Michael Seibel
26 statements across 3 episodes · 6 bullish · 7 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement May 8, 2019 by Michael Seibel · said 2 times in 2 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Michael Seibel's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Jason Lemkin (1), Anu Hariharan (1)
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2023 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Michael Seibel, oldest first
May 8, 2019 negative
Seibel: Most Common B2B Mistake Is Miscalculating Customer Acquisition Cost
“If we really look at a lot of YC companies nowadays, we have a ton of B to B companies, and the most common mistake they make is they don't really understand if they can afford the process they need to do to acquire customers.”
May 8, 2019 positive
Seibel: YC portfolio is worth $100B across 2,000+ funded companies
“To give you a sense of YC, we've now funded over 2000 companies, about 4000 alumni. Our companies combined are worth about a hundred billion dollars. We have about a hundred companies that are worth over a hundred million dollars and 17 worth over a billion, a…”
May 8, 2019 positive
Justin.tv survived two months of runway to reach $1M in profit
“We were always extremely transparent about our cash in hand, our months of runway, our traffic, our revenue. And there was a moment where we only had two months of runway left. We were generating about 750,000 dollars a month. We were burning about a million d…”
May 8, 2019
May 8, 2019
Seibel: Pre-PMF startups must minimize non-essential staff and fire frequently
“An early stage pre-product market fit company should be trying to minimize their non-essential employees, and you should not believe you're great at hiring, which means, unfortunately, you're probably gonna have to do a lot of firing.”
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Oct 5, 2023 positive
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Seibel: Pitch ask slides should focus on milestones, not hiring plans
“Talking about who you will hire on the ask slide. Nobody cares who you will hire. They care what you're going to do with the money, and more specifically, what revenue milestones you're going to hit, or what usage milestones you're going to hit with the money.”
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Oct 5, 2023
Seibel: Pitching unique insights requires first explaining what the startup does
“You only get the right to do this if I know what your company does and if I'm impressed with your team. A lot of founders try to skip to this point And if I don't know what your company does, I can't tell whether your insights good or not.”
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023 positive
Seibel: Early investors value execution speed over revenue numbers
“What investors are looking for is momentum. They're looking, do you get things done quickly? They're not necessarily looking for, do you have a ton of revenue or a ton of users? If they're investing in an early stage company, they know that you might not have …”
Oct 5, 2023 neutral
Michael Seibel: Angels write 10% of checks just to avoid saying no
“Category three that people don't talk about. If they ask me, it will be uncomfortable for me to say no, so I will write them a check. I'll tell you that in my experience, this is up to 10% of the time. I am hoping the founder doesn't ask me for money. Because …”
Oct 5, 2023
Michael Seibel: Startups need separate pitch explanations for investors and customers
“You need two different answers to what do you do. One that you give investors, and another one you give customers, and they're different. The words on the front page of your website are for customers. If you're using that for investors, more often than not, yo…”
Oct 5, 2023
Seibel: Pre-Airbnb rental platforms failed because they did not process payments
“All of the other products that came before it that let people do timeshare and list their places online didn't process payments. And as a result, processing payments in a low trust environment, where you have never met the host, and the host has never met you,…”
Oct 5, 2023
Seibel: Founders must earn investor attention every two minutes of a pitch
“A lot of people think that an investor is going to sit down for a 30 minute meeting and give them 30 minutes of their time. It's not true. Especially on Zoom, it's very not true. You earn every two minutes of that meeting. If the last two minutes sucked, that …”
Oct 5, 2023
Oct 5, 2023 positive
Seibel: Bottom-Up Market Sizing Math Matters Far More Than Headline Numbers
“The reality is how you calculate the number is what's important. As an investor, I don't know how many potential users you might be able to get. You have to educate me about that. You should do that research. I don't know how much you're going to charge the us…”
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Oct 5, 2023 negative
Seibel: Hiring a designer for a startup pitch deck is a mistake
“If you need a designer to build a slide deck, you're doing it wrong. And here's an even deeper, more important point. Your designer has no idea what the most interesting and important points of your pitch are. So if you hand them your pitch to design, they wil…”