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 33 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
Sandell: Benchmark would be in trouble without abundant downstream capital
“A firm like Benchmark would be frankly in real trouble if there wasn't enormous amounts of capital because they only do series A and series B deals and they hope other people are going to come along and carry their companies after them.”
Scott Sandell: Free is the most powerful business model in the world
“This fit into our overarching theme, you know, that the most powerful model in the world is free, and they were going to be disruptive because they were offering something of real value, you know, stock trading where commissions were seven or eight dollars a t…”
Robinhood's early operating cost structure was 1/35th of E-Trade's
“And they came back and said, yeah, pretty much our cost structure is about one 35th of E-Trade.”
E-Trade spent $800 to acquire a customer while Robinhood spent zero
“E-Trade was spending, like, 800 dollars for a new customer. Robinhood was spending zero.”
Sandell: Robinhood poached executives from Facebook more often than losing to them
“And when we would talk about how hiring was going for this position or that position, it was more likely that they were poaching some senior executive from Facebook rather than losing a competition to get somebody from Facebook.”
Sandell: Robinhood's market potential exceeds Charles Schwab
“Well, I looked at it from the beginning, and I said it should be at least as big as Charles Schwab. That was my reference point in terms of a business, but as we got into it, I realized it could be much bigger.”
Robinhood raised $3.5 billion in five days
“You know, they had to raise a ton of money in a short period of time, and without missing a beat, I think they raised 3.5 billion dollars in five days start to finish.”
Sandell: VC differentiation is harder as competitors push absurd valuations
“At the simplest level, it's harder and harder to differentiate yourself as a venture capitalist when people will come along and offer valuations that might be, in your mind, sort of absurd, and so we've been facing this challenge now for a number of years, but…”
Sandell: Software post-IPO growth accelerated from 18% to 50% over two decades
“But interestingly enough, in the seven quarters after the IPO, the average company grew 18%. And that was considered fantastic. You couldn't get funded today if all you were doing was growing 18%. In the decade that followed, they grew 28%, and the decade just…”
Sandell: 100%+ software growth justifies paying premium entry valuations
“If it's a software company growing over a hundred percent a year, and I really believe that that's going to continue to happen for some period of time. Then I can justify paying a price that not too far down the road, maybe 18 or 24 months, or maybe even a yea…”
Sandell: Small funds should rely on deep-pocketed follow-on investors over pro-rata
“If you have a small fund, I think you want to be super sensitive about getting people who can carry the freight for a long time and not look for you to do your pro rata along the way.”
Sandell: NEA makes all firm decisions in a weekly three-hour meeting
“The only reason NEA could have scaled to the size it is, is because of the trust that we have in the partnership, which enables us to meet for three hours a week, make all the decisions necessary, and then have the confidence that they would be executed well.”
Sandell: LoanPal finances 40% of US residential solar loans
“They back about 40% of solar loans in the United States today.”
At 100 employees, Robinhood had 85 engineers and one marketer
“They had, you know, 85 software engineers, and 15 customer support people, and probably one person in marketing.”
Sandell: Robinhood's board pushed management to start spending on paid marketing
“In the board meetings, the board actually impressed upon the team that we should probably figure out How to spend some money on customer acquisition, because we could grow faster, and the payback on these customers was so high that you could afford to spend a …”
Sandell: Startups must maintain reserves because capital vanishes during market busts
“Not only do valuations come down, but in the busts, usually there just isn't capital at any price. So you have to make sure you always have a reserve on your balance sheet, and I think you also have to have a business plan that allows you to make rapid adjustm…”
Sandell: Tech startups founded today will rival ExxonMobil and GM
“The result will be that some very iconic companies are being built today that will be the Exxon's and General Motors of tomorrow, or the IBMs, and we've already seen a handful of examples. The FANG companies have already shown us what kind of upside is availab…”
Sandell: Software development productivity has increased fivefold due to open source
“Just the development of software is now about five times more productive than it used to be.”
Sandell: 'Free' is the most powerful business model in the world
“And that business model of free, which I think is the most powerful business model in the world, is transforming one business after another.”
Sandell: Longer private holding periods drive higher returns for VC funds
“Those longer holding periods are precisely why venture capital firms like ours are able to generate much larger returns because we're not giving those away to public market investors.”
Sandell: Secondary markets will become vital for managing early-stage funds
“Well, I do think that the secondary markets Are really at an inflection point, and there's more and more capital flowing into the secondary markets. You know, we've seen it, of course, first for entrepreneurs. There's been a pretty robust secondary market avai…”
Sandell: NEA's top growth basket returned 36% annually over a decade
“This particular collection of companies has raised thirty-two billion dollars in total, and we've only been responsible for three billion of it. So that's kind of great. Our companies have had access to all this company. The problem is that that particular bas…”
Sandell: The best venture investment decisions are made in small groups
“We are firm believers that the best decisions are made in relatively small groups.”
Sandell: Cultural mismatch is the main reason people leave NEA early
“Once we've hired people, we're watching very carefully to see whether their behavior matches our values and our culture, and really that's the one thing that causes people to leave NEA on a relatively premature schedule.”
Sandell: Light-touch leadership attracts venture talent who reject rigid hierarchy
“So if you have a light touch, you're more likely to attract, I think, people who probably would chafe under more rigid forms of leadership.”
Sandell: Board members build trust by showing kindness during tough quarters
“When an entrepreneur comes into a board meeting and they've had a tough Quarter or tough month or something hasn't gone right. You don't have to beat them up over that. Just be kind and they will always appreciate that.”
Charles Schwab's average customer age was 55 when Robinhood launched
“Charles Schwab had grown up with those customers in the average age I think at the time Robin Hood started was 55 years old”
Sandell: Software automation is essential for sustaining a free consumer product
“You know, it was designed from the beginning to be self-serve, basically completely automated with software, and that turns out to be an enormous advantage in a business where you're trying to offer something for free.”
Sandell: Average venture capital investment holding period is 8 to 10 years
“And one of the things that seems a little frightening is that those things have occurred about 10 years apart, and the average venture capital investment is somewhere between eight and 10 years nowadays.”
Sandell: Startup time to IPO grew from 2.5 to 6-10 years
“In 1999, it was something like two and a half years from inception to IPO. And now it's more like six or seven. And at one point it was nine or 10.”
Sandell: NEA plans to raise bigger and different kinds of funds
“Well, I think there's certainly an opportunity to raise bigger and maybe different kinds of funds to meet these needs, and that's something we plan to do.”
Sandell: NEA grew flagship fund size from $2.3B to $3.6B in 20 years
“We've been growing actually relatively slowly, Harry, 10 or 15% fund to fund. We started with the first big fund, NEA-TEN, in 2000, a 2.3 billion dollar fund, so we've been growing on a large base since then, and our latest fund is 3.6 1,000,000,020 years late…”