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 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Nav Burned $87 Million of Its $100 Million Raised Before Turning Profitable
“And here we are a little more than 10 years later, a hundred million bucks raised from great venture capitalists, burned eighty-seven million bucks before we turned our first dollar profit, which was because of how I grew up in business, entirely uncomfortable…”
The Best Venture Financing Terms Leave All Parties Equally Unhappy
“The best terms for a financing round are mutually disagreeable. That's how you know you got to the right spot. Everybody's, you know, equally unhappy with it around the table.”
Non-Essential Investor Requests Directly Reduce a Startup's Probability of Success
“The CEO's time is simultaneously the company's most valuable resource and it's most constrained, so I don't want stuff lobbed over the fence at me. Anything that I'm dealing with that I don't have to, like, actually reduces the probability of success”
Nav Experiences Counter-Cyclical Demand Surges During Economic Downturns
“For us, fortunately, our business is counter-cyclical. So we do good in a good economy. We do well. We do really well in a down economy because if you're a business owner and credit is easy to access and financing is easy to access, if all of a sudden the econ…”
Taking Venture Capital Permanently Eliminates the Lifestyle Business Option
“The very first dollar in venture capital that you take, you make one permanent commitment, and that is you're going to provide liquidity. So you lose optionality in the business to just say, ah, I'm going to be a lifestyle business.”
King Predicts Nav's Next Funding Round Will Reach $200M to $300M
“And in our next round of financing would probably be, you know, that two, three hundred million dollar round where, Early investors can get some money or all of their money if they want. Early employees can finally get some liquidity that exercise and pays for…”
Kleiner Perkins Secured 27% Equity in Nav's Series A for $2M Extra
“He said, look, I really want to have 27%. I love this deal. I want to work with you. I'll go down to 25. And I said, how about you give me an extra two million bucks and we'll give you the 27. He said, done.”
Nav Has Reached One Million Small Business Customers Nationwide
“Now we got a million, million customers around the country in different industry verticals.”
Nav Secured Five Term Sheets After Three Same-Day Sand Hill Road Pitches
“So at my A round, it was a pretty competitive round. I got five term sheets. I had two term sheets in hand and I had three Investment committee meetings on the same day, two hours apart on Sand Hill Road.”
Nav Closed Its Series C Funding Round With $60 Million Banked
“I was the CEO, the founding CEO, CEO of the first eight and a half years, closed our C round, had sixty million bucks in the bank.”
King Profited $8,000 in First Month Cold-Calling for Sign Repairs
“My first month, I profited eight grand, a cold call. I drove around at night, looked for burnout electric signs, and I'd cold call the next day and offered to fix the sign, and that turned into an 8000 dollar profit”
King Personally Invested the First $500,000 to Launch Nav
“I put in the first half million bucks myself”
GO Corp Was the First VC-Backed Startup to Raise $100M and Bankrupt
“It was the first venture-backed company to raise a hundred million bucks and go bankrupt, the GO Corporation.”
Founder Mental Breakdowns Result From Cumulative Neglect, Not Isolated Triggers
“That's like the 50 year old that bends over to pick up a pencil and their back goes out. It wasn't picking up the pencil. It was an accumulation of not taking care of your back. And she's like, you haven't done that for your mind. But those were some dark, dar…”