Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

OpenView writes $5M–$25M checks across 3–5 deals yearly

Ashley Smith · Using Product Led Growth as an Indicator for Investment w/OpenView Venture Partner, Ashley Smith · Sep 11, 2019 · at 4:10

This episode carries Ashley Smith's own address, with nobody on the show putting questions to them. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.

Ashley Smith, Venture Partner at OpenView, outlines the firm's check sizes, investment cadence, and support structure for growth-stage SaaS startups.

0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.7s
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“OpenView does five to twenty-five million dollar checks, A, Bs, and Cs, three to five investments a year, and I have an entire expansion team that's like three times the size of the investment team that helps with pricing, packaging, hiring, messaging”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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Insight
Smith: PLG companies cannot grow without a full-featured free tier
“If you're trying to build a product-led growth company, and there's not at least something to give away for free that's a full-featured product, it's not gonna grow.”
Ashley Smith Sep 11, 2019 ▶ 12:46 Using Product Led Growth as an Indicator for Investment w/OpenView Venture Partner, Ashley Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Over half of GitHub's growth to $7.5B was entirely developer-driven
“Developer community drove a company after 10 years to a 7.5 billion dollar acquisition based on sharing. There was a lot of sales motion. We had an incredible sales enterprise enterprise sales team but over half that growth was 100% developer driven with no sa…”
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Assertion Partly supported
Smith: Running GitHub without a CEO prior to Microsoft acquisition
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Opinion
Smith: Few companies reached a $7.5B acquisition via community like GitHub
“When you think about product driven growth, there are not many companies in the world that you can say a community has driven a company to a 7.5 billion dollar acquisition. More so than GitHub.”
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Assertion Supported
PLG public companies grow at 35% versus 25% for traditional SaaS
“Faster growth rates. 35% versus 25% in SAS.”
Ashley Smith Sep 11, 2019 ▶ 7:16 Using Product Led Growth as an Indicator for Investment w/OpenView Venture Partner, Ashley Smith
Assertion Partly supported
Public PLG companies command a 10x EV-to-revenue valuation multiple
“Higher multiples. Enterprise value per revenue is 10 X. These are actual numbers you can dig into. I think they're actually higher now if you go look at the updated index. Which means your company's worth about two times more.”
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