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 9 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
Breinlinger: Relying on early metrics like MRR leads VCs to bad decisions
“If you are so focused on just the data of user acquisitions, MRR growth, whatever, especially at the early stages where it's probably only a million or so in revenue, I think you can just buy into hype too easily and make bad decisions that ignore common sense…”
Breinlinger: Three of four Jackson Square Ventures unicorns required bridge rounds
“At Jackson Square Ventures, the partners here, we've invested in four unicorn companies, and three of them, Equalogic, DocuSign, and Responsys, they all had bridge rounds.”
Breinlinger: Marketplace platforms cannot successfully span both commodity and premium tiers
“I actually don't believe the same company can own both. Largely because the workflow is just completely different for commodity level and master level.”
Breinlinger: DocuSign lost 25% of revenue overnight after regulatory shifts
“DocuSign was a fascinating story because we had led a round, and then shortly after that, some regulations changed, and basically they lost 25% of their revenue overnight.”
Breinlinger: Aggregating supply or demand solves the marketplace chicken-and-egg problem
“I think one of the strongest ways is to find some sort of aggregator. So find an aggregator of demand or an aggregator of supply to kind of solve one side of the marketplace for you.”
Breinlinger: Audio transcription cannot support a premium master marketplace model
“I don't think there's an opportunity to build a master transcription marketplace because there's just not enough of a difference in quality between what we do as the commodity and what a master could do.”
Breinlinger: Jackson Square tests if users outgrow marketplace services before investing
“That's actually an important test I look at for every investment is, hey, do users outgrow the service?”
Breinlinger: Meerkat's rapid growth was unsustainable and crashed post-investment
“Meerkat is actually one of my favorite examples, which was skyrocketing in terms of usage, but nothing was sustainable about it, and, you know, they got an investment, and it crashed shortly after that”
Breinlinger: Frequent small marketplace transactions create more value than large trades
“Somebody comes into your marketplace and spends a thousand dollars one time, and then they're gone. Or somebody comes in, spends 10 dollars a hundred times with a hundred different providers. That is much more valuable because you've got so much more data and …”