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Matthew Bellows

Partner, Grit Capital Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestorexecutive@mbellows ↗LinkedIn ↗grit.vc ↗

Matthew Bellows is the founder and former CEO of sales productivity platform Yesware, and co-founded BodesWell, which was acquired by American Express in 2022. Today, he is a partner at Grit Capital Partners investing in early-stage fintech, AI, and marketing technology companies.

18statements → 7claims → 2claims resolved → 3.89/5average certainty → 1.28/5average debate potential → 7said about them ↓

0 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 6 assertions · 3 insights · 8 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 5 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 Matthew argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Bellows aims for Yesware to hit a $30M ARR by end of 2016
“I would like to end the year at about a thirty million dollar run rate.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 17:26 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% certainty 3
50% 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 Matthew Bellows on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

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

Insight
Bellows: Founders should generate $1M in sales before hiring first rep
“My recommendation is that the founding team, whether that's If the engineer is the sort of CEO person, the partner, sell about a million dollars worth of product before you go out and sell and hire your first or second salesperson. You want to get to about a m…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 4:47 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bellows: Yesware has crossed a $10M annual recurring revenue run rate
“We're above 10 now.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 6:35 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bellows: Google Apps represents roughly 5% of Yesware's total market
“Companies in the Google Apps world, which is about five percent of our total market.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 7:13 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Insight
Bellows: SaaS usage data is messy, requiring intuition over clean metrics
“My, the real advice I would give to your listeners is don't be frustrated if things aren't crystal clear. Like, when I read the blog posts about doing cohort analysis, this is where I read the blog posts about finding the feature that determines whether or not…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 15:26 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Bellows aims for Yesware to hit a $30M ARR by end of 2016
“I would like to end the year at about a thirty million dollar run rate.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 17:26 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bellows: Yesware counts approximately 750,000 registered users
“We have about, like you said, 750,000 registered users.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 6:01 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Partly supported
Bellows: HBS case study documented Yesware at $7M ARR a year prior
“Harvard Business School did a case on Yesware, where we talked about, this would be about a seven million dollar company. That was about a year ago.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 6:06 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware targets companies with 1,000 to 2,000 employees
“Our target market is customer, you know, companies with a thousand to 2000 employees. Two to 300 sales people, and those are companies that we go after aggressively. We can do a little bit smaller companies, we can do a little bit larger, but that's kind of ou…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 7:22 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bellows: Yesware's average deal size is around $500 per month
“Our average deal size is around 500 dollars a month.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 9:05 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware sales reps need 100 monthly leads to close 8-10 deals
“We look to give us each individual sales rep about a hundred leads a month. To close eight to 10 leads they need to make their quota.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 10:23 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware reps carry a monthly quota of $4,000 in new MRR
“Yeah, our quota is, is 4000 dollars of new monthly recurring revenue a month.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 10:39 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: 90% of Yesware's leads come from organic inbound channels
“We do a little bit of paid but I would say 90% of our leads are from inbound to the website, or inbound to the Chrome store, or the Google Apps marketplace. Those are our main channels.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 11:59 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware uses organic individual adoption to qualify enterprise outbound leads
“Yeah, so, so, so if a company has 10 or 20 or 30 reps already using Yesware, and on, on average, you know, five to 10 will be paying reps, paying users who they will put in their credit card, that, that's a great lead for us. So, we want to spread this product…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 13:33 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Insight
Bellows: Marketing automation is one-to-many; sales acceleration is one-to-one
“Those people are sort of higher in the funnel, if you will. Those are marketing automation companies, and so they focus on one-to-many marketing blasts and communications from a marketing group, and whereas we focus on the one-to-one between the salesperson a…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 16:51 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bellows: Yesware has 80 total employees and about 30 in product
“Total employees is 80. We have about 30 people in the product group, which are engineers, designers, and product owners.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 3:59 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware employs roughly 25 to 30 sales staff
“We have about 25 or 30 folks in the sales department.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 4:24 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware partners with Salesforce, competes with InsideSales and ClearSlide
“We are a partner for Salesforce.com and other CRMs. we compete with companies like Insidesales.com or ClearSlide or others that, you know, are also trying to make salespeople more effective with their software.”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 16:25 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware
Disclosure
Bellows: Yesware uses Reid Hoffman's 'The Alliance' framework for executive roles
“And we've just rolled that out to our executive team here as a framework. And it's really, it's a fantastic, helpful way to talk about how long people want to be at the company and what they're going to do in the next, in their next, what they call tour of dut…”
Matthew Bellows Feb 5, 2016 ▶ 18:55 Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware

The other half of the tape: Matthew Bellows's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 6 episodes on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 7

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0022332017201820192020episodesmentions
0232017201820192020episodes it came up in
0011.5232017201820192020episodesmentions per episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
2018 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2017 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Yesware Aims for $30m in 2016 with Matthew Bellows of Yesware Feb 5, 2016 9m
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