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 16 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
Benioff dismissed early Zendesk threats to Salesforce to avoid fear-based leadership
“I did a year at Salesforce in the middle of all that, and I was mentioning Zendesk. I was like, hey, there's these guys called Zendesk, and they might be a problem for, like, our customer service business and I got the kind of uh-oh moment where, like, oh, and…”
Kellogg: Net Dollar Retention Shows Almost Zero Correlation With SaaS Multiples
“The R squared is only .O six between net dollar retention and enterprise value to next 12 months revenue.”
Kellogg: Only startups that raised huge pre-crash rounds survived 2002
“In 2002, there were only two types of startups in existence. Those that had raised a large amount of money at a ridiculous valuation prior to April 2001, or dead. There was no other type of startup in 2002, when the internet bubble burst.”
Kellogg: Competitor Used One-Dollar Renewals to Manipulate Churn Metrics
“I competed against the company that did one dollar renewals. And they would juice their churn rate so they could offset their SAS metrics.”
Kellogg: Consulted for a startup that missed targets despite 100x pipeline coverage
“I literally did a consulting gig with a company that had 100 X pipeline coverage. Can you imagine? So their pipeline was a hundred times bigger, and they still missed their numbers. So, so think about that. And the answer is they don't have what I call pipelin…”
Kellogg: Monday.com spends 5x more on sales and marketing than R&D
“Monday.com, the Work OS, aren't they kind of a PLG company, product-led growth? Doesn't the product kind of sell itself? Well, they spend five times as much on sales and marketing as they do in R&D.”
Kellogg: Chief Marketing Officers typically last 1.5 to 2.5 years
“CMOs last one and a half, two, two and a half years. You're gonna be hiring one soon, whether you just hired one or not.”
Kellogg: SaaS CAC ratio averages 1.3; over 3.0 becomes uninvestable
“So I like the CAC ratio very important SAS metric, you know, typically runs around 1.3, you know, below 1.3 is getting to be quite good. Below one is really good. Best I've ever seen was .4. Anything between 1.5 and two people start to scratch their eyebrows a…”
Kellogg: PE firms recalculate all SaaS metrics from raw data
“In the VC side, frankly, I don't see as much recalculation, but when you meet PE people, they will literally take all your financials and just recalculate everything. You know, you're going to say your churn is, you know, only 10%. They're like, well, we'll fi…”
Kellogg: ASC 606 flattens price ramping into straight-line GAAP revenue
“It will drive on an ARR basis, epic net dollar retention, but on a revenue basis, ASC. So six will flatten it out. It will see right through this trick and you will just end up with a 120 K per year in gap revenue.”
Kellogg: Private SaaS companies will start tracking Remaining Performance Obligations
“I think the next metric we're going to see private companies start to look at is now kind of second billing in public companies, RPO remaining performance obligation.”
It takes 11 to 13 years on average to reach IPO
“You know, it takes on average 13 years to build a public company. I guess it was 11 years for the twenty-twenty-one cohort. It was only 11.”
Kellogg: 90% of SaaS companies spend more on sales and marketing than R&D
“Nine out of 10 SaaS companies spend more on sales and marketing than R&D, 50% of SaaS companies spend more than double on sales and marketing than R&D, and it only goes up from there, right?”
Kellogg: Expansion ARR CAC is roughly 40% of new customer acquisition cost
“By the way, it does grow at 40% of the cost of new logo customer acquisition. If you look at the customer acquisition cost ratio, for example, in the key bank survey that I'm citing down below, you'll see that the expansion CAC or the customer acquisition cost…”