why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable
ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't;
assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card:
▮▮▮▮▮ certainty ·
▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Opinion
Ehrenberg: Y Combinator's adversarial founder-investor ethos is 'really shitty'
“It's against, like, the YC ethos. Like, I don't think in many ways that that attitude of it, you know, founder, it's founders versus investors, keep investors at arm's length is really healthy. I actually think that's really shitty. And does founders agree to …”
Disclosure
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures flatly refuses to invest in crypto or tokens
“We will not do anything in crypto or tokens.”
Disclosure
IA Ventures requires every prospective investment to have multi-billion-dollar potential
“Each of us make two to three investments in a given year. Every investment that we are making, we think has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar outcome. Every single one. That, that is the bar.”
Disclosure
IA Ventures targets 24 deals per fund to find two returners
“We found in our, kind of, the power law reality of venture that we would much rather take 24 gigantic swings in a portfolio over a four-year period and work Hopefully that two will be multiple fund returners and that the next six, so call it two super performe…”
Insight
Ehrenberg: Permissive 'founder friendly' VCs are actually doing founders a disservice
“Founder friendly has Become identified or associated with being permissive and being loose as it relates to documentation, as it relates to founder expectations, as it relates to founder egos. I think that is actually being very founder unfriendly”
Disclosure
IA Ventures found zero investable D2C fintechs after reviewing hundreds
“I would say we've looked at hundreds since the days that we did those two investments and have not found anything that has really met that threshold. So is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? Not based on what I've seen.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ehrenberg: Regulated enterprises will not buy pure cloud software
“There are a lot of places that unless you can give them an appliance, or you can load it on their servers inside their firewall, they're not going to buy it. They are not going to put their data in the cloud.”
Disclosure
IA Ventures expanded beyond big data due to restrictive investment thesis
“Those guardrails were overly restrictive relative to where we felt we could really both source and invest intelligently and to achieve the returns that we were shooting for.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ehrenberg: Enterprise sales got easier as companies created test sandboxes
“Even three years ago it was much, much harder to sell to the enterprise because it had to be right. It had to be full production ready. It really couldn't be In beta, because the stakes were so high. Now, I think a lot of companies have environments that are j…”
Disclosure
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures considers vehicle hardware startups for their data
“Even though we're really not a hardware oriented fund, we look pretty seriously at some of these companies because of the data that these devices are capturing”
Disclosure
Ehrenberg: IA Ventures invested in The Trade Desk at PowerPoint stage
“Sometimes we invest, you know, again, Trade Desk was a PowerPoint.”
Disclosure
IA Ventures held 19% ownership in The Trade Desk at its IPO
“We actually co-led the seed round with Founder Collective, and then we bridged the company three times, participated in the A, participated in the B, and by the time the company IPO'd in September of 16, we own 19% at IPO”