Christian Owens

Founder & Executive Chairman, Paddle · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@christianbowens ↗paddle.com ↗

Christian Owens is an entrepreneur and Thiel Fellow who founded the SaaS billing and merchant-of-record platform Paddle at age 18. Under his leadership, Paddle reached a $1.4 billion valuation and acquired subscription analytics provider ProfitWell in 2022 for over $200 million.

28statements → 13claims → 5claims resolved → 60%fully supported → 3.64/5average certainty → 1.29/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

3 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 8 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

13 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · 11 disclosures · 2 what ifs · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 8 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Christian argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Owens: I hit my first $1M in revenue at age 15
“I was probably 15 ish, 15, 16.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 9:27 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Owens: Paddle at least doubled revenue from 2020 to 2021
“It was really high. Like it was because it was a sort of a little bit of a COVID aberration. Because we were, we saw like the tailwinds of all of that. We at least doubled the business like kind of over that kind of period of time.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 42:33 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
63% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Christian Owens on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Christian Owens said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: Paddle has lost only 8 customers to churn in 7 years
“If we look at logo churn, we have Sort of 900 customers today. And like we've lost in terms of actual churn eight customers in seven years.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 11:54 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Assertion Contradicted
Owens: Paddle at least doubled revenue from 2020 to 2021
“It was really high. Like it was because it was a sort of a little bit of a COVID aberration. Because we were, we saw like the tailwinds of all of that. We at least doubled the business like kind of over that kind of period of time.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 42:33 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
What-if
Owens: Paddle might have raised at a $3.5B valuation two months earlier
“Two months earlier and we might have raised it like a three and a half billion dollar valuation.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 1:16:38 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
What-if
Owens: The ProfitWell acquisition likely wouldn't have happened two months later
“Two months later, I think the deal might not have happened like at all.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 1:16:48 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Insight
Owens: Expanding Paddle to gaming is simpler than physical D2C e-commerce
“The step for us between do we do this for SAS business and do we do it for a game is sort of fairly short versus the step of like, do you do it for SAS business? Do you, versus do you do it for Glossier or like kind of like one of these sort of D to C e-commer…”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 1:24:30 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle charges a flat 5% fee across all volume
“So we charge a flat five percent across everything.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 2:33 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle's largest customer processes around $45M in ARR
“No, so, like, right now, and this is deliberate, the largest probably does, I think, in the region of, like, forty-five million ARR.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 3:45 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Opinion
Owens: Software needs a business infrastructure equivalent to AWS
“We actually think that there is an opportunity for somebody to build kind of this almost sort of like the second most important piece of infrastructure that software company buys, which is sort of like the business infrastructure to AWS's technical infrastruct…”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 7:06 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: Paddle has surpassed $10 million in ARR
“We're just north of like ten million.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 15:23 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Assertion Partly supported
Owens: Paddle avoids charging professional services fees entirely
“We don't charge professional services. We don't do any of that stuff.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 15:41 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: Paddle has roughly tripled its revenue year-over-year
“We've roughly three X revenue every year.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 15:51 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle charges no monthly or setup fees, taking only a percentage cut
“We monetize the transaction volume that flows through Paddle. We don't take a monthly fee. We don't take a minimum. We don't take a setup fee. We don't do any of that stuff. We only win when the customers win. So we monetize the payments that are coming throug…”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 5:22 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle charges 5% plus $0.50 as maximum self-serve pricing
“Five percent and 50 cents is the kind of publicly available pricing. If you kind of self-serve sign up on the website, obviously there is a whole spectrum of customers. If you're doing a hundred million dollars a year, sort of the pricing does go down. If your…”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 5:46 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens scaled a previous software company to $3M-$5M ARR before Paddle
“So sort of pre paddle, I built a software company. And I really ran headfirst into the problem that we try and solve, scaled it to three to five million in ARR sort of, and ran into this problem where we were, we had a few 100,000 kind of people using these pr…”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 6:48 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Assertion Supported
Owens: I hit my first $1M in revenue at age 15
“I was probably 15 ish, 15, 16.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 9:27 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens invested roughly $100,000 of initial capital to launch Paddle
“It was probably because it was like in little chunks. As we kind of like built this stuff, it was probably call it a hundred K sort of to begin with.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 13:54 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens says Paddle's founding equity split was roughly 70/30 or 75/25
“I think I don't even remember what the initial kind of equity split was. It was sort of like two thirds, one third or three quarters, one quarter or something like that.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 14:11 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: Paddle lost 87% of its ARR when one $350K customer churned
“We got from like zero to 400 and then went back down to about like 50. Because we lost like a customer that was like contributing like 350 K and error. And then we had to then rebuild from 50 kind of back up.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 36:28 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: ProfitWell Retain charges a 4% to 6% take rate
“It's roughly between four and six percent. Like it's still tiered right now.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 56:13 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle's initial acquisition offer for ProfitWell was tens of millions lower
“It was several, it was tens of millions, like lower.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 1:13:44 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Disclosure
Owens: Total Financing Including Debt Was Substantially North of $200M
“It was vast majority cash. Sort of, I actually think the number, if you include sort of like, we rounded it to like a whole number, but the actual number, including the debt was pretty like substantially north of two hundred million.”
Christian Owens Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 1:19:52 Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Acquisition
Assertion Supported
Owens: Paddle remits sales taxes in over 40 countries
“We pay their taxes for them sort of like calculate and pay and remit sales taxes in 40 something different countries.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 3:05 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Disclosure
Owens: Paddle's annual platform volume is under $500M
“It's less than five hundred million.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 5:30 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Owens: Inbound channels drive 20% to 25% of Paddle's new business
“It's probably 20, 25% of new business is inbound versus the rest outbound today.”
Christian Owens Jan 26, 2020 ▶ 8:22 1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year

Show 4statements(4 left)

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Details of $20m Revenue Profitwell and $55m Revenue Paddle Deal and what led to the $200m Jun 27, 2022 19m
1646 Why 900 SaaS CEO's Put $200m in ARR Through Him Every Year Jan 26, 2020 10m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 2,600 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.