Insight
Data-driven algorithmic VC investing fails at the seed stage, says Zelby
“In my opinion, it only works at certain stages and in certain categories. This does not work at all at the seed stage. You're betting on people for the most part, and you're betting on the growth of a category. There's no data.”
Insight
Long funnels work for consumer products, but B2B requires shorter onboarding
“One nuance here that is a hundred percent accurate for consumer and a hundred percent inaccurate for B to B for anything enterprise shorter is better.”
Disclosure
SignalFire uses proprietary algorithms for deal sourcing and talent intelligence
“So we buy, scrape, or, you know, aggregate every data signal you could possibly imagine. And our engineers have proprietary algorithms that use that data to do one of two things. One, we have different systems that are alerting systems for us on the investment…”
Disclosure
SignalFire completes a minority of investments purely from automated alerts
“On the sourcing side, we've definitely done deals that were completely from our alerting system. In addition, we just do a ton more outbound than the average firm because we'll go in these meetings and we'll triage based off of, oh, this looks interesting, and…”
Insight
Enterprise systems of record achieve defensibility because data migration is painful
“Ripping and replacing software is so painful, and it's incredibly hard to get people to do it. You've already trained your team on it. It has all of your information and data sitting in that system. It's just really hard to rip something out when it's there, w…”
Opinion
Shoe subscription startups must build B2B infrastructure for major legacy brands
“The only way I think you do this as an independent company is you provide the picks and shovels infrastructure for every brand to do it. So you go and sell to the Brooks, to the Nike, to the Adidas, to the Reebok. I think that's doable.”
Opinion
Remote personal training apps like Future fundamentally sell human accountability
“Essentially, in my opinion, FutureFit is paying for accountability. So you're paying 200 dollars a month for a person on the other end to, like, sort of care about you.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tempo fitness extracts margins from recurring software subscriptions, not hardware sales
“They don't make a ton of money on the hardware part. They're making money on the subscription.”
Disclosure
SignalFire operates with one-third engineers to invest its $500M fund
“So if you look at our team, we're about a third engineers and data scientists building products. We're about a third people on our platform. These are the in-house business people doing PR recruiting growth, and then we have investment, and we, you know, we es…”
Assertion Supported
Deel won by focusing on contractors over full-time international employment
“Their biggest competitors. So there's two big ones, papaya global and remote.com and deal started out a little bit differently. The other two said, Hey, we're going to really focus on full-time employment internationally. They focused on contractors”
Disclosure
SignalFire reserves its proprietary data platform exclusively for portfolio companies
“We do not sell it and we don't spin it out. That's part of our whole selling point is that this is within the family. So if you come and take our money and become part of the SignalFire family, you get access to all this stuff. So we don't actually give it out…”
Assertion Partly supported
Approximately 75% of kids aged 9 to 15 are on Roblox
“75% of kids between nine and 15, I think, are on Roblox.”
Assertion Supported
The average Series A startup uses 34 different SaaS applications
“If you look at the average series a company they're using, I think the stat is 34 different SAS applications.”
Assertion Supported
Tempo fitness uses 3D computer vision to instantly correct exercise form
“Well, it uses computer vision to not only count the reps, but it checks your form. So let's say you're doing a curl and you're only going. It'll call that out. Or if you're doing a lunge and your knee is going over your ankle. And so part of the weight countin…”
Assertion Supported
Erik Voorhees launched unreleased crypto token basket platform Prism in 2017
“Well, in 2017, so Eric Voorhees, who was the guy that created ShapeShift, he actually created Satoshi Dice. He was super, super early in the crypto space. He launched something that never got out of private beta called Prism, and you could create a basket of t…”
Assertion Contradicted
Future Fitness charges $200 per month for digital virtual personal training
“You know what I was going to say though, a partnership opportunity for them is future fit because they're already charging people, 200 dollars a month for literally a digital subscription to a virtual trainer.”
