YouSaid · the spoken record

Max Altman

lines on the record: 110
first: 2025-11-21
most recent: 2025-11-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think I would do a lot more to sort of brand myself as a thought leader. I've definitely been a little bit more PR shy. It wasn't like, you know, I always had like stage fright growing up. I think I would be that guy who's just like, hey, I'm going to host these fireside chats and I'm going to like be the person who is everywhere in their faces everywhere.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people forget all the time just how big these markets are. One of the companies we're really excited about, we invested in is Stand, which is redoing the insurance market in California as all of the big insurance companies are pulling out there. And they're basically saying we can now use fly drones over and visualize the houses and help underwrite exactly what we think the fire risk is. Harry, right now, if you're in a fire zone in California, your premiums are like 5%, like literally 5% of the home. Like if you have a $5 million home, you're spending $250,000 a year on home insurance and fire risk zones. So they're like, great. Other people are modeling this based off the zip codes. We are actually going to be able to have computer vision and model this.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, people also just can't wrap their head around the size of some of these markets, like the example always is, oh, you're selling software to customer service agents to improve their efficiency. It's like, well, what if you just were the whole market cap of all customer service agencies? I think that's like 400 billion of value right now.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or more, and absolutely. I think people were like, how is Thrive going to deploy all this money well? There needs to be these multi-hundred billion dollar exits. I'm like, turns out there are or, you know, and it's not just going to be open AI. I think it's going to be a lot of them.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I remember when I first got to San Francisco, like, Andreessen was more up and coming, and I was like, no, like, it's, you know, it's Sequoia and Founders Fund and Benchmark. And there were just these loud, splashy people. I don't see this working. I was clearly wrong. And they got it right, just like you.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you could be what I call a text guy where you can kind of just sit at home and text people and build great relationships and fly totally under the radar. I don't think you can do that anymore.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be humble and notice stay in your lane. The worst thing you can do is come right out of the gate and say, We're going to lead Series A's, know what you're good at. That might be seed, that might be box group strategy, that might be coming in, but just stay in your lane and be honest with yourself.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figure out what someone truly wants. And the answer is not always money. It might be title. It might be recognition. It might be the ability to work on what they want. So when you're either hiring someone or trying to partner with them in any way, truly understand like what is the most important thing to them. It can't just be compensation.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hadrian. I was friends with Chris just like socially. We were hanging out a ton during COVID whiteboarding things and I remember I just like wasn't maybe I wasn't as aggressive those days so I didn't give him an offer and then like he talked to me like two weeks later and he's like hey like Dellian's leading around and everything you know and I was like well you know why didn't you talk to me he's like why didn't you talk to me we were sitting together for like weeks on end and I was like oh shit maybe I should be a little more aggressive offering term sheets”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, I think that it is people say it's a sort of chummy, like collaborative thing where we're all Kumbayan having fun and then you get to it and someone just like elbows you out of the way. It's not. It's a competitive market. We're all competing for a scarce amount of good equity.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think Lux Srini, who was the CTO at Xenophobits, went on to build Zero Down. It didn't quite work out, but the timing was wrong, and then joined leading a special kind of special architectural projects at Ripling has just been an amazing guy. To watch over the last kind of decade.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got some really sick outdoor speakers from my backyard. I love listening to music. I love sort of meditating and just chilling back there. And it was absolutely worth it.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know a few that are. I think it's the ones that have kind of prioritized family and things. I think I would be less happy as a billionaire than I am right now. Of the things you're talking about, I would want a nicer house than I'd want a boat, and I would want to constantly just upgrade my life, and I don't think I would just be happy with what I had. It's really dangerous because it's like, hey, I bought a $20 million house, but my buddy, down the street has a $40 million house, and I'm good friends with him and I go over there. It's really challenging, I think, to just say, I don't want that.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I'm unfortunately in a little different position where I'm closer age to those people and just around them a lot. And I think for me it's just very important to say like for my own happiness and like ability to succeed at work to sort of stay off of that like hedonic treadmill.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I mean, there's something to be said of like if you're still early in your career and making money and you're like, hey, I can get out, I can sell this for a few hundred million, not to you, but back to the LPs and you take a nice chunk yourself, or I can wait and see if it goes to half a billion. It's pretty hard to not take what's on the table. Yeah, if you don't need the money, like let it ride all the way up.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then at the very end, they just go, and people are like, hey, hold Andrew, hold more rippling, hold more SpaceX. It's gonna double, and it's the difference between your 3X firm and your 6X firms. It's really hard to let these things go, Harry.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It might not have hurt to sell Gusto. I think Gusto is a great business, but I think, you know, they were valued at $10 billion at one point. And I think there's still going to be a strong business. I don't know if they're going to have explosive growth from there. Great guys, but couldn't have hurt to take it a little bit off the table. I think our job has definitely changed now. We need a spot when the market is inefficient and there's too much hype. And some things just get overvalued. And especially as a seed investor, not a gross stage investor. If we can show that we're 100x or get money off the table at 100x, we don't need to wait for that 200 or 300x. So we have to sort of make our own, again, it's almost like a gut instinct when we think it's overpriced. This all being said, some of the best advice I've got is that last double or that last triple comes really fast where, you know, things grow quickly and then they're around 500 million to a $2 billion valuation and they sputter in a little bit.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has, and I think historically I've held longer. We've also had some, frankly, that, you know, had their five, ten billion dollar valuations in 2022.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, I think I like Paul Graham connected me to Ron Conway and then Ron's like, oh, you should meet this guy, Steve Anderson. I was like 20 years old. And I was like, okay, cool. VC job sounds great. He was, I think, really focused on just doing a few things well and not covering the whole market. And he sort of stayed in his lane. He was liked by a lot of people and he just didn't try to cover everything. He's like at a fund of his size. He just needed to have one or two good wins per fund. I think he had more than that. And I think it's kind of guiding how I'm building his fund.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think you have to. And I think I was fortunate enough actually intern for Steve Anderson at baseline when I was in 2009, who I think was one of the most amazing investors and taught me a ton. And then he kind of, you know, rode off into the sunset after hitting Twitter and Instagram and was like an almond farmer or something now, like living a great life. And those guys were absolutely amazing and really set the stage for what seed investing looks like. But I kind of think, yeah, we have to compete with them. We have to do better than them. There's not room for all of us. And frankly, I kind of think, Harry, you were younger when you started, so you might have a little more time. I got like 15 years of this until I'm really good and then I'm kind of relevant and a new set of seed funds will replace me.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, but I also think it's sort of just like every generation has a refresh. I mean, you mentioned Sarah. I think conviction is going to be a great firm. I think there's room to have a new set of firms maybe every decade. And to be honest, I kind of think.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For sure, I think it's really challenging to be like a $700 million fund. Now I think you're either a really massive, powerful platform like an Andreessen or a GC or use have the legacy cachet like a Sequoia recliner, or you have to be a boutique firm that has a very specific offering and stays small. And you kind of, I know you're juggling.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bigger. I think we'd like to be five or six GPs, two or three associates, so we have the incentives on maybe three, four hundred million per fund.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to build, I think, what a first round capital looked like when I grew up. I want to have something where 10 or 15 years from now, we are maybe a quiet luxury brand, like a Thrive or a USV, where everyone's like, hey, they are the premier early stage brand. They're not as loud as everyone, but we think of them as excellence.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a mistake. In 2015, 2016, when I started doing this, it was very much just hang out with great people. There's now too many VC funds and too many companies. And I think right now you do have to do PR and build your brand. And I think it just took me a little bit longer, frankly, to be able to come to that realization. But yeah, moving forward, and you are the first, I think the PR train is going to start a little bit.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, of course. And I think I've been fortunate enough to know who's like that and have my sort of crew there that's not like that. But I do think it gives me more motivation to sort of prove that I can be an amazing investor myself and build out a huge brand for Saga. And I think that will take some of the pressure off of that, to be honest. It's definitely a driving factor for me. And frankly, like we have not done the PR, but that's part of the reason that I'm doing it now to show that I'm a really good investor myself.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both. I mean, like, hey, let's be honest, clearly it allows me to have more success in investing, where it's just like I have, because of him, some brand Halo effect. And people are like, oh, Max, do you invest in AI? And I'm like, I can, you know what I mean? There's something around that. It definitely helps. It helps a little bit with deal flow. I think it makes it worse of like, do you remember in San Francisco and you're out at a party on a Saturday night? You know, someone will ask about it. You know, my friend wants to go work at OpenAI. Can you help him get a job? I'm a little bit.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think I just want to be really sensitive as my brother that he is not putting himself in a compromised position at all sharing information he shouldn't”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I could. I don't. I think for a lot of reasons is first and foremost like the companies under, you know, scrutiny, like obviously I don't want to put him in a weird position. Where he's leaking anything. It doesn't seem like good for OpenAI. And it doesn't feel good. Like I kind of want, and you might say this is stupid to earn this on my own right.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This or not, yeah, but I think the two real things that I think about one, what are these world-class engineers that are sitting in downtown San Francisco going to build and what do they not want to touch? So when we're looking at companies, we did a company called Fleetworks that were pretty excited about, and they are doing, while it's in the AI voice space, it is for supply chain trucking logistics, and they're helping them match things better for shipping. And I don't think that people there are going to want to be calling and dealing with a shipment of oranges from Miami to New York that are late. I think they want to stay sort of in their ivory castle a little bit.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a little bit of an art, not a science. I think I just try to visualize, I meditate, and I visualize what they're going to offer when it's a $3 trillion company.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I think you're forgetting the ones that are like, hey, we whipped this up in a weekend, and it's sort of some API thing that OpenAI is going to build. I think 11 Labs is the exception to the rule. So this kind of led us to lead in what we're calling like second order effect AI companies that are further away from what open AI looks like when it's a $3 trillion company.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone's like, oh my God, they had this dev day thing and it's going to kill a couple dozen companies in San Francisco.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a CS and math guy. I was not an English guy. I think what I mean is when open AI and anthropics started getting popular, everyone's like, we're going to build things that are adjacent to that and they are AI voice or AI video gen. Because right now, you know, OpenAI is worth $30 billion and is offering chat. And I was like, look, it's not because of inside information and it's not because I know that he's one of the most ambitious people in the world, but like they're trying to be a multi-trillion dollar public company and solely anthropic. And that means they're going to have to try everything. Amazon tried making a freaking phone. You know what I mean? Like they're going to try everything. So if you have like the naivety to think you're going to build something that's really close to what open AI is building and they're not going to build it. You're crazy. Like, you know what I mean? So I think we've really stayed away from things that open AI will encroach on and just offer a better product.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Terrible. Maybe the worst decision related to tech that this administration has had. Like, first off, why would you not want an amazing engineer immigrating to your country? Just like straight up, we want all of the best, smartest people going to work in our country. And then also it's really bad for the small guy. Like, cool, Amazon, Google, they're like, well, we got this really great engineer who graduated from IIT. We want him 100K, no big deal. But if you're a Cedar Series A company, it's completely hamstringing you. I was really frustrated to see that.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Help, I'm generally someone that less regulation is a good thing. It is opening up the MA market, having people feel like we have a hot IPO market is wonderful because it gets money back to the LPs and the VCs get that money back and just everything is healthier. I think it's clearly better.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like it. It's fun. People are building really cool things, and that's what's getting me excited during that lull I was talking about when it was on-demand dry cleaning. Like, that's not fun. I can't get out of bed to go invest in that, but now we're seeing people that are really swinging for the fences. It's fun to think about, you know, androil or Hadrian manufacturing or Saronic and Austin or it's fun to just be investing in these really cool companies that wasn't the case before.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think it's just economics, to be honest. There's now like hundreds of billions of capital chasing slightly more companies. I think the experiment we're going through right now and went through in 2020 is like, hey, if we put 10 times as much capital into the market, there better be 10 times as much good equity to be sold and 10 times as many amazing companies being built. And there's definitely more, but there's like two or three more. So now we have this system where there's just so much capital chasing not that many great deals. So the founders have all of the sway and all of the decision making of how they want to run their process.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and they go talk, or Harry, like there are a lot of people in this industry that say they know, you know, it's sort of like name drop, they know everybody, and then we're going to make this introduction to, like you said, Moon or Alfred Lynn. They can't. And I think there's a few seed funders, I think both of us in this room can just like text those people directly. And I think some of the founders don't believe that we can necessarily do that. And it will be as easy as it is for us to do it.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's two things to that. One is it's really hard if a more junior partner from an Andreessen or someone like that reaches out or an associate, another firm reaches out from a branded firm and they're like, we want to talk to you. You're like, oh, I feel great about myself. Oh my God, I can't control myself. I just talked.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Like, why would you not say we're about to start this race, work with your lead seed investor, get the deck ready? And when you're ready, open the gates, aka have me and my partners introduce you to one of the GPs at all of the firms and then have the fundraise process start. They have to do it that. They should do it that way”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it looks a lot better and feels a lot better if someone's raising 30 million and someone has a lead check that comes in with 20 and then they fill in the rest after that. People do these wonky things where they're like, well, you raise five from this person and we have this thing soft circled and then you get to your lead and they're like there's only room for us to do under half of this deal. We're out. And I'm like, don't do that. I promise you they're going to sit out if you filled up two-thirds behind it. And I think a clean series A also looks like a nice process. Metaphor I always give them is it's like a big horse race where all the VCs are chasing you and what you want to do is maybe have one horse start first so you maybe talk to a potential lead like a week or two before then you send the deck out to everyone but you want all eight horses chasing after you at the same time you don't want to have this as like a random sloppy process”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really hard if you get Sequoia to offer you money and be on your cap table and have that amazing brand halo effect to not take it. And I think someone always should.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. One of my biggest fears for companies that we've invested in is Andreessen coming out and putting $100 million right off the bat into one of their competitors. That's absolutely terrifying. So I do believe, yes, we need to get all of the gravity behind our best companies. We need all the best investors. They need to get hundreds of millions of dollars to build out their moat and have their war chests against any of their competitors. I just don't think that should maybe happen right at the seed. Like maybe wait until after the A to do that”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't listen once in this fun, but for the most part, they listened, and I think what we tell them is, I think Mark Andreessen said it really well on my brother Jack's podcast is like, VC's job is to be a brand for the company until the company can build its own brand long term. So I'm like, well, then our job as a new fund is to make sure we get them the best brand, whether it's the Thrive or Sequoia or Kleiner, to lead their A. So we're like, hey, hold tight, please listen to us and run a really clean series A process and get one of those best people on your cap table and then hiring will be easier, selling will be easier, raising capital will be easier.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It'll absolutely distort the company. Like getting fat and happy early on is not great. You know, people used to say like, hey, be raw and profitable. And like, maybe we're not in the days anymore of sleeping on a mattress in the ground, eating ramen, but I don't think it's good to say, hey, we can just burn through money trying tons of different things. There's no rush. Like let's throw big parties. Like, you need to have a lot of fear that you're going to kind of run out of money every day to be pushed to work harder.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in our cases, the founders that we've spent the most time with always go to bat. We get 70, 80% of our parada, even in the best deal. But often they say, hey, can you step back a little tiny bit?”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've had a great time working with Kosla in this fund. We've had two deals where we've ended up at the seed with 10% and they've ended up with 10% and we've just had a great time working together.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I 100% agree with you, and you have to earn the right for doing your Pro Rod of the Series A and the series B in the series C. But I think we've gotten to a point where Sequoia or Kleiner or someone leads you around, like you're not often getting your full pro rata. And I think you have to be honest with yourself on that. So I think a lot of the times that I've learned is like, hey, model in the prorata, but you're only going to get 70 or 80% of it. We've never had 100% of ours taken away, but we've definitely had cases in a”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, I was fortunate enough to have data from the earlier funds to say we have absolutely crushed it and we're now like about 4x DPI. I think we can get to five or six and we knocked it out of the park. 10 is insane. Like our goal here is to get you to four or five and that's amazing. Like if someone comes in and says we're going to get you an 8x I would kind of walk out of the room.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source