ClaimsVinod Khosla

“Been recommending direct listing since Spotify listing;”

Vinod Khosla, on X 21 June 2019 Post by @vkhosla on X, 2019-06-21 (X)

Factual Economics and markets

Vinod Khosla has been recommending direct listings since Spotify's direct listing, and the Spotify team helped him understand it.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

What would count as true or false

There are two parts: (a) Khosla has recommended direct listings since Spotify's direct listing (April 2018), and (b) the Spotify team helped him understand direct listings. Part (a) holds if public statements, interviews or tweets from April 2018 to June 2019 show Khosla recommending direct listings. Part (b) holds if a statement by Khosla or Spotify supports it. True: both parts are supported. Mostly true: part (a) is well documented and part (b) is not contradicted, but rests only on Khosla's own statement. Mixed: part (a) is only weakly documented, with few or late recommendations. Mostly false: Khosla's documented support for direct listings begins well after Spotify's listing, or he expressed scepticism in that period. False: evidence shows Khosla opposed direct listings during 2018–2019.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (2)

  1. E1 Acquisitions, growth curves, and IPO strategies: A day at Khosla Ventures GitLab (about.gitlab.com blog) · 8 April 2019 Own record

    “The route we chose to go—traditional or direct listing—was another topic.”

  2. E2 Acquisitions, growth curves, and IPO strategies: A day at Khosla Ventures GitLab (about.gitlab.com blog) · 8 April 2019 Own record

    “Direct listings are historically uncommon. It wasn't until Spotify went public via a direct listing in 2018 that there was even a precedent for tech companies.”

Reasoning

E1 shows that the choice between a traditional IPO and a direct listing came up at GitLab's meeting at Khosla Ventures in April 2019. It does not say that Khosla recommended direct listings. E2 names Spotify's 2018 direct listing as the precedent but attributes no statement about direct listings to Khosla. Neither item shows that Khosla recommended direct listings from April 2018 onward, or that the Spotify team helped him understand them, so neither part of the claim can be settled.

Cite this claim

Vinod Khosla, “Vinod Khosla has been recommending direct listings since Spotify's direct listing, and the Spotify team helped him understand it.” (said 21 June 2019). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_2fa1c39e7224, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2fa1c39e7224

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Vinod Khosla, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

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All of them

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