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 17 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
Ding: Remote 'rockstar' engineers cannot succeed at Merge
“It doesn't matter if you're a rockstar engineer, because you wouldn't be a rockstar engineer at Merge.”
Ding: Delay monetization until your pipeline can reach $1M ARR quickly
“I think you should not collect revenue and not onboard customers until you know that you are going to get a million of revenue as quickly as possible.”
Ding: Building Integrations In-House Is as Pointless as Self-Hosting Servers
“There have been some situations where we've talked to companies where they're like, no, like our founder believes in like we build this in house and we can be uniquely good at it. And obviously I'm biased, but that is just fundamentally not true. There's no on…”
Ding: Booking competitor sales demos just to snoop is unethical
“So I don't really believe in doing that. I actually think it's unethical, but there's a lot of things online. And if you're a really good stalker, which I am, you can find anything. You really find it. Everything's on YouTube. Everything is on a podcast. You c…”
Ding: Founders unwilling to do awkward outbound outreach will not succeed
“Like, anyone who is too lazy to outbound, you're just not gonna make it. Like, that's just not, you just gotta get over that. Like, you have to be embarrassed. You have to do, like, all these, like, really awkward things.”
Ding sent outbound recruiting messages to 50,000 engineers for early Merge
“I don't even remember the exact number of engineers that I outbound, but I think it was like 50,000 or so.”
Ding: Founders can reach $10M ARR through sheer hard work
“My co-founder and I, we still think like to get to ten million, you just have to work really hard. That's really it. It really, it sucks. And it's like a lot of paid, but you can just work your way to ten million.”
Ding: Merge achieved true product-market fit after hitting $1M ARR
“I felt like it after we hit a million.”
Ding: Unengaged customer feedback is more useful than polite enthusiasm
“If they're totally unengaged, that means it's not a good fit. And that means that you are not solving the problem that they have. And then you should find out what is the problem? Like, why am I not solving that? What is the gap between, like, what you need an…”
Ding: Startup fundraising is fundamentally a proxy for founder sales ability
“It's a lot of games and marketing. And I thought I understood that, but it's so, so, so, so true. And it's basically a proxy for how good you are at sales.”
Ding: Treat seed fundraising as a debutante ball to introduce your company
“I really view this seed as the debutante ball and you meet with everyone that you can. So you're introducing yourself to the industry as a new founder, as a new company.”
Ding: I work 9-to-9 in the office plus nights and weekends
“So I do nine to nine. I'm in the office, and after I'll, like, hang off my husband, maybe for like an hour, and then I'll, like, code again, like, check my Slack. Weekends, like, I'm definitely online. Some weekends I'm working a lot more, some weekends work a…”
Ding: Merge gave first customer Drata two free months to prove value
“They didn't pay us for the first two months because we wanted to prove ourselves to them. We wanted to show them we would do whatever they wanted and we would really make sure that they were happy.”
Ding: Merge conducted 100 discovery calls via cold outreach before building
“We had a hundred conversations. So I would cold message random people. I would look for people in products. Design, customer success, founders, I would really reach out to anyone I could try to, literally anyone that had an integrations page and see if they wo…”