drop shadows, as it were, as sort of styling exercises.”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 9:21 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Startup ecosystem's major failure mode is shipping overly lightweight MVPs

“This notion of minimum viable product, I think, is in some senses cute to talk about. It's certainly something that I think for folks who are used to building, Cathedrals for prototypes. I think it's something that would help them in many regards, but I think …”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 14:25 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Joining mediocre small startups is where resumes go to die

“The middle point, in other words, going and joining a small startup where your friends are working because you know somebody there or because it, you know, sort of sounds like an interesting category, but you're not really sure because you haven't spent enough…”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 19:00 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Product-market fit is liquid, not a static destination

“Product market fit is a liquid, not a solid.”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 21:08 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Assertion Not checkable as stated

Vassallo: VC ecosystem lacks practical resources for designer-founders

“When I looked at the venture industry that I was now part of, most of the observations were pretty high level. So there were lots of stats out there on numbers of billion dollar design founded companies or stats on LinkedIn job openings for user experience des…”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 6:16 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Designer-founders must approach business models like user experience

“And so I think most designers really need to begin to kind of step back from their sort of super strength in product design and understand that, Hey, like I also need to think about my business model in this with the same intentionality and the same focus that…”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 12:39 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Young workers over-optimize for initial salary over long-term mentorship

“The most common failure mode that I see for young people designers and engineers, business folks coming into the workforce is that they over optimize around title and or around salary, or around sort of very much the, sort of call them the transactional compon…”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 16:04 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Insight

Vassallo: Educational systems and early jobs strip away natural entrepreneurial instincts

“I believe we're all natural-born entrepreneurs. Oftentimes, it gets designed out of us by our educational systems or by the very narrow nature of our first jobs or second jobs”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 26:38 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

20VC Disclosure

Steve Vassallo Refuses to Share Pitch Decks With His VC Spouse

“When we're asked you know, can you send the deck or the diligence materials to your wife? I will outright say absolutely no. So we keep a Chinese wall between us.”

Steve Vassallo Feb 26, 2018 ▶ 25:31 20VC: Why The Current Crop Of VC Does Not Understand Design, Why Product Market Fit Is A Liquid Not A Solid & How Graduates Can Optimise Their Career for Personal Development with Steve Vassallo, General Partner @ Foundation Capital

The other half of the tape: Steve Vassallo's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 21 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 12Trae Vassallo 4Jason Lemkin 2Rory O'Driscoll 1

Every mention by year

One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Steve'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, Foundation Capital	1	9	—	full record on 20VC →