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 13 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
AI-Native Burn Multiples Fall to 0.4x at $100M ARR
“At a hundred million ARR, the burn multiple falls to 0.4 X for AI native companies versus 1.6 for classic SAS companies. They're four times more efficient in adding ARR.”
Product Marketing Backgrounds Correlate Best With Head of Marketing Success
“And what we found is both from a commonality standpoint as well as a correlation with tenure and success, it's product marketing.”
Pepper: SaaS Multiples Will Settle Higher Than May 2022 Levels Within 24 Months
“I happen to be one of the bulls and I'm not calling the bottom. That's not our job to pick the bottom, but my guess is that we do settle out at multiples higher than today over the next. 24 months. And we get back to that being normal as opposed to normal bein…”
Successful SaaS Startups Consistently Hit a Growth Plateau Around $15M ARR
“We looked at all the data of our companies over a decade. Even the successful ones hit this thing that we call the growth plateau. Around fifteen million ARR, you can see in the data, and again, these are the successful companies that made it through. They hit…”
Pepper: SaaS Valuations Will Fall in 2-4 Quarters as Founders Need Capital
“I think it's going to take two, three, four quarters. For those companies that raised in early or mid 20, 21 to need to come back and there will come a time where they need capital and the pendulum will swing from, you know, purely power on the part of founder…”
Pepper: VC fund deployment cycles will normalize back to 2-3 years
“In the last two or three fund cycles, we were investing each of those funds in one year. I think we're going to see fund cycles normalize back to a two or three year fund cycle.”
Sales Leaders Present at IPO Average Three Years of Prior Tenure
“On average, we find the sales leader that is there at time of IPO has been there for more or less three years prior to that, just to have the time to build out the maturity and sophistication in that revenue repeatability.”
54% of Tech Companies Hire Their CMO Within Two Years of IPO
“And you can see from the data, 30% are hiring their CMO a year, less than a year from going public. You know, a total of 54% two years to IPO. And then on the dollar side, 46% are hired after a hundred million ARR.”
Over 50% of Pre-IPO Revenue Comes From Upsells and Cross-Sells
“The first is thinking about the split between existing customer base and new customers, and what you see here is by the time companies are ready to IPO, over 50% of their revenue is generated by existing customers through either upsell or cross-sell.”
International Customers Make Up 30% of Tech Company Revenue at IPO
“If all of those are the case, then, of course, it makes sense to start expanding internationally, and again, at the time of IPO, We typically see about 30% of revenue made up from non-North America customers.”
Software Companies Average Three Distinct Products at the Time of IPO
“Cross-sell obviously requires a more diverse product suite, and what you can see along the bottom here is, on average, companies at the IPO stage have three products.”
Matthew: 1Password bootstrapped 15 years before raising a $600M round
“Iconic and Excel invested in one password, which had been bootstrapped for 15 years before they ended up. Before they ended up raising capital, you know, they raised a six hundred million dollar round over the last couple of years.”