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David Sacks

Founding General Partner, Craft Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderexecutivehostauthor@davidsacks ↗craftventures.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

David Sacks was the founding COO of PayPal and later founded Yammer, which sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. He co-founded venture capital firm Craft Ventures in 2017 and co-hosts The All-In Podcast.

31statements → 8claims → 2claims resolved → 3.61/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → 29said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 16 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how David argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
David Sacks: Seed-stage startup mortality rate will reach roughly 80%
“Well, I would say that the mortality rate on seed right now is very high. You know, I think it's probably going to be like, 80%.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 9:35 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of David Sacks on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything David Sacks said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Held up
David Sacks: Seed-stage startup mortality rate will reach roughly 80%
“Well, I would say that the mortality rate on seed right now is very high. You know, I think it's probably going to be like, 80%.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 9:35 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Opinion
David Sacks: Series A and B are currently better investments than seed
“So I, I'm no longer convinced that seed is particularly like a bargain in terms of that part of the market. In fact, I think probably Series A or Series B is a better place to invest.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 10:24 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
David Sacks: Startups must cap their Burn Multiple at 2.0 during downturns
“Do not let your burn multiple go above two, because We're going into a tough period. It's more likely that you're gonna miss than exceed, and if you miss, your burn multiple's gonna, like, go off the charts. It's gonna be even worse than you're planning, right…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 37:20 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: Always hire proven sales experts over domain experts
“They always make the mistake of choosing the domain expert. I would say you should almost always choose the sales expert. A good salesperson, a good AE will learn your product, will learn your market. That's what they've done their whole careers. Trying to tea…”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 10:23 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
David Sacks: Big tech will own AI infrastructure; startups are M&A targets
“Ultimately, my view is that infrastructure can be owned by the big tech companies, and Those mainly are plays for a good M&A exit.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 2:59 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
David Sacks: Repricing to fix negative gross margins risks losing product-market fit
“It's like one of the worst things you can ever discover, is that your late stage business, which is growing really fast, is actually negative gross margin. Because what that means is, you've been selling dollars for 90 cents, and so now you have to question, i…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 17:27 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
David Sacks: Many 2021-funded startups will fail or restructure by 2025
“There's still, I think, you're still gonna see over the next year or two a lot of companies, you know, Run out of money and die, or have to take down rounds or, you know, restructure.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 20:44 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
David Sacks: Expect widespread vendor consolidation as enterprise buyers cut costs
“We thought there were five or six different categories of, you know, sales enablement. They're all now trying to get into each other's business. And buyers are starting to sharpen their pencils and say, well, we just need one of these. And I think that's gonna…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 24:10 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
David Sacks: CAC Payback and Magic Number are flawed and easily miscalculated
“What I was seeing in metrics like CAC, is that if the finance team simply misattributed a certain expense, then, like, it would make the CAC Payback look great... Magic number is even the worst version of this. Like, no one knows how to calculate. It was const…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 32:55 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
David Sacks: Burn Multiple should trend from 2.0 to zero at IPO
“Your burn multiple, which is just your burn divided by your net new ARR, it should be going down. And obviously, by the time... That's the point, it should be going down, and so, like, if you're a late stage company, you're like a growth stage company, like, y…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 34:33 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: Product heads should report directly to CEO, not CTO
“I think it's important for the product organization, even though it's very small, to report directly to the founder CEO. Sometimes I see it tucked Under the CTO, and obviously that can work too, but I feel like it's a better way for the founder to stay involve…”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 6:46 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Disclosure
David Sacks: Craft Ventures spends 70% to 80% of time on AI
“In terms of looking for new ideas, I think the team is spending 70 to 80% of their time looking at AI.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 1:10 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: Tech platform shifts are ponds that get fished out over time
“If you think about every major platform shift as, like, kind of a pond, and the pond is kind of stocked with opportunities, it will get fished out over time. You know, the best opportunities over time will get taken. There's always this question of, why is thi…”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 1:31 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sacks: There will be an AI co-pilot for every professional job category
“I think there's going to be a co-pilot for every professional job category.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 3:17 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Disclosure
David Sacks: Craft has written only one or two Series A checks
“We've only made, I'd say, a couple of, you know, well, we've made a few seed investments. Seed checks are a lot easier to write right now. I think we've only written one or two, you could call them, like, series A type checks.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 5:10 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Assertion Not checkable as stated
David Sacks: In 2H 2022 every board meeting was re-forecasting down
“It wasn't until the second half of twenty-twenty-two that every board meeting I was at was, like, a exercise in re-forecasting down.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 6:56 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Opinion
David Sacks: The 2021 tech market was the biggest bubble since 1999
“It's, you know, it's just never gonna be like it was in twenty-twenty-one. I mean, that was like the biggest bubble Since the dot-com bubble in 1999.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 25:54 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Prediction Partly held up
David Sacks: Expect a wave of commercial real estate bankruptcies by 2025
“Yeah, you're gonna see a lot of Siri bankruptcies in the next 18 months.”
David Sacks Sep 13, 2023 ▶ 27:11 What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: Series A SaaS startups should target roughly 50 employees
“Typically, the Series A company is around 50 employees. That doesn't mean you're at 50 at the time you raise the Series A round. It's usually what, that's the target, that's what you're trying to get to.”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 0:43 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: SaaS target headcounts are roughly 125 for Series B, 400 for Series C
“Series B, again, that's more of a target, about a 125 employees. Series C, about 400.”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 1:06 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Assertion Partly supported
Sacks: Average SaaS Company at IPO Has $100M ARR and 1,000 Employees
“We know based on publicly available data that that at IPO, that the average sort of SaaS company at IPO has about a thousand employees and about a hundred million of ARR. So that ends up being about a 100,000 dollars of ARR per employee, and we can kind of wor…”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 2:04 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: Scaling SaaS Companies Should Target 50% S&M, 40% R&D, and 10% G&A
“About 10% of your organization should be G&A. About 40% R&D and 50% sales and marketing. You can see that on either a, sort of a dollar cost basis or on a headcount basis. Either way, that should roughly work.”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 3:37 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: SaaS Companies Need One Manager for Every 5 to 10 Reports
“For every five or 10, somewhere between five and 10 employees, you do need a manager. Like a really lean organization would have, say, one manager for every eight to 10 employees, and, you know a sort of a less lean organization might have one manager for ever…”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 3:56 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures
Insight
Sacks: SaaS companies need one PM and designer per 5-10 developers
“You want to have, you know, one PM for every five to 10, you know, developers, and you're going to have, by this point, by about a 50 person org, you're going to have a couple of designers. And again, that same sort of ratio, in that five to 10 developer range…”
David Sacks Oct 29, 2021 ▶ 7:05 The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures

Show 7statements(7 left)

The other half of the tape: David Sacks's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 27 times in 14 episodes on the Official SaaStr Podcast. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 18Christoph Janz 5Christina Shen 3Carlos Delatorre 1

Statements about David Sacks, by other people (2)

Insight
Parker Conrad: Silicon Valley's startup focus orthodoxy is wrong and limiting
“This conventional wisdom is wrong or at least extremely limiting, and there exists a set of companies that could be built that are often not built that break this rule.”
Parker Conrad Jun 27, 2023 ▶ 2:06 Rippling CEO Parker Conrad's Theory of the Compound Startup: Disrupting How We Think About Software
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Top VCs read every cold email and decide within a week
“Every single one of them said they read every single cold email they get, and every single one of them invests in one week.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 17, 2021 ▶ 45:55 The Highs and Lows of Fundraising from Founders That Have Raised $1B w/ Calendly, Coda, LaunchDarkly

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00831562021202220232024episodesmentions
0362021202220232024episodes it came up in
001.53362021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 9 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
2022 14 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
What the Future of SaaS Holds with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures Sep 13, 2023 27m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of David Sacks was played rather than David taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
The SaaS Org Chart by Series with David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ven Oct 29, 2021 26m aired address
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