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 20 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
Sanwal: Elite pedigree in hiring is overrated for challenger startups
“For us, right? But I think for us, like, pedigree has sometimes led us astray. We are, because of how we've grown and how we've sort of been brought up, we like people who are hungry and ambitious and, you know, who have a bit of the chip on their shoulder. An…”
Wilkes: Galileo raised venture capital primarily to get press and analyst coverage
“When we did make a decision to raise, you know, we were profitable and had been profitable for quite some time. We had a large and scaling business, but it was hard to get analysts and press to pay attention to you or to consider you as an alternative. It's an…”
Sanwal: VC funding would have locked CB Insights into 1000x smaller TAM
“And I think if we were not revenue funded, we'd have not seen that opportunity. I'm pretty sure that we'd have raised a bunch of money. We'd have burned time and effort on that. It's ultimately a total addressable market. For that first segment of dealmakers, …”
Sanwal: Revenue funding beats VC on cheap capital, clarity, and speed
“There are three main reasons before that I think revenue funding is the cheapest form of capital, and I'll kind of dial into these. Two, it provides clarity on where you as an organization and your team should focus, and then third, I think it helps achieve pr…”
Sanwal: CB Insights raised $10M, untouched, and out-earns heavily funded rivals
“You know, we've raised 10, haven't touched any of it, and are doing more revenue than all of those.”
Sanwal: Real businesses are fundamentally valuable, not exit-dependent
“A real business to us is one that's not reliant on a flip, is not reliant on selling out to Somebody who values it in some esoteric way, it's a business that's fundamentally valuable.”
Sanwal: Startups can only balance two of three key stakeholders
“You can have three masters, right? You can have your clients, you can have your team, and you can have investors. And in our view, you can balance two of them.”
CB Insights raised $1.15M in non-dilutive NSF grants before taking VC
“We've raised some money from the National Science Foundation but that is non-dilutive, so they don't take any equity. It was a grant, so we raised 1.15 million dollars over a few grants but nothing that is you know, no money that has required us to give up equ…”
CB Insights rejects one-third of candidates during the reference check stage
“And when we get to references, I'd say one out of three candidates fall out of getting an offer based on what we learned from references.”
CB Insights will replace traditional research reports as the market standard
“Yeah, I mean, I think we are going, I think we're going to be the industry standard when it comes to data on what's happening, what's next, right? So when people want to know what the next big industry is going to be, they're not going to read research reports…”
Sanwal: Asking candidates how they prepared reveals work ethic and analytical ability
“Yeah, so the question I like to open with is just tell me how you prepared for this conversation. A lot of doing well, you know, and again, at CV Insights is about being prepared, doing the work, glamorous or not glamorous, to make sure that you put yourself i…”
Sanwal: CB Insights will never operate at negative margins
“We're never going to do something that's sort of a negative margin, just because we don't think that that is a prudent way to build a business.”
CB Insights is building an AI-driven management consultant product
“From a technology perspective, it's really building kind of a machine learning driven management consultant. Basically, you tell us what your challenges are, and we will curate the data for you. We will run the calculations on it, and we will create the presen…”
CB Insights acts as the Bloomberg terminal for venture capital
“Yes, we are absolutely not replacing VCs. We don't invest in companies. You know, I think of us like you know, the same way Bloomberg sells data to hedge funds, we're, you know, kind of comparable there.”
Market intelligence is shifting from qualitative pundits to data-driven probability
“I think, you know, there's, our view is that the world is moving more towards probability and away from pundits.”
CB Insights operates with a $30k to $35k average contract size
“Subscription SaaS businesses, you know, especially the kind that we have, which is, you know, let's say, 30 to 35 K average ticket”
Sanwal: CB Insights newsletter reached over 500,000 subscribers
“And then again, like the numbers don't lie, right? We crossed 500,006 weeks ago. We're probably at 520,000 now. You know, like it just keeps growing.”
Sanwal: CB Insights has maintained 70% to 100% year-over-year growth
“We've grown kind of at a hundred percent, you know, 70 to a hundred percent year over year for the last several years.”