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 53 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Cohen: Nobody will use Concur, Amex GBT, or Salesforce by 2028
“In five years from now, nobody is using, going to use Conquer and Emacs. Nobody, by the way, nobody is going to use Salesforce.”
Cohen: Form-based software like Salesforce will be obsolete within 10 years
“I think I called out Salesforce back then, as I cannot imagine people using something like this in the next 10 years. I think AI accelerates this.”
Cohen: Sierra, OpenAI, and Anthropic Fail at Complex Vertical AI Needs
“There is nothing even remotely closed to what is needed when you go to a complex vertical out there. Okay. And it's definitely not in the kind of Sierra level, but even if you take it to the level of the APIs, If I'm kind of taking an anthropic and an open AI,…”
Cohen: Market obsession with LLM infrastructure is misdirected as models commoditize
“I think if we'll move from the LLM infrastructure discussion, which I think people are obsessed there, which I actually don't think it's an important discussion. It's also a very commoditized kind of thing.”
Cohen: Navan will ultimately capture the entire corporate travel market
“And I think as the, as long as we will service our customers and our users, the business will continue to gain share. We're going to take the entire market. I really believe in it.”
Ariel Cohen: SAP and Salesforce haven't innovated since the 90s and 2000s
“I think the last time that SAP innovated something was in the nineties, and the last time that, that Salesforce innovated was in the beginning of 2000.”
Cohen: SAP and Salesforce have not innovated in decades
“Salesforce and SAP, which are not innovating. I think the last time that SAP innovated something was in the nineties, and the last time that the, that Salesforce innovated was in the beginning of 2000.”
Cohen: Navan is seeking Slack alternatives due to declining product quality
“The team right now is looking for alternatives. Not because you know, we love Slack. But you can see that over time, the search works a little bit, you know, worse. The buttons are moving to the wrong places. I care a lot about product and design. And I think …”
Cohen: Public status gives payments companies a major capital advantage
“In the payments business, I think there is huge, huge advantage to be a public company in the way that you are actually raising capital for that part of the business compared to being a private company. I think if you kind of go too long in the payments busine…”
Cohen: Avoiding margin scrutiny in private markets builds weak businesses
“This mechanics of maybe it's better to be in the private market because nobody will look at how I'm defining revenue, or what's gross margins, or what contribution margin, I think it doesn't create a good business.”
Cohen: Navan's internal AI routing is shifting significantly toward Google models
“We've seen our agentic platform, Cognition, plays between models based on who will give you the best answer, and actually we saw movement much more to Google recently. A lot of the transactions with Edge, which we didn't release yet, but you know, we have it i…”
Cohen: Navan's co-founder vibe-coded their expense product in six hours
“I gave the team a challenge, and actually Ilan, my co-founder, obviously took it first and did it over the weekend to vibe code our expense product. And it took him six hours to do that.”
Cohen: 28 of 30 investors claimed business travel would never return
“We've talked probably with 30 investors. 28 of them told us that travel will never come back.”
Cohen: Navan achieves up to 100% travel attainment versus industry's 40-50%
“It's I think that it goes by Segment more of the higher end of the market, what we are calling named enterprise, and even mid-market will get 100% attainment. As you start to go down market, you are getting more towards the 80% attainment, and even that number…”
TripActions Was Among the First Tech Unicorns to Conduct COVID Layoffs
“We are one of the first, I would say, unicorns to do layoffs, just because usually I think in TripActions we are executing really well.”
Ariel Cohen Predicts Business Travel Will Rebound Stronger Post-COVID
“I have strong belief that people, once it is done, will get back to travel, to business travel, even in a stronger way.”
Cohen: Navan has only lost six enterprise customers ever; five returned
“In the history of Navan, we lost six enterprise customers. Five of them are back, ok?”
Cohen: Navan's AI handled 55% of support chats during JFK shutdown
“55% of the chats were run through Eva, ok? Our call center, in the worst time during this event, The wait time was 16 minutes, one six.”
Cohen: LLM Travel Demos Are Nowhere Near Production Readiness
“It's all of the cute demos that you sometimes see by LLMs, like you can book your trip, whatever, or you can, it's really nice cute demos. Trust me. It's not even remotely close to being there.”
Cohen: Navan's deep travel ticketing plumbing creates an unassailable moat
“An area that I actually think it's almost impossible to disrupt us is the travel side. To create the infrastructure that we've created to bring the content into the platform, the plumbing there, I don't think that people fully understand the plumbing that you …”
Ariel Cohen: Building Navan required sacrificing early family time
“It wouldn't. It wouldn't. That's the price. That's the price.”
Cohen: Companies that fail to adopt AI will not survive
“I would say maybe AI is eating the world and eating software, and companies that will not join the party will not be around.”
Cohen: Navan co-founder is building products to obsolete our current suite
“Actually, my co-founder right now is running two projects That are making a, basically a lot of what we've done to date obsolete, and I think that's how you maintain innovation.”
Cohen: Netflix, Heineken, and Adobe signed with Navan during COVID lockdowns
“Our biggest customers would sign up with us, like, customers like Netflix, Heineken, Adobe, sign with us on these times where people were not traveling because, again, change management, The easy thing to do at that time.”
Cohen: Salesforce and SAP revenues are currently declining, not growing
“If I look at the numbers, I think both Salesforce and SAP actually specifically now are not growing and in fact declining, right?”
Cohen: Navan is not for sale and will not sell
“We are not for sale, and there is a reason for that, and by the way, ah, we've, ah, kind of passed this test, ah, several times. Other companies could have sent me to retirement a few times by just, ah, you know, buying us, and we didn't sell because we think …”
Cohen: Navan scrapped its internal AI stack to adopt OpenAI
“And so we decided to do it. We decided to kill what we have to use the infrastructure. The bot is the bot, you know, the UI is the UI, the ability to change the flight comes from our API to change the flight, but then to use their technology.”
Cohen: Navan's AI bot will handle 90% of support by 2024
“I think that this AVA, I think will probably by the end of the year will replace 50% of our interactions in the contact center, and I think by the end of next year, it will replace 90% of it”
Cohen: Public travel competitors operate at 50-55% margins versus Navan's 75%
“You're talking about 50, 55% gross margins compared to 75 today.”
Cohen: Navan could hit 85% gross margins in two to three years
“Going to 80, maybe even 85. 85 is not model deal, but maybe even 85, ah, in the next two to three years.”
Cohen: Operational infrastructure is Navan's primary moat over AI
“So I think the moat That we've created is actually not around that technology. The moat is around all of the infrastructure here that allows us to go globally, to service our customers globally, to provide one T&E report for all of the companies that are using…”
Cohen: Navan launches completely free tier for lower-end market customers
“On the lower end of the market, we are free, right? And that's new. We are completely free. You go in and you don't need to pay us.”
Cohen: AI will make humans smarter by 2028, like scientific calculators
“Everything around us will be more efficient because of AI, and maybe the opposite of what we think all of us will be smarter because of AI. It's almost like we got, you know, you remember that we had this calculus, you know, computer, you know, when we were ki…”
Cohen: Enterprise customers require public company transparency and stability
“We have been starting to take, share in the enterprise segment, assigning more and more and more customers, and for them, for that type of segment, it is actually important that you're going to be public. They want the transparency. They want to understand you…”
Cohen: Unmanaged corporate travel is larger than the managed market
“There is the managed side, you know, Amex and Concare. There is the non-managed. Everybody that are doing whatever they want to. It's actually a bigger market, and we think that we have an opportunity and the right to win in both markets, and that's what matte…”
Cohen: Navan fears unknown early-stage disruptors over visible competitors
“I tell you what is the only competitor that I'm worried about. The one that I don't know about. The one that sits, like, the ones like Navan, 1011 years ago, that are ignorant enough about the problem, but are really, really, really good, that will create some…”
Cohen: Intimidation by incumbent Concur delayed Navan's launch by three years
“For us, travel, we didn't know anything about it, and Conquer back then looked so scary that probably we've delayed that, this journey by two to three years.”
Cohen: Companies spend 7% of budget on travel and entertainment
“Companies are spending seven percent of their entire budget on T&E”
TripActions Platform Usage Dropped by 90% During COVID-19
“Obviously, the usage has dropped down by 90%.”
Ariel Cohen: Video Conferencing Is Transactional and Eliminates Body Language
“Video conference, conferencing by definition is very transactional, right? You start a meeting, you end the meeting, you don't really know what happens in the five minutes afterwards, the five minutes before that, all of the body language, and so on.”
Founders Should Double Estimated Crisis Timelines When Sizing Budget Cuts
“And actually, if you think that it's a three-month crisis, it's better to think that it's six-month crisis. If you think it's six months, think that it's 12 months.”
TripActions Shares Cash Reserves and Burn Rates With All Employees
“Employees in trip actions all the time knew how much money do we have? How much we burn? On what do we burn the money?”
Ariel Cohen plans to build Navan for another 20 years
“11 years in this journey, and probably at least for me, another 20, 20 years to go.”
Cohen: Upside Travel raised $200M versus Navan's $4M in the same year
“When we started Navan, There was this company, Upside Travel. We raised four million dollars. They raised 200. Same year, ok?”