Insight
Agarwal: CEOs should fly economy so employees cannot demand business class
“Like I still fly economy. A lot of people say, why do you fly economy? Is that worth your time? And I'm like, it's not about working my time. It's building a democratized system in the company where if I fly economy, nobody else better ask to fly business.”
Assertion Partly supported
Agarwal: Vista has the highest IRR of any North American PE firm
“Vista has now had the highest IRR of any private equity firm in North America.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Vista Equity Partners has never lost money on an acquisition
“They've never lost money. And any acquisition in their history, which no company can say.”
Disclosure
Agarwal: Vista takes zero dividends from high-growth software portfolio companies
“So they don't take money back. They want to invest it back to grow faster. So for example, they've never, they don't want a dividend. They said, put that money and plow it back into the business because we want to go faster.”
Insight
Agarwal: Going public forces discipline and forecasting rigor on a company
“When you go public, it changes you as a company, because you learn to be much more disciplined, you have to be able to forecast better, you just get a tighter grip of your business, you get different sets, you build different sets of muscles, you know, just li…”
Insight
Agarwal: Bookings Is the Best Leading Indicator of Future SaaS Performance
“What we've seen is the most important indicator of how you're doing the future is bookings because then that's, that shows your future, your current work and your future work versus your past.”
Prediction Held up
Agarwal: Cvent will collect over $500 million in cash this year
“So basically, we'll collect more than half a billion in cash this year.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Cvent's profit margins are substantially north of 10%
“And our numbers are north of this, frankly, substantially north of this. Let's just say you want 10% profit.”
Assertion Partly supported
Agarwal: Vista used Cvent's $130M cash balance to fund buyout
“We had one hundred and thirty million dollars cash in our balance sheet. They use that to buy our own company.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Agarwal: Cvent was Vista's first high-growth software acquisition
“So what happened with Vista, they used to invest in companies that, you know, EBITDA was a little more focused. Now their focus is high growth. So we were the first company that they acquired that was high growth.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Meetings market matches consumer electronics, exceeding most nations' GDPs
“It's big, it's equal to the same size of consumer electronics globally, if you believe it. Bigger than the GDP of every country, except 17.”
Disclosure
Agarwal: Cvent didn't receive a 20x revenue buyout offer before IPO
“Unfortunately, we didn't get 20 times revenue like Qualtrics as an offer, because maybe that would change your mind if you get that kind of valuation.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Cvent Doubled Revenue and Grew Headcount to Nearly 4,000
“We closed our deal in 16, and so we have more than doubled already as an organization. So to give you a sense, we were about 18 or 1900 employees. This year, we'll end the year, we're starting to approach 4000 employees. And in terms of revenue, we've more tha…”
Assertion Partly supported
Agarwal: Cvent operated for 13 years without raising outside capital
“For 13 years, we didn't raise any capital. We relied on ourselves, so it changes the way you look at a lot of metrics.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Cvent Net Revenue Retention Is Above 100% But Below 115%
“So we're certainly north of 100. We're not, Approaching one, 15, one, 20. So I'll just kind of just say that.”
Disclosure
Agarwal: Rolled over proceeds into Cvent during Vista acquisition
“Like I invested back my proceeds cause I was, you know, the largest shareholder at Cvent and I put my money back into the company, some of it.”
Disclosure
Agarwal: Cvent is reducing profits year-over-year to fund growth
“For example this year, we're taking our profits down compared to the prior year because such a great opportunity.”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Cvent powers conferences for Dreamforce and AWS
“We do, you know, helping Dreamforce, AWS, their large conferences of 50, 80, 90,000, whatever, 100,000”
Assertion Supported
Agarwal: Cvent lists about 200,000 venues on its sourcing platform
“We have about 200,000 venues where you can find the right location for your actual event.”
Assertion Partly supported
Agarwal: Competitor Lanyon was formed by aggregating about 20 companies
“And Lanyon was an aggregation of about 20 different companies that kind of merged together.”
