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 31 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
David Sacks: Seed-stage startup mortality rate will reach roughly 80%
“Well, I would say that the mortality rate on seed right now is very high. You know, I think it's probably going to be like, 80%.”
David Sacks: Series A and B are currently better investments than seed
“So I, I'm no longer convinced that seed is particularly like a bargain in terms of that part of the market. In fact, I think probably Series A or Series B is a better place to invest.”
David Sacks: Startups must cap their Burn Multiple at 2.0 during downturns
“Do not let your burn multiple go above two, because We're going into a tough period. It's more likely that you're gonna miss than exceed, and if you miss, your burn multiple's gonna, like, go off the charts. It's gonna be even worse than you're planning, right…”
Sacks: Always hire proven sales experts over domain experts
“They always make the mistake of choosing the domain expert. I would say you should almost always choose the sales expert. A good salesperson, a good AE will learn your product, will learn your market. That's what they've done their whole careers. Trying to tea…”
David Sacks: Big tech will own AI infrastructure; startups are M&A targets
“Ultimately, my view is that infrastructure can be owned by the big tech companies, and Those mainly are plays for a good M&A exit.”
David Sacks: Repricing to fix negative gross margins risks losing product-market fit
“It's like one of the worst things you can ever discover, is that your late stage business, which is growing really fast, is actually negative gross margin. Because what that means is, you've been selling dollars for 90 cents, and so now you have to question, i…”
David Sacks: Many 2021-funded startups will fail or restructure by 2025
“There's still, I think, you're still gonna see over the next year or two a lot of companies, you know,
Run out of money and die, or have to take down rounds or, you know, restructure.”
David Sacks: Expect widespread vendor consolidation as enterprise buyers cut costs
“We thought there were five or six different categories of, you know, sales enablement. They're all now trying to get into each other's business. And buyers are starting to sharpen their pencils and say, well, we just need one of these. And I think that's gonna…”
David Sacks: CAC Payback and Magic Number are flawed and easily miscalculated
“What I was seeing in metrics like CAC, is that if the finance team simply misattributed a certain expense, then, like, it would make the CAC Payback look great... Magic number is even the worst version of this. Like, no one knows how to calculate. It was const…”
David Sacks: Burn Multiple should trend from 2.0 to zero at IPO
“Your burn multiple, which is just your burn divided by your net new ARR, it should be going down. And obviously, by the time... That's the point, it should be going down, and so, like, if you're a late stage company, you're like a growth stage company, like, y…”
Sacks: Product heads should report directly to CEO, not CTO
“I think it's important for the product organization, even though it's very small, to report directly to the founder CEO. Sometimes I see it tucked Under the CTO, and obviously that can work too, but I feel like it's a better way for the founder to stay involve…”
David Sacks: Craft Ventures spends 70% to 80% of time on AI
“In terms of looking for new ideas, I think the team is spending 70 to 80% of their time looking at AI.”
Sacks: Tech platform shifts are ponds that get fished out over time
“If you think about every major platform shift as, like, kind of a pond, and the pond is kind of stocked with opportunities, it will get fished out over time. You know, the best opportunities over time will get taken. There's always this question of, why is thi…”
Sacks: There will be an AI co-pilot for every professional job category
“I think there's going to be a co-pilot for every professional job category.”
David Sacks: Craft has written only one or two Series A checks
“We've only made, I'd say, a couple of, you know, well, we've made a few seed investments. Seed checks are a lot easier to write right now. I think we've only written one or two, you could call them, like, series A type checks.”
David Sacks: In 2H 2022 every board meeting was re-forecasting down
“It wasn't until the second half of twenty-twenty-two that every board meeting I was at was, like, a exercise in re-forecasting down.”
David Sacks: The 2021 tech market was the biggest bubble since 1999
“It's, you know, it's just never gonna be like it was in twenty-twenty-one. I mean, that was like the biggest bubble Since the dot-com bubble in 1999.”
David Sacks: Expect a wave of commercial real estate bankruptcies by 2025
“Yeah, you're gonna see a lot of Siri bankruptcies in the next 18 months.”
Sacks: Series A SaaS startups should target roughly 50 employees
“Typically, the Series A company is around 50 employees. That doesn't mean you're at 50 at the time you raise the Series A round. It's usually what, that's the target, that's what you're trying to get to.”
Sacks: SaaS target headcounts are roughly 125 for Series B, 400 for Series C
“Series B, again, that's more of a target, about a 125 employees. Series C, about 400.”
Sacks: Average SaaS Company at IPO Has $100M ARR and 1,000 Employees
“We know based on publicly available data that that at IPO, that the average sort of SaaS company at IPO has about a thousand employees and about a hundred million of ARR. So that ends up being about a 100,000 dollars of ARR per employee, and we can kind of wor…”
Sacks: Scaling SaaS Companies Should Target 50% S&M, 40% R&D, and 10% G&A
“About 10% of your organization should be G&A. About 40% R&D and 50% sales and marketing. You can see that on either a, sort of a dollar cost basis or on a headcount basis. Either way, that should roughly work.”
Sacks: SaaS Companies Need One Manager for Every 5 to 10 Reports
“For every five or 10, somewhere between five and 10 employees, you do need a manager. Like a really lean organization would have, say, one manager for every eight to 10 employees, and, you know a sort of a less lean organization might have one manager for ever…”
Sacks: SaaS companies need one PM and designer per 5-10 developers
“You want to have, you know, one PM for every five to 10, you know, developers, and you're going to have, by this point, by about a 50 person org, you're going to have a couple of designers. And again, that same sort of ratio, in that five to 10 developer range…”
Sacks: Use 'Head of' titles at Series A to retain flexibility
“One thing you'll notice here is that I've called the heads of a lot of these departments head of sales as opposed to VP of sales or chief revenue officer. The reason for that, I find this works with a lot of my series A companies, is they're not sure if that p…”
Sacks: Aim for at least 50% internal promotions for mid-level managers
“I am a big fan of promoting from within whenever possible. You probably want at least 50% of these management roles to be promotions when they can be.”
Sacks: Series C startups must hire a VP of Engineering alongside founding CTOs
“By this point, you're absolutely going to need a VP of engineering. This is somebody who helps the CTO with the actual managing of the organization. You know, it's pretty commonly the case that the co-founder or CTO is chosen because of their technical chops a…”
Sacks: Analyst relations is an underappreciated role for Series C SaaS companies
“You're going to have one or two people doing AR, which is analyst relationships. I think this is actually kind of an underappreciated role for, if you're at twenty million of ARR, if you're at the Series C stage, you really want to be trying to convince the ma…”