Opinion
Singh: Software Has Been a Horrible Investment Category Since 2018
“Software has actually been a really horrible category to invest in for the last five, six, seven years.”
Insight
Singh: Buying lowest-NPS stocks outperforms high-NPS companies over time
“I've always told investors just, you know, you'd be better off buying a basket of stocks that have the lowest NPS of all, and they'll outperform the companies that have the best NPS. And you'll be like, well, it doesn't make sense, but think about the companie…”
Assertion Partly supported
Singh: Median Public Software Stock Down 21% Since 2018
“The median software company that's public is down 21% over the last six years, from 2018 to now.”
Insight
Singh: Diluting Equity for Marginal Growth Rates Destroys Shareholder Value
“A way to think about it is if, let's just pretend you're growing a hundred percent a year, and then you raise a growth round for twenty-five million dollars, you sell a third of your company, and now your share count is a third bigger. But if your growth rate …”
Insight
Singh: Startups should generate $1 of ARR for every $1 raised
“My view is, you know, if you raise a hundred million dollars, you should be able to generate a hundred million dollars of error off of that platform over time to pay back for the time that it takes to get to that hundred million dollars.”
Insight
Singh: Platform software products are vastly more durable than single vertical solutions
“Because the platform product is way more durable than the single vertical product. And the single biggest problem people make in investing and starting companies is they think they, because they get a lot of great feedback from their customers because they're …”
Opinion
Singh: No company deserves to trade at 30x revenue long-term
“There's no company that deserves to be trading at 30 times revenue for a long period of time.”
Insight
Singh: Sensor data underwrites restaurants better than bank tax returns
“I always said, I could underwrite a restaurant better than a bank. I don't need your tax returns. Just put a sensor in your restaurant, and I'll track the traffic and be able to lend you better than any bank could, and a bank can't do that, and in a similar se…”
Assertion Contradicted
Singh: PAR Is Second-Best Performing Sub-$10B Public Software Stock
“In that sort of sub-ten billion dollar software, we're the best performer sans one company over the last one, three, five years.”
Insight
Singh: Most Software Models Are Too Small for Public Scale or VC
“Getting in software sounds like a better business model, but more often than not, it is not big enough to be a scalable public company or to be a venture-backed business”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singh: PAR Software Had -60 NPS and -99 CSAT Upon His Takeover
“They're gonna see that our software business is on fire, and that our customer NPS is -60. Our CSAT was -99. We didn't have one customer that was green on our CSM scores, right?”
Assertion Contradicted
Singh: PAR Technology founders invented the point-of-sale terminal in 1978
“In 1978, our founders invented the point of sale terminal.”
Disclosure
Singh: PAR Acquired Punchh for $500M Using Overvalued Stock
“We went out, we bought a half a billion dollar business called Punch, that's based here in Austin now, and we started using our stock because we thought it was very inflated, and so it was the greatest we ever did, because it built, it gave us tremendous scale…”
Insight
Singh: Functional Org Charts Mistakenly Distance Enterprise Software Leaders from Customers
“In enterprise software, I think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes CEOs do is you get really big, you get farther and farther from your customers. You create org charts that are completely functional, where you have one CRO, one CPO, so on and so forth. An…”
Assertion Partly supported
Singh: US restaurant unit growth now comes from stadiums and EV stations
“Restaurants are no longer growing in the United States, right? It's like we're over retail, we're over restaurant. And so the growth of the units of restaurants is now in stadiums. It's in convenience stores. EV charging stations. It's not going to be the net …”
Insight
Singh: Software Companies with Identical Metrics Should Not Trade at Identical Multiples
“You can have two different companies with the exact same metrics, and they shouldn't trade the same. You know, and so you've got to be very specific about what you're acquiring and what you're buying. You know, you can see software companies growing at a hundr…”
Insight
Singh: Product-led founders excel at building products but fail at rationalization
“Product-led founders are amazing at building product, but they're very bad at rationalizing product.”
Opinion
Singh: Beloved point products trade at lower multiples than platforms like ADP and SAP
“Whether it's, like, a DocuSign or a Zoom or all the ones I just talked about, like, and look at what they trade at. They trade at, like, three times revenue. You know, these are, DocuSigns are great products. Zoom is a great product, but they trade at the shit…”
Insight
Singh: FinTech mostly puts acquisition engines on legacy financial products
“The problem with FinTech is that it's just taking all the stuff we do now and putting a consumer acquisition engine on it.”
What-if
Singh: PAR Turnaround Would Not Have Been Easier Taking Company Private
“So I thought about that a lot, and I actually think the answer would be no, and I'll tell you why. The operational changes were extreme. We replaced almost the entire management team, you know, we shipped a bunch of jobs offshore, did a lot of crazy stuff, but…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singh: The Average Restaurant Runs on 20 to 40 Software Products
“If you go into the average restaurant, you'll be shocked how many individual products run that restaurant. It's upwards of 20, 30, 40 sometimes.”
Assertion Partly supported
Singh: PAR Grew Software Revenue from $5M to Over $250M
“When we took over the company, the revenues were about one 71 80, and they were five million dollars of software revenue, 165 of hardware and services. Where today will be, you know, whatever, four 50 of revenue, but two 52 60 will be software. The software's …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singh: One Salesperson Closed a 10-Year, $230M Deal With Burger King
“We signed a deal in December of last year, that was a two hundred thirty million dollar 10 year deal, twenty three million dollars a year. That took one salesperson, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singh: Average Age of GMs Running $100M P&Ls at PAR Is 30
“The average age of the GMs who run a hundred million dollar P&Ls at our company is like 30. You know, we've got somebody that's 26 or 27, we've got somebody that's like 35.”
