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 34 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Blond: Parker Conrad Will Build a $100 Billion Business With Rippling
“I just wanted to join this guy's company because he was going to build a hundred billion dollar business. You know, we didn't realize that outcome with Zenefits. He's going to with Rippling.”
Blond: Sales Reps Will Fail If Founders Cannot Close Deals First
“If you as the founder cannot close customers and generate revenue people that sort of specialize in sales will definitely not be able to. There is no one better qualified to acquire your first set of customers than you as the founder.”
Blond: Do Not Hire Initial Sales Reps From Salesforce or Rippling
“If you are hiring your first AE, first AEs number one and two, They need to have seen an early stage startup environment. Do not hire from an extreme example, be Salesforce, but gosh, even today, you know, don't hire from a rep who came from rippling. And join…”
Blond: Brex Never Used Recruiters to Source Sales Talent
“At Brex, we did not use recruiters, internal or external, to source candidates for the sales organization Ever.”
Sam Blond: Generating demand, not conversion rate, is almost always the startup bottleneck
“And I just believe that demand masks a lot of other potential problems and almost all startups. The bottleneck to growing faster is demand. We are constrained by the number of opportunities that we are creating. We are misdiagnosing this as a conversion rate p…”
Sam Blond: Account executives must generate their own demand from day 1 to 1000
“Salespeople should absolutely be responsible for controlling their own destiny in a way, generating their own demand that often manifests through outbound. I think this is true on day one. This should be true on day 1000.”
Blond: Early-stage startups should build fully in-person sales organizations
“I think if you are starting a business today, I am very biased towards building the in-person both the, you know, the entire company, but also the sales organization.”
Blond: Startups should prioritize startup experience over domain expertise when hiring initial AEs
“Where people over index is domain. If you are hiring your first AE, first big AEs number one and two, they need to have seen an early stage startup environment.”
Top sales talent avoids third-party recruiters
“Most of them do not go through a third party recruiter. They want to go somewhere where their reputation precedes them a little bit.”
Blond: Move on from underperforming sales hires who lack effort or attitude
“If the performance isn't there, you sort of default to, okay, what is the effort and the attitude like? And if either are lacking, this is either like a zero time or one time conversation with the person around performance.”
Blond: Assessing early sales hires should take 30 days at most
“I, the number that was coming to mind for me, it almost doesn't matter how long the cycle is with these early hires in particular, I think, 30 days. And in here, you're probably closer to right with your week. Most, you know, many folks say a quarter, many fol…”
Blond: Brex AEs Sourced More Revenue Than SDRs at $100M ARR
“When we were a relatively mature startup so let's call it 50 to a hundred million dollars of annualized revenue. One of the things that we noticed was that the AEs were sourcing far more of their own revenue than their SDR counterparts.”
Sam Blond: AI Cannot Devise Creative or Unconventional Sales Campaigns
“I think what, at least today, AI does not accomplish that humans still do is this aspect of being creative. You know, the AI isn't going to tell you here is your contrarian or unconventional outbound sales campaign that is different from what everybody else is…”
Blond: Run late-night, small whiteboard sessions for contrarian sales ideas
“At a ten-person startup, Harry, you're the founder, you're gonna be in this meeting, the two sales reps are gonna be in this meeting, and then maybe we have, like, somebody in growth, that person's gonna be in this meeting. So we've got four people in this mee…”
Blond: In-Person Meetings Tripled Sales Conversion Rates at Brex
“We measured conversion rates at Brex. When we met a customer in person, we had three X the likelihood of closing that deal than if we didn't.”
Blond: Remote-only Zoom sales models are becoming obsolete
“And so like the days of working from home, doing Zooms only to meet with customers, not meeting customers and developing personal relationships those days, I think are going to be a thing of the past, if not already.”
Blond: Modern Salespeople Are Lazy and Overdependent on SDRs
“Today's salespeople have gotten a little bit lazy. And I think they and we, cause I consider myself, you know, part of this community. Couple of things have happened. One, we have become overly dependent on marketing, SDR, anybody to source our own leads. We a…”
Sam Blond: Picking the Right Startup Defines Career Success More Than Performance
“The reality is the importance of picking the right company it just really defines one's career. I attribute so much of my success to joining the right businesses. Now, like, I was able to perform within those businesses, and, you know, for context, we're talki…”
Blond: Top Sales Reps Outperform Bottom Reps 3x Even in Hyper-Growth
“But what happens seemingly universally, even at the best companies in the world, like Zenefits in 2014, is there are outlier performers That perform at something like three X to the bottom performer. And so you get a team of like 10 people, even when you're in…”
Blond: Startups should always hire two individual account executives first
“The way I start is hire two individual contributor account executives. Those are sales reps. Always start with two.”
Blond: Startups should not hire SDRs before hiring a sales leader
“I don't like hiring SDRs prior to hiring a sales leader. Because they need a lot of hands-on management.”
Blond: Startups must win non-friends customers before hiring sales
“You should have a handful of non-friends and family revenue-generating customers, and a process that you believe is repeatable in terms of generating more of these customers.”
Blond: Test sales candidates by having them pitch their previous company's product
“Oh, I think the prior company is a really interesting one, because I think what's hard about sell me my company, meaning, you know, let's, let's say you sell me 20 VC, right? You're a 20 VC expert, and I'm not. So, you know how to pitch this product better tha…”
Blond: Effective sales hires improve leading pipeline metrics almost immediately
“If you make the right hires, there are metrics that you should start seeing improve almost immediately, regardless of how long the sales cycles are.”
Blond: Having early performance conversations with a hire is a red flag
“If you're having sort of like performance expectation conversations really early on, you know, I think that is a bit of a red flag but you know, not it's not one size fits all, once again.”
Sam Blond: Startups Should Target Outbound in Concentric Circles
“I think the way that startups should be approaching this, first is on who you are targeting, and then how you target them. So who you are targeting, think about the universe in terms of concentric circles. And you want to start with the sort of like closest co…”
Sam Blond: Brex Scaled Outbound from Personal Networks to Billboards
“At Brex, we started with personal networks, we moved to investor networks, we moved to YC companies, we moved to former YC companies, we then put billboards up all over San Francisco, and we targeted companies that were headquartered in downtown San Francisco …”
Blond: Brex Spent $300,000 on Its Initial SF Billboard Launch Campaign
“The very day that we launched in GA the product, we put billboards up all over San Francisco. And I think the campaign cost something like 300,000 dollars over three months, but we were everywhere. And that just made everything easier for us.”
Blond: Opening a San Francisco Restaurant Was Brex's Biggest Mistake
“In hindsight, that was a big mistake. We should have focused on what was working, building a credit card company using our dollars to acquire things like customers, and not, you know, remodeling A hundred year old restaurant that was in dire need of a remodel.…”
Sam Blond: Startups should only offer discounts late in sales cycles to drive urgency
“I think where people make mistakes and salespeople in particular make mistakes is like just defaulting to discounting. This is something that happens very late in a deal and it happens with A very clear trade-off, which is driving urgency to close.”
Sam Blond: Startup AE total comp ranges between $100K and $250K
“AE range, 100 to two 50 is, is like the AC is the total comp for a sales rep.”
Blond: Brex's Champagne Outbound Campaign Yielded Massive Response Rates
“And I've talked about a champagne campaign that I did at Brex where we sent founders a bottle of champagne early on and, you know, congratulated them on a recent fundraise. That's differentiated. It received a ton of responses.”
Blond: Brex Hired TaskRabbits to Hand Out $4 SaaStr Breakfast Burritos
“We show up, we had task rabbits outside of the event in Brex t-shirts handing out Brexfist burritos to every single person that walked in the venue. So the first experience that they have at Sastra is they get a Brex burrito on when they walk in. Four bucks a …”
Blond: Brex opened a San Francisco restaurant when under 100 employees
“We decided at a very early stage, we were less than a hundred employees, we decided that we were going to open a restaurant and lounge. And so we opened a in South park in San Francisco, we opened a Brex lounge on top of a South park cafe, which was a restaura…”