The Ledger
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Lightspeed would not have survived or scaled without quadrupling its pricing
“We would not be here today if we didn't times four. There's just no way. That allowed us to build the software that ended up being adopted by All of those users on a large level. And if we had kept the software cheap and had the same number of it, just nothing…”
Ten-slide pitch decks let founders superficially change strategy without true focus
“The problem with a ten-page deck is you could go in and Change your whole strategy by changing two slides, you know, like that's not focusing, you know, it's and I feel like that's so easy to just throw a couple of ideas on and not have to really go through th…”
No startup employee is an 'A player' for every phase of scale
“People might be the exact perfect, right? A player for a particular moment and a particular period. And then they may be able to do that. Somewhere at some other company and they may not be an A player for when you're at the next level of scale. Right. And so …”
Distributing equity too early is a mistake because scaling requires reshuffling leaders
“I think it's a mistake to go all in on, on, on equity too early. And I think you have to be cognizant that, that you might need to move the pieces around.”
Lightspeed reached $10M bootstrapped revenue via 400 global software resellers
“After seven years of bootstrapping, cause that was our journey, a seven year of bootstrapping, we got to ten million of annual revenue, which was all software. All of that was driven by 400 resellers around the world, making 25% on times four pricing.”
Resellers turned $5,000 Lightspeed software deals into $25,000 total hardware installations
“They're making 25% after off the 5000, but they're also selling You know, at the time it was all on-premise. They're selling servers. They're selling computers. They're selling networking. They're selling training. You know, we were selling five, 5000 dollars …”
Partner with adjacent ecosystem players who bundle and monetize surrounding services
“I think the lesson is like, if you're building a product, like who are the adjacent people in the ecosystem that could be selling what you're doing alongside with what they're doing, right? They're, these guys were used to selling software, but they were reall…”
Only write a business plan after validating early willingness to pay
“Once you have established that you have with your MVP or your, yeah, with your MVP or your early beta, you have early indications that people are gonna pay for this. And will convert off of, you know, a trial, and what they, what they're willing to pay, then y…”
Startups fail to scale when technical founders remain stuck in coding
“I saw in those early days, a lot of other companies that the founder was still coding after a very long period of time and they didn't scale, you know, like it was the founder was still debugging things in, in the middle of the night, instead of going out to m…”
Dasilva used early Lightspeed profits to buy physical real estate as insurance
“I was buying real estate with our profits and just building it like a real, I felt like if anything happened with a software business, I wanted some assets for the company, you know, so I would buy the company, buy the, buy these buildings and rented to light …”
Bootstrapping longer solidifies a startup's corporate identity and internal culture
“The bootstrapping, I think the longer that you bootstrap, just my opinion, the more you solidify your identity as a company, you know?”
Startup founders must completely discard their job description every single year
“Be willing to throw away that job description every year. You know, be honest with yourself. There's things that you love, the things that you think you're great at, that you add, that add the most value to the business, but be ready to do a real assessment of…”
Early Mac dealership customers became Lightspeed's global reseller network
“And then when they were good at, when they were really good at the software, after one or two years, they became our international distribution network. They became our resellers and they started to sell Lightspeed in their neighborhoods. And that's where the …”
Dax Dasilva's initial goal was an Apple Design Award, not a $1B company
“My only goal was not to build a company with a public company that's at a billion dollars. I have no finance background. It was not, I had not even a clue what that even meant. All I wanted out of this whole thing was to win an Apple Design Award from Steve Jo…”
The original Lightspeed interface was modeled after Apple's iTunes playlists
“What the original version of Lightspeed was almost set up like iTunes now called Apple Music. Now it makes no sense anymore. But back in the day, like iTunes had like playlists on the side and like content on the other side. And we built, you know, the origina…”
Lightspeed did not transition to the cloud until raising from Accel VC
“It wasn't until like we brought in a VC that we actually transitioned to the cloud. And that was actually, that was a huge part of the transformation that we did with Excel that was huge, hugely successful and allowed us to do everything we're doing now.”