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 36 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
Hiten Shah: Nobody in tech actually knows what they are doing
“I think the number one lesson there was basically nobody knows what they're doing. And that's not just them. That's also me. And I've also met with many investors and many other folks, even folks that worked at companies and nobody really knows what they're do…”
Hiten Shah: Startup founders want encouragement, not tactical advice
“One key thing though, that after a lot of reflection, a lot of time that I realized is that most people, they just want encouragement. They don't really want advice.”
Hiten Shah: Expansion strategy matters far more than initial market size
“Markets are all pretty big now, and I don't really care about market size as much as if this business has a natural path or some, not even natural, but the founders and the team are thinking about how it expands over time and where they see it going. I feel li…”
Hiten Shah: Burnout stems from attempting to control uncontrollable factors
“Depression or burnout or whatever other folks would call it is really a result of stress and unrecognized stress based on me trying to get control of things I cannot control. And that's the fundamental thing that really burns me out is when I'm trying to get c…”
Hiten Shah: Serial entrepreneurship is overrated and prior experience can hurt founders
“But there is not as much of an advantage as I think there might've used to be when it comes to a serial entrepreneurship. So I'm in full hearted agreement with that statement. There are advantages, of course, because you have some level of experience, but you …”
Hiten Shah: Founders must prioritize incentive alignment over personal friendship with investors
“If you have to make a hard decision or have a hard conversation with your investor or your investor needs to have a hard conversation with you cannot let the friendship get in the way because this is a business relationship and you need to make sure that you h…”
Hiten Shah: Venture capital investing beyond seed is a numbers game
“I feel like investing is something that you have to be pretty dedicated to in order to do an amazing job at it beyond like pre-seed or seed rounds. The reason for that is it is a numbers game. You are basically writing enough checks so that some of them work o…”
Shah: Drift's pricing strategy will force competitors to drop per-contact pricing
“And that once someone did it, eventually a lot of the other companies are going to get a lot of pressure to do the same thing.”
Hiten Shah: Founders who don't need venture capital shouldn't raise it
“If you don't have to raise money, don't raise money.”
Hiten Shah asks prospective hires about their earliest traumatic memory
“I do that even with team members, you know, especially early team members at a company”
Hiten Shah: Past personal hardship indicates a founder's capacity for persistence
“A sign of persistence or a sign of that they can be persistent is that they've had hardships in their life and have got, and have gotten through it.”
Hiten Shah: Founders must track competitors as high market density impacts customers
“So number one, there's more companies out there than ever. Number two, competition is heavier than ever. They used to say, don't focus on your competition, focus on your customer. Now what I'm going to say is focus on your customer just like you used to, but d…”
Shah: Late-stage SaaS companies face an inevitable valuation course correction
“There are a lot of companies that have raised a lot of money at very high valuation, and I don't think that's going to work, and that's very clear in SaaS. Not all, not every company has the growth rate of slack. But many companies have the valuations that are…”
Shah: Watching Senior Board Members Is More Useful Than Seeking Advice
“Be on a board and have someone who's more senior than you that's been on boards before as an investor, and you can just absorb by watching them and learning how they do things, but that is actually more impactful than talking to people and getting advice from …”
Shah: Overconfidence Diminishes a Leader's Impact and True Knowledge
“The more you think, you know, the less you actually are able to have an impact and the less you actually know.”
Hiten Shah: Early-stage fundraising timelines are compressed due to market capital abundance
“The timeline that you mentioned, yeah, it is being compressed. It seems like later stages, it doesn't seem to be compressed as much, frankly speaking earlier stages. It is cause there's a lot of money sloshing around.”
Hiten Shah: Seed investors primarily focus on getting startups to their next round
“The simplest outcome on the seed stage is that this business gets the next round. And so you have to understand what the incentive is for the investor, what the incentive is for yourself, which is obviously building a great business. I'm assuming if you're a f…”
Shah: Top VCs invest when startups seem bound for success regardless
“Does it feel like this business is going to be successful without me? That's, I think, what is in the back of the heads of the best investors. And if so, I want in on it.”
Shah: Institutional pre-seed investing trend will spread globally
“I think this trend is going to permeate everywhere. That's just, what's going to, it's going to boil down to. And some folks in places are probably a little behind just because of the amount of investors in that area, amount of sophistication in the area. But …”
Hiten Shah: Truly data-informed startup investing only begins post-Series A
“I think it's much easier to make really data informed decisions post series A. So if you're a series A investor, you're more likely to be able to make better data informed decisions.”
Hiten Shah outlines five core responsibilities for startup leaders
“And I figured out that like, I need to spend my time directing, coordinating, editing, motivating, and co-learning. And these are the five things that I come back to and remind myself of as much as I can.”
Hiten Shah: The biggest opportunities come from unexplainable, intuitive decisions
“Because I think that's where the biggest opportunities are the things that you feel are right that are unexplainable.”
Shah: Extreme process documentation is the key to remote team success
“Extreme amounts of process documentation and process improvement. Boring stuff.”
Hiten Shah: Founders conscious of constraints maintain creativity even with venture funding
“If you're conscious of the fact that constraints create creativity, it doesn't matter whether you raise money or not, you're going to already think about it like I'm constrained.”
Hiten Shah: Startups should only raise VC after achieving product-market fit
“Once you're at a point, my ideal scenario is, you get to product market fit, You start experimenting with channels and things like that so that you're basically ready to scale, and then you wanna make a, make an argument, so to speak, that without money, we wo…”
Shah: Raising VC is like marriage, but immediately becomes just business
“It's almost like you're going into a marriage when you raise money. But then what you don't realize is after that marriage, it's just business. Like, I don't mean to say it's just business, but essentially everyone's focused on the business and how to get grow…”
Shah: AWS and modern tools eliminated the $1M upfront cost to build software
“Founders used to be able to raise money just by having a deck. And the reason is, it was much harder to build stuff. Harder meaning it took more resources, more money. So you needed actual Like a million dollars just to get your servers going, and get the prod…”
Hiten Shah predicts startup creation and competition will keep increasing
“There's going to be more and more companies in the future. There's going to be more and more competition, and the reason is, you know, it's easier than ever to start a company, and on top of that, Because it's easier than ever and it's cheaper than ever.”
Hiten Shah: Startup capital recycling from exit liquidity will not stop
“So the money coming into the system from people who are very entrepreneurial, founder friendly, were in a startup that went IPO or had a liquidity event, that's what's feeding this, and I don't see that stopping.”
Hiten Shah: Running a startup gets harder over time, not easier
“Over time it just gets harder, it doesn't get easier, so you have to be ready for that stress”
Shah: Full-time investors should deploy heavily into early-stage SaaS
“So honestly, if I were an investor right now, on the early stage, like a full-time investor, I'd be heavy into early stage SaaS right now. Just because I think the valuations are going to be much more reasonable than before.”
Hiten Shah: Brian Balfour Explains B2B Growth Better Than Anyone Else
“I don't think anyone's explained growth for a B to B company as well as he has.”
Hiten Shah: Buffer Founders Advanced Corporate Transparency Movement Significantly
“They've really pushed this movement around transparency and openness a lot further. And I'm sure there's, they've impacted many more businesses than the countless businesses. Right. And that, that kind of, regardless of what happens with their business, they'v…”
Shah predicts the term 'SaaS' will change meaning by 2021
“In five years, I don't think we're going to be using the terminology SaaS the same way we do today.”
Hiten Shah on how helping others generates long-term business serendipity
“Within 24 hours, some random thing happens. That wouldn't have happened. That's very good for me, my businesses, my life, whatever. That only happened because I decided to help somebody at some point like three years ago. So this magic just happens if you're j…”