The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Green: Preferred stock in capital-efficient software creates strong downside protection
“If you build a business with 20 of revenue, you're growing 30. And you've only burned three million bucks. You're doing something right. And if we can get in there and own preferred stock at the top of the cap structure, and it's recurring and has 80% gross ma…”
Green: Most investment funds provide awful information disclosure to limited partners
“I would rate most funds information disclosure as awful. Not bad. Awful.”
Green: Venture funds with 50 to 200 investments effectively become index funds
“So we want to run funds with about 20 investments. We think there's too many funds that become index funds, and they just have 50, a 102 hundred investments in them. We think that's crazy.”
Green: Lead Edge shifted away from Silicon Valley investments in 2019
“So it actually caused us, in 19, we shifted the portfolio away a lot from Silicon Valley towards more bootstrapped entrepreneurs in Ames, Iowa, or Sarasota, Florida, or Niswa, Minnesota.”
Green: Lead Edge Fund I allocated 25% to Alibaba at $12B valuation
“And we said to people, listen, I'm going to raise a fifty million dollar vehicle. And I'm going to put 25% of the fund in Alibaba at twelve billion valuation, roughly.”
Green: The best outbound VC associates are often college athletes or entrepreneurs
“We find the best analysts and associates are oftentimes college athletes or entrepreneurs.”
Green: Lead Edge runs a dedicated exit committee meeting multiple times monthly
“We have a disposition committee that meets a couple of times a month. Most firms have investment committees. Very few firms have disposition committees.”
Green: Lead Edge has suffered complete losses on only two companies ever
“Our loss ratios are very strong. We've only lost all of our money on one of two companies ever.”
Green: Roughly a third of Lead Edge exits come from secondary sales
“So probably a third of our exits have actually come from secondary sales. We'll sell to another fund that's already an existing investor in the company.”
Green: Lead Edge sifts 10,000 companies annually to close 5-7 deals
“Today we have 18 people that speak zero to two years out of college, We talked to 10,000 plus companies a year, and if you said I needed to meet all eight criteria, It'd be one percent or a hundred companies meet all eight criteria. So we say we need five or m…”