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.
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Deeter: VC deals get done when partners champion high-end upside
“By the end of the day, the deals that get done, it's the ones where the partner sitting there saying, I'm pounding the table that the high end and more as possible. And that's, that really is the qualitative overlay that has massive quantitative implications.”
Deeter: Sector-dedicated VC funds force capital deployment regardless of market quality
“The risk of having a semiconductor fund or a semiconductor team is that, you know, you carve out, pick a number, five hundred million to invest there. Like, you bet your ass they're going to invest five hundred million in semi, whether the right answer was two…”
PaaS Customers Graduate to In-House Infrastructure Far Less Than Feared
“Whereas I think the market and the investors, and frankly, even the teams were very worried about this graduation phenomenon, it's happening way less than anyone feared. And it's really just very specific cases where people go narrower, not broader.”
Mega-Checks Fail in Enterprise Cloud Because Growth Isn't Paid Acquisition
“They haven't done much in the enterprise cloud world, but I think there's a reason why, which is it's hard to put hundreds of millions of dollars into mid-stage companies. You run the risk of overfunding them, and it's not a paid acquisition game in the way th…”
Deeter: Marketing and Sales Matter Less in the AI Economy Than PLG
“Marketing and sales have less of a role in this new economy than they did before, and that these products in many ways are selling themselves, and product-led growth and innovation is the unlock for This, you know, supernova and shooting star aspirational grow…”
Tech Incumbents Face an Incumbent Disadvantage Against Lean Startups
“When realizing that this notion of an incumbent advantage, I firmly believe now is an incumbent disadvantage. It is really hard to beat a focused, you know, lean team with their head down going after a problem set.”
New Communication Channels Layer on Older Ones Rather Than Replacing Them
“What you find is that these new channels don't replace each other. So Video and push notifications and things. They don't replace SMS, so you don't have the situation where the SMS market plateaus, or the email market with the synchronization, you know, where …”
Hiring a Big-Company CRO Too Early Disadvantages Early-Stage Startups
“And so hiring the big company CRO at that point is not only overkill, but it probably sets you up at a disadvantage because they're going to be disconnected. They're going to be layering in other execs. They're going to be working on process when really you ne…”
Deeter: Outbidding competition for tech talent is an unwinnable arms race
“Really the primary job of the CEO obviously is to hire a great team, but you do that not by outbidding your competition in this market. That's an unwinnable arms race. You need to pay fair market economics, but really what you need to do is compel them by the …”
Deeter: Reducing churn is the #1 lever for SaaS lifetime value
“Hands down, the single biggest thing a company can do to drive long-term lifetime value of the business and increase margin is to improve those churn stats.”
Founders Should Default to APIs Because Companies Rarely Replace Them
“If I was a CEO today, and when I'm in the boardrooms today with CEOs, my advice is where you can plug in APIs and use them for whatever the capability is, do that first. And over time, constantly look at designing it out, but you almost never will.”
Founders Cannot Outsource Early GTM Discovery to Early Sales Hires
“And you can't outsource that to your sales team early, or you're going to lose the magic. You're going to lose the insights, and you're going to shoot the rocket off, 10 degrees off target, even if it's working.”
Startups Facing Preemptive Term Sheets Should Raise Half-Rounds Ahead
“Raise a half round ahead, not a full round ahead. So this idea of if you can envision deploying more capital and initially we are going to raise this money to get through these phases, let's think about the intermediate milestones where we can then go out and …”
Capital-efficient startups pull away from competitors in down markets
“However, in the medium to down markets, you will be disproportionately rewarded, because investors will flock to quality, and you will have the ability to invest in your model when others don't. As the cost of capital spikes in the market, the efficient busine…”
Team misalignment causes Bessemer's most painful investment losses
“The team really is our number one factor and where we've lost money or where we've had very painful experiences along the way is where We just got out of sync with the team or didn't fully understand where the team was headed.”
Public company boards should spend half their time on strategy
“Preserving the time for the strategic stuff is the most important actual use of the boardroom members, and so, for private companies, that ratio tends to be the vast majority, and the update part is very modest, and when you get to the public side, at least tr…”
Deeter: SaaS companies growing under 100% derive most revenue from renewals
“Any business that's growing less than a hundred percent has the majority of their this year's revenue locked up in renewals and upsells, not net new business.”
Deeter: Growth is single most correlated short-term variable to enterprise value
“Growth is still fundamentally rewarded, and it's the single most correlated variable in the short term To enterprise value. Really, if you deconstruct where the outliers are both good and bad, you'll find that it's efficient growth that's rewarded most.”