Danielle Morrill
CEO & Founder, Groupthink. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestoroperator@DanielleMorrill ↗LinkedIn ↗daniellemorrill.com ↗
Danielle Morrill was an early employee and Director of Marketing at Twilio before co-founding and leading the venture data intelligence platform Mattermark. She currently builds software products such as Groupthink, invests through vehicles like XFactor Ventures, and coaches startup founders and executives.
Everything Danielle Morrill said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Morrill: Overhyped equity options create severe retention crises during repricings
“It's almost like we've taken stock options and we've hyped them up more than we should have, because then you do have this trust problem where if you do have to do something for the survival of the company, Now you're telling a couple thousand people, hey, we …”
Morrill: Young founders build consumer tech because they lack real-world experience
“I think there's just a ton of people who work on consumer products because they don't know anything about the world.”
Morrill: Hopping between mid-stage startups is a smart career tactic
“Actually, you can find people that just hop from, you know, mid-stage startup to mid-stage startup as pretty much a career tactic, which I think is pretty smart, actually.”
Morrill calls splitting founder equity 50/50 intellectually lazy
“It's intellectually lazy and people should be more thoughtful about it.”
Morrill: Investor Competition for Rare Unicorns Drives Up Startup Valuations
“And then I think you're also seeing these really massive rounds because what I'm seeing is really competitive deals where investors feel like there's not that many super Unicorn potential startups. They want to pile into those, and so that drives up valuation …”
Morrill: Late-Stage Investors Push $100M Rounds to Deploy Excess Capital
“What I'm seeing is a lot of the pressure is coming from that side. It's like, well, we don't want to deploy thirty million dollars, we want to deploy a hundred million dollars, because We don't have another, enough places to deploy its capital.”
Morrill: Mattermark operates without a board of directors
“Raising these big seed rounds, so we don't have boards for a really long time. Like, I don't have any board members, so I go to my advisors, and I'm trying to work with them and think through a lot of these questions with them”
Morrill: Public markets do not know how to value low-friction SaaS
“I think the public market doesn't even know how to value it, really.”
Morrill: Middleman business models fail to generate strong profit margins
“Yeah, but you know, you don't make a lot of money being the middleman. So we decided let's do something where we're really building the software and where we're the ones creating the value.”
SaaS customers actually decide to churn months before their renewal date
“People don't make a churn decision on the date of their renewal. They don't say, oh, I'm not going to use this anymore. They already decided. They decided months ago when they stopped using it.”
Morrill: Mattermark Customer LTV Expected to Top $50,000
“So we have a really substantial amount of early customers upselling now, too, if we have an enterprise plan that's, like, more in the six-figure range. So I think it's gonna be, you know, in the fifty-k plus range, but I don't know for sure yet.”
Morrill admits a $1 billion valuation would far exceed Mattermark's value
“If someone comes along and offers me a billion dollars for Mattermark, that is so far and beyond the value of the company right now at least to me, but if someone else sees that kind of value, you'd have to consider that would be life-changing for every single…”
Morrill holds lion's share of Mattermark equity over husband and friend
“I started the company. I recruited my husband to join me. I recruited my friend Andy to join me. So I have the lion's share of the founder equity.”
Mattermark MRR is approaching $300K in early 2016
“It's like two, I want to say two 62 75. We're getting really close to 300 now.”
Morrill: Mattermark annual ARPU grew from $6K to around $10K
“So it's been moving. So now it's coming up to almost 10,000. This is the number we want to see go up over time, obviously. So it started out around 6000 when we started, and now it's around 10,000.”
Morrill: Mattermark annual churn is under 10%
“I mean, I think, oh, annual churn at this point is like sub-ten percent.”
Morrill: Mattermark Targets $4.8 Million in Revenue for 2016
“I mean, I think if we hit like, you know, basically two X of what we did last year, so 4.8 million, I'd be thrilled. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. But I think that's a very solid year. I mean, continuing to grow triple digit, you know, growth…”
The other half of the tape: Danielle Morrill's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 6 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 8Ezra Firestone 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 10
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
2016 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- EP 319: He's 23 And His Asian Parents Don't Like The Non-Traditional Entprenreuer Route He's Taking
- How Male Marketer Does $1.5m Per Month In Womens Cosmetics with Ezra Firestone of Boom! By Cindy Joseph EP 207
- EP 317: New Dad Does $1Million Per Month on Fish Oil and Bernie Sanders?
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Danielle'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 | CEO & Founder, Groupthink | 1 | 13 | — | full record on Top Founders → |
 a16zLEDGER | CEO & Founder, Groupthink | 1 | 7 | — | full record on the a16z Podcast → |