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 20 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
Deeter: Bessemer refuses to hire sector-specific investors or protect cooling sectors
“This is very much why we don't hire sector-specific investors, and we don't give you air cover if your sector goes out of favor, meaning our job's to make RLPs money, and if you're in a sector that's cooling off, you better get the hell out and go somewhere el…”
Deeter: Bessemer invested over $100M each in Anthropic, Perplexity, and Canva
“You know, you look at an Anthropic or a Perplexity or a Canva and we, you know, we have, you know, nine figures into each of these companies and yet we are still, you know, well below historical venture standards where you aspire to own 20% or something in the…”
Deeter: Bessemer portfolio company hit 90% automated support with higher NPS via Fin
“I was at one of our portfolio company board meetings the other day, and they mentioned that they had switched from, you know, human-based interventions to the FIN product from Intercom, And they showed the stats of deflections went up, I forget to, you know, 9…”
Deeter: Bessemer is evaluating nuclear fusion investments accelerated by AI
“We're looking at, you know, fusion investments now that I think will be supported and accelerated by AI.”
Deeter: Passed on Tesla Over Roadster Unit Economics
“One of the most famous and most painful for me was Tesla early on. It's on my anti-portfolio. If you go to the Bessemer website, we have a page dedicated to our screw ups, and that's one of mine. And it was because I couldn't fundamentally see how the unit eco…”
Deeter: Bessemer created 'Century Team' to re-underwrite top portfolio companies
“And we've actually added people and processes to make sure that we don't get subject to this kind of mental inertia where we invite in, you know, another partner to look at it and our best deals were constantly saying, You know, okay, we have the century team,…”
Twilio Built Software Layers to Avoid Becoming a Commoditized Infrastructure Pipe
“The commoditization of communications or the migration of their larger customers. So I think you asked a very insightful question along the way, which I probably didn't give enough due to, which is we worried about that very heavily. And so part of our Preempt…”
Bessemer passed on Tesla after failing to foresee its financial viability
“Tesla is the one that is front and center for me. I'm a car geek at hard. I love hardware products, and spent a lot of time with them early on, and just couldn't see the path to viability of the high-end car in a tough automotive time, so I bought the first ca…”
Deeter: Bessemer expects $1 of ARR growth per $1 net burn at Series B
“A crude rule of thumb we use for call it series B companies, roughly that ten million dollar stage of ARR is one to one, which is we like to see for every dollar of net burn, we'd like to see a dollar of ARR growth added.”
Deeter: Bessemer owned 28% of Shopify and Twilio at IPO
“We own 28% of Shopify and Twilio at IPO and we owned, you know, well less than that of Procore and Service Titan just because we, you know, included a lot of other investors downstream.”
Bessemer distributed Shopify stock to LPs rather than selling directly
“So importantly, we distributed early. We didn't necessarily sell. So what we did is we gave people the choice.”
Twilio's Revenue Was Declining Month-Over-Month When Bessemer First Invested
“When we made the investment, not only was the revenue tiny, but it was actually down month over month.”
Bessemer Holds 25 to 30 Unicorns in Its Private Cloud Portfolio
“Within our private cloud portfolio right now, I think we have between 25 and 30 Unicorns that have obviously chosen to raise, you know, large financings north of a billion”
Bessemer avoids market timing to pay fair prices for visionaries
“Great companies are built in all markets, and so I've really given up trying to time markets either as a founder or as an investor, and my point of view is Find great people with big vision and pay the fair market price, and generally, really good things happe…”
Deeter: Bessemer Is Targeting Vertical AI in Accounting, Legal, and Medical
“We're going down accounting and legal and medical. We're going through these sectors where there's a lot of, you know, front edge humans doing busy work and paperwork, and we're supercharging them.”
Deeter: Bessemer's largest all-time investments include Twilio, Canva, and Anthropic
“So it used to be Twilio. Then you know, probably StubHub, Canva, Anthropic Yeah, probably, probably that bucket.”
Deeter: My first Bessemer investment roadmap was in zero-trillion-dollar RFID market
“My first roadmap at Bessemer was RFID, radio frequency identification, which was and is a zero trillion dollar market.”
Stripe Is Number One on Bessemer's Private Cloud 100 List
“Stripe, which is cloud number one on our private cloud 100 list today with Snowflake's graduation, most likely.”