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Santi Subotovsky

General Partner, Emergence Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorfounderemcap.com ↗

Santi Subotovsky is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, known for leading its early-stage investment in Zoom and serving on its board through and following its 2019 IPO. He previously founded SaaS e-learning platform AXG Tecnonexo and co-founded Puente Labs to support Latin American founders scaling globally.

14statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.29/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 13said about them ↓

0 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 4 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 Santi 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 Santi Subotovsky on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Santi Subotovsky said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Investors are a terrible target market because VCs are notoriously cheap
“Investors are not a great market. I mean, we're very cheap. We don't like to pay for technology and it's a small market, so it's going to be very hard to build a big company if you're just targeting investors.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 7:22 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Opinion
Crunchbase organically became the system of record for private companies
“Crunchbase has become the system of record for private companies, and they have done that organically without any major investment or any defined strategy.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 3:53 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Emergence spun Crunchbase from AOL to build a next-gen Dun & Bradstreet
“So when we spun it out of AOL, we had the thesis that we could create a next gen B to B database. So think of next gen Dan and Bradstreet with a much more efficient and organic data acquisition model. So think of LinkedIn, but for companies instead of for peop…”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 4:16 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Less than a third of Crunchbase's original users were actually investors
“More than one third of the use case for Crunchbase, the lookup use case, original Crunchbase use case, We're not investors. We're salespeople. They were using Crunchbase for prospecting, and that's what got us excited. One-third was HR-related, people in the r…”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 7:42 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Insight
Crunchbase's historical network moat is nearly impossible to recreate from scratch
“The power of the network is something that is very hard to recreate. If you were starting from scratch, then you can create a great tool, a great platform. But if you don't have the history that crunch base has, it's going to be very hard to build that.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 11:15 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Assertion Partly supported
Emergence invested just $7 million to spin Crunchbase out of AOL
“So we invested seven million dollars.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 16:21 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Emergence Capital invests exclusively in B2B cloud companies
“We're focused exclusively on B to B cloud. We don't do anything outside of that.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 2:10 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Emergence Capital typically invests $5M to $10M in Series A rounds
“So typical check size is anywhere between five to ten million dollars going in, It's a series A”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 2:47 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Emergence interviewed 85 CEO candidates before hiring Jager McConnell for Crunchbase
“We talked to over 85 CEO candidates for that process, and we ended up getting, I mean, we're fortunate to get Jagger McConnell from Salesforce”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 8:59 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Crunchbase rebuilt its entire software architecture after the AOL spinout
“Over the last couple of years, we rebuilt everything to make it scalable, because it was a great asset when it comes to data, not necessarily a great asset when it comes to software architecture, and also when it comes to business model.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 12:29 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Emergence Capital's $330 million fund was 60% deployed by mid-2018
“So the last fund was three hundred and thirty million and we're about 60% deployed.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 16:02 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Emergence Capital targets a concentrated portfolio of 20 companies per fund
“So we're probably going to invest in another seven companies. So each fund we invest in 20 companies.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 16:08 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Emergence spent nine months negotiating the Crunchbase spinout from AOL
“So it was a long process. It took us, I think, nine months.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 4:52 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL
Disclosure
Zoom initially rejected building Instagram-style filters for being too distracting
“At first, we refused to come up. I mean, we talked about Instagram filters. Should we come up with Instagram filters? And then we said, no, that's going to be too distracting.”
Santi Subotovsky Jun 22, 2018 ▶ 16:59 1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL

The other half of the tape: Santi Subotovsky's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 9 episodes on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 13

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
008415820182019episodesmentions
04820182019episodes it came up in
000.841.5820182019episodesmentions per episode
2019 12 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
1063 How We Spent $7m To Spin Crunchbase Out of AOL Jun 22, 2018 13m
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