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 2,034 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 41 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
Deeter: Second-tier debt lenders recalled lines in 2008, killing a startup
“In oh eight, we did see several venture debt providers, not the tier one folks, but the level below them block lines or recall lines. And in, in one very painful case in our portfolio, it killed the company, a company that should not have died because of the c…”
Cassidy: 80% of startups lose their first sales VP in year one
“I would guess probably eight in 10 startups probably fire or lose their first VP of sales inside of a year.”
Dropbox Sales and Marketing Spend Is 50% of Next Competitor
“Our model is very scalable, it's super efficient, and because of that, our overall sales and marketing spend, when we compare it to our next competitor, is about 50%.”
Requiring credit cards for free trials generated $500K incremental ARR for Lucidchart
“These changes ultimately on, on the pricing page ended up back in the day for us, Contributing about 500,000 dollars of incremental revenue in just 12 months, which was a huge win for us back at the time. And overall, they increased payments by 25%, which is o…”
Shopify sees an 80% annual merchant churn rate, warns Romain Lapeyre
“What was interesting is that the yearly churn is 80% for Shopify. It's pretty frightening, because at the end of the year, there's only going to be 20% of the stores that work here at the beginning of the year that will still be around and still be your custom…”
Stack Overflow EMEA Maintained a 1% Sales Attrition Rate Over 5 Years
“And at Stack Overflow, our attrition rate for EMEA for the five years I was managing the team was just one percent.”
Jay Simons: Atlassian spends twice as much on R&D as on S&M
“We spend twice on R&D, you know, that, that we do in sales and marketing.”
Simons: Atlassian has 2,000 channel partner salespeople in the field
“And if you think about it, like, our sales force, you know, we've got 2000 salespeople that are out in the field. They're not employed by us, but they effectively do the same job. They're salespeople.”
Reina: ElevenLabs scaled from $0 to over $600M ARR in 41 months
“And when you look at the stats, for instance, we went from Zero to a hundred million dollars in ARR in 20 months. Then we went from a hundred to two hundred million dollars in another 10 months. Then we went from 200 to three hundred and thirty million in anot…”
Reina says he told reps $1M ARR added $33M to valuation
“And I used to people, for the one million dollars in revenues that you bring, it's around thirty-three million dollars in extra valuation for the business.”
Glean CPO: External AI harnesses grow faster than native Glean UI
“I mean, if I bundle all of the cloud, cursor, codecs, it is one of the fastest growing parts and definitely faster growing than the UI of Glean, which is still by a large margin, a very high daily engagement driver.”
Rubrik CPO: Enterprises refuse full agentic control over core infrastructure
“So we're seeing a lot of pull towards agentic solution, but also caution because they are not willing to kind of cede control completely to agents for their core infrastructure and core security systems.”
Drumright: Harvey employs around 180 former lawyers as legal engineers
“We have, you know, I think a 180 legal engineers who are Working with these law firms and in-house teams on building bespoke agents based upon the firm's best practice, the playbooks, their precedent. And these legal engineers have themselves been lawyers for …”
Lemkin: Podium generated over $100M in AI agent revenue
“When Podium went, became agentic about a year half ago and crossed a hundred million of agent revenue, the agents for the same customers, for the same HVAC guys and other trades, the agent all of a sudden could do a lot more than get a lead.”
Lemkin: AI slide maker Gamma has reached $150M in revenue
“This is all Gamma does at a hundred fifty million revenue.”
Lemkin: Twilio's growth rebounded to over 20% due to AI agent APIs
“And to me, Twilio is another example. It almost died. It's growing four percent. Now it's growing over 20% because the API worked with agents.”
Lemkin: Mailchimp's revenue dropped nearly 20 percent last year at Intuit
“Mailchimp's revenue fell almost 20% last year at Intuit.”
Lemkin: SaaStr hits eight-figure revenue with three humans and 21 agents
“We're three humans and 21 agents and a dog, right? We can take some risk that you can't take. We can take a lot of risk. People trust Saster. We have 450,000 people in our community, eight figures of revenue, 10, 15,000 people a year that come to our events wh…”
Lemkin: Managing SaaStr's AI agents requires eight hours a day
“And it's exhausting because now it's eight hours a day instead of 20 to 30. We are at our limits. We cannot do any more.”
Lee: Gamma scaled to 50,000 signups per day without marketing or sales
“So in the very beginning, we had, you know, 5000 signups a day, then 10,000 signups a day, and 20,000 signups a day, then 50,000 signups a day, and it kept on going up. And this was a moment in time where we're doing zero marketing, zero sales.”
Salyers: Replit agent rebuilt HeySummit's event features in one hour
“He just instantly was so smug about moving us off of Hey Summit, and then he did it in an hour.”
Lemkin: HeySummit tripled SaaStr's pricing from $299/mo to $10k/year
“Tripled our pricing from two 99 a month to 10 K. Tripled our pricing for like no usage. I would never recommend them to anybody.”
O'Driscoll: Hyperscalers Spending $688B on AI CapEx Against $110B in Revenues
“We are spending in AI CapEx just among the hyperscalers
Six hundred and eighty eight billion dollars this year.
On the other hand, and that's how it takes to make AI.
Think of that as all the money, I'm very simplistic, all the money going in to just make AI h…”
O'Driscoll: SaaS multiples collapsed because average growth dropped to 10%
“The collapse in the SAS multiples, and you've said this, has happened because of the collapse in the SAS growth rate. I mean, we didn't just, you know, like the average company used to grow at 30%, and now it's what? It's sub 10. It's 10.”
Higgsfield Nearly Doubles Its ACV Every Quarter as It Moves Upmarket
“And for us, we, every, like every quarter, we almost pretty much double our ACV as we move substantially up the markets.”
Companies Are In-Housing Video Production to Avoid Agency Friction
“We're seeing that increasingly companies bring the capabilities in house. As you are right, that's like back and forth with the agency. It's just very frustrating. And that is both budget wise and timeline.”
Creative Agencies Account for Nearly 70% of Higgsfield's $300M ARR
“Like, if we just talk specifically about three hundred million ARR, most of that's, like, almost 70% are agencies.”
The Coca-Cola Christmas Commercial Was Generated on the Higgsfield AI Platform
“We have seen many Olympic ads, Christmas ads, like Coca-Cola Christmas ad was generated on Hicksville.”
At Least 10 of the Top 30 Media Orgs Build Internal Tools
“I think out of top 30 media organizations in the world, at least 10 build internal tooling because they feel that everything available out there is not good yet.”
Marc Benioff told Lemkin he wished Salesforce customers only paid after deployment
“And I said to Mark, what do you think about FTEs? And he stopped and he said, I can't do this, but I wish every single customer at Salesforce had an FTE and did not have to pay me. Until they were deployed. That's what he wanted in the authentic age.”
Qualified's AI inbound agent booked 682 meetings for SaaStr, outperforming human BDRs
“I didn't know until Amelia presented the data this morning. I think it set up like 682 meetings. That is better than any BDR I've ever worked with could do.”
Lemkin: SaaStr tripled its output with fewer people using AI agents
“We have triple the output we were before agents, okay, with fewer people, right? Fewer people triple the output”
Lemkin: Marketo is raising SaaStr's contract prices by 20% again
“Like Marketo just wants to raise our prices. 20% again. And all they do is threaten us.”
Interacting with an agent builder develops its distinct personality
“If you start to talk to the agent in this builder in the back end, it will develop its own, what I call personality or you can call it brain, but it will develop its own personality to do it.”
SaaStr's AI agent replaces 60% of VP of Marketing basic functionality
“He doesn't think he's replaced a VP of marketing, but he has replaced about 60% of like a basic functionality.”
Lemkin: Cloudflare Laid Off 20% of Workforce Despite Crushing Financial Numbers
“And they did one of the first mass layoffs of a company doing really, really well. So they let off 20% of their workforce, even though they're crushing all their numbers.”
Lemkin: Two SaaStr Portfolio Companies Blew Entire Annual AI Token Budgets
“And then this week I went to two board meetings for Sastra fund portfolio companies who said they blew through the whole token budget already this year. Hardly gone. One wanted like five more million this year in tokens.”
Lemkin: SaaStr Inbound AI Agent Booked 614 Meetings From 442k Chats
“This agent booked 614 meetings from 442,000 chats. It's almost unbelievably strong numbers from 2.2 million website sessions. That's our funnel to get to handing them to you and David to close.”
Lemkin: Public Software Stocks Trade at S&P 500 Discount for First Time
“Public software stocks, for the first time ever, are trading at a discount to the overall S&P.”
Lemkin: Palantir Accelerated to 85% Growth; Karp Projects Over 100%
“Palantir, going from 27% growth just two and a half years ago to 85% growth today. 85%. Alex Karp said in the last earning call he's projecting over a hundred percent growth at their scale.”
Lemkin: Replit and Lovable share similar size and growth rates
“So it's funny, as a case study, Lovable and Replit, like, they're arch and arch competitors. They're about the same size, same growth, same everything, same, but they started totally differently.”
Lemkin: Descript reached $50M in revenue before CEO stepped down
“But, and it just makes me sad because they got to fifty million in revenue. And it got hard. The CEO stepped down, gave the keys to his VP of product, left the company because it got hard.”
Lemkin: SaaStr has three humans, 20 AI agents, and growing revenue
“Back in 20, 20 saster was 20 some odd folks, full time equivalents. Now we're three humans and 20 AI agents. And we're doing more and with more revenue and more output than 12 months ago”
Lemkin: Figma Make scored zero and hallucinated entire website
“Make got a zero. It hallucinated the entire website like 20, 25.”
Lemkin: Benioff Stated Envy of Palantir's Deal Size and FDE Model
“When Mark Benioff came on the TwentyVC with me and Maureen Harry, he said, my number one wish, my number one thing I'm jealous of Palantir's is one, their deal size. But two, I wish I could give everyone an FDE before I had to charge them.”