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 17 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
Martin Galovic: FansMetrics Could Have Sold For More With Harder Negotiation
“I didn't negotiate hard enough. That was probably the first mistake. I could definitely, like, sell it for much higher.”
Studia could have reached $1M revenue by hiring five to ten people
“And we could have just continued You know, scaling it up. We just hiring five, 10 people in specific markets could very fast, like, you know, become a million dollar revenue business.”
McDannell saved an acquisition after low appraisal via weekly growth updates
“And like, it almost fell out because the appraisal came in so low and I stuck to the full price offer. And, but I know he would have, they would have dropped if they weren't so excited and engaged and watching me grow the company for three and a half months.”
Avoiding past M&A mistakes saved Calderon millions on the StratDev sale
“If I were to have made the same mistakes that I did on, for example, the first acquisition, I would have came out probably, you know, millions of dollars with a lesser outcome than I did with this one.”
Lee: Genius Sheets could have sold for more with extended negotiations
“I could have negotiated higher and kept the process going longer and gotten more out of it. I just, at this point was so busy with the other stuff. I needed to get it off my plate that we picked. Who we thought was the best buyer at the time on a price that we…”
Domofsky: Founders should define upfront cash minimums and financing limits early
“I wish I would have put some parameters on it For myself, you know, I, a minimum of X amounts up front. Here's my maximum length term on seller financing. You know, I wish I would have been a little clearer with what I actually wanted because I wasn't 100% sur…”
Osterman: Commingling product lines prevents buyers from securing SBA acquisition loans
“The problem for our business was that we had multiple product lines under the same corporate entity, and therefore we were filing taxes every year as like a combination of all of our Product lines. And then, like, the SBA always wants to see the tax filings, a…”
Levy-Garboua: WhatsApp cease-and-desist killed Noosa Labs' biggest potential revenue success
“Had it not happened, I think it would have been our biggest success today, revenue wise. Like, I think we were ready to 10 X this business at least.”
DiGiorgio: Delaying Cross-Border Legal Work Cost Us a Month in M&A
“If I understood it better, I would have started the process as we started due diligence. And not have lost that month in the due diligence to then start the process.”
Lynch: Solodrop would have sold for half without its subscription transition
“I think if I sold it eight months prior, it would have been like half the value that I sold it for.”
Daniel Ch: SimpleInk's growth required the Notion tailwind
“So I don't think we would have gotten the growth we've had or the, yeah, the number of users and, you know, the support and access to all these people, which wasn't for notion.”
Gazdecki: Bizness Apps could have grown larger by focusing on one vertical
“If we went narrow on, like, one vertical, I think we could have grown further”
McBride: TripKit likely could have sold for more with earlier margin scrutiny
“It would have benefited us when we were selling, so we could have sold for a higher price, probably if we had paid attention to that earlier”
Gazdecki: Selling a startup requires an in-house VP of finance
“I don't think I could have sold my first business without having an in-house VP of finance given the due diligence request.”
Matt Ali: Holidays and buyer financing delayed the Apreva acquisition
“I think it would have been a lot faster if it wasn't the end of the year and we hadn't hit like Thanksgiving weekend and then, you know, the holidays, but I think the buyer had some financing that you needed to come through as well through like the sale of the…”
Sinise: Linq Commerce should have listed earlier during market peak
“I would have actually probably listed earlier when the boom was at a higher peak. But we just never ended up going through acquire.com at that time. We were just heads down on the app.”
Spera: GrowthBar wasted resources building keyword research tools from scratch
“I think we spent a lot of time and resources creating keyword research stuff from scratch that, you know, perhaps we didn't need to spend that time doing, and we could have refined the core product, which was the AI writing for SEO product.”