The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Gerstner: Altimeter invested over 30% of its debut fund into Snowflake
“Our first fund VC won hell. I couldn't even raise it. I was 20 or 25% of the fund. And I put, we put over 30% of that fund in Snowflake at a point in time that the world thought we were crazy.”
Gerstner: Altimeter analysts will be fired for unvetted FOMO pitches
“If you are an analyst who walks into my office with an idea a day because, you know, Johnny Mac down the street did the deal, like, you will be fired. Right? You better come in prepared, not with Dribbble, but you better have done your work because we're going…”
Gerstner: VCs must distribute shares unless projecting 3x-5x returns over 3-5 years
“So for us, when I think about distributing is, do we still have venture returns left in this over a reasonable period of time? And if the answer is we don't see a three to five X over the course of the next three to five years in that deal, then we're obliged …”
Katz: ClickHouse raised at a $2B valuation with zero revenue
“The Series B that Cotu and Altimeter jointly led at two billion felt expensive. We had no revenue. We had no product. We had control of an open source database. We had no customers. We had 15 employees.”
Ball: Overestimating growth durability was my biggest investing mistake
“The mistakes that I made right when I reflect back was that middle category, right? It was forecasting wrong. It was saying, Hey, I think I'm identifying a good market and a good business, but I had an expectation for growth durability. That just didn't happen…”
Ball: True founder-friendliness requires investors to have hard conversations
“To be a truly founder friendly investor and board member. It is about having those hard conversations. It's not about shying away from conflict.”
Gerstner: Most of Altimeter's $6B LP distribution in 2021 came from Snowflake
“Most of that distribution, right, not all, but most of that distribution was Snowflake.”
Gerstner personally provides 20% of the capital in Altimeter's funds
“I'm 20% of the capital in altimeter.”
Gerstner: Altimeter underwrites exits at 20% below pre-COVID average multiples
“Everybody on my team, for example, knows that we're applying a 20% discount To the pre-COVID ten-year average, right? So that is the exit multiple that we use.”
Gerstner: Altimeter passed on pro rata rights multiple times in 2021
“Sometimes you know, we'll have to pass on our pro rata in those rounds because we think that the price, like we did many times last year, the price has just gotten too far ahead of itself.”
Gerstner: Becoming a 500-person 'Blackstone of VC' would be a failure
“If we were a 500 person organization and look like the Blackstone of venture capital, I think we probably would have failed in that journey. That's not our North Star. It's not where we're headed.”
Gerstner: Altimeter could double AUM with same team size
“We could manage twice as much money as we're managing today with the exact same team, because this game is about picking the right ideas, making good decisions, thinking clearly, having conviction.”
Ball: SaaS startups stall at $50M ARR when failing to penetrate enterprise
“The market just wasn't that big, right? There were some early adopters, maybe in Silicon Valley, that were using your product But the reality is, is you never really broke into the enterprise, right? You never really broke into where the big dollars were, and …”
Ball: Complex VC exits take 12 to 18 months due to investor alignment
“This is why these processes end up taking 12, 18 months is because it's not 12, 18 months of negotiating with an acquirer or figuring out how to do a dividend back to the preferred, right? It takes 18 months because these are really hard decisions that are oft…”
Gerstner: An Altimeter software portfolio company missed its projections by 70%
“We have a software company, you know, where, where people, where they misplanned by 70%, right?”
Gerstner: Altimeter will grow by only 5-10 people and transfer majority ownership
“We may be five or 10 people bigger. The incredible partners and young people around here will have even more responsible responsibility doing all the things that we do today. I mean, in the fullness of time, I want to see Altimeter have an incredible generatio…”