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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John Frankel Warns Oversubscribed Deals Frequently Lead to Premature Scaling
“We often find that the hot deals where everyone's scrambling to get in, where they raise the round size and they raise the round price, they prematurely scale, and they're often challenged as the company approaches the next round and the like.”
John Frankel Says Startup Creation Costs Have Bottomed Out
“I think it's pretty much bottomed out. I think we've pretty much taken most of the OPEX, or rather, most of the CAPEX involved in starting a business making an OPEX. I'm not sure it goes down much from here, because now you're down to people costs, And real es…”
John Frankel Argues the Federal Reserve Is Trapped in a Rate-Cutting Loop
“The Fed has consistently cut rates over the last 16 years to solve problems brought about, to be quite honest, by low rates, and is now stuck in this circle sort of consuming itself and the rest of the economy.”
John Frankel Predicts Interest Rate Normalization Will Be Ugly
“At some point, we're going to have to smash back through the looking glass to some sense of normality. It'll be ugly when it happens, but no central bank or government has a stomach together set.”
John Frankel Says High-Volume Seed Investing Degrades Portfolio Returns
“The problem is that doesn't lead to high returns to that portfolio. Because for, you know, every one in a thousand companies you had, you also have the other 999.”
John Frankel Claims Every Successful Startup Undergoes a Pivot
“Oh, every, every successful company pivots.”
John Frankel Says Worst Performers Took Years to Generate Revenue
“The worst companies we've seen in our portfolio have been the ones that take three, four years to get to revenue, three, four years to get, to prove their ideas against customer engagement.”
John Frankel Argues Crowdfunding Is Not a Winner-Take-All Market
“It's not necessarily a winner-take-all space. You know, I've heard people describe Kickstarter as becoming the Friendstoper space, but I'm not really seduced by that argument. I think that there's room for more than one platform, and they, their models really …”
John Frankel Says Good Startups Raise Capital in Any Market
“Generally good companies get funded in good or bad scenarios. Bad companies get funded in good funding markets, and sometimes bad companies pivot into being great companies.”
John Frankel Warns High Valuations Box Startups in for Future Rounds
“You can raise too much money at too high valuation, and then box yourself in for the next round.”
John Frankel Says the Best Time to Scale Capital Is Series A
“The best time to raise a lot of capital is once you've solved a lot of a problem, so you don't prematurely scale, but you scale into a business with no numbers. That's usually around about the series A to series B stage.”
John Frankel Says Most Failing Startups Pivot Too Late
“Usually, companies pivot too late. Usually, when it, you know, when it fails, it's because they pivoted too late. They stayed with the wrong model too long.”
John Frankel Notes Each Venture Round Dilutes Startup Equity by 20%
“Each round is 20 to 30% diluted plus or minus.”
John Frankel Predicts Crowdfunding Will Yield Huge Businesses
“And I think that is a very powerful concept, and I think there'll be some very big businesses built over time. And I still think, I think we're still in like the second innings of this space.”
ff Venture Capital Gave Wade & Wendy a Term Sheet in First Meeting
“We, I think we took the First meeting that Drew Austin, the CEO, had with VCs, and in the, in that meeting, we gave them a term sheet and renamed the company.”