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 39 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Lemkin: If Box cannot re-accelerate growth, incumbent SaaS is hopeless
“If he can't get Box to 20 to 30% growth I'm giving up on, on the rest of the world.”
Lemkin: SaaS incumbents see no revenue boost from AI features yet
“So far the evidence is no. So far it says the incumbents are gonna, they're gonna do great things with AI, great, great things. The product's gonna be much better, but it's not clear they're gonna get any revenue boost from it. No one's saying that none of the…”
Levie: Box's 4x valuation multiple is way undervalued and should be 6-8x
“Now, now Forex is clearly way, way too undervalued. It, you should be in the kind of, you know, six or eight X range.”
Levie: Box reinvests in headcount whenever AI boosts function productivity
“At least so far empirically, every time that we've done that, we will actually reinvest in that area of the business.”
Levie: Box API activity already dwarfs direct human user interactions
“The volume of API usage on our system is already enormous and already, you know, is outsized relative to any of the end user interactions in the system.”
Cannon-Brookes: Only four public CEOs remain from 2020 SaaS peer group
“In COVID in 2020, we formed a group of SaaS CEOs. I think there were 16 of us that got together, we'd meet on Zoom every single week, right? At one stage, 10, 11 of us were public, maybe more, we all had earnings calls, and you know, it was a really good thera…”
Lemkin: Public SaaS companies are re-accelerating growth through AI
“I'm glad to see that just literally this week, we were seeing Mongo even Okta, which had been struggling, Box last, the other day, Zoom, which is, you know, which is not exactly a rocket ship anywhere, but seeing growth re-accelerate because of AI, it's like, …”
Hamid: Aaron Levie's Box IPO dilution led VCs to re-up founder equity
“Aaron has done a great PSA for founders with his equity stake at the IPO, where I think we as investors, board members have done a way better job making sure that our founders get re-upped when, especially when they dip below a certain threshold.”
Khan: Box and Dropbox margin expansion required public market discipline
“Like, I don't think the margins that Box and Dropbox is generating, if they could have generated, if they would just stay private. Because the growth was slowing, they were forced to look at the business and run the business better.”
Lemkin: Dropbox and Box have settled into low single-digit growth
“I think we are seeing some great companies like Dropbox and box settle into that and just feel that they without, unless they have a huge market cap and then go buy something that it is the world, right?”
Lemkin: Box and Dropbox Were Very Late to Go Multi-Product
“When we look at the boxes and the drop boxes, and I think both Aaron and Drew are honest here. They were very late to go multi-product and arguably drop boxes and multi-product at all. Arguably it's one product boxes kind of getting there, but I would say it's…”
Levie: Users Will Wire Into Specific AI Models Rather Than Abstracted Selection
“I don't think you're going to have complete commoditization of sort of the personality of the models for the sort of style and the response to the point where then, you know, if you're a user, you know, any given response could come from Gemini, Versus GPT-IV …”
Levie: Goal setting must be ambitious but decoupled from harsh accountability
“Whenever possible, have as ambitious of a goal as possible, and so goal setting should be sort of ambitious and idealistic in terms of what you're trying to achieve. That is, needs to be separate, though, from sort of like what maybe we would consider like har…”
Levie: Founders scale only by avoiding solving problems directly
“As you're scaling, you have to attempt to not solve, hopefully, as many problems as possible in the business directly, and that's your only way of scaling”
Suster passed on Uber and Box due to personal biases
“The obvious example, Harry, is Uber, where having lived in London and seen the taxi lobby and how strong the taxi lobby was in London, that clouded my vision for what was possible. Having lived in Los Angeles and seeing how few people ever use taxis, that clou…”
Lemkin: AI features helped Box return to double-digit growth
“It has led to a boost at Box. It hasn't turned Box into a hundred percent grower. It's gotten it back to double digit growths.”
O'Driscoll: Legacy SaaS giants have lost high-valuation growth premium
“These companies, they're in a much more bounded world now. They might grow 15%. They might grow five percent. They might trade at six times revenues. They might trade at four times revenues. You know, if you look at the stock chart, the area of magic is gone, …”
O'Driscoll: I passed on Box in 2010 before investing nine months later
“Same thing on Box. I passed at the start of 2010. The round didn't even get done, and nine months later, I literally woke up and said, what's the dumbest thing I did all year? I didn't do that deal, and I went down and did it.”
Scale Venture Partners invested in HubSpot, Box, DocuSign, and RingCentral in 2009
“Yes, I remember that was in O-Nine. We did HubSpot, Box, DocuSign, and I think RingCentral.”
O'Driscoll: Box's valuation suffers from competing against free Microsoft and Google
“The reason the stock price is always hard is we're competing against Microsoft and Google who give it away for free.”
Hamid: Box raised 2008 bridge financing at a $25M valuation
“We got to invest more dollars in the box at a twenty-five million dollar valuation. More, like, every incremental dollar or, you know, two, three million dollars in bridge that was being done was done at that valuation.”
Hamid: Box was one week from running out of cash before IPO
“I've had companies that are one week away from cash out become public companies.”
Annie Pearl: New products inside established companies take longer to impact revenue
“It always takes much longer for the sort of payoff of that investment to really start to materially lift and impact the business.”
Levie: Box secretly built a peer-to-peer file sharing product in 2005
“And we actually developed another product that we don't talk about publicly, which was going to be a peer to peer file sharing technology that we were going to introduce in the market.”
Levie: Box centralizes software design like Apple while keeping engineering autonomous
“So for design, as an example, we probably more have the Apple ethos. So our software design is extremely centralized and that ensures that everything we put out in the market, we believe is going to have the same look and feel the same great user experience. C…”
Levie: Pursuing a peer-to-peer architecture in 2005 would have failed Box
“So if we had chosen the peer to peer path as an example, that would not have worked just based on the architecture of the web went.”
Levie delegates everything outside product, strategy, culture, and customers
“And so I've designed my schedule, my time to be able to support, you know, spending time in those areas, which then by definition means you need to delegate all of the other important aspects of the business as much as humanly possible.”
Levie: Product bets fail when teams prioritize technology over customer problems
“And when certain features or products don't work and often they frequently have a, an element of Us as sort of product managers and people within the company brainstorming about how amazing it would be if we could do X thing with Y technology, as opposed to th…”
Shirazi Passed on Early-Stage Investment Opportunities in Box and Waze
“I remember making a bad decision not to advise or invest in box or join box because I just thought that the business was so young and so early, and it was basically when it was just three people. And I also made a mistake on Waze, too. And, you know, I met the…”
Box and Twilio Reached $200M ARR Prior to Going Public
“In fact, the last two IPOs that we've seen at DFJ over the last couple years, Box and Twilio, were both companies that were on nearly two hundred million dollar annual revenue run rates before they got public.”
Box's post-2008 revenue ramped from $5M to $125M
“They went rough revenue ramp was five, 10, 25, 55, one, 25, and so just, you know, exploding out of the gate on the heels of that.”
Seibert: Dual-tracking M&A and funding yields stronger acquisition deal terms
“If we had started in January and had a full six months to sort of side by side pursue funding and partnerships or acquisition, I think we would have been in a much stronger position.”
Lemkin: Box Generates Over $1B Annually With $800M Gross Margin
“Box is doing a billion-ish a year, a little bit more, right? So, twenty million goes to, two hundred million goes to COGS, to servers and support, and he's got eight hundred million to play with each year.”
Lemkin: Box, HubSpot, and Shopify IPO'd under $1B valuations
“Box IPO did eight hundred million. HubSpot IPO did eight hundred million valuation. Shopify IPO did a seven hundred and fifty million dollar valuation.”
Deeter: Box had over 130% net upsells in its IPO prospectus
“Was the fact that they had over a 130% net upsells, meaning if you stopped closing any new business and essentially fired your sales and marketing team, the business would still grow 30%.”
Levie: Early investors thought the concept for Box was stupid
“And it never felt like an epiphany because the moment I started pitching people on the idea, they thought it was stupid.”