The Ledger, every show

“I think I could invest in your company, and I think for the next two, three years, you can make some money, but I don't think you're going to be right for long, because I believe we have to wipe out all the people, and you have to make a prediction engine that…”

“These guys get any traction. The valuation is going to be at 40, fifty million. I'm telling you. I know these enterprise companies are gonna help with bananas. He gets a million of revenues, it's gonna be 20 x, 30 x.”

“I don't see any VC wanting to say to their investors that they made all this money off of this type of program.”

“Culture is built with 75 things. One of those 75 may be this infrequently. It doesn't have anything to do with really building culture.”

“It's really easy to say, I love you, baby. But it's much, much harder to actually cut you a check. If they love what you're doing, people are greedy with their money. They would want to make money on it.”

“We all know we can have five developers do it in five months. It's, if she has the publishers... It doesn't matter. She can have a worse product if she owns the publishers.”

“But as soon as you actually start going wider and actually start putting marketing money in, one thing you're going to find about a B to C, you will drink capital marketing this business. This is going to be horrendously expensive to scale.”

“There's no money in this.”

“That's a small market. Fifty million a month in an, in a total market, I don't know, whatever, six hundred million a year. It's too small to matter.”

“This revenue is going to get to twenty million and getting in at two and a half. Think about it. It's one of the best VC returns you'd have.”

“The cost to scale this kind of company, I think, has gone up an order of magnitude than what it used to.”

“There's no equipment yet. There's no proof in the pudding. There's no real work through.”

“It's a mispriced deal.”

“I guess my, when I step back and I look at this I don't think your business is actually that investable right now.”

“So, so, I don't back companies based on this idea that you're going to get a lot of money, and then hopefully, because you're a good guy, you're going to figure it out.”

“And this is service business. This is not a SaaS company.”

“So I'm gonna pass, and here's my reasoning. I can't get comfortable around being involved in a business like this because I don't feel comfortable pushing for profit and scaling and all this kind of stuff, and when I have to consider what we're really doing.”

“I can tell you that a lot of, you know, nonprofits should act more like businesses and figure out how to make it profitable so they can do more like what you're saying.”

“I think fundamentally, you're in a declining market. You have too much churn. You have too much weightlifting to get these sales done. I'm just saying, I don't fundamentally think you're structured properly to hit the purpose that you're talking about.”

“But this market's big enough to have, honestly, a 100,000 of these things.”

“You are still A one-on-one where the other person has to consume, ah, their person hours times rate, which is back to a service model, which is an inefficient model that lawyers and accountants and everybody else are desperate to get out of.”

“I'm not that interested in your attendance platform because I think it's a feature, not a product, and it's got a hurdle because it's not only a feature, I've got to put in a piece of hardware, so I'm moderately interested, not that interested.”

“I don't like the education space and what you're doing. I would like you to be an enterprise product for businesses, for attendance, for workers, where there's real money transacting involved. I think that's the higher value usage, and I think you're going to …”

“The reason it's very very expensive, is that 10% gets eaten very quickly on customer acquisition cost, your marketing costs, you're getting in the players. So the 10% isn't probably enough to scale. You have to go through a lot of cash.”

“It has to be a marketplace for this to work.”

“Marketplaces take a lot of money, but I think it actually takes more money than she's raising. I think she was a valley company, and Charles, correct me if I'm wrong, you'd be 20, 30, forty million in, and you'd be pumping way more cash in, and trying to get t…”

“I think that cryptocurrency in general is like, I think a like good 98% of it's gonna get washed out, and I think you know that as well.”

“What you're describing is a niche subset of the wine. You have to really be into wine to do what you're doing to, like, look at your phone, find an app, find a bottle. The average person's not going to do that. The average American consumer does not do that.”

“Really, your valuation is probably not much more than what you just did, and really what you should be looking for is, is, is probably strategic investors that'll help you and make these introductions and what have you.”

“I think this is the most amazing lifestyle business. This guy understands how to work that New York market. He could get out a million bucks of free cash flow a year. He could pay all his investors. He could make three, 400 grand a year and be very happy.”

“My, when I step back and I look at this I don't think your business is actually that investable right now. What I expected to hear was after raising three and a half million, that you would have thought through the business a little more. I wanted you to come …”

“So, so I don't back companies based on this idea that you're going to get a lot of money, and then hopefully, because you're a good guy, you're going to figure it out.”

“And this is service business. This is not a SaaS company.”

“I think he needs five, ten million bucks. I think he needs to go hard or go home. I'm telling you, this thing is, Is, is so going to be copied.”

“Whenever something's free, you're, you are the product. In other words, there are so many people, for instance, a lawyer may pay 50 dollars or a hundred dollars a lead you pass over. That's a big, chunky revenue. All these partners and services you have around…”

“Google has the flywheel effect. So every time you use Google, you add to their prediction machine. It's so strong that even the largest company on the planet can't catch up.”

“I think somehow you're going to raise this money at some kind of big valuation, and I think you know it, because I think that's what you said, you're really good at raising money.”

“The winner of the space will have a moat, and the moat is really simple. Who got the stars on and using it?”

“So look, there's two things that are always true about Starting a business. It always costs more, and it always takes longer. And I've never met an entrepreneur that says, you know what my problem was? I just raised too much money.”

“I think it's likely that you're going to get acquired, and the number's not going to be that high, but it's going to change your life, and I think it's going to be a lot of money for you, but I'd rather have a better multiple, because I think you're going to g…”

“You could get that valuation if you were a multi-repeat entrepreneur, and you had this crazy good track record, and they're just not even buying into your company, just the person.”

“Dynamic pricing is happening. I just don't know how it's going to happen.”

“It sounds like what he's doing isn't working yet. That's fundamentally why I haven't invested.”

“I would like to pay a higher valuation for your company, and I'd like to put in more money when you have 500 or a thousand of vending machines, and I'd like to pay for that, right? I'd like to pay a 10, 15, twenty million dollar valuation when you have actual …”

“I'm in if I can get comfortable with a lead and comfortable with the valuation after the show.”

“It's very hard to invest in a company that can't show a big gross margin, because it's very hard to ever get to a net margin.”

“For the listeners, I think what they have to see in this one is that you can come in here with tremendous potential in a business, but if you can't crystallize the value of your business to investors, it doesn't work.”

“And then right afterwards Amazon kind of came out and said they're getting into the kind of shipping business and kind of making it shipping for all. And I think that muddied the waters a little for me. I just couldn't get comfortable enough that they were goi…”