Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q When did you launch this idea? What year?
A So this, I mean, the startup was officially formed in, uh, 2014. Uh, that's when we actually started on the base, but the idea, the seed of the idea really happened in about 2007 or so. So, you know, I'm from India. I went to school in India and this happened with me where, you know, some of my classmates and friends had to like drop out of school midway during my junior year, junior year. Um, right. And then that's what really Led to me sort of starting a non-profit at that point, which basically reached out to all of our alumni, raised money, uh, and then I graduated, joined Goldman Sachs for a full-time job, did that for a few years, but I was always running this on the side along with a friend of mine, um, and that's really when over those years where we were raising money from alumni of our institution, we realized that Not just at our college, but, you know, institutions globally. The relationship between alumni and their alma mater is just based on loyalty and not like a true relationship, which is where we realized that this needs to get fixed, and that's how we started AlmaBase in, uh, 2014.
AI assessment note: “the startup was officially formed in, uh, 2014”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q You're from gold, Goldman. So I'm expecting you to be able to explain this very clearly so that anyone can understand it. How does a lighter capital RBF revenue based financing work?
A It's pretty simple actually. I mean, sense that, um, you don't need to put any collateral upfront. It's revenue based financing. So they give you a certain amount of money based on how much revenue you have and what's, what are the projections, et cetera. So it's a fairly safe bet from their side as well. So we are, we are doing it at 40%, uh, you know, over three years. So for example, if we raise a hundred K, we're repaying 140 K and the way the repayment works is it's a cut or it's a percentage of monthly cash receipt, right? So if you, let's say in a certain month, let's say we get a hundred K in cash. We pay nine K, 10 K, something like that. And then it goes down over a period of time in terms of the percentage of the cash flow, et cetera. So it's a fairly straightforward instrument.
AI assessment note: “the repayment works is it's a cut or it's a percentage of monthly cash receipt”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q 20 14. And do you remember the first customer? Can you tell us that story?
A That was actually my alma mater. So we started with, uh, you know, uh, selling in India because we, when we started being, it was really, uh, naive. I mean, we said everybody in the U S has already figured out how to do alumni relations and we're going to do this for India. So we were like, let's just bring the best ideas from the U S and implement it in India. We unfortunately did that for about, uh, three years, um, sold to pretty much all of the top tier institutions in India. And then we were like, okay, where do we, So we have Bits Pilani, we have IIT Bombay, we have Pan IIT, um, you know, Christ University, et cetera. So some of these top tier institutions in India, but then we had nowhere to go after that. So then we were like, okay, um, you know, there's a much bigger opportunity, uh, in the U S so that's when we started shifting focus to the U S roughly in like mid 2017 or so.
AI assessment note: “That was actually my alma mater. So we started with, uh, you know, uh, selling in India”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Yeah, I mean, you, there's two types of founders. Founders that want headlines and want to go for a billion dollar win, which is high risk, and those that want to keep as much of their company as possible and build it to a ten million dollar profitable thing that they can get rich off of. Which are you?
A I'm the second one. I mean, we call that value SaaS, actually. I don't know if you've heard that before, but what we mean by value SaaS is creating value for every stakeholder. So right, like founders for sure, but employees, um, you know, customers, making sure everybody has value in this equation is what we built for. So yeah, we're certainly going to be, uh, not going to be type A, which is like raise tons of money and hopefully get there. Um, but yeah, we're more of, I mean, at this point, money is not really our bottleneck. There's A few things that we're solving for, but whenever money is a bottleneck, I think we will raise a little bit of debt to keep us going.
AI assessment note: “I'm the second one. I mean, we call that value SaaS”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q What's your thesis on scaling the sort of take a percent of the donations model, right? Which can be lower touch and potentially grow pretty quick.
A Yeah. So, I mean, I think we want to sort of use the fundraising knot as an, I think where we really do well is when people have all of our products, right? Like we run the end to end sort of alumni program from data to engagement to fundraising. Um, so we don't really see a lot of value. I mean, we do give, you know, uh, customers the ability to try no cost, but only a transaction fee for one campaign, just to give it a shot. And then we say, okay, you have to be a subscription to be able to keep it going. Right. I don't really see a lot of value in just saying, just pay as a cut because we're going to law, we're going to get a lot of, you know, um, noise in terms of the kind of customers that we attract. We want to be really focused on the kind of customers that, that it makes sense to have all of our products.
AI assessment note: “I don't really see a lot of value in just saying, just pay as a cut”
Answered produced feed
D 4 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q How do you compare that to just regular debt where it's just a flat, simple to understand interest rate? In other words, if I asked you, what's the interest on this money? How would you try and calculate that?
A Yeah, it's not that straightforward. I think we just took it, you know, based on the simple math that are we, if we're going to get this a hundred K, are we going to generate revenue? That's way more than a 140 K or not. Right. And if it is, then that's what we need. Right. So we didn't really, I mean, we did, I think, talk to a bank and bank of America is our banker. We did talk to them, but there was lots of complications. And also they said, we can give you a maximum of 40 K, 50 K, something like that, which wasn't sufficient at the point that we raised. And we had a good relationship with lighter. So that's what we went with.
AI assessment note: “simple math that are we, if we're going to get this a hundred K”
