Harbaugh: Informal 'no-deck' VC chats are evaluated as high-stakes pitches
“And they said, you know, come in, you don't have to have a deck, just come in and talk to the partners. And I was like, okay, sure. And this was a huge mistake. I went into this, what turned out to be a partner meeting, and I was completely unprepared. I had l…”
Harbaugh: $1M ARR hires build systems while $50M ARR hires operate them
“Every single one of these phases of one, five, 10, 20, and fifty million, you're probably going to be hiring completely different people. The people you're hiring at one million are the people that want to build the machine. The people you're going to hire at …”
Harbaugh: LaunchDarkly had no full-time finance hire until Series B
“We did not have a full-time finance person until our B round. So up until our B round, I was still running all the models and the spreadsheets.”
Harbaugh: Early LaunchDarkly customers completely rejected self-serve credit card signups
“Our first attempt at pricing was we tried to go cheap and cheerful. We had a click through where you could go and sign up with a credit card. Easy peasy. Don't need salespeople. What happened for us is that absolutely nobody wanted to use our click through agr…”
Harbaugh: Enterprise software must price high because procurement expects 10% discounts
“If you're in an enterprise sales cycle, people expect you to ask for money. People are paying for a premium service. They're paying for a premium ELA. They expect it to be higher. Ah, and the insidious thing is that they also expect it to go to procurement and…”
Harbaugh: Low initial SaaS pricing anchors customers for life against upgrading
“What happens if you have a customer that is paying you 29, 79 dollars a month, is that you have anchored them for life, that this is a product that is worth 79 dollars a month. So, no matter how much you have other customers who are now paying a lot more and g…”
Harbaugh: LaunchDarkly's 'work is not life' value was weaponized against deadlines
“What happened with this work is not life value was that people started weaponizing it of, we don't have deadlines. I don't owe my other teams anything. Or, I don't really have to work very hard at all.”
Harbaugh: 500+ person companies need outside consultants to refresh company values
“When you're eight people, you can do a survey of your company very quickly. Ah, when you're 500 plus worldwide, you actually want a consultant who can come in and interview people, run focus groups, and get real input.”
Harbaugh: LaunchDarkly raised $200M Series D at $3B valuation
“Yeah, so we announced our Series D of two hundred million at a three billion valuation, which is pretty fun to say, by the way.”
Harbaugh: Active founders managing venture funds is weird
“I think it's weird, to be honest. Like, I have a full-time job. Like, I'm CEO and founder of LaunchDarkly. That's a full-time job.”
Harbaugh: Raising solely from operators increases follow-on financing and pro rata risks
“I think the risk with that is that the pro rata and a lot of risks and subsequent rounds just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Harbaugh: Meet one VC monthly to avoid cold fundraising starts
“To build the actual relationship, I do really like it sounds stereotypical, but like a coffee or a lunch, and just slotting that into your schedule every month. So that way you can be 12 different VCs in a year. And so that when it is time to actually run a fu…”