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 13 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
Slack Delayed Building an Outbound Sales Motion Too Long During Hypergrowth
“I actually helped to build out our very first ever outbound motion at Slack, was the very first person to ever do it and ever do our first, which we called Proactive outreach. Cause outbound was, you know, of course a dirty word back then, but it is so importa…”
Overly Generous Self-Serve Tiers Cannibalize Future Enterprise Sales Revenue
“Is they have their, essentially their self-serve or their lower end product cannibalize what could be their future enterprise product. We ran into that at Slack. We run into it at Webflow all the time where there has to be a huge product differentiation outsid…”
Startups Should Always Hire Sales Representatives in Cohorts
“You should always hire in multiple sets of sellers, not for competition, but because it's actually not, not that much more work to teach people, you know, teach a group of people than to teach one person.”
Startups Need $1M to $2M ARR Before Building Enterprise Sales Teams
“And once you have conquered those things, again, to recap there, The pain, the product market fit, some revenue, maybe one to two million dollars in ARR, as well as sell outside of the friendlies, that's the time that it is to start building an enterprise prod…”
Asking Sales Candidates to Demo Your Product in Interviews Is a Mistake
“And one of the most common things I think people do quite wrong in their final round is they ask people to demo their product. I think this is one of the absolute worst things that you can do.”
Scaling Startups Should Buy Software for Future Growth, Not Present Size
“Build things for scale. And what I mean by this is don't buy the cheapest tool now because it's meant for an SMB. If you know you're scaling and if you know your hyper growth, build something for, you know, buy and build for next year, for the year after, for …”
Founders Must Successfully Sell Their Product Before Hiring Sales Reps
“If you can't be successful as a founder selling your product, how can you ever expect someone else to be successful?”
Cold Outbound Emails Should Follow a 10-80-10 Personalization Structure
“We call it the 1080 10. So 10% personalization within this email needs to be about, Hey, Harry, I saw you live, you know, in London. Here's some common things that people like you struggle with. You know, I saw you were over in Finland last weekend, or whateve…”
Early-Stage Founders Should Prioritize Securing Customer Logos Over Revenue
“I advise them to not worry too much about the revenue early days. Focus on getting those logos because very few people ever want to be the very first mover and shaker.”
Discounts Should Primarily Be Used to Control Deal Close Dates
“Discounts should be used Very selectively, and the single biggest reason a discount should be used is to control the close date of the deal.”
Stock Option Grants Are Meaningless Without Knowing Total Outstanding Shares
“People get so fixated on the amount of options that they're getting, but options don't actually mean anything. If you don't know how many options are outstanding Or what the actual value is of those options.”