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 82 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
Deeter: Cloud leaders are superseding FAANG as tech growth drivers
“Our thesis internally is that those horizons and the growth rates of those markets are starting to pull back, and that you see a changing of the guard. And it's really the cloud basket, and we pulled out six names in particular with Microsoft, Twilio, Shopify,…”
Deeter: Microsoft Azure could challenge AWS for top cloud slot
“At this rate, it is quite possible that Azure competes for AWS for the top slot in the coming years. And we're already seeing signs of that on the enterprise side specifically.”
Deeter: Claims of 'business as usual' in VC right now are crap
“I think the idea that it's business as usual is, is crap. I don't think any venture firm is approaching it that way. And I think anyone that's suggesting that is, is misleading at best.”
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…”
Deeter: New and fringe investors in venture and debt will suffer the most in downturn
“So I think the, it's safe to assume that the new entrance or the fringe entrance in most cases are going to be the ones most impacted. That applies to venture firms, debt firms, corporate venture firms, et cetera. There, there's even potentially the crossover …”
Deeter: Economic Impact Will Be Worse Than Expected, Extending Into 2021
“I do believe the economic impact from this is going to be unfortunately more significant when than people are digesting yet. And this could take several quarters and well into next year for the overall economy to get started again.”
Deeter: IBM bought Red Hat for $33B because it was late
“Thirty-three billion dollars for Red Hat. Because IBM was jammed, they were late to the cloud party, and hybrid cloud is their attempt to be relevant again in the cloud universe.”
Deeter: AI Productivity Will Come From Human-Machine Pairing, Not Displacement
“You hear a lot about this idea of worker displacement around automation. Ah, we see the other side of this, though. The AI and machine learning and, ah, productivity gains that are coming in particular from this human and machine pairing. In areas where you've…”
Deeter: The near future belongs to human-assisted AI, not full automation
“Prediction one is that this year and in the coming few years will be the era of the human-assisted AI. Take the most valuable knowledge workers, the high wage employees across your customer base, and figure out how to help them. Figure out how to take you know…”
Deeter: Screenless, non-graphical interfaces will be the winning paradigm
“So we are entering an era where different interfaces, and in some case, no graphical interface, is the winning paradigm.”
Deeter: Canva and other private cloud companies will cross $1B ARR
“There are private cloud companies that now have line of sight, or in Canva's case and a few others, will be crossing the billion dollar ARR mark while still private.”
Deeter: Cloud will become dominant delivery model for all software in 3 years
“And we do believe that within the next three years, cloud will become the dominant delivery model for all of software in this enabled cloud first world.”
Deeter: Startups with fundraising momentum should prioritize speed over greed
“If you've got discussions underway and enough momentum to complete it, hit it hard and try to like finish immediately. And don't worry about optimizing price or valuation or terms bluntly, just get it done and think of that as speed over greed.”
Deeter: Investors will treat downturn quarters as a wash for funded startups
“The other thing though, for those of you operating businesses that are already funded and are thinking through plans is that you're going to get a hall pass on the next few quarters in, in terms of the numbers. Now that doesn't help you if you're in a fundrais…”
Deeter: The 2020 market crash is the fastest 30% decline in history
“This by contrast is the fastest 30% plus decline by the broad market in history. I mean, this beats the great depression, the oh, wait, the dot com, et cetera.”
Deeter: Bessemer takes zero courtesy meetings during downturn
“So we are taking no courtesy meetings right now or over the next several weeks. Any meeting we take, we legitimately think is interesting and could be an investment full stop.”
Deeter: Tech M&A will be extremely active and outpace IPOs in 2020
“I think the M&A market is going to be extremely active later this year and open much more aggressively than the IPO market will.”
Deeter: Public cloud industry will cross $1T market cap in a few years
“And if you extrapolate this, take 10, take a third off the growth rate, 10 full points of CAGR, we still have a line of sight to crossing that trillion dollar milestone in the next few years as an industry.”
Deeter: Stripe and Adyen will be multi-billion dollar successors
“Companies like Stripe and Adyen will certainly be multi-billion dollar successors.”
Deeter: SaaS applications will embed payments to expand TAM
“And so we absolutely believe That applications more and more are going to layer in payment capabilities and find that as an upsell driver that's a hidden gem and massively expand your market size as a result.”
Deeter: Screenless Interfaces Will Increasingly Drive Enterprise SaaS Success
“In enterprise applications, we absolutely believe that screen lists will increasingly lead to success.”
Deeter: The next wave of SaaS businesses will define the 2020s
“What you see is this next mountain of SaaS businesses being created that we believe will be the story of the next decade.”
Deeter: Cloud unicorns grew 74% year-over-year at over one per week
“And so, in just a one year time period, there was a 74% increase in cloud unicorns, and almost, ah, a new unicorn in the industry is being created per day right now, and in the cloud industry, it was at a rate of more than one per week.”
Deeter: Telehealth visits experienced a 300x increase during COVID-19
“This is an example of telehealth that has skyrocketed given the cloud And COVID combination, a 300 X increase in telehealth visits.”
Deeter: WCLD was the top-performing NASDAQ ETF across all industries in 2020
“This basket propelled WCLD to be the top performing ETF on NASDAQ across all industries. In 2020 and the number two tech ETF in the entire US within tech.”
Deeter: Salesforce paid record 35x multiple for Slack acquisition
“35 X revenue multiple paid for what is a fantastic business by one of the leaders of cloud with Salesforce really showing that this was the second largest enterprise software acquisition in history after only IBM's purchase a red hat, but also the largest mult…”
Deeter: 'Mount SaaS' basket returned 800% over four years vs 330% for FAANG
“If you go back for four years, Mount SaaS had an 800% return
On investment compared to things, 330%.”
Deeter: Private market lag will slow venture deal pace
“It will take a while for the private markets to adjust to what we've seen very rapidly happen in the public markets. And I think that's going to impact deal pace as well.”
Deeter: Venture dealmaking bar should normalize around mid-April 2020
“The net new conversations are hard and the bar is always high, but as the, one of the prior tweets said it's astronomically high right now. That will adjust and that will come back to a little bit of normal deal management in the next few weeks, but I suspect …”
Deeter: Startup exits cluster across market cycles, but entry points do not
“Great entrepreneurship, you know, happens across all cycles that the exits tend to be clustered, but the entry points aren't.”
Deeter predicts Slack, Peloton, DocuSign, and Box will benefit from pandemic
“Certainly a slack or a Peloton or a DocuSign or a box will probably benefit from this.”
Deeter: Recruiting and martech SaaS will struggle while financial systems stay resilient
“Recruiting solutions are probably going to have a tough go of it for the next couple of quarters. Martech solutions are probably going to have a tough go of it. Whereas core financial systems will probably be more resilient. If they're targeting mid-market or …”
Deeter: Some Bessemer portfolio companies dropped 30% to 40% within a week
“We literally have companies that last week said you know, we're seeing no impact that are down 30 or 40% already into this week.”
Deeter: Influential LPs will pressure small VC funds to pause deployment
“Yes, so that happens much more and absolutely will be kind of the brake pedal that you don't see. Will be a few influential LPs may call a small fund and say, look, we really would love it if you'd hit the brakes hard for a couple of quarters so we can service…”
Deeter: Total combined capital into cloud in 2018 doubled the 2015 record
“Fantastic names that in aggregate, when you put together the three ways to buy stocks, public IPOs, private venture capital dollars, and then outright acquisitions, last year was a record in terms of total combined capital by a large multiple. In fact, 2015 wa…”
Deeter: Private cloud unicorns outnumber public ones 55 to 44
“Again, for the first time ever, there's more private cloud unicorns at 55 than public cloud unicorns on our index at 44.”
Deeter: Software Category for Product Teams Is Opening Up Rapidly
“And yet, historically, their product teams, internally, have had strong, very talented resources, but very little technology to accomplish their goals. And very little product for the product teams, ironically. We've seen an explosion of tools and technologies…”
Deeter: Enterprise mobile software will take root through vertical use cases
“We think we're gonna see a lot more of this, and really, Enterprise Mobile is gonna take root through these vertical use cases.”
Deeter: Blockchain will have a lasting impact on tech
“What we can all agree is that the distributed ledger and this notion of blockchain is gonna have lasting impact to tech, and we'll talk about that later.”
Deeter: The five most valuable companies in 2017 were venture-backed tech
“Then for the first time consistently in 2017, all five of the most highly valued companies on the planet were venture backed technology businesses.”
Deeter: Serverless computing and FaaS will rival SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS
“We're adding a fourth bucket today, which is for the first time, and I suspect many of you in the room, ah, can't even guess what the acronym stands for. Ah, the hardcore technical folks I bet do immediately. It's Function as a Service. There's the emergence o…”
Deeter: New infrastructure businesses will center on container management at scale
“And so, as you think about where we go from here, specifically around the serverless world, the future is about managing these containers at scale. And at first, what was about the fundamentals of what is a container and how can these work together has very mu…”
Deeter: 90% of the time, external APIs outperform internal builds
“Because nine times out of 10, these will be better, faster, and cheaper than your internal team can build, and they're getting in the way of you building the high value layer on top of it.”
Deeter: Over 90% of millennials expect to leave before equity vests
“Over 90% of them don't expect to stay around to see their first chunk of equity vest over the typical four year period.”
Deeter: A majority of billion-dollar companies are founded by diverse teams
“A majority of the billion dollar companies that you want to be part of, that we want to invest in, are founded by diverse teams.”
Deeter: Average public cloud company returned 12x over eight years
“12 x is the return profile if you bought just the average public cloud company.”