Christian Owens
Founder & Executive Chairman, Paddle. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@christianbowens ↗paddle.com ↗
Christian Owens is an entrepreneur and Thiel Fellow who founded the SaaS billing and merchant-of-record platform Paddle at age 18. Under his leadership, Paddle reached a $1.4 billion valuation and acquired subscription analytics provider ProfitWell in 2022 for over $200 million.
1shows
2appearances
28statements
5resolved
3supported
1contradicted
60%fully supported
Everything Christian Owens said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Owens: Paddle has lost only 8 customers to churn in 7 years
“If we look at logo churn, we have Sort of 900 customers today. And like we've lost in terms of actual churn eight customers in seven years.”
Owens: Paddle at least doubled revenue from 2020 to 2021
“It was really high. Like it was because it was a sort of a little bit of a COVID aberration. Because we were, we saw like the tailwinds of all of that. We at least doubled the business like kind of over that kind of period of time.”
Owens: Paddle might have raised at a $3.5B valuation two months earlier
“Two months earlier and we might have raised it like a three and a half billion dollar valuation.”
Owens: The ProfitWell acquisition likely wouldn't have happened two months later
“Two months later, I think the deal might not have happened like at all.”
Owens: Expanding Paddle to gaming is simpler than physical D2C e-commerce
“The step for us between do we do this for SAS business and do we do it for a game is sort of fairly short versus the step of like, do you do it for SAS business? Do you, versus do you do it for Glossier or like kind of like one of these sort of D to C e-commer…”
Owens: Paddle charges a flat 5% fee across all volume
“So we charge a flat five percent across everything.”
Owens: Paddle's largest customer processes around $45M in ARR
“No, so, like, right now, and this is deliberate, the largest probably does, I think, in the region of, like, forty-five million ARR.”
Owens: Software needs a business infrastructure equivalent to AWS
“We actually think that there is an opportunity for somebody to build kind of this almost sort of like the second most important piece of infrastructure that software company buys, which is sort of like the business infrastructure to AWS's technical infrastruct…”
Owens: Paddle avoids charging professional services fees entirely
“We don't charge professional services. We don't do any of that stuff.”
Owens: Paddle has roughly tripled its revenue year-over-year
“We've roughly three X revenue every year.”
Owens: Paddle charges no monthly or setup fees, taking only a percentage cut
“We monetize the transaction volume that flows through Paddle. We don't take a monthly fee. We don't take a minimum. We don't take a setup fee. We don't do any of that stuff. We only win when the customers win. So we monetize the payments that are coming throug…”
Owens: Paddle charges 5% plus $0.50 as maximum self-serve pricing
“Five percent and 50 cents is the kind of publicly available pricing. If you kind of self-serve sign up on the website, obviously there is a whole spectrum of customers. If you're doing a hundred million dollars a year, sort of the pricing does go down. If your…”
Owens scaled a previous software company to $3M-$5M ARR before Paddle
“So sort of pre paddle, I built a software company. And I really ran headfirst into the problem that we try and solve, scaled it to three to five million in ARR sort of, and ran into this problem where we were, we had a few 100,000 kind of people using these pr…”
Owens invested roughly $100,000 of initial capital to launch Paddle
“It was probably because it was like in little chunks. As we kind of like built this stuff, it was probably call it a hundred K sort of to begin with.”
Owens says Paddle's founding equity split was roughly 70/30 or 75/25
“I think I don't even remember what the initial kind of equity split was. It was sort of like two thirds, one third or three quarters, one quarter or something like that.”
Owens: Paddle lost 87% of its ARR when one $350K customer churned
“We got from like zero to 400 and then went back down to about like 50. Because we lost like a customer that was like contributing like 350 K and error. And then we had to then rebuild from 50 kind of back up.”
Owens: ProfitWell Retain charges a 4% to 6% take rate
“It's roughly between four and six percent.
Like it's still tiered right now.”
Owens: Paddle's initial acquisition offer for ProfitWell was tens of millions lower
“It was several, it was tens of millions, like lower.”
Owens: Total Financing Including Debt Was Substantially North of $200M
“It was vast majority cash. Sort of, I actually think the number, if you include sort of like, we rounded it to like a whole number, but the actual number, including the debt was pretty like substantially north of two hundred million.”
Owens: Paddle remits sales taxes in over 40 countries
“We pay their taxes for them sort of like calculate and pay and remit sales taxes in 40 something different countries.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Christian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & Executive Chairman, Paddle | 2 | 28 | 60% 3/5 | full record on Top Founders → |