Anand Sanwal
Executive Chair & Co-Founder, CB Insights. On 4 shows, 6 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorauthor@asanwal ↗LinkedIn ↗anandsanwal.me ↗
Sanwal co-founded CB Insights in 2008 and served as its longtime CEO before transitioning to Executive Chair in 2024. He previously managed the Chairman's Innovation Fund at American Express.
4shows
6appearances
97statements
11resolved
10supported
1contradicted
91%fully supported
49said about them ↓ Everything Anand Sanwal said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Sanwal: Best practices produce average results and will not build exceptional companies
“Best practices are for losers, full stop. They're for people who want to be average. Like, nobody who follows best practices builds great companies or builds exceptional companies.”
Sanwal: Investor push that more funding increases success is unsupported folklore
“One of the most cancerous things that some And I wouldn't say it's all, but some prominent investors in sort of emerging tech companies have done is to push a narrative that more funding increases your likelihood of success. That idea is not supported by data.…”
Sanwal: Elite pedigree in hiring is overrated for challenger startups
“For us, right? But I think for us, like, pedigree has sometimes led us astray. We are, because of how we've grown and how we've sort of been brought up, we like people who are hungry and ambitious and, you know, who have a bit of the chip on their shoulder. An…”
Sanwal: Building an IMG Academy-style entrepreneurship school for 6th-to-12th grade
“What I'm trying, what we're working on is building a school of entrepreneur-ing, so it's a in-person, sixth to 12th grade school, you know, if you know the IMG Academy, right, like, for sports, right, like, the basic idea is, like, people go pro in sports at a…”
Sanwal: Education should enforce proven teaching scripts rather than artisanal improvisation
“We still treat education very artisanally, right? It's like, you know, it's like everybody's an artist. Like, oh, Sam likes teaching history this way, and Sean likes teaching it this way, and Anand likes teaching it this way. It's like, hey, just go and, like,…”
Sanwal: Odds that VC alone changes startup trajectory are close to nil
“The odds that a VC alone is going to change the trajectory of your business is close to nil.”
Sanwal: Giving early employees C-level titles causes organizational friction later
“If somebody's gonna be a CTO when you're three people, and then you get to 30, and that person no longer is relevant in that role, then you're gonna have to top them, they're gonna look like they took a demotion, it just creates all sorts of agita and anxiety …”
Sanwal: Consensus-driven culture results in a 'shit brown culture'
“If you give everybody input into what the culture's gonna become, you're gonna have a shit brown culture. And so what you got to do is say, nope, this is our culture, and we're going to spike on these two colors, and that's it”
Sanwal: Do not hire candidates with a track record of startup failures
“When you see somebody who's taking a lot of L's, like, you know, hey, I was at a startup, it failed, my prior startup had this problem, and you look at their resume, and it's just like a string of losses, like, don't hire that person.”
Sanwal: Revenue funding beats VC on cheap capital, clarity, and speed
“There are three main reasons before that I think revenue funding is the cheapest form of capital, and I'll kind of dial into these. Two, it provides clarity on where you as an organization and your team should focus, and then third, I think it helps achieve pr…”
Sanwal: VC funding would have locked CB Insights into 1000x smaller TAM
“And I think if we were not revenue funded, we'd have not seen that opportunity. I'm pretty sure that we'd have raised a bunch of money. We'd have burned time and effort on that. It's ultimately a total addressable market. For that first segment of dealmakers, …”
Sanwal: CB Insights raised $10M, untouched, and out-earns heavily funded rivals
“You know, we've raised 10, haven't touched any of it, and are doing more revenue than all of those.”
JPMorgan is avoiding blockchain and digital currency, unlike Goldman Sachs
“When you compare that, for instance, to JP Morgan, you don't, you see JP Morgan has sort of avoided the digital currency space, right? They're not doing anything in blockchain or Bitcoin you know, like Goldman is, right?”
Unfunded corporate partnerships with startups are always a waste of time
“Oh god, yeah so big companies will come to you. If you're a startup here, they'll come to you and say, hey, we don't have any money, but we want to do a partnership, and like, they'll use terms like joint value creation. Like, you should just run fast from the…”
CB Insights sees a bigger opportunity competing with McKinsey than Bloomberg
“I, you know, I really think of us more, to some degree, going after, like, McKinsey, right? So if you think about McKinsey services as a pyramid, there's sort of that bottom layer, which is sort of, you know, what are my competitors doing, and where are market…”
Sanwal: Dave & Buster's enables peer-to-peer gambling on arcade games
“I think Dave & Buster's now allows gambling on, like, Top Shot. Like, you know, Sean and I are playing against each other, like, I can literally bet Sean, like, hey, I'm gonna get 10, and you're gonna get less.”
Sanwal: None of 80 surveyed teachers use proven daily quizzing methods
“Like, it's, like, proven stuff that says, you know, if you want a young person to, like, learn something, you should quiz them daily. Like, it's shown to work, but, like, if you talk, I've talked to probably 70 or 80 teachers, not a single one can, does it.”
Sanwal: Focusing on personal branding as an entrepreneur is nonsense
“You know, if you care about your personal brand, and you really, if that's what, you know, like, all that shit is nonsense, so it won't be good for y'all.”
CB Insights has reached ~$100M ARR without a PR firm
“We're kind of in that hundred million ARR category, and we don't have a PR firm still”
Sanwal: CB Insights' outfunded competitors all failed or are struggling
“We've been outfunded by numerous competitors. They've all they've all failed or aren't doing very well. So, money is just oxygen. It doesn't buy you the ability to execute, and I think that's really important.”
Sanwal: Selling SaaS products to startups is 'the perfect SaaS hell'
“We used to sell the startups in the early days, and maybe this has evolved, but, you know, they die, they churn, they require lots of support, they don't have a lot of money, so it's kind of like the perfect SAS hell.”
Sanwal: Early-stage founders should prioritize revenue before fixing tech debt
“Don't worry about perfecting your tech too early. So again, this one changes with scale, but in the beginning, I remember we used to have conversations about, like, oh, we got tech debt, and I was like, hey, we don't have any fucking revenue. Like, I don't car…”
Sanwal: Hacker News Front Page Is Useless for Non-Developer SaaS
“Unless you sell developer tools, like, totally useless, right? We would get, we did get there a couple times. Our Google Analytics traffic spiked, and then we just got, you know, a bunch of people who said our product sucks in the comments, so that was fun.”
The other half of the tape: Anand Sanwal's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 47 times in 20 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Parr 18Nathan Latka 8Shaan Puri 7Harry Stebbings 5Pat Grady 2Mark Kilens 2Clay Wilkes 2Semil Shah 1
Statements about Anand Sanwal, by other people (2)
Parr estimates CB Insights generates roughly $100 million in annual revenue
“You started a company called CB insights that is in the range of a hundred million dollars in revenue or something like that.”
Shaan Puri: CB Insights made $300k pricing a PDF up to $100k
“The best thing that ever happened to us was my buddy was like, no, no, no, you need to charge like 12,000 dollars minimum, 25,000 as your medium, and then have a 100,000 dollar option. He's like, dude, it's a PDF. Like, are you sure? And that's what they did. …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
My First Million 25
Top Founders 12
20VC 10
2024 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
2023 17 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- Metaverse IRL, Bollywood Protein Powder & AI Gadgets That Suck (#507)
- This Hedge Fund Manager Got Away With Insider Trading… Then Made Billions (#509)
- Sam Reveals The Company He's Worked On For The Last 8 Month
- 9 Lessons from Building Marketing Teams at HubSpot, Drift, and Airmeet
- 3 Frameworks to Help Forecast & Inform your Board in Your First Three Year
- Profitable Growth is sexy again. How we hit $1.7M profitably with only 6 FTEs and plans to scale profitably by 5x YoY.
- How Dave Ramsey Built A $300M/Year Media Empire (#428)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
2016 9 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- EP 436: $4.5m on Ebay, Now SaaS Hits $25kMRR to Help Sellers Sell on Ebay with Crazylister CEO Victor Levitin
- EP 438: Dancing His Way to $100k+ Business with Instagram Genius, Dancing Wizard Zach Benson
- From Cleaning Company at 26 to $14m Agency By His 42nd Birthday, EP 266: Andrew Howlett
- 20VC: The Future For Autonomous Vehicles & How Software Is Eating Cars with Nikhil Basu Trivedi, Investor @ Shasta Ventures
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Anand's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Executive Chair & Co-Founder, CB Insights | 2 | 26 | 80% 4/5 | full record on 20VC → |
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Executive Chair & Co-Founder, CB Insights | 2 | 18 | 100% 4/4 | full record on My First Million → |
 MADLEDGER | Executive Chair & Co-Founder, CB Insights | 1 | 14 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Executive Chair & Co-Founder, CB Insights | 1 +1 | 39 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Top Founders → |