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 13 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
Founders with PMF must demand VC partner meetings over analyst calls
“Once you have a vision, and once you have the product market fit, you need to, you will only get what out of your business what you expect of it. So if you expect only to ever talk to analysts at these firms, guess what? That's all you'll talk to. But if you d…”
Non-Valley founders face a higher risk of quitting due to disbelief
“And so outside of Silicon Valley, I think that all of us here are at far more risk of quitting because people just won't believe in what we're doing.”
To VCs, building in Utah is no different than Bucharest, Romania
“If you're in Lehigh, Utah, you may as well be in Bucharest, Romania when it comes to investors. Like, it doesn't matter. Once you're outside of the Bay Area, you're just outside, and there's nothing really matters.”
A $1M seed check in Podium would be worth over $200M
“The irony of that story is if that firm would have invested a million dollars into Podium at that time, today it would be worth over two hundred million dollars.”
Startups outside the Bay Area must fight harder for credibility networks
“Because we're not in the Bay Area, we are going to have to fight even harder to build a credibility network, and you just need it. You need to have people, you need to have investors, and you need, I think the first 25 hires that we made at Podium were, ah, re…”
Non-technical founders must hire engineers before building a sales team
“And I think it's really important to hire an engineer first if you're not, if you don't already have engineering power because if you don't have a great product, you're kind of screwed even if you're great at sales.”
Podium scaled from $0 to $60M ARR in four years
“In the past five years, my co-founder Dennis and I have built a SaaS company outside of Silicon Valley from zero to sixty million dollars of ARR in four years.”
Podium grew from $1M to $10M ARR in just over one year
“That took about a year, a little longer than a year, but we went from one to ten million of ARR, and the whole theme of that year for us was building our credibility network.”
Podium scaled from under 10 to over 100 employees in 2015
“And that year for us, in the year of 2015, we went from one, we went from less than 10 employees to over a hundred, and because of the advice that Andrew Mason gave us, we focused on our values, we started hiring based on our values, and we decided to make a r…”
Podium tripled its ARR from $10M to $30M in 2017
“Now, next, the next year, in 2017, we went from just over ten million of ARR to 30.”
Podium doubled its ARR from $30M to $60M in 2018
“Now, the next year, ah, we went from 30 to 60, and that was another big year, not quite as big of a jump as 10 to 30, but in that year, we basically pulled away from the pack.”