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 75 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
Harries: Retool is 'dead at the wheel' amid AI transition
“And I think Retool is kind of dead at the wheel at the moment. I don't hear the recent things they've been launching, and so I could imagine Loveball going in that direction.”
Harries: Apple marketing unreleased Apple Intelligence features is bad growth strategy
“The thing I'd most like to change about the world of growth is is you just should not launch products which aren't actually ready. The biggest villain I see doing this at the moment is Apple. And so we've always held Steve Jobs in our mind as just like this be…”
Harries: Conversational AI agents will completely replace inbound SDR roles
“The function of an inbound SDR is I'm sure the best ones are persuasive and they're friendly, but really the function is data collection, and so instead, one, why don't you just add that to the form in the first place? Well, the reason is people don't really w…”
Harries: Retool Is Dead at the Wheel Compared to AI App Builders
“And I think Retool is kind of dead at the wheel at the moment. I don't hear the recent things they've been launching, and so I could imagine Loveball going in that direction.”
Harries: Apple Is Marketing Unfinished AI to Drive Hardware Sales
“The biggest villain I see doing this at the moment is Apple. And so we've always held Steve Jobs in our mind as just like this beacon of marketing and product and engineering. And now you have Apple pushing that the reason you should upgrade to the newest iPho…”
Harries: ElevenLabs founders want to build a bigger company than Google
“Matty and Peter literally want to build a bigger company than Google.”
Harries: AI will push product managers into growth or product engineering
“Yeah, I think PMs move to either growth, so you combine the PM role with marketing, and depending on your size and how strong your engineers are, you do more or less of the PM, or many PMs will actually move towards product engineering, which is they're somewh…”
Harries: Organic LinkedIn is today's most underappreciated tech growth channel
“The most underappreciated growth channel I see is organic LinkedIn. On Twitter, you're competing against the best writers in the world. You're competing against Harry Stebbings running shorts. Yeah, Bill Ackman. Like, it's really tough. On LinkedIn, you're com…”
Harries: ElevenLabs Founders Aim to Build a Company Larger Than Google
“Matty and Peter literally want to build a bigger company than Google. They want to build something absolutely massive.”
Harries: Long founder-led monologue launch videos fail to retain viewers
“And the big mistake that I see with most people's videos is that they put the founder themselves, they do a full five minute monologue themselves about the company mission, And unless you have the editing skills of Mr. Beast, you're just not going to keep peop…”
Harries: Superhuman's Staircase Launch Video Loses Viewer Attention Due to Pacing
“The staircase was beautiful, but you're watching Rahul walk down this beautiful staircase, and by the time he's walked to the bottom, kind of, you've moved on. And so then, in this, like, attention economy, you really need to make it short and snappy.”
Harries: ElevenLabs Tracks CAC Payback Period Over CAC to LTV
“Actually, the day-to-day metric and ratio we're really thinking about is CAC to payback period, rather than CAC to LTV.”
Harries: Controversial viral growth stunts destroy trust needed for enterprise sales
“He's also putting a big black X on himself if he ever actually wants to sell to enterprise sales teams, where you're like, ah, do I really trust this person? You know, I think it's a risky move.”
Harries: Sub-100% user retention in prosumer AI is acceptable if viral expansion keeps NRR over 100%
“And I think when you look at consumer and prosumer, yes, for that individual user, you may only be on 87% revenue retention, but what then happens is you build a product on Lovable, you then share it with a bunch of your friends, a handful more people sign up …”
Harries: Paid marketing before PMF is early B2B startups' biggest mistake
“The biggest mistake I see early founders making, particularly for BtoB, is doing paid marketing too early. Because if you don't have PMF yet, you're not going to get paid marketing working, and you're going to spend all your time and all your engineering time …”
Harries: Organic LinkedIn is today's most underappreciated growth channel
“The most underappreciated growth channel I see is organic LinkedIn. On Twitter, you're competing against the best writers in the world. You're competing against Harry Stebbings running a short. Bill Ackman. Like, it's really tough. On LinkedIn, you're competin…”
Harries: Conversational AI agents can completely replace inbound SDRs
“Really the function is data collection, and so instead, one, why don't you just add that to the form in the first place? Well, the reason is people don't really want to go through this back and forth and go into more detailed questions and, you know, trying to…”
Luke Harries passed on angel investing in ElevenLabs early on
“I was kind of angel investing them. I was like, this is not something I want to invest. What do you mean? Step one, you're going to build the world's best AI audio model. Something no one else has ever done. Anyway, so I did an invest.”
Harries: Semaglutide is the biggest medical advancement since penicillin
“This is, like, the biggest thing in medicine since penicillin”
Harries: Five-minute founder monologue videos fail to retain launch audiences
“The big mistake that I see with most people's videos is that they put the founder themselves, they do a full five minute monologue themselves about the company mission, and unless you have the editing skills of MrBeast, you're just not going to keep people for…”
Harries: Long-form blog SEO content will increasingly die over time
“This is, you know, long words, long-form articles. That, I think, will increasingly die over time.”
Harries: Interactive SEO tool pages will remain effective for five-plus years
“The part which I am confident will stick around for at least five years are tool pages”
Harries: Startups should hire a front-end growth engineer early for mini-tools
“This is why I think right at the start you should hire a growth engineer that's front-end focused that can independently be focused on building these and exposing these small bits of value to Out so that people can get and experience the value as quick as poss…”
ElevenLabs' affiliate program generates tens of thousands in MRR with zero maintenance
“So for example, affiliates, we set up over a year and a half ago, and that now is bringing in over, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of MRR Per month. But this was set up a year and a half ago by one engineer in one week, and then no one's touched it sin…”
ElevenLabs targets CAC payback periods between 12 and 36 months
“Actually, the day-to-day metric and ratio we're really thinking about is CAC to payback period, rather than CAC to LTV. We set different payback periods depending on which product line and how aggressive we want to be, but these vary between, say, 12 months, 2…”
ElevenLabs uses consumer products as low-CAC entry points for enterprise growth
“We actually have done this funky move of we've led in a consumer product, which enables us to get the CAC incredibly cheap, and then people may move up to creator or even enterprise.”
Harries: 60% to 70% of ElevenLabs' core engineering code is AI-generated
“In terms of core engineering, I would say probably 60, 70% of code now is AI written, so still like the majority.”
Harries: ElevenLabs uses zero AI-generated code for research engineering
“Where we don't do any AI written or AI generated code is our research engineering, where it's just like research engineering and research, where it's a very different style of work, and also these code bases are so sensitive.”
Harries: Bryan Johnson's 'Don't Die' campaign is the premier growth strategy in tech
“The best growth strategy I've seen is what Brian Johnson is doing. His marketing is so good that they made a Netflix show about his marketing, and I do think Brian Johnson's actually being a authentic. Like, he really does care about longevity, about creating …”
Harries Passed on Angel Investing in ElevenLabs Over Terrible GTM Plan
“And I was like, That is a terrible go to market plan. That's absolutely terrible. I was kind of angel investing them. I was like, this is not something I want to invest. What do you mean step one? You're going to build the world's best AI audio model, somethin…”
Harries: Curative was one of the fastest companies to reach $100M revenue
“The company we partnered with took a different approach. You know, they were some of the first people to do these testing, did incredibly well. One of the fastest companies ever to a hundred million dollars in revenue. And that company became curative.”
Harries: GLP-1 medications are the biggest medical breakthrough since penicillin
“This is, like, the biggest thing in medicine since penicillin”
Harries: Scaling horizontal AI products requires foundational models and founder-type product leads
“And I think the reason we've managed to get it working is because we've started with these incredible audio models, all these people come naturally to us. We've then been able to raise money Hire incredible founder type peoples who really own these individual …”
Harries: Interactive SEO Tool Pages Will Remain Effective for Five Years
“The part which I am confident will stick around for at least five years are tool pages”
Harries: ElevenLabs Targets 12 to 36 Month CAC Payback Periods
“We set different payback periods depending on which product line and how aggressive we want to be, but these vary between, say, 12 months to 24, maybe even 36 months for that payback period.”
Harries: ElevenLabs Uses Consumer Entry Point to Acquire Cheap Leads
“We actually have done this funky move of we've led in a consumer product, which enables us to get the CAC incredibly cheap, and then people may move up to creator or even enterprise.”
ElevenLabs splits growth into distinct top-down enterprise and bottom-up developer teams
“What we've done is spin up separate teams. So we have an enterprise marketing team, which is just focused on going in on the top. They're like, how do I get these SQLs, which are marketing sourced? They're doing executive dinners, they're doing the events, the…”
Harries: Traditional PMs Will Shift Into Growth or Product Engineering
“Yeah, I think PMs move to either growth, so you combine the PM role with marketing, and depending on your size and how strong your engineers are, you do more or less of the PM, or many PMs will actually move towards product engineering, which is they're somewh…”
Harries: 60% to 70% of Core Engineering Code at ElevenLabs Is AI-Written
“In terms of core engineering, I would say probably 60, 70% of code now is AI written, so still like the majority.”
Harries: Current AI wave, not COVID boom, is right time for aggressive VC investing
“The wrong time to be the tiger global play of investing quickly was back in the COVID boom. The exact right time is now, when I think you have this unlock of capabilities with the AI models, which has meant new products which just couldn't exist before.”
Harries: Avoid LinkedIn ads due to excessively high CPMs
“LinkedIn ads, the CPMs are so high. Yes, you can do great targeting, but actually I would argue invest a lot more time into creating excellent content that you distribute organically. Maybe you want to layer on ads on top, but particularly the kind of people t…”
Harries: AI customer support agents perform better than human representatives
“I actually prefer speaking to an AI customer support agent than a real person, because they're more knowledgeable, they know exactly how to solve your problems, they can escalate, they know all the policies.”
Harries: ElevenLabs Won't Build Digital Avatars to Avoid Competing With Clients
“We want to build the best platform to make these end-to-end conversational AI agents, but we explicitly don't want to be building full digital avatar platforms, so that way we're able to be trusted partners to companies like Hey Jen, Synthesia, Captions, who a…”
Harries: Wordware raised $40M, the largest Y Combinator raise ever
“And also Philip, the guy who organized it, he founded Wordware, which is the largest raise from YC ever. I think it's about forty million dollars.”
Harries: Digital CBT healthcare businesses face a six-week retention ceiling
“The tricky thing with digital CBT is it's great for lots of people, but it really only lasts about six weeks from a business point of view.”
Harries: Men's health startup Fella generates over $30M annual revenue
“That company's now doing over thirty million dollars a year in revenue, helping thousands of patients”