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 35 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
Hyatt: Most AI agent startups are near-term arbitrage risking market collapse
“I think most of them fall into, if you just really think through the second order effects of it, fall into kind of like near-term arbitrage, which might just take that whole market to zero, especially if you are meeting the market where it is today with the mo…”
Hyatt: High-volume 'Brita filter' deal coverage is ineffective venture investing
“I don't know that the Brita filter version of investing is the right way to evaluate, or at least I'm not executing the way that I want to do my job and the way that I think my partner should do their jobs together in that kind of like trying to get, win the c…”
Hyatt: Spark Capital ignores market size when evaluating investment opportunities
“We don't talk about or look at market size at all, unless it's sometimes there's a, you know, a confirmation that it's a small market.”
Hyatt: Founders seeking hands-off VCs are settling for mediocrity
“They're setting their bar too low. Like that's the bottom line. Like they're settling for mediocrity because they're afraid of risk.”
Hyatt: Spark Capital's early-stage deal quality dropped during COVID
“I think our quality of investing went down on the early stage team and has since recovered.”
Hyatt: We invested in Anthropic because capital isn't the only AI moat
“If we had believed that only capital was going to win, Then we would not have invested in Anthropic, because you know, surely Sam was telling us and everybody else, like, we're going to win the capital game. The capital game is the only way to win, and so ther…”
Hyatt: Top-down modeling could never have predicted Oculus
“But that's not something you could have ever modeled your way into before we made that investment, right? Like, virtual reality was dead, and it'd been dead for, like, 15 years plus until, you know, Brendan and Palmer and Nate walk in and give you a demo, and …”
Hyatt: Autonomous Vehicle Startups Must Partner With Major Automakers to Scale
“It, I think was the absolute right thing to do for the company. You know, I think I supported Kyle in decision, and it is a good exit but more importantly, you know, Kyle wants to lead the self-driving revolution, and we knew all along that that would require …”
O'Driscoll: First venture rounds for OpenAI and Anthropic were $23B and $4B
“The first venture round at OpenAI was twenty-three billion pre with Thrive, and the first venture round at Entropic was four billion pre with Spark and Menlo, you know, right?”
Hyatt: A job protection mindset leads to the biggest VC investment mistakes
“And so I came in with a nothing to lose mentality, which allows you to sit on the front end of creative risk and being willing to take that extra risk, which of course, that's what this business is about. Versus this kind of protection is like, I just want to …”
Hyatt: I wrote only two checks during the COVID remote investing boom
“I wrote the fewest checks I've ever written in my career. I think I wrote like two checks in a year and a half.”
Hyatt: Spark Capital won Wordware deal despite higher competing term sheets
“The last investment I did was a company called Wordware, and that was a very, very fast, very, very competitive. They had term sheets for quite a bit higher, but you know, I'm getting dinner with the founders. I'm going for walks in the morning. Like, I met wi…”
Bijan Sabet's Twitter Series B Catapulted Spark Capital Into Top Tier
“As I was joining Spark, Bijan Sabat at Spark led Twitter series B and that investment catapulted us into the upper echelon of VC firms.”
Realistic SaaS payback periods are 15 to 18 months, not 12
“15 to 18 months for high growth businesses is what we like to see. Very rarely, everyone talks about 12, it's very hard to get it down to that level.”
Hyatt: Spark's Biggest Wins Like Twitter Were Impossible to Model Initially
“If you look at all of our big wins from Oculus to Twitter to Tumblr to Cruise, like all of these companies were, at the day that we invested, were very hard to actually model the exact market size of that company,”
Hyatt: Most VCs prioritize market modeling over team and product
“I think VCs generally, despite whatever they say on their websites, are market-first investors. So they want a market that they can model, you know, that they can give to an associate, and an associate can say, this is a one billion dollar market or a one tril…”
Founder vision and instincts matter more than academic pedigree
“And I also, I've just never bought into this kind of elitist way of thinking about like where you went to school You know, where you work, you know, whether you work at Google or, you know, Apple or something, it's more of, you know, what's your idea? What, wh…”
First-time founders possess a unique audacity and fearlessness
“I think first time founders have a level of audacity that, you know, sometimes more experienced people don't have because they, they're just, there's no fear.”
Reck: Spark Capital's fund returned multiple times via Oculus and Wayfair
“So TalkSpark Capital, our Series A lead, you know, the deal after Get Your Guide was Oculus Rift, right? You know, Palmer Lucchi. So, you know, we were basically off the hook a couple of months after they made the investment in us because the fund was already …”
Hyatt: Spark Capital chose not to raise $5B during the SaaS boom
“We could have very easily raised five billion dollars. We could have very easily You know, tripled or quadrupled the size of the team. We didn't do that. We stayed seven people, six people partnership.”
Hyatt: I outline the next round's pitch deck immediately after investing
“About 20% of the time, 25% of the time, founders are down for it. After we invest, I immediately try and have a conversation and get a pitch deck together for the next round. Like, what would the next, just a glossary, just a table of contents. What would you …”
Hyatt: I passed on Discord twice before eventually investing
“Discord, Jason, I knew for seven years. We were founders together before, before investing in Discord, and also smartly passed I was twice on Discord before investing.”
Mo Koyfman Led Plaid's Seed Round and Was First Outside Director
“I led the seed round in Plaid and joined the founders, William and Zach, as their first outside board member.”
ServiceNow grew to $43B market cap by launching new products annually
“They went public in 2012, one hundred sixty million dollar in run rate. It was a single product company. Fast forward to today, they have five plus products. They committed to launching one to new products every year and new products are 30% of new business. A…”
Median 2018 SaaS IPO took 15 years and reached $200M ARR
“You had to be around about 15 years. You're about two hundred million plus in ARR, growing around 40%, have 75% gap gross margins, are losing money, have at least 120% net dollar expansion rate, sell a thirty-k product per year on average, Have about a thousan…”
Best-in-class SaaS companies need 75% of ramped reps hitting quota
“I think you want to have at least 75% of your ramp reps at a hundred percent of quota.”
Best-in-class $5M to $20M ARR SaaS grows 7.5% to 10% monthly
“Let's just say you're kind of between five and 15, 20 of ARR. I think you want to be growing seven and a half to 10% month over month. That would be best in class.”
Growth investors should prioritize software that is critical to business continuity
“At the end of the day, it's like, is this product core to business continuity? So what does that mean? If you ask the customer or stakeholder, If you rip this thing out or if it shuts off, what's going to happen to their business? I think the best products are…”
High-growth SaaS companies should target 130% plus net dollar retention
“I think on a net expansion or net dollar retention, which is kind of the North Star number that we focus on, you want to be a 130% plus.”
Spark Capital always provides follow-on capital if portfolio companies secure outside leads
“If they're able to recruit outside capital, then we always find a way to be supportive. I don't think we've ever sent kind of a negative signal that you're describing about some other serious cause for concern in the company.”
Startups should complement VC-heavy boards by adding an independent CEO director
“So when I make initial investment in the company, I always tell the founder exactly that. And I tell him that the best way to compliment me on the board is to add an independent director to the board. That's either a current or recovering CEO. That can help wi…”
Twitter had under 250,000 daily active users when Spark Capital invested
“There was less than 250,000 daily active users.”
Spark Capital conducts 10 to 15 customer reference calls per investment
“For the best companies, I feel like once you do 10 to 15 calls, and they're all starting to sound the same, you know you've sort of figured it out. But we like to do at least that many for every company that we're thinking about investing in.”