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 33 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin's 2022 Stock Buyback Created $50 Billion in Market Value
“So probably I'd say like based on where we're trading today, roughly a third of the company's value came from that buyback. So you said a hundred and fifty billion roughly, so let's call it fifty billion around.”
Adam Foroughi: Companies Will Not Need Separate Product Managers and Engineers
“And so I do think the role of product should end up looking a lot like it does at our company over time is that either your product people become engineers or your engineers become product people, but you don't need both.”
Adam Foroughi Predicts More Tech Layoffs Over the Next Couple of Years
“My guess is you're going to see a lot more tech layoffs over the next couple of years as companies really start understanding that not laying people off creates A blockade to actually getting to this AI native state.”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Employees Who Avoid AI Technology Will Be Fired
“If you avoid utilizing these technologies, you're not, and you're gonna get fired, and that's life, and so we demand that the people who are at the company are adopting these technologies rapidly to create more output, but we don't shy away from different diff…”
Foroughi: AppLovin will become the third-largest digital ad marketplace
“Like if you just to size it, that's Facebook, Google one, two, or in whichever order I'd have to check, but that's the third biggest digital marketplace for advertising in terms of scale that will exist.”
AppLovin Cut Departmental Staff 40-50% in 2024 Despite Fast Growth
“Mostly in 24, we had a year where we probably grew near double digits. Sorry, near triple digits. But we ended up cutting the team's staff by 40, 50% in most departments.”
Adam Foroughi: AI Automated Creative Production Will Reduce Human Designer Headcount
“We felt like AI is going to get to the point where creatives are going to be automatically produced. You still need humans to innovate, but you can have less humans because a lot of the design work can be handed off.”
AppLovin Core Ad Business Generates Over $10M EBITDA Per Employee
“So if I just went to the core business, Our core advertising products are about 400 people. So call it some very, very high percentage of all the companies EBITDA comes from the core business. So if you then calculate the EBITDA per employee over 400, it's a r…”
AppLovin Operates Without a COO, CMO, CRO, or Chief People Officer
“If you look at our exec team, we have CEO, CTO, CFO, and general counsel. We don't have a CRO. We don't have a COO. Go down the list of other C levels that people might have. We don't have a CMO. We don't have a chief people officer. We don't have any of these…”
AppLovin Restricts Equity Grants to Only the Top 10-15% of Employees
“And we used to believe that every single person should have equity granted by the company. Instead, we went to a place where we said the top 10 to 15% of the company will get equity, and the rest won't.”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Operates Without a Dedicated Product Management Team
“We don't have a product organization. Our engineers are meant to be product managers.”
Adam Foroughi: Enterprise SaaS Market Sell-Off Is Not Over Yet
“So in a way, I would say not only is it fair because of the risks that exist, I'm not sure it's actually done yet. You know, again, I'm not a trader of businesses, but I do think we're going to go through material changes in the market, especially when it come…”
Foroughi: AppLovin will clear over $15 billion in ad spend by 2022
“And we put out there by the time we're done with this next year, clearing over fifteen billion dollars of ad spend in our marketplace.”
Adam Foroughi: Tech Layoffs Stem From COVID Overhiring, Not AI Efficiency
“I think it's the latter today because the former is still yet to take full effect at most companies”
Adam Foroughi: 80% to 90% of AppLovin's Code Is AI-Generated
“Yeah, I mean, 80, 90% probably, but, like, that, that discounts quality over over quantity”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Achieved a 150 Rule of 40 Score Last Quarter
“I mean, our rule of 50 in the last, rule of 40, sorry, in the last quarter, I think was like a 150.”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Platform Reached $11B Ad Spend Run Rate
“We put out that a year ago, the scale of investment on our platform was eleven billion dollar run rate.”
Adam Foroughi: Corporate Share Buybacks Historically Do Not Yield Positive Results
“So, you know, buybacks are interesting because if you look at history, the concept of buyback doesn't usually pan out. It's not usually a good financial bet.”
Adam Foroughi: Reference Checks Reveal Half of People Think I'm an Asshole
“If you do checks on me and people who've come across me, you'll get half the people that say, I'm very aggressive, and they sort of like it. Half the people will say, I'm an asshole. They'll all say I'm competent.”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Core Business Headcount Will Not Grow Significantly
“Is it gonna be 800 on the core business? I highly doubt it. Is it gonna be 50 on the core business? I'd love it, but I highly doubt it too. So I think we're sort of in a range of a good level for what we need for what we're doing today. Now, if some of the thi…”
Adam Foroughi: In-Person Interaction Will Gain Value as AI Automation Expands
“I think as human beings, as we go to this world where bots are going to do more for us, in-person is even more valuable.”
Adam Foroughi: Half of the Cap Table at Most Private Companies Wants to Sell
“Most companies that are private probably have half their cap table that's sellers.”
Adam Foroughi: Faster AI Code Deployment Will Temporarily Trigger More Security Breaches
“Because of how quickly these models are just getting exceptionally good, it's almost certain companies are going to be releasing code faster. When you release products faster, you ship fast, you break things, and because of that, you're going to have more secu…”
Adam Foroughi: AppLovin Reaches Over One Billion Daily Active Users
“We build a business trying to better, to help an advertiser reach a consumer, drive a transaction inside this gaming audience, billion plus daily active users.”
Foroughi: VCs universally avoided gaming and advertising investments in 2012
“Well, in 2012, everyone hated gaming, and everyone hated advertising.”
AppLovin generated over $190M in software revenue in a single quarter
“And that's why last year we did two hundred million in software revenue. And you can just see acceleration this last quarter, we did over one hundred and ninety million in software revenue. So almost the entirety of last year in one single quarter because of e…”
AppLovin Received Early Acquisition Offer Worth Hundreds of Millions in Cash
“We got approached to sell the business for quite a lot of money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, all cash.”
AppLovin Market Cap Dropped 92% in 2022 to Under $4 Billion
“In 22, we fell about 92% to a little bit under four billion dollar market cap.”
Adam Foroughi Commits to Staying AppLovin CEO for Next 10 to 20 Years
“As a CEO of a public company, I'm committing for the next 1020 years. I need to be here a long time.”
AppLovin Operated Without a Board From Founding Until KKR's 2018 Investment
“When we were private from 2011, when we started the business to 2018, when KKR invested and we got our first three person board, I didn't have a board.”
Foroughi: Mobile app discovery was bound to become a massive problem
“So app discovery was gonna be a real big problem, and we wanted to solve it through advertising.”