Arjun Sethi
1 appearance on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
32statements → 13claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 3.75/5average certainty → 2.16/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
1 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 10 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 12 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · 12 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 10 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Arjun argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Arjun Sethi on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Arjun Sethi said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Sethi: Social Capital marketed data capabilities ahead of actual execution
“I don't think we successfully did that, but I think we did successfully marketed it ahead of what we could do, but we did bring some of the brightest minds around the table.”
Sethi: VCs demand high ownership targets because they are bad pickers
“A lot of the reasons why people focus on ownership, it's a hard thing to say is that they're just bad pickers. So if you say I can focus on 20, I want 10, 15, 20% ownership in this company. It's because they believe that if they make failure somewhere else tha…”
Sethi: Startups like Terra and FTX could reach hundreds of billions
“These companies will probably at some point, if they continue to grow at the pace they're growing, could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Sethi: Tribe Capital's portfolio loss ratio has always been under 5%
“And so historically, and up until this day, you know, fast forward four or five years since we started, our loss ratios have always been sub five percent.”
Sethi: 90% of startups lack product-market fit, even after raising $100M
“90% of the time, companies do not have product market fit. That's a really hard statement. Even companies that have raised upwards of 25, 50, a hundred million dollars, sometimes they don't have product market fit.”
Sethi: A startup's core product-market fit dynamics never improve over time
“One thing that never changes, and we've seen that across every company, we've been a part of Uber, Facebook, Airbnb, Lyft, et cetera. The list goes on where we built a lot of these growth and data science frameworks is that their product market fit and how the…”
Sethi: Lolapps spent up to $60M monthly on digital advertising
“We would spend upwards of 50 to sixty million dollars a month in advertising across mobile and social platforms.”
Sethi: MessageMe team became rare outside shareholders in Telegram
“Part of the asset sale and team acquisition, interestingly enough, was that we ended up selling a small portion of our designs and products to Telegram, and so you see a lot of that today. So we're probably one of the only outside shareholders that own parts o…”
Sethi: Tribe Capital ignores pitch decks and traditional data rooms
“Like I'm not looking at a data room. I don't look at their deck. I don't care about any of that.”
Sethi: Tribe generates 50-to-100-page company reports in 20 minutes
“The moment I get it on average, if we prioritize it, let's call it a P zero at the firm, it's 20 minutes to get a 50 to a hundred page report.”
Sethi: No other VC gives founders 50-to-100-page reports when passing
“If I'm giving you a 50 to a hundred page report and I'm passing on you with a 50 to a hundred page report. No one does that.”
Sethi: Tribe bases pro rata follow-on decisions on metrics, not board sentiment
“We don't rely on the last board meeting didn't feel good. So I don't want to do my pro rata. Or I didn't have a good conversation with the founder. We look very, very purely at the metrics and say, okay, great. If we were to upsize, what do we need to see?”
Sethi: Stealth energy company Invenia generates nearly $1B revenue with 60 employees
“Another one is we have a company called Invenia. Super stealth. Almost make about a billion a year in revenue. It's 60 people.”
Sethi: Tribe Capital holds private data on 2% of venture-backed startups
“I think the number for us is that we have roughly about two percent of almost all of the venture backed companies, private data sets that sit within our coffers and we benchmark off of, and the goal is to get to 10%, right?”
Sethi: Tribe Capital does not care about taking board seats
“I think a part of it is we don't care about board seats, at least again, aspirationally, we have, some of us have a ton, some of us have none.”
Sethi: Selling secondary equity was heavily stigmatized around 2008
“Taking secondary at that time as well was like a huge no, no. Like if you did it, You've committed some sort of sin, especially during the 2008 timeframe.”
Sethi: Early-stage angel rounds typically see an 80% failure rate
“The same loss ratio that you see typically at the early, early stage angel rounds, which is 80% of the stuff you invest in fails.”
Sethi: Social Capital was sole firm with growth and data science team
“Social Capital was the only firm that I had met that had built out a growth and data science team at the time.”
Sethi: Top 5% venture funds can have a 60% loss ratio
“Typical firms across early and mid would have up to, let's say a really, really good firm. It's 30% loss ratio, but on average, even as it's publicly available data, you can have up to 60% loss ratio, but you can be a top five percent firm.”
Sethi: Venture valuations are inflated at seed and late stages
“It's really, really early at the seed stage. You have a, maybe a product, a team or an idea, maybe you have a demo, but you're mainly going off of a narrative that people get excited about. And so people bid that. And that's the market price that you pay. So i…”
Sethi: Early-stage and $5B–$15B companies require the most investor support
“The earlier we invest, the more hands-on work. The later we invest, the less. There's more governance. But the much more later the company becomes in their life cycle, let's call it five, 10, fifteen billion these days that you see for a lot of our companies, …”
Sethi: Athelas benchmarked in top 5% of companies evaluated by Tribe
“And so they always benchmarked at the top five percent of companies that we had ever seen, but I had no idea what they did.”
Sethi: Tribe's First Look program drove over $100M in portfolio revenue
“So I mentioned those two examples, but if I was to count the revenue uptake for our whole portfolio, just through the first look program, I'm just getting customers. It's probably over a hundred million in annual revenue or ARR depending on the company.”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Arjun Sethi – A Technology Company that Deploys Capital at Tribe, Venture is Eating the In | Mar 14, 2022 | 54m |