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David Rosenthal

Co-Host, Acquired · 1 appearance on the record.

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hostinvestorfounder@djrosent ↗LinkedIn ↗acquired.fm ↗

David Rosenthal is the co-founder and co-host of Acquired, an in-depth business podcast detailing company histories and strategies. Previously a Principal at Madrona Venture Group, he also manages the early-stage investment fund Kindergarten Ventures.

16statements → 5claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.81/5average certainty → 2.25/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 19said about them ↓

3 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 1 names 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 David 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

Assertion Supported
Rosenthal: Andreessen Horowitz made $11 billion on its Coinbase investment
“Well, it turns out they invested in Coinbase and made eleven billion dollars on it.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 49:13 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
100% certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
83% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

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 David Rosenthal on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything David Rosenthal said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Rosenthal: Bad timing, not bad models, killed dot-com startups
“And the reality was that was all wrong. It was just timing and exogenous factors that made that not work at the moment.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 20:44 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: Entry price does not matter in early-stage venture capital
“If you're just buying options at early stage venture, then price doesn't matter. Then you want to have as many shots on goal as possible. You want extreme volatility and long tails, right? All the stuff that you don't want when you're buying a series of cash f…”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 24:36 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: VCs must back high-profile failures to capture extreme upside winners
“I want to be in the big blow-ups because it means I'm chasing volatility, and that means I'm going to get into huge winners as well.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 26:52 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: Y Combinator proves early-stage VC scales because founders avoid help
“Well, it turns out there's a whole class of entrepreneurs, a large percentage of them that don't need or want your help. So I would actually push back. I think it actually can scale quite well. Y Combinator's a perfect example of this. They've done thousands a…”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 29:39 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: Undifferentiated mid-tier venture capital firms will die a slow death
“If you're undifferentiated You're not gonna get the best deals, and you're gonna die a slow death.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 33:36 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Opinion
Rosenthal: Silicon Valley probably needs its own native Goldman Sachs
“People are even talking in Silicon Valley about, like, why is there not a native Goldman Sachs of Silicon Valley, and that's a really good question. There probably should be.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 46:07 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Supported
Rosenthal: Andreessen Horowitz made $11 billion on its Coinbase investment
“Well, it turns out they invested in Coinbase and made eleven billion dollars on it.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 49:13 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Disclosure
Rosenthal: Braintrust reached an $11.5 billion market cap on $30 million raised
“Braintrust is a great example. Super, super interesting company. My fund invested a little bit in it. When they listed on Coinbase about a month ago, they shot up to about an 11 and a half billion dollar market cap. And this is a real company. They've got tens…”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 55:13 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: Crypto projects bootstrap resources by issuing tokens instead of cash
“Because in crypto, you can bootstrap resources. Like, you can incentivize players in your ecosystem to participate by rewarding them with the project itself, like tokens in the project itself. You don't need to go pay somebody to do something. And that applies…”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 55:40 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Insight
Rosenthal: Sequoia's Don Valentine valued industry perspective over financial acumen
“Don Valentine, who started Sequoia in the seventies, his big innovation in venture was this realization that, Hey, what mattered in early stage venture capital was not finance acumen. It was industry perspective.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 12:48 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rosenthal: Andreessen Horowitz reshaped venture capital through high-velocity seed investing
“And Andreessen was the firm that really got this. It started deploying tons of capital, doing lots of seed investments, high valuations, high capital velocity deployment, and really has reshaped the whole industry around it.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 24:56 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Supported
Rosenthal: Solo investor Elad Gil has deployed over a billion dollars
“I don't know the exact figures, but I guess he's probably deployed hundreds of millions, if not billion plus of capital over the last few years, and it's just him.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 39:51 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Disclosure
Rosenthal: I deploy as much angel capital in Series E as pre-seed
“Like, I deploy just as much capital in series C's and D's and E's As I do in pre-seeds.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 41:31 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Partly supported
Rosenthal: Sequoia Capital bought 40% of Cisco for roughly $2 million
“You look at some of the rounds that they were doing, you know, they were putting like Two million bucks into Cisco for, like, 40% of the company.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 18:57 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Disclosure
Rosenthal: I deployed more capital as a podcaster than a VC
“I have a small fund. I'm a podcaster now, but I still, I've never invested more in more companies or more money in my career while I'm a podcaster.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 36:18 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Supported
Rosenthal: Modern Treasury processed over $2 billion monthly in under four years
“This company's three and a half years old, and they're doing over two billion dollars of payment volume a month on the platform.”
David Rosenthal Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 49:22 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)

The other half of the tape: David Rosenthal's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 17 times in 1 episode on Capital Allocators. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jeffrey Solomon 17

Statements about David Rosenthal, by other people (2)

Disclosure
Gilbert: Acquired began to investigate why large acquisitions succeed
“When I pitched him on the concept for Acquired of, like, hey, you're investing in companies, I'm starting companies, like, it'd be nice to understand When they get acquired for like a lot of money, and those go really well, why?”
Ben Gilbert Jan 3, 2022 ▶ 11:55 David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment World 1 (Capital Allocators, EP.229)
Assertion Contradicted
3,000 people attended the funeral for victims Cecil and David Rosenthal
“And when I was at their funeral yesterday, and there were 3000 people there”
Jeffrey Solomon Nov 5, 2018 ▶ 32:00 Jeffrey Solomon - Grief and Goodness in Squirrel Hill (SPECIAL EPISODE)

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
001012012018episodesmentions
0112018episodes it came up in
00100.52012018episodesmentions per episode
2018 17 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert – Acquiring an Industry. Venture is Eating the Investment Jan 3, 2022 26m
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