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 2,724 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
Lemkin: SaaS Profitability Is Necessary but Ignored Without Growth
“Profitability efficiency is great. It may be necessary. It may be necessary. If you don't have capital, if you're bootstrapped, if you've spent all your money, the public markets are demanding that everybody be more efficient, but it's not enough. So profitabl…”
Lemkin: Founders must only hire early sales reps they would personally buy from
“Interview 30 kids of any age and be religious about this. Just only hire one you would buy your own product from. Don't give on this. I don't care whether they worked at Toast. I don't care if they worked at Owner. I don't care if they were the first person in…”
SaaS Companies Should Cap Post-Sales Spending at 10% of Revenue
“I tell companies all the time, 10%. That's the number. You have 10% of your revenue that you can spend on all things post sales. And I can debate what's in there or not in terms of the menu we talked about. But ultimately, if you're going to run a business tha…”
Tunguz: Software startups tripling growth without AI are a hard sell
“If you're tripling, doubling without AI, it's a hard sell.”
Tunguz: AI is in a "Groupon era" where GTM outpaces product differentiation
“It's a Groupon era for AI where one company takes off and then there are 15 to 20 others because you're wrapping the API, you have a lot of capability out of the gate, and then long-term product differentiation probably matters less than go-to-market execution…”
Ramp VP: Planning AI Around Current Model Limits Guarantees Failure
“Rather than trying to figure it out, decide today with the limitations that we have today, which in the world of AI, that It's like a complete, that just leads to complete failure within weeks.”
Halligan: Hiring a Banker to Sell a Tech Company Never Works
“He'll wake up one day and be like, oh, I want to sell my company, hire a banker. It never works. It's inbound. It has to be inbound.”
Lemkin: VC-Backed SaaS Must Reach $200M ARR in 10 Years
“You, to be a venture backed company, you have to go from zero to two hundred million in 10 years. Do a spreadsheet. If you don't triple, triple, double from a million, you will never get to two hundred million in a decade. It just won't happen.”
Lemkin: Startups Lack PMF Until Customer Sources Become Inexplicable
“You don't have product market fit until you have no cus more customers than you know why. If you know exactly how you got every customer and it's hard and you're not, and you're like our other guy who was great. He said a million, but they don't know how to ge…”
Lemkin: Venture Capital Is a Niche Product Demanding T3D2 Growth
“The truth is we talk about on the internet that like it's a choice, but the truth is the venture capital is a niche product. It's a weird product. It requires T three D two growth. Most folks are not experiencing T three, two growth. Or don't appear to have th…”
Amin: Startups Use AI Efficiency Tools to Hire More and Grow Faster
“Companies are not trying to be efficient. Companies are trying to grow. And so if I give you a way to grow faster, then you're just gonna say if we had more people and this thing is more efficient, then we'd grow even faster. And so I'm gonna try to add more p…”
Kellogg: PE Firms Want SaaS Companies Fixed Before Acquiring Them
“The biggest thing I've learned about working with PE is I thought they were fixer upper people... And I don't actually think many of them like to do that. They want it fixed first.”
Lemkin: AI is tactical table stakes and may not increase SaaS revenue
“I believe AI is as much table stakes, more table stakes at a tactical level than it is budget enabler at a meta level, at a high level. I think you have to do it. And it's hard, but it may not actually increase your revenue.”
Lemkin: Scaled SaaS Companies Must Grow New Logos 20% Annually
“If it's scale, if you can't grow your new logos, 20% a year, you're in decay. Okay. 20% a year plus 120% NRR. I know it doesn't totally sum, but that's your 40% growth at scale.”
Lemkin: Founders Must Re-Found Their SaaS Company Every 5 to 10 Years
“Because every five to 10 years, you have to re-found a company. It's so hard just to keep up with bugs. It's so hard just to keep up with feature requests. It's so hard to build the product you built 10 years ago, right?”
Kellogg: Private Equity Can Turn Most Stagnant SaaS Companies to 20%+ EBITDA
“A lot of times founders think it's not possible and give that company to a PE person. And I guarantee you they're going to have 20% EBITDA, maybe 30% EBITDA in a couple of years. It can be done.”
Persson: Startups should enter existing categories rather than creating new ones
“I think it's much better to break into an already existing category with something significantly better than in the early days, try to do something bigger.”
Tunguz: The 20-year SaaS go-to-market playbook no longer applies
“The playbook that we've built over the last 20 years, basically no longer applies. And we need to re-instrument and re-determine what this new world looks like.”
Tunguz: AI agent startups struggle in mid-market compared to PLG and enterprise
“We see most AI agentic software companies, people who are selling software that replaces labor, they either sell at the bottom, PLG, bottoms up, or they sell at the very top. Mid-market is much harder.”
Financial platforms only earn the right to monetize payments through software excellence
“We don't get to do your payments unless you love the software that you just talked about. Like we are a software government. We have to make a great experience. We have to make it so that when you're going between buildings, you can actually pay a bill if you …”
Lemkin: Starting multi-product at $100M ARR is too late for SaaS IPOs
“You can't, even if you build the products in a year, it takes so long for that revenue to get material, doesn't it? Two, three years. So if you start now at a hundred million or two hundred million in revenue to try to go to IPO, you're fracked.”
Lemkin: SaaS companies need roughly 700 employees at $200M ARR to survive
“You basically got to have 700 people when you get to two hundred million in ARR. And that may sound, hey, what does that mean for me? I'm not at two hundred million in ARR today. Roll it back to where you are. You can bridge some of the gap with capital, but a…”
Jasper CEO: AI Startups Must Build a Services Strategy Immediately
“If I was building a AI application company, I would, my first piece of advice is build a services strategy immediately. Do not wait.”
Padelford: Standalone POS software is commoditizing to zero value
“No single, like if you're POS only, like POS will get commoditized to zero and basically already is. Most POS companies alone are making all of their money on the rake of the transaction and not no one's like the hardware is now zero that you have to start.”
Padelford: Sales teams follow power laws; companies mistakenly just add headcount
“Most businesses that I've seen and most sales orgs that I've seen Almost always fall under a power law. Which is most of the business is being driven by a small number of people. And yet the company continues to add headcount and spread it out. And it's just s…”
Padelford: Sales leaders should ignore average rep performance and use medians
“The other thing is immediately kill anyone who talks about averages. If they're showing up, they're like the average performance. Oh, the average performance. That's pulled both directions by your worst rep and your best rep. So if you have a rep who's 10,000 …”
Plank: Cold calling is more effective today because competitors abandoned it
“I think picking up the phone and calling people is like a lost art. I think a lot of companies just don't do that anymore. And it may even be why it's more effective today is because everyone's cold calling doesn't work. We got to do other things.”
20-tab startup financial models are always poorly designed
“As a rule of thumb, I have never seen in my life an Excel plan or a Google Sheets plan that had dozens or maybe 20 pages or tabs where it actually made sense. None. I've seen a lot of these, but I think they are all just really poorly done. If anybody wants to…”
A 10-20 person sales team that never fires anyone indicates dysfunction
“If an investor sees a company with 10 or 20 salespeople and they've never let go a salesperson, that almost tells you something Tells you that something isn't working because it's unheard of, that every single salesperson works out.”
Lemkin: Do Not Let A VP Start Until They Master The Product
“I wouldn't let them start until they know the product folds. I wouldn't let them start. Now, best of all is literally give them the, if you really think they're so great, give them the offer, agree on the comp, agree on the equity and say, you know what? Now t…”
Lemkin: Stretch Sales Leaders Must Have Recruited Quota-Hitting Reps
“Make sure, even in a stretch candidate, that they have hired two to three salespeople that hit quota before. Not 20, not 200, but it's not enough if they inherited a team. It's not enough if they were on a sales team. It's not enough if they were an SDR that g…”
Riparbelli: Buyers are uniquely willing to pay upfront to try AI
“Which I think is very unique to AI, is that people are actually very willing to pay to try something out, both in enterprise and personally, much more so than the kind of previous generations of SaaS.”
Riparbelli: AI video value comes from replacing text, not studio production
“I would say the two big aha moments was, the first one was like, people are not replacing video production, they're replacing text. That's very fundamental to our understanding of like, why this product is valuable.”
Lang: Rushing SMB onboarding actually lowers successful go-live rates
“Meaning sometimes, you know, you think that, oh, like more momentum is a good thing and let's, you know, onboard you really quick. Let's go live next week. But actually the success rate drops quite a bit when you push that hard for it because you know, you wan…”
Lang: SMB SaaS cannot scale if CEOs help close $6,000 deals
“When you built like a high velocity sales motion, you gotta find the systems to make it scale. And it can't be that, oh, you know, we need someone to help close to steel. Let's bring in the CEO when the deal size is only like, you know, six, seven, eight K ACV…”
Lacher: Seed Checks From Multi-Stage VCs Create Severe Series A Risk
“If you have an aggressive Multi-stage fund in your cap table, everyone knows if you're killing it, they would preempt your next round. They would clearly do the A round. That's certain. Can give you 10,000 examples. It's just, if things are going okay, but not…”
Stebbings: Founders should pitch VC firm founders to avoid orphaned investments
“And that's why I also really like, and I always push people, work with the founders of firms. They ain't leaving, number one. You're not going to get orphaned. They're not afraid to take these courageous bets. They're not getting fired by other partners.”
Howard Lerman: Scheduled one-on-one meetings slow companies down by delaying urgent issues
“People, if they need to talk to you, they queue up the stuff they need to talk to you about until the meeting. So if I have a meeting with Kyle, with Kevin, on Thursday at two o'clock, let's say I need to meet him, and he's got something really urgent to tell …”
Howard Lerman: Startup founders should hold 8 PM Sunday night planning calls
“The frickin' founders who are starting the company and trying to do something impossible and move a rock up a mountain ought to be available at eight p.m. Sunday night for an hour and a half to plan out the week.”
Lerman: Replace outbound SDRs with equity-backed advisors for direct executive introductions
“Instead of investing heavily in BDRs and SDRs and outbound to generate demand, Use your stock options to bring on advisors who can make a fast introduction to the top people immediately and get you in. No BDRs can be able to get a meeting with the CEO of some …”
Cabane: Google Ads AI now outperforms manual targeting and bidding
“The learning is, as of six months ago, that has changed, and it is working absolutely. It's making the job seamless. Like, the LLMs now, inside Google Ads, are making targeting better, ok? They're better at showing the right creative. They're better at showing…”
VCs ignore profitability but excuse margin flaws for hyper-growth startups
“And so they're not gonna give you credit because you're profitable. They're not gonna give you credit for lower growth because of macro issues. But what they will do is they get a little blind to hyper growth. Like they're so deaf because fewer companies are h…”
Outsourced SDR agencies fail because shared reps never learn the product
“Agencies for BDRs and SDRs never work with a few exceptions. The reason they never work is because with. 20 clients, you never learn the product.”
Lemkin: Startups Fail When Sales VPs Refuse To Learn The Product
“The number one reason I see startups struggle at your stage. In today's world is they hire a VP of sales that either doesn't want to sell. Or doesn't ever want to learn the product.”
Lemkin: Require A Product Demo Before Hiring Any Sales Candidate
“I would never give anyone an offer letter before they give you a demo from CRO to junior SDR.”
Lemkin: Requiring Prospective Sales VPs To Close Deals Is 100% Mandatory
“I used to not be sure. Now I think it's a hundred percent required. They've got to sell themselves. And if you hear hesitation in their voice, they ain't gonna do it. If you hear a maybe, don't make the hire.”
Lemkin: Sales Drop 90% Of The Time When Founders Stop Selling
“Not a hundred percent of the time, but at least 90% of the time sales falls.”
Lemkin: Startups Decay Faster If Their CTO Cannot Integrate AI
“If your CTO by today, isn't sure how to, doesn't, isn't sure how to integrate AI into your product. Ask yourself if you need a new CTO. It doesn't mean get rid of them, but your competitiveness, I think is going to continue to decay and accelerate.”