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 26 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: Investor push that more funding increases success is unsupported folklore
“One of the most cancerous things that some And I wouldn't say it's all, but some prominent investors in sort of emerging tech companies have done is to push a narrative that more funding increases your likelihood of success. That idea is not supported by data.…”
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…”
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: 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: 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: Modern startups are repeating Kozmo.com's flawed unit economics
“Our business model, if you were to boil it down, was essentially buying things for two dollars and selling them for one dollar and, you know, hoping somehow that that would work out in volumes. And, you know, I think interestingly enough, it's sort of a busine…”
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.”
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: Most B2B content fails because creators write buzzwords for robots
“Yeah, I mean, I think it sort of fundamentally comes down to, for whatever reason, B to B content providers don't write for human beings, right? They sort of have a perception that they're Clients are these robots, I think, that just want to read buzzwords and…”
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…”
Avoiding early VC funding gives founders leverage in future raises
“If you can avoid it, For as long as possible. It's a good thing. You'll also have more leverage at the time when you do fundraise because you're coming to them from a position of strength. You know, you're not asking for sort of a handout to survive.”
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: 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.”
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…”
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 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”
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.”
Venture capital will evolve slowly as technology companies become cheaper to build
“I do think the VC model is one that is going to need to evolve, right? I think companies are increasingly less expensive to build, especially tech companies and so I think we're gonna see experiments in venture but, you know, they're gonna play out over many y…”
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.”
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: Candidates who add value during interviews show an exceptionally strong signal
“Like that's a really helpful conversation because somebody's, they're adding value and that's an incredibly good sign at the interview stage if somebody's adding value that early.”
Sanwal: Was a paper millionaire at Kozmo.com before IPO failed
“So I was a millionaire on paper. Cosmo was expected to go public. We'd filed for our S-One.”