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Ryan Buckley

Co-Founder & CEO, Shovels · 2 appearances on the record.

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founderexecutiveauthoracademic@rbucks ↗LinkedIn ↗rbucks.com ↗

Ryan Buckley is a serial software entrepreneur who leads Shovels, an AI and data intelligence platform aggregating nationwide building permit and contractor records. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of freelance writing marketplace Scripted, founded lead generation tool Toofr, served as CEO of mobile data company MightySignal, and authored The Parallel Entrepreneur.

21statements → 10claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.95/5average certainty → 1.33/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 11said about them ↓

2 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 9 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 insight · 8 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 6 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 Ryan 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
Ryan Buckley: AirNow raised far more capital than reported on Crunchbase
“So I think that crunch based data is probably off and, you know, overseas investments some private deals don't all get cataloged in crunch based, but they have a whole network of European investors.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 14:54 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
83% certainty 4
50% 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 Ryan Buckley on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

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

Opinion
Ryan Buckley: Content marketing has become a race to the bottom
“Content marketing seems to be like a race to the bottom now.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 1:08 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Disclosure
Ryan Buckley: Texas PE buyer halted payments on Toofr sale
“I sold it to a another private equity firm in Texas. That relationship kind of went south and they've been a bit litigious. So I won't say exactly who they are, but just the very high level thing that, that kind of went, went south was they were on sort of a p…”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 8:27 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Disclosure
Ryan Buckley: Xenon structures general manager shadow equity as side letters
“And shadow equity also means that they so, you know, Xenon doesn't want to write GMs into the cap table. It's just it's just overhead, just kind of hassle. So it's essentially, it's a side letter that says if, and when there's a liquidity event, you get X perc…”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 9:29 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Opinion
Ryan Buckley: MightySignal was a single feature, not a standalone company
“It's essentially a feature versus a platform and mighty signal very much like really good at the single feature about what it does, breaking apart apps, looking for SDKs, tracking it in a database. It's not really a full blown company. It's just, there's just …”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 10:53 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Insight
Ryan Buckley: Sellers accepting private stock should demand mandatory liquidity terms
“If there is stock and it's a private business, you want to essentially have warrants that would Force the buying entity to essentially cash out your stock in a certain amount of time if they don't go public or something like that.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 13:24 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Assertion Partly supported
Ryan Buckley: MightySignal had $1M ARR and zero employees upon acquisition
“No, they're actually none. So he bought the business. The whole team was acqui-hired by Instacart. And so he handed me a business that was doing a million ARR with no team.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 3:21 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ryan Buckley: MightySignal board approved shutting down at a total loss
“They were about to shut it down. And the board had already approved it. The assumption was they were going to let it go. Investors were going to take a loss.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 6:11 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Disclosure
Ryan Buckley: MightySignal CEO compensation included over $100K and shadow equity
“Low double digits kind of shadow equity And it was higher than a hundred K.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 6:49 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Disclosure
Ryan Buckley: Xenon Ventures targets at least a 3x to 4x exit
“Their thesis is to get at least three to four X out. So we want to then sell for a multiple three to four revenue or at least acquisition costs like what they bought it for.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 12:25 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Assertion Supported
Ryan Buckley: AirNow raised far more capital than reported on Crunchbase
“So I think that crunch based data is probably off and, you know, overseas investments some private deals don't all get cataloged in crunch based, but they have a whole network of European investors.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 14:54 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ryan Buckley: Xenon Ventures will hold Baremetrics as a cash cow
“I think that one's a cash cow. They're going to hold on to it for a while.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 17:24 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Assertion Partly supported
Buckley: Scripted has raised $15 million in capital
“We have, we've raised fifteen million dollars for scripted.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 2:19 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Buckley: Toofr's ARPU is $180 per month
“Our poo right now is 180 dollars.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 5:34 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Disclosure
Buckley: Toofr is completely bootstrapped without outside capital
“Completely bootstrapped.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 6:38 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Disclosure
Buckley spent zero personal dollars to bootstrap Toofr
“I'd say no, it's none. Zero.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 7:30 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toofr's monthly gross customer churn hovers around 10 percent
“Yeah. It still hovers around 10%. Last couple months have actually been pretty good, like six, seven percent range acquisition.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 7:58 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toofr's MRR has remained flat at $18,000 for the past year
“So that 18 grand MRR has actually been relatively flat for the last year.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 8:08 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Toofr acquires customers completely organically with zero ad spend
“It's completely word of mouth organic. I don't spend on AdWords. I don't really do anything.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 8:40 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Disclosure
Toofr has 16,000 lifetime registered users but only 100 active customers
“There's like 16,000 people who have registered in Twofer's lifetime. Like I said, I got a hundred active customers in any given month, but like 16,000 email addresses that are inbounds.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 10:11 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley
Disclosure
Ryan Buckley: Jonathan Siegel required divesting side businesses for MightySignal role
“The other thing was I had to sell my site business. So he knew about two for the finding emails app and that I had this other things going on. It's like, don't want you distracted.”
Ryan Buckley Jul 14, 2022 ▶ 7:07 Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 months later for $4.5m.
Assertion Supported
Buckley admits competitor Email Hunter beats Toofr in SEO
“Hunter kicks my ass in, in SEO.”
Ryan Buckley Mar 26, 2017 ▶ 10:58 EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate Emails With CEO Ryan Buckley

The other half of the tape: Ryan Buckley's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 11 times in 4 episodes on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 11

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0021422017201820192020episodesmentions
0122017201820192020episodes it came up in
0021422017201820192020episodesmentions per episode
2020 4 mentions in 1 episode
2019 4 mentions in 1 episode
2017 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Flip Your SaaS Playbook: PE firm Acquires $1m ARR MightlySignal for .5-1.5x, Sold 24 month Jul 14, 2022 11m
EP 610: Toofr Hits 100 Active Customers Paying $180 Monthly to Get Better, More Accurate E Mar 26, 2017 8m
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