YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Browder

lines on the record: 119
first: 2026-05-18
most recent: 2026-05-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So I say to the young founders the VCs will say anything to get you to sign right there and then, anything, they'll reverse engineer what the founder is looking for and say, oh, I'm friends, I'm buddies with that guy. I know someone at that company with golf buddies. I can get him to be a customer. Like right now, I can introduce you to so many customers and they just say exactly what the founders want to hear. And these poor young founders, they're so impressionable. Sometimes they sign the safe on the spot. Afterwards, of course, it never materializes. They never get that. customer that they were wanting because it turns out they weren't as close golf buddies as the person made it out. So I say to founders, do not sign on the spot. And going back to my offers, I don't made them sign on the spot. It's just too much, especially for these young founders. I say you have the night to think about it. I think decisiveness is a key quality, so I do want to know by the next morning, if not, it's done, but they can't sign on the spot.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While the VCs always win. If they do a price round, some of them are shocks. They say we want a 15% option poor at the seed. So the safe, you can just pursue the existing option pool and wait till the company becomes more valuable. But I'm biased.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'll give you a classic example of how this impacts decision making, which is safe versus priced rounds. As a precede and seed investor, the kind of B minus VC investors will want to get that next round on a priced basis to get that gap markup. But if you actually care about the economics and making money in the long term, you want the next round on a safe because safes don't dilute other safes. And so I was actually talking to a seed investor about this and I said to them, why don't everyone just encourage more safes? Safes are beneficial for founders because they can raise more quickly and all of this stuff. And they said no, but they want to get the price round so that raise the next fund. So I think this raising the next fund nonsense really does impact decision making and actually directly hurts founders with some of these things.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you advise them? The people buying these secondaries are shocks. If someone is emailing you asking to buy anthropic shares, the value of anthrop is probably going to go up. And the same is true with these founders. And so I would say to them, if you're being bombarded with secondary offers, perhaps they have more experience with the market than even you do as a founder of your own business. I think a lot of founders, they've regretted a lot of my friends, they've regretted taking secondaries. They've got one of these kingmaker firms in, and then the valuation has gone up 3x in a few weeks. So why not do the secondary at the higher price? So I would say if it's too much inbound, there could be something that they have within their investing experience that as a founder, maybe it's their first time business, they maybe shouldn't jump to sell too quickly.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad fund, yeah. And the private markets, there's no insider information. Speaking generally, all of these founders are like my good friends. I speak to them sometimes at 2 a.m. And so if you can build that depth of relationship and conviction, it's kind of adverse kind of positive selection through that kind of relationship that you can build with the founders. You can tell if it's real because I'm not a professional investor. And I'm sure you'll ask me about being a founder versus an investor. I think people consider me as a founder and that's a unique edge. Anyway, going back to your question, so that was a good investment, but I realized the opportunity cost of that investment, given where I come in, it could be 20 to 30 precedes and the value creation at the precede is so high that I decided for my fourth fund no reserves, just everything up front, Browder Hotel, let's go.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm on my fourth fund. My first three funds, I did do reserves, and I did some great reserve investments. Like, for example, I did a very hummingbird style investment. I put 15% of my third fund in owner at the Series A. That fund has micro one, lots of other good things. So that would be a very good fund because of that reserve investment and also because of these preseeds.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's nonsense. I think they shouldn't do something stupid like sell 50% of their companies to a Midwest angel for like 100K. Like you see with some of these shark tank deals. But at the same time, the number one thing I say to, especially these young founders I back is either it succeeds or it doesn't. If it succeeds, at a minimum, you're worth hundreds of millions or billions. You're on the cover of magazines. It's life-changing. If it fails, you're nothing. So if taking that extra money can reduce the chance of failure by even 5%, the kind of expected value is infinity in terms of life improvement. 5% of infinity you should still do it.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's not just law firms, even consumers who use do not pay. I think I'm sure lots of people have signed up because of the investors that backed us.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it depends on the sector. It really depends on the sector. If you're a consumer company, getting forerunner could be the kingmaking thing. Generally, it could be Founders Fund or Sequoia or something. So that's a very diplomatic answer.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's kind of two groups of farms. There's like the Kingmaker farms that you should accept at any price. One example would be Founders Fund or Sequoia or people like that. And so if you get an offer from them, X, and the offer from someone else is at 2X, you should take their offer because even if your maximizing amount raised and minimizing dilution, in the long run, your king made and it will save you in the next round. But another mistake these entrepreneurs make is they have the list of the Kingmaker firms as too big. There's probably like some tier two firm that think very highly of themselves that aren't in that same level as Founders Fund or Sequoia.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you can't explain the business to someone at the pub in the UK, if you go to a pub and say, I'm building observability for AI agents, they'll laugh at you. But if you say, I'm building software to automate health insurance claims, that makes sense.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm more excited than ever. Everyone is pitching this AI infrastructure nonsense. We're building agent observability, like the jargon levels. I'm British. I think this all BS. They just add on the jargon. I love people building real businesses. So the more real it is, the better.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is the biggest mistake I think I've made as an investor over the years, which is as an investor and entrepreneur, my imagination can run wild as to what they can build. I think if only they did this, it would be huge. The problem with that is unless it comes from them, it's not their life's work. And so I'm very cautious. I have a rule. I never tell the entrepreneurs what to build, which might seem surprising as an investor. I say to them, it's your job to build the product and get customers. I can help with everything else. So I never indexed too much about the idea, it's about the person. With that said, there's a few things that I'll never touch. I'll never touch crypto. I'm not getting into whether I believe in crypto or not. I think it has huge use cases, but I think it's best left to the crypto funds. Consumer hardware is tough because of various different consumer hardware issues. So I try and stay away from that, at least from my fund. But beyond that, anything and wet science as well, stay away from that.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that once the minor things get sorted, it's actually quite there's so much money. People ask me, are you worried about competition from XYZ B5 seed firm? I'm like, no, they're helpful. They can kind of join these companies and babysit them. And so once these minor things are sorted, it becomes legible fairly quickly, not for like a unicorn, but certainly for an institutional seed.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I would agree with that. I think athletes is one form of never giving up, and you can kind of tell a huge chip on your shoulder is another way. There are so many.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never give up. If you back someone who's above average IQ, very smart and never give up, of course they'll succeed. And I think this is actually a mistake a lot of VCs are making. They are focusing too much on these credentials. So there's a race right now to back the Math Olympiads. VCs are like going to spelling bees and math competitions in high school. And I think IQ is very important. You need someone smart, but much more important is they'll never give up. And I could tell from my own journey and interviewing people for the Teal Fellowship and seeing so many founders that Allie was someone who would never give up. And he's overcome huge challenges along the way to kind of build his business.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My building to this day, and I like come at 12 a.m., and he's like working middle of the night, and he did all those three things, and it changed everything.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the opposite is true, actually. The crazier it is, the better they do. Ali Ansari is a micro one is objectively my best performing investment in terms of multiple. The founders get upset when I reveal exact valuation numbers, but let's say over 1,000 X, well over 1,000x. And based on the scale of the business, when I met him, I said I'll invest only on three conditions. So it was a California LLC uninvestable. It has to be Delaware Corp. He was based in kind of Los Angeles as a solo founder and he was running kind of a staffing business, which there's a million staffing companies, even in the UK. So I said, you have to move to the Bay Area. You can live in my spare bedroom. You have to reincorporate in Delaware or shift to Delaware. And you have to do a software style product. I don't mind what you do, but it can be anything. We grinded and he's the hardest, one of the hardest working people I've ever seen. And actually, he still lives.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're staying in my house. Do you want to stay tonight? Yeah, some are off to the races. So some, I introduce them to a top three firm and they get it and then they're like, and it's actually going back to, it's actually seconding. Once they get the top three firm, it's like a stampede. It's like Safari Stampede. Everyone is trying to invest. And I was thinking, where were all these people just three weeks ago? Sometimes they require a bit more time and then maybe I bring in a sector expert. Like if they're doing government, I bring in a top government VC or if they're doing consumer, I bring in consumer. Sometimes it takes longer, but I always get them in a stapled spot and it depends on the company.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I've never lost belief in someone who stayed with me. I think there's enough filters before that. The opposite is true. I've accosted them at 2 a.m. while they're sitting on my couch. I'm like, I want to put in another 300K. It's difficult to say no.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I will go very personally to do everything to help them. So oftentimes this arbitrage is I'm moving them internationally. I will put that 01 genius visa on my credit card. I'll use all my social capital to introduce them to whoever it takes. I had one person. He was building in data centers. I phoned up my old friend Jamie and introduced him to Jamie from FluidStack. Do anything possible to kind of build up credibility, build their team and get them in a stable spot.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sacha LP question. I think I think you should start Funder fans. You have amazing judgment. I think there's something special about one”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was thinking of buying the Facebook house. It's actually not that expensive house. The actual houseware Facebook started. And when I was starting Do Not Pay, I didn't know it was a Facebook house. The first I found out as a Facebook house is there's a bus of tourists from Asia who would show up at the house and it would be like Avenue of the Stars, like I guess growing up, I would visit LA and you'd like go on a bus with all the stars. And this was like on the tour route and this bus showed up of these tourists and I said, what are you here for? And they said, we're here to see Mark Zuckerberg's house. I immediately thought, I guess this is the content marketer and me. You can come in, but you have to subscribe to Do Not Pay. We had a Do Not Pay employee outside with a clipboard and to enter the house, you actually had to become a Do Not Pay user.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every founder needs some fast believer, whether it's taking my spare bedroom or the amazing programs out there. I really think you need a first believer and YC can be a great first believer for them. Some companies do better in YC than others. The problem with any accelerator, not speaking specifically about YC, is you're competing for attention with all the other companies in the accelerator. If you're the top of the accelerator, then that's incredible. You're the kingmaid or queen made company. If you're like a middling company, it might actually be better to not be compared to all those other companies. And going back to my spare bedroom, it's a supply constraint. There's only one spare bedroom. And so it actually is a bar for me is like, do I want to put these people in my spare bedroom? And there's only one. So all my focus is on them. So there's no dilution in terms of the brand. I'm not doing 100 companies in my spare bedroom. In fact, one of my LPs asked me, why don't you start buying a hotel or rent out?”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when the Teal Fellowship started, it was really about backing incredible individuals out of distribution individuals, like Dylan Field was working on photo sharing app, and then I think some drone ideas. Vitalik was just a crazy individual doing crypto, which was not exciting at the time. And it was really about the individual. In the kind of late 2010s, a flood of people were applying to the Teal Fellowship with huge external validation. But now I think it's going back to really focusing on the individual.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lots of deals like that. And so I thought, okay, I'm out of my teal fellowship money. Maybe I should raise a small fund to keep this going because it pays to be early.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why I started my phone because I did other investments as well that did very well. I also invested in going back to my Stanford roommate, Justin, and various other ones at the time.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, so they pay it in installments because I guess they think these crazy young people who don't want to give them 250k at once, they might buy drugs or something. Probably not, but do some crazy stuff. So at least with me, they gave it to me in installments. So I took all my first installment and just put it into him”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they have this tradition where obviously the ultimate decision on who gets the fellowship is up to the foundation, and Peter finally, but fellows help out every year in the selection in various ways. And I was helping out one year and I was actually interviewing fellows for the next class, and that's how I met a lot of these people.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So back in my day, before the hyperinflation, I'm getting old, it was 100K. Then last year was 200K. Now it's 250K going up.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I put all my Teal Fellowship money and I invested it in Adam Guild and other amazing entrepreneurs. That's how I started investing. Maybe I'm an investor at heart in some ways because that's what I did.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think not being transactional, it's a price, so it goes to the individual as a price, and you can do anything you want with the prize money. You can use it on research on how to grow organs. You can invest it like I did in my teal fellow classmates.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These days. And my roommate was a fellow Brit. I guess they put the two Brits together. He went on to found a company called FluidStack, which is publicly reported to be a tens of billions kind of company. And so just having those peers is absolutely incredible.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fellowship retreat, and back then they made you share rooms. Now Peter Teal is so wealthy. If you go on the retreat, they actually give you your own room. But back then you had to share rooms with the other fellows.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I actually got the Teal Fellowship a few weeks later. The Teal Fellowship, the best thing about it is you have 19 other people who also have these dance class style problems, who have the same problems as me as an entrepreneur. Like one example would be, how can you convince a 60, 60-year-old to work for you? At the time, do not pay was like very early in the machine learning days. We were trying to do some machine learning classification for parking tickets. And I was trying to get one of these old OG machine learning people to work for the company. I was turning to one of my Stanford dorm mates who was also trying to do apps and projects, but he was more a committed college student. And I said, do you have any idea about how I can convince this person to work for me? And he had no idea, rightly so, because he was like dealing with his own college problems versus building a company. So I think the biggest benefit of the Teal Fellowship is having 19 other young people who are dealing with the same challenges as you. And I went to the first”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I was at Stanford, and to graduate Stanford, like many universities, they have diversity requirements. You have to do various things in the curriculum to get your degree. And one thing you have to do is it's called Creative Expression. And I'm not sure how I seem, but I'm not the most creative person. I'm more of a claude code style person. I love the code. This was the last requirement I had. And the easiest way to satisfy this requirement was to go to dance class once a week. There's this famous class at Stanford called Social Dance. It was at 9 a.m. It was like a schlep. And do not pay servers were crashing. And I really am very bad at dancing. So I had decision to make. Did I want to go to this dance class or did I want to keep my business up for millions of users? I didn't go to the dance class. I kept do not pay running, failed out the dance class, and that was my kind of precipitated my dropping out. Not the teal fell.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One should create their own luck and meet as many peers as possible because you get different things from different people. One person is an expert at growth. One person is an expert at fundraising. One person is an expert at life. Cliff who introduced us, I think he's an expert at life.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ask a lot of people I knew for advice and they kind of laughed at me. And I was actually really upset with them for not kind of validating this achievement that we got this million. It was actually a million dollar acquisition offer that was a bit depressing, but I think they actually gave me good advice, which is you can do better than this.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unfortunately, all of the best founders I've invested in, they've had delusional levels of ambition. The more delusional, the better. And unfortunately, it is a sign of success to be delusional. So I think it's better that they're more on the delusional side. But I agree with you. Do not pay initially, we got an acquisition offer for a million from one of these OG legal tech companies when we just started. I was about to take it. So I agree that you never kind of realize how big things can be.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think being British, that substance is always, I try and be more substantive than hype. I think it's just the UK culture. When I give references, I always say this reference is actually really good because it's coming from a British person. I'm not like one of these hype Americans. And I give founders I invest in this advice. It's okay to be as hyped as possible with your vision and ambition. You should have boundless ambition. But with how you're describing the current state, it should be very accurate. So I think there's a balance with what your plans are versus where it is today.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Zoom is the first must say they should fly to London in person. I say you should reject Zoom and always do in person where possible. If I was pitching you, I'd fly to London.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell every founder I invest in don't have too high of expectations. Pitching VCs is like a game of poker. You should never reveal too much information about what you're seeking. So every founder I invest in, I say, don't reveal the price that you want. The price is a function of how hot the deal is, which ironically is less hot if you go in swinging for the fences with something too high. Secondly, I try and relive my story and I say, you have to do a demo. There's a famous story. I gave this founder advice to do a demo. He's a biotech founder and he even did a demo like a very personal demo. Everyone was passing on him and then he did this demo and then a top tier person came inside. So definitely do the demo, make it all about them. Also, I mean, there's a million things like the CEO should be doing it, not like five founders speaking over each other. There's like a whole list I send it to any founder I invest in.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I left the room for a few minutes. I came back and they wanted to invest on the spot. First of all, Silicon Valley is such a kind of herd mentality place. Even the people that previously rejected me once they found out that this firm wanted to invest, everyone started to rescind their rejections. And I thought that was a bit depressing. And second of all, it taught me a really valuable lesson, which is nothing changed about the company, nothing changed about me. Nothing changed about the team. Nothing changed about our usage. But the most minor differences in framing and strategy made all the difference. That's actually some of the lessons I give the founders I invest in. If things aren't working, you just need to change the framing just slightly, and that can make a monumental difference.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one really knows what this can be. You should put the logos of the biggest companies that you one day want to emulate. So I stuck in the logo of Intuit, which is a $200 billion company in the US, and I said, we want to be the turbo tax, which is one of their products of consumer rights. And I also put the Honey logo, which was just acquired that year for $6 billion. And then I put Credit Comma, which was acquired for $8 billion, put that in the deck. Said finally, this was around the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. You shouldn't say you want to do advertising. Advertising is not very fashionable right now among feces. I said, okay, what should I do? He said, subscription. So I put in subscription. And I didn't even really believe that it could be like people would subscribe to it, but I put in subscription. And he turned out to be right. Everyone now subscription is our main business model. So I made those three very minor changes to the deck. Did my presentation the next day. And Harriet was like a night and day difference. Everything changed. Not only did they want to invest, they like...”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even go back to Stanford. So it was the next day, it was one of my last pitches. I guess this kind of speaks for how bad the situation was, but I turned to my outside counsel lawyer for advice. If you're turning to outside counsel for business advice, then you know things are really bad. He's an amazing lawyer. He's a partner of a firm called Wilson Sansini. His name is Damian Weiss. He's like on the cap table of all the amazing companies. I told him the predicament I was in. And he said, well, do the pole pitch in front of me right now. So I gave him the whole pitch and he interrupted me halfway through and he said, you're doing it completely wrong. He said, first of all, they're not investing in the PDF DAC or some presentation. They're investing in you and the product. And so the fact that you're not doing a demo is criminal. So I kind of quickly scrambled together a demo of a robot appealing someone's bank fees because do not pay was expanding to bank fees in the US and added that to the presentation. He said, second,”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is probably the hardest point of do not pay, which is three years into the company. So I'd raise the precede from Andreessen from Mark. It came time to raise the seed two or three years later. Do not pay was incredibly popular. Millions of people were using our free product. And I thought it was a slam dunk pitch. That was a huge mistake. I was going down Sandhill Road because all the VC's firms were in Sandhill Road back then. And one after the other, they were rejecting me. I went just down the list, rejection, rejection, rejection. This was really depressing because I had actually just dropped out like a week before. As passionate as I was about do not pay, there's only so far I could go with just me. I needed to hire a real team and raise some serious money to keep it going. I had like two or three pictures left and I thought if these don't go well, I'm just going to throw in the towel and like do something really depressing, like, like go work for big tech or something, go work at Google because I just have to give up.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think the opposite was true. So I was sitting, and I've never told this story before, but I was setting a poker game at Stanford with my friends. This is no exaggeration. I got a news alert saying, so my father is a human rights activist and he's like an enemy of the Russians. It was a newsaler about my father that he'd just been arrested. The Russians managed to get him. It's just made me incredibly paranoid. And so I think I was more paranoid. Most people don't have the mafia after your family. And so I was always paranoid and fearless. And so I think actually it kind of made me more paranoid to like take big swings. I called him. It didn't go through.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More of a free pass. If all of these founders who are getting this controversial staff were in college, they might be able to kind of pivot more quickly.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People see their life as paint by numbers. So they say if I go graduate, I go to business school, I go work at X company, then in five years I'll be ready to start my company. The problem is the world changes so quickly that the paint by numbers approach doesn't work anymore. I would say to any founder who has an idea of what they want to do, they should just go for it. The world won't wait for them. On the other hand, you see a lot of people drop out just for the sake of it. In fact, when I dropped out in 2018, I actually had like one or two classes left at Stanford. So I was very close. It was very kind of taboo to drop out. Now dropping out is almost the establishment. So you see people drop out just for the sake of it. And I think that's definitely wrong because there are huge advantages to being in college, even if you're doing a startup. You can recruit your friends. You have your college email and people will take you more seriously if you email them from Stanford or mit.edu. Also, people give college students.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a friend, he has a great saying which I'll copy there are three types of people those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened. And I think at best, venture investors are in the second one, sometimes unfortunately they can be in the third. So the biggest issue is they don't go crazy on the founders, which happens a lot. But of course they can add value at strategic points.”
2026-05-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source