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Chad Byers

Co-Founder and General Partner, Susa Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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Chad Byers co-founded Susa Ventures in 2013, an early-stage venture firm investing in fintech, healthcare, enterprise software, and logistics. He is best known as an early seed-stage backer of Robinhood, alongside investments in companies such as Andela, Mux, Stord, and Newfront Insurance.

15statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 3.93/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → 2said about them ↓

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

4 predictions · 1 assertion · 3 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 3 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 Chad argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

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 Chad Byers on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Chad Byers said on TBPN that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Byers: Early stage will be the last entrenched Alamo of venture
“In a world where companies are more efficient, early stage is really like the place to, Do this business. It'll be the last entrenched Alamo of venture.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 11:09 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Byers: $70M pre-product seed rounds will be a huge waste of capital
“There's seed rounds at 70 with nothing and like four 19 year olds. Like this is insane. And because Ventures Power Law, that individual deal can make sense if it's the right one. But as an industry, it's going to be a huge waste of capital.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 13:05 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Insight
Byers: Early success leads venture capital firms into destructive feature creep
“I think there's this General thing in venture, but it's true of the whole world, right? You get a little bit of success, start to think you're, you know, you're onto something, and then you get feature creep. And so feature creep in venture is like, oh, maybe …”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 5:06 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Assertion Partly supported
Byers: Vivek Ramaswamy co-founded Chapter; Vance and Thiel on board
“Up until two years ago, Kobe had a very interesting board and a very interesting co-founder. So his co-founder was Vivek. And his board was JD and Peter Thiel.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 15:26 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Byers: Apple will face innovator's dilemma against personal AI copilot startups
“We think the apples and others are going to have a little bit of innovators dilemma on this stuff.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 19:59 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Insight
Byers: Market sizing diligence is bad work at seed stage
“I don't ever search how big a market is. That's what you're already wrong. I've never done that work. I actually think it's bad work to do at seed.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 23:01 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Susa Ventures launches $175M Fund V for pre-seed and seed
“Fifth fund, hundred and seventy-five million, and it's a return to what we did at the very start. So only pre-seed and seed.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 3:04 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Susa Ventures resisted pivoting entirely to crypto or AI
“We have. Yet to go all in on something, but that is not to say we haven't had a risk of potentially falling into that a hundred times in the last decade. We talked about going all in on crypto. We talked about going all in on AI.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 7:40 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2031
Byers: 2021 venture capital vintage will be historically poor
“Like that vintage is going to be historically shitty.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 12:47 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Byers: AI will spark a Cambrian explosion of non-venture-scale SMBs
“There's going to be this Cameron explosion of. Like micro S and B and midsize company creation that AI enables that maybe shouldn't be venture backed”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 17:50 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Each Susa Ventures partner only completes two to three deals annually
“We do relatively low volume. Each partner will only do two or three deal of the year.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 19:17 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Flexport is the only deal Susa ever committed to on a phone call
“We committed to Ryan on the phone. It's the only time we've ever done that in SUSE history. We committed to the deal on the phone call.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 14:05 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Susa quietly began deploying Fund V in December, completing four deals
“We soft secretly started writing checks out of it in December. So we're actually four in, which is a little hot for us.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 19:09 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers: Susa Ventures launched in 2013 with $25M from 75 individual LPs
“20 13 started with twenty five million it was kind of a pass the hat type fund no institutions all individuals family offices 75 lps like horrific to manage wouldn't recommend that to literally anyone”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 4:13 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.
Disclosure
Byers plans zero-cardio bulk phase targeting 1,000-pound lifting club
“My plan in July is to go like full meat, all protein, no cardio, bulk phase, and try to get as far as I can by end of year.”
Chad Byers Mar 19, 2025 ▶ 26:11 "I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad.

The other half of the tape: Chad Byers's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes on TBPN. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most John Coogan 2

Every mention by year

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2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
"I Partner with People" - Chad Byers talks about Venture, Fitness, and Being a Chad. Mar 19, 2025 16m
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