YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas McInerney

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73
first
2026-01-16
most recent
2026-01-16
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1
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podcast

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  1. “This is super interesting. I think I call it internally at our firm. Is it enjoyable to volley, to play tennis, to play ping pong, pickleball, whatever it is, with the founder? A founder, when you ask him a tough question, hey, there's seven other LLMs and now there's 15 open source projects, how are you going to cut through the noise? Now, some of them might just be like, well, we'll be better. And you're like, okay, can you explain to me how? And if the person is just filibustering where it's not credible and they're not asking you questions and it's not that productive discussion, you're like, wow, I wonder how this person is going to hire people. Find partners or raise money from a Series A firm. They need to have that humility to engage that discussion, but also that confidence of you, we're going to figure that out.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “But unpack more of the if you can put your finger on it the personality type Not that we want people here at Foundry University to be inauthentic. Yeah. But I'm just curious what you've learned.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And there has to be some thesis of why you're going to disrupt a space where there's some number of incumbents. Exactly. Yeah. Let's unpack, double click on the individual. What else? When you're talking to the individual, they have deep technical. You said young, it is a young man's game, a young person's game, to use non-gender specific language. It's a young person's game, I think. Most people agree you have to do a lot of sacrificing. Although the returns for second and third time founders are really good too, but we do see that sort of dichotomy. Either it's Mark Pincus on his third startup or Elon on his third or fourth, or it's somebody right out of college or just dropped out.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “This fear of like, oh my God, this is terrible. So you then, I am guessing, had to figure out why this would be different. Was”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “We have a couple of plants where we might consider building one, but after Fukushima, after Three Mile Island, and after Chernobyl, after those three. Yes.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Their first four weeks. That's lemon.io slash twist L-E-M-O-N.io slash twist All right, we're back at this weekend, startups here live in Tokyo. Excellent. We have about 50 founders in the room representing 30 companies here. Most of them are first-time founders. When we meet with these companies, we like to assess what they need help with. Number one, number two is almost top three. How do I raise money? How do I get you to give me a check? Number two, how do I find a co-founder? Although if they're here, we've already sorted for that. And then typically the third thing is how do I get my customers? How do I go to market? Let's start with how you look at and evaluate an early stage startup, one that either is about to put their product into the market or the product's been in market for, let's say, under 100 days. You don't have meaningful data to review.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Building out your team is one of the most crucial things you have to get right in your startup and finding the right developers is particularly important. But now there's lemon.io. They're going to save you time, money, and headaches by doing all the time consuming legwork for you. They've got an experience lineup of prevetted developers working for competitive rates. Just 1% of applicants are accepted into Lemons Elite program. And they're not just out there finding this great talent. They're also working with you to integrate these new members into your team. Plus, if it's not a good fit, hey, and sometimes things don't work out, Lemon will hook you up with a new developer ASAP. I've seen startups go from just pretty good to amazing after filling out their teams with developers from lemon.io. Go to lemon.io slash twist and find your perfect developer or technical team in 48 hours or less. Plus Twist listeners get 15% off.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “When we get back from this quick commercial break, a little pause for the cause, and we do cover our sponsors here this week in startups, I want you to take me through your rubric, your heuristics, your rule set for companies that you absolutely have to invest in, and then also your turnoffs, things that are red flags that you will never invest in when we get back on this week in startups.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And it's a filtering mechanism. And when you look at VCs, they're so busy they have to put so many large chunks of work together. That they really do appreciate. Sometimes they don't always show it. And they try to, the bad ones try to run over the angels and maybe take away their rights or whatever it happens to be. We got some good war stories there we'll get into. But they appreciate that filtering mechanism.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Thomas is also in and now Socca's in and Naval came in boom boom boom and that momentum is in a way it's kind of like building consensus”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “What do you think on our best days, angels, those first couple of checks, the first 10 investors before a proper seed fund comes in? What do we do really well and were we coveted, still coveted, but what do we aspire to do in those that year zero, that year one?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “No, exactly And at that time, we were very coveted as early stage investors It was like, I really appreciate you. When so much money came into the system and YC in some ways a victim of their own success because so many people want to go there with status that it became a bit of a competition to see, and I got to be. Know judicious hear what my comments, but I think the posture change from, wow, these angels really are angels in that sense. They're putting their money on the line. They know it's a 90% chance they get nothing back to, hey, how can we manipulate a bunch of dentists and high net worth individuals to come to a demo day, create scarcity? And it became very pushy and gamed a little bit, yeah?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “When I started Open Angel Forum, I think I got to maybe a dozen people, two dozen people in the major cities. But it was hard because there just weren't that many of them.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And it was low status when you and I started. If you said you were an entrepreneur, especially in Los Angeles, or even in the Bay Area, people were like, why would you do that? Sounds painful. You're a misfit, right?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It was awesome, and there weren't as many startups and the people who were choosing to do startups were of incredibly high caliber, and you had to be a bit resilient and a bit of a maniac to do it, yeah?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Just so we could get ten people to give twenty five or fifty K each just to give the founder enough money to get to a proper seed round and be ready for a venture capitalist.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “What was it like 10 years ago in the United States when you and I started Angel Investing? And then, how has it changed in the last decade?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, it's a fantastic time to be here. So let's get into, even before you were an angel investor in incredible companies, notion, segment, man, both of those companies, fantastic. And then even some that were very promising early, but then had some challenges. Bird and clubhouse come to mind, and you started doing some late stage. You got SpaceX in there, Uber, yum, yum, open AI Anthropic and perplexity. So you have really run the table. Total number of investments you've done.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And you're not the only one. I won't say who else is here, but we had a lunch when I was here in the fall. And I was just delighted to have a dozen of you show up for lunch with me. And it's all these incredible founders and entrepreneurs here. Why do you think entrepreneurs and founders, especially successful ones, wind up here in Tokyo?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Unbelievable All right, so let's get started here. You've been an angel investor. Well, let me ask you before we do that why did you move to Tokyo?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So cute, and everybody has the same backpack. So then I worked backwards with some of my founders here. I said, where do we get those backpacks? Peter, I asked some Grok and ChatGPT, where do you get them? I figured out where you get them. And I went and I bought my daughters these with all the stickers. And now they bring them to their school with them.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “My nine year old daughters, my twins were absolutely flat brigasted about that. And I saw all these kids walking to school with their backpacks.”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Year zero. About half the companies who come to the program are not yet incorporated. They're just projects. They're MVPs. They're business plans. They're vibe-coded little prototypes. And we love that because that's where founders could use a lot of help in learning how to pitch their product, how to go-to market. And today we're going to talk all about that with a good friend of mine who is making his third appearance on the program. I can't believe it, Thomas. Thomas McInherney is an angel investor extraordinaire, and he now actually lives here in Tokyo, correct?”

    2026-01-16 · This Week in Startups · Avoiding buzzwords and marketing-speak (feat. Thomas McInerney) | E2236 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source