Zach Weinberg
Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio. On 2 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderinvestorexecutiveoperator@zachweinberg ↗
Zach Weinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Curie.Bio and a general partner at Operator Partners. He previously co-founded Invite Media, which was acquired by Google, and Flatiron Health, which was acquired by Roche.
2shows
2appearances
47statements
6resolved
2supported
1contradicted
33%fully supported
12said about them ↓ Everything Zach Weinberg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Weinberg: Keith Rabois is a "giant doofus" regarding healthcare
“I think the guy is a giant doofus, and I would continue to hold my belief that he's a giant doofus, and I'll be very specific about why. I think Keith Raboy is probably a phenomenal technical investor, software company investor. It seems to me to be an amazing…”
Weinberg: Upper-middle-class family safety nets enable founders to take startup risks
“The reality is if you've got family wealth, and we're not talking about having to have tens of millions of dollars here, you can just be upper middle class wealth, let's call it. It makes it a lot easier to make a leap and to do a startup because in the back o…”
Weinberg: It is naive for modern companies to claim complete societal neutrality
“To me, I think it's a little naive to think that a company can just say, we stand for absolutely nothing but our business. And maybe that was true 5060 years ago, but I just don't believe that that's true today.”
Weinberg: Companies should take socio-political stances before their business is affected
“There are things that eventually have an effect on the business, and you need to make a stand on them before they have that effect.”
Weinberg: Initial checks drive almost all value in venture returns
“I'm more and more convinced that it kind of doesn't matter. And actually by far the most important thing is did you get into the right great company in the first place? It's the initial check that drives almost all the value.”
Weinberg: Founders should sell under 5% of equity in secondary sales
“For the founder, I encourage them to take enough money off the table that they're comfortable taking a big swing at a bigger outcome. And for some people, just to put some numbers against it, some people, that's a million dollars. Because remember, you're goin…”
Weinberg: Venture fund returns are dropping to 1.5x to 2x
“You're seeing fund returns come down. You're not seeing five X, six X funds. You're seeing one and a half X, two X funds, and some that are probably even one X funds where you pile in and something goes really wrong.”
Doctors will not change workflows within a startup's timeframe
“Doctors are not going to change. And at least not in any sort of timeframe that matters for a startup. Maybe, maybe 1015 years.”
Weinberg: Companies can take public stances while prohibiting workplace political debates
“You can say, I believe these things are important, and also say to an employee base, however, don't bring it into the day-to-day office, don't bully people, and if you do bully people, and if you do push people based on their beliefs, we're going to fire you, …”
Weinberg: Tech companies are not democracies; control rests with CEOs and boards
“And Jeff is completely right. It is not a democracy and it's really up to the CEO. And then ultimately the board who controls who the CEO is.”
Weinberg: Second-time founders with small first exits are the best investments
“I have found that second time founders who had a good but small first outcome are by far and away the best people to invest in.”
Flatiron captures EGFR mutation status in 99% of its dataset
“If you looked for that in a structured field, you'd see it about nine or 10% of the time. In our data set, it's 99%.”
EMRs are built for billing and workflow, not population health
“EMRs, including our own, we're no better, are built for physician workflow and billing. They're not built for population health or informatics or all this”
Machine learning should enhance human experts rather than replace them
“Our take on this is we should be building tools for trained professionals along with a feedback loop to tell them how they're doing. Machine learning and other technologies I think you can apply on top to make those people slightly more efficient.”
Most under-20 person healthcare startups fail to cross the scaling chasm
“There's a hell of a lot of 20 people and under healthcare startups coming out of incubators and whatnot, but most, if you look at the success, and not to, Poo poo startups, but most fail to cross that chasm into, like, a successful healthcare business.”
Weinberg: Operator Partners targets at least 2x next-round valuation step-ups
“We're looking for things where the multiple on the next round, not because I care about the markup at all, but because it shows Real growth and real value creation is more than like two X, let's call it as a baseline. So if I'm going to fund a company at a 10 …”
Weinberg: Wealth increases happiness by providing total flexibility over time
“I actually would say the money has made me happier. Maybe I'm not supposed to say it, but it's true, but it's not because, oh, I get to go around like spending it on cars and houses and stuff like that. It's just the flexibility to choose where you want to spe…”
Weinberg: Financial independence enabled me to speak freely on Twitter
“I don't need to ask anybody for anything anymore, I guess, and there's a freedom to that. I don't have to rely on somebody else saying, oh, I like this person, let me help him, and I guess that's a little liberating. And you'll notice I didn't necessarily have…”
Weinberg: Seed investments must project at least a 2x Series A step-up
“And we're looking for things where the multiple on the next round, not because I care about the markup at all, but because it shows Real growth and real value creation is more than like two X, let's call it as a baseline. So if I'm going to fund a company at a…”
Weinberg: For every seed win with a markup, three or four fail
“Because for every one of those checks that you write that gets there, there's like three or four that don't. And it's got to pay for the ones that don't get there. And that's the venture math, right? Your winners have to win big and they have to pay for all th…”
Weinberg: Startup liquidity cycle times are now 10 years or longer
“I think the cycle times on these companies are so long. We used to say seven years, but I think it's actually much closer to 10, if not longer.”
Weinberg: Shifting existing customer budgets is easier than creating new ones
“It's a lot easier to go after a market where people are already budgeting for that type of expense, whether it's a business is already budgeting for it, And you're just shifting it from where they spend it today to what you're going to do. And that's a lot eas…”
Weinberg: Operator Partners exercises Series A pro-rata rights 100% of the time
“For now, what we're generally saying is if the Series A Is getting done and it's getting done at a price that we feel like is reasonable for the business, which most of them are, by the way, that's 80, 90%. Then a hundred percent of the time we're going to par…”
The other half of the tape: Zach Weinberg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 11 times in 5 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Logan Bartlett 4Harry Stebbings 3Matt Turck 2Samir Vasavada 1Josh Kopelman 1
Statements about Zach Weinberg, by other people (1)
Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg Were Vise's First Investors
“And the first investors that actually said yes were these guys, Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg, who started a company called Flatiron Health and sold it For a bunch of money to Roche and they actually went to Penn, and they're like, look, we had a similar story …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 9
the MAD Podcast 2
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2022 4 mentions in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Zach'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, Curie.Bio | 1 +1 | 25 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
| MADLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio | 1 | 22 | 20% 1/5 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |