Wesley Chan
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, FPV Ventures. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investoroperatorexecutivefpvventures.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
During his early career at Google, Chan founded Google Analytics and Google Voice and helped launch Google Ventures' seed investing program. He later co-founded FPV Ventures after investing at GV and Felicis Ventures, backing companies including Canva, Plaid, and Gusto.
2shows
3appearances
40statements
10resolved
6supported
2contradicted
60%fully supported
14said about them ↓ Everything Wesley Chan said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Wesley Chan: More Than 75% of the Crypto Industry Is Scammy
“I was one of the first to like boohoo crypto. You know, some of it's unwell, but like I said, like, I can't be involved in a bunch of stuff where like, I think more than three quarters of it is scammy.”
Wesley Chan Refuses to Invest Without a 100-Year Company Vision
“If the founder comes to me and doesn't have a hundred year plan, I don't want to, I don't care. I don't want to be involved. We don't just do wedges, right?”
Wesley Chan Ignores TAM and Market Size When Making Investments
“I don't do it. I don't actually, you know, look at the say, is the market big enough? I just say, does the founder have a unique insight on a market that hasn't been created yet or that, you know, they're about to expand into.”
Wesley Chan: Market Downturns Are Treacherous Times to Actually Invest Capital
“No, it's the best time to have a fund. It's not the best time to be investing, right? There's a lot of treacherous deals out there.”
Wesley Chan Avoids Taking Pitches in Domains Where He Has Expertise
“So I try not to take any pitches in the areas I know too much about because I have a natural bias to pass on it and say, say no. And I'd rather, you know, have one of my colleagues or partners who don't know enough about it, take the pitch and then like be rea…”
Democratizing expert software increases a company's total addressable market by 100x
“And by the way, it also increases your market by an order of a hundred extra more, right? You know, we're You know, Adobe's building Photoshop for probably hundreds of thousands of people who want to, who are skilled or want to make design their profession, an…”
Wesley Chan: Founders Hate Corporate VC Due to Divergent Interests
“Corporate venture capital has been an utter distaste and a success and founders hate it because, you know, the interest of the company that's investing in the interest of the founders diverge.”
Wesley Chan: Unfavorable markets defeat great founders unless they adapt
“A market will beat out a great founder, but the best founders understand how to adapt to the market and find the bigger piece, right?”
Wesley Chan: Outlier returns come from market-creating companies
“My outlier returns the companies that I've had the privilege of working with Are ones that create new markets.”
Wesley Chan Claims a 30% Hit Rate on Early-Stage Unicorn Investments
“My hit rates around, around 30%. Right. So, you know, one in every, you know, three or four companies I've hit, you know, are a billion dollar plus, and I've been an early investor.”
Wesley Chan Led Canva's Series A Without 20% Ownership or Board Seat
“I did not have 20% ownership of Canva when I led the Series A. I did not have a board seat. In fact, so many people said no to them because they said, we're not giving you a board seat. Or they said, we're not giving you 20% ownership.”
Wesley Chan: Dogmatic venture capitalists usually get knocked out quickly
“In fact, the VCs that subscribe to hard and fast rules that have dogma are usually the ones that get knocked out very quickly.”
Wesley Chan Passed on Twilio's Seed Round Due to Expert Bias
“And I passed on it because, you know, I looked at it and, you know, talked to my team at Google voice and everybody looked at it. It's like, oh, this is easy to do. Like, you know, once the company gets big enough, they don't need toilet anymore. Boy, I didn't…”
Ring will generate hundreds of millions in revenue in 2016
“He's, you know, going to do, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, if not more this year.”
Fitbit became a massive fund returner despite widespread investor skepticism
“With Fitbit, when I didn't bet on Fitbit, everybody else was looking at connected devices or looking at hardware and going, you can't make money on hardware. And I didn't, You know, sort of wrote a check into it and became one of the biggest, you know, sort of…”
Teenage messaging and emoji apps are silly, fleeting investments without durability
“A lot of folks are investing in something that I find kind of silly. Oh, I'm building apps for teenagers to talk with each other, or I'm building an app for people to sort of like you know, send emojis to people. I don't understand those markets. You know, the…”
FPV Ventures Makes Investment Decisions in Under 12 Hours
“It's Peg and myself and a couple. Folks were five people. We move really fast. You know, we can decide on things in less than 12 hours.”
Wesley Chan Seeks 'Two Gigabyte' Product Breakthroughs Over Incremental Features
“I ask founders and I tell the story, what's your two gigabyte moment? Like, you know, you're telling me something that's incremental and I'm looking for the two gigabyte when everybody else has 25 megabyte moment.”
Wesley Chan: Market sizing fails by conflating features with products
“So that's the fallacy of market sizing, right? Is that people conflate that people conflate the feature part of their things in the market size for that feature for that of the product, right?”
Wesley Chan Caps FPV Ventures' $450M Fund at 20 Core Positions
“I can only do maybe 20 at most core positions in my fund.”
Chan: Evaluate early startups on a founder's ability to evolve products
“My biggest lesson learned on investing is that what you see today is not what, if the founder truly visionary will not be what the company is a year or two years or five or 10 years from then. So you have to really believe that the founder is capable of morphi…”
Identifying Product Visionaries Requires Asking Non-Gameable Questions Ten Different Ways
“You have to ask it 10 different ways. In ways that make sense. And, you know, again, that's one of those things I want to give away the trade secret to how I do it, but like you, you're, you have to ask it 10 different ways and listen carefully. And if the ans…”
Wesley Chan: Sales Leaders and CMOs Often Make the Best Product Managers
“Some of the salespeople, some sales, you know, leaders and CMOs have lots of product expertise. You have to remember, they're close to the customer. They've explained to the customer what the product does. They, you know, in their previous jobs have learned wh…”
The other half of the tape: Wesley Chan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 14 times in 5 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Victoria Treyger 4Aydin Senkut 3Melanie Perkins 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 14
2019 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: What It Takes To Be The Most Effective Coach To Startup Founders, The Biggest Surprises and Challenges About Transitioning To Venture From Operations & 3 Trends Shaking The World of Consumer Today with Victoria Treyger, General Partner @ Felicis Ven
- 20VC: Guild Education's Rachel Carlson on The Benefits of Scaling Startups Outside of Silicon Valley, Why Mission and Margin Are So Tightly Integrated & Why Mums Are The Most Under-Utilised Asset In The Economy
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2016 9 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Start Niche, Move Broader & Become Profitable Quickly with Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO @ Canva
- 20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
- 20VC: Techstars Founder, David Cohen on Scaling Techstars Ventures and Investing In Uber, Twilio and Sendgrid
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Wesley'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 Managing Partner, FPV Ventures | 2 | 37 | 63% 5/8 | full record on 20VC → |
 AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Co-Founder and Managing Partner, FPV Ventures | 1 | 3 | 50% 1/2 | full record on American Optimist → |