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Jeremy Giffon

Founder & Investor, Octave · 1 appearance on the record.

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investoroperatorfounderexecutive@jeremygiffon ↗jeremygiffon.com ↗

Jeremy Giffon was the first employee and general partner at holding company Tiny, where he spent eight years executing and structuring software acquisitions. He was previously on the founding team of edtech startup MediaCore and now invests through his fund, Octave.

26statements → 9claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.62/5average certainty → 2.38/5average debate potential → 45said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 5 assertions · 4 opinions · 12 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 6 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 Jeremy 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
Giffon: Venture Capital Lacks Hurdle Rates Present in Private Equity
“There, there's a hurdle in private equity, and there's no hurdle in venture capital, which makes the whole thing even sweeter.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 12:28 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Giffon: VC dollars deployed grew 10x over past decade
“Venture is 10 X in terms of dollars deployed in the last 10 years.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 14:50 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
50% 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

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

Opinion
Jeremy Giffon criticizes traditional finance as extractive leveraged buyout culture
“I do think that it's notable that, like, the current paradigm in which we live, the largest and most important finance firms come out of a Culture of leveraged buyout, which it's extractive insofar as the primary goal is to make a thing more profitable. The co…”
Jeremy Giffon Jul 8, 2026 ▶ 15:45 China Considers AI Export Controls, SK Hynix $28B IPO, Banks Target Payment Business | Diet TBPN
Opinion
Jeremy Giffon argues white-collar jobs are artificial and non-essential
“To me, it's, like, very obvious that every, certainly every white collar job is, like, totally fake and made up in the sense that, like, they are not contingent for shelter and food and medicine and other necessities, but most jobs do not Touch those.”
Jeremy Giffon Jul 8, 2026 ▶ 13:57 China Considers AI Export Controls, SK Hynix $28B IPO, Banks Target Payment Business | Diet TBPN
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Giffon: We are about to see a renaissance of bootstrapped startups
“And I think, you know, I think we're about to see kind of the renaissance, the bootstrapper.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 3:59 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Giffon: AI will enable 100% annual growth with far less capital
“I think we're about to see like an era of incredibly like capital efficient businesses that by the way, like are not giving up growth at all. Like you can still grow a hundred percent a year.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 4:27 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Founders with $20M revenue and $100M raised are quietly trapped
“A thing that happens far too much that, that no one talks about is all these founders who are stuck. You know, if you have twenty million of revenue, A hundred employees and you've raised a hundred million bucks. You can't just quit. If you're the founder, eve…”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 8:17 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Liquidation preferences trap founders who build heroic $30M revenue businesses
“Look, if you build a business to thirty million bucks for revenue, that's like a heroic feat. It's extremely hard to do. And then you somehow end up with eight percent of it under a two hundred million dollar press stack. That kind of sucks. And I don't think …”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 13:05 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Opinion
Giffon: The largest venture firms are functioning PE shops
“Just as the biggest firms are turning into PE shops, the biggest venture firms are functioning PE shops.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 14:56 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Giffon: The 'venturification' of Middle America is buying up local businesses
“I mean, right now you're seeing The venturification of middle America and like, as all these venture co's start to buy up, you know, vets and med spas and all these things like venture capital. I'm in like, I'm in the rural Midwest right now. And like, you're …”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 17:34 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Scaled VC firms inevitably turn into fee-seeking asset managers
“At some sense, at some scale, you just become an asset manager and really what you're looking for are you know, different fee paying products basically.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 22:35 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Giffon: Capital allocators realize they can only eat DPI, not IRR
“Gross IRR is, is all well and good, but eventually, you know, you can only eat the DPI and that's kind of, that's what the, you know, that's what the capital allocators are starting to demand.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 2:52 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Every company should consider capping headcount and scaling with AI
“I think like every organization should be thinking hard about whether or not they ought to cap headcount and just, you know, keep headcount at or below where it is and increase kind of headcount, so to speak through AI.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 3:45 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Opinion
Giffon: Returning capital is often the best outcome for venture-backed startups
“I think like oftentimes the best outcome is just returning capital, which used to kind of be a norm in venture.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 7:06 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Silicon Valley only offers one product: primary growth capital
“There's basically one product in Silicon Valley and it's like primary growth capital. And you know, once these markets become bigger and more liquid, more efficient, there needs to be a different kind of different just as there is in wall street or like on the…”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 15:04 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Pure alpha-focused investment firms cannot scale into giant institutions
“Your business can only really get so big if you're actually in the business of like true alpha outperformance, you can't, you know, build the JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs or something.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 20:14 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Rapidly Cropping Up Startup Categories Rarely Form the Permanent Equilibrium
“I can't think of an example where like a whole class of businesses have cropped up, grown immensely quickly, and then kind of just been the new equilibrium. You know, that, that's certainly not what happened in the dot com. There's some exceptions, but in gene…”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 25:58 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Disclosure
Giffon: My business picks up the roadkill of the venture industry
“My business is picking up the roadkill of the venture industry. The startups, the founders that have triumphantly built Heroic and wonderful businesses and have gained 1,000,010 of millions of revenue and built incredible teams and have a wonderful product and…”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 0:40 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Giffon: Venture portfolios face a severe lack of DPI in the middle
“There's a lot of these, a lot of businesses, a lot of great businesses out there, and a lot of, like, stock founders, and there's more and more of them, and increasingly a lot more VCs who realize that, like, you know there is a severe lack of DPI, especially …”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 2:20 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: An investor's cost of capital dictates what they demand from startups
“The cost of capital of the people that own you makes a really big difference for like what they expect and what they demand of your business.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 6:27 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Scaling from $20M to $100M revenue requires different leadership than starting up
“A lot of times the person who takes a business from 20 of revenue to a hundred of revenue can be a very, you're looking for a very different type of person, someone who's going to start it from zero and grow it into a huge business.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 9:02 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Senior execs at larger firms are untapped talent for running startups
“There's a lot of C-suite and senior executives at a business that's two or three times bigger than maybe the business you're looking at. And those are people who are like highly capable, has at least some entrepreneurial spirit, but maybe they're not, you know…”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 9:49 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Assertion Supported
Giffon: Venture Capital Lacks Hurdle Rates Present in Private Equity
“There, there's a hurdle in private equity, and there's no hurdle in venture capital, which makes the whole thing even sweeter.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 12:28 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Insight
Giffon: Making money online in high school predicts a successful founder
“If you made money online in high school, I honestly can't think of an exception to have someone who's done that and has not ended up being like, Quite a successful founder in one way or another.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 18:19 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Assertion Supported
Giffon: Sequoia Heritage is roughly the size of Sequoia Capital
“I mean, Sequoia heritage, you know, Sequoia heritage is, is significantly or maybe not significantly, but it's like roughly the size of Sequoia.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 22:18 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Giffon: Users will consolidate AI model subscriptions to one within three years
“I know like I pay for, you know, whatever, six different models, like that's probably not gonna be true in three years, right? Like there's probably gonna be one that I'll end up paying for too. There's certainly no reason to pay for six right now.”
Jeremy Giffon Mar 9, 2025 ▶ 25:33 "There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state of VC.

Show 2statements(2 left)

The other half of the tape: Jeremy Giffon's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 45 times in 20 episodes on TBPN. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jordi Hays 13John Coogan 12Will Manidis 2

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00134258202420252026episodesmentions
048202420252026episodes it came up in
002448202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 9 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
2025 13 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
2024 23 mentions in 7 episodes 3 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
"There's a lot of stuck founders out there" - Jeremy Giffon breaks down the current state Mar 9, 2025 16m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Jeremy Giffon was played rather than Jeremy taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
China Considers AI Export Controls, SK Hynix $28B IPO, Banks Target Payment Business | Die Jul 8, 2026 1m clip played
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