YouSaid · the spoken record

Max Altman

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110
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2025-11-21
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2025-11-21
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  1. “No, but I also remember talking to Jack one time and he's like, yo, I built a multi-billion dollar business, and he's crushed in one of the most successful early stage inventors. He's like, but people still call me Sam's brother.”

    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

  2. “25. Us, I had to fund that I was leading that Sam was helping out with a little bit in 2016 called hydrazine. We were able to put in a pretty good check, co-lead it with initialized Gary and Alexis, who also had a great fund that vintage.”

    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

  3. “I am, and I think I've been quiet for a while, and I'm really loyal to him, both, and he's the one that gave me a chance. He taught me how to do venture. He sort of set the bar for what I want to be investing in. And frankly, you know, let me be one of the earliest investors in Ripling. So I'm very loyal to him. But yeah. I think there were some small mistakes made, but they were company-wide. They were under all departments, not just his. Everyone knew about it. They weren't ethical mistakes, and he sort of, you know, took the fall. Maybe the CO has to always do that, though.”

    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

  4. “I fully agree with you. I mean, first off, when any of my friends are like, I want to join tech, what should I do? And I say, don't care about the product, don't care about anything, just go work at the fastest growing company because winning feels great. It feels amazing. And I think we sort of maybe lost our way a little bit in the late teens in tech, where everyone was, you know, they were making out about their mission and saving the world and we're doing on-demand dry cleaning and on-demand dog walking, but it's going to help the world this way and you should feel good about yourself. And I'm like, just go build a great business and like winning is the most fun thing here. And I think we really lost our way for 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

  5. “We leave the call. I'm like, okay, great. I'm going to write some specs where we're going to build that. And Parker's like, no, no, no. They say that. They don't actually want.”

    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

  6. “Need to get it done before tomorrow, or if someone's screwed up, he would just email them wtf. Not any context. Like if anything went wrong, if there was a customer case that looked bad, which just means fix this right now. I absolutely love that. What did you learn from the Xenophon's experience? Because that is a pretty transformational time in your career as well. It's like your first time in tech as well. Yeah. What I learned first and foremost is you need, especially then to build an absolutely amazing product and customers don't know what they want. So I remember one of the first times, my first week on the job, we would do customer discovery calls. And we'd listen in, and the customer's like, I want you to build this thing for payroll and this thing for HR tech.”

    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

  7. “Everyone was just winning and making t-shirts and hanging out, and it all was good for a little bit. I totally, it's funny, I spoke to Parker before from obviously Ripling, and I remember being an SF when I was like 18 and Xanophys was just like the hottest thing in the world. It was a blast. That was my foray. Was a quant trader after college because I wanted to go to Chicago as a Midwesterner. Hated that came out, then joined as the first product manager at Xenophots and got to work for Parker directly for was that amazing. It was amazing. He's crazy, but he's the best salesperson and the best product person that I've ever met in my life. How's he crazy first? He's that person that on a Sunday night at 9 p.m. will just call you and just say, I have this new idea.”

    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

  8. “I mean, whatever people want to say about him, I think he's extremely smart. I love Keith. Yeah. Phenomenal. What do you think the world doesn't see about Keith that you do? I mean, he's rough around the edges. He's honest. He probably doesn't agree politically with a lot of people in San Francisco, but that's not taken away from how smart he is, how good an investor he is. And like, frankly, the first board I served on was Teespring, and he was also on that board. And people can say, like, oh, he's kind of a dick or anything. But I mean, my experience was I was a 27 year old and he was like, hey, call me whenever he was taken half an hour, hour calls to help me understand how to do the job. So that's my experience with him. God, I remember Teespring. These are back in the day. That's like a blast from the past. It's a throwback. This is like Savage Garden being played. And you're like, this reminds me of a school disco. That was the Silicon Valley I grew up with. Those were nicer times. It was a black.”

    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

  9. “Society, I think, breaks down a little bit as you grow. Well, this is like pre tourist venture. Yeah. I think most of the people in Venture stay a tourist. They like going to events. They like telling people at private members' clubs that they're VCs and they have single digits IQs. Yes. Some of them. I think, though, to be fair, there's a lot of wonderful people in the industry, and I'm at least fortunate enough that there's dozens of people who I think I have real relationships with. Single smartest friend who's a VC. Not a family member.”

    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

  10. “Culture in the Midwest is very different, it's very humble, it's very communal, and then I remember I got out to San Francisco and I'm like, everyone is so aggressive and individualistic. So I think it helps a ton, one, in that you build a lot more real relationships and a lot more like close friendships because that's how we grew up. The flip side is we're a little less aggressive in some of the earlier mistakes I made was just being a little bit less pushy than some of the people that might have grown up in Atherton. Do you think there are many real relationships in benches today? There are still some. There are less. I think when I got there in San Francisco in 2013, it looked a little more like a smaller town, maybe Austin or St. Louis where everyone really trusted everybody and had deep connection. And naturally it's grown 10, 100x the number of VC funds, the number of startups out there. So I think, you know, it looks more like a New York where just generally trust.”

    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