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Simon Ponsford

Co-Founder and CTO, Exhale Security · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutivescientistengineer

Simon Ponsford is a distributed systems specialist who served as CEO and CTO of workload orchestration platform YellowDog. He also founded cloud services provider Tivarri and co-founded cybersecurity company Exhale Security.

16statements → 6claims → 1claims resolved → 3.62/5average certainty → 1.12/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 4 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 assertions · 10 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 4 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 Simon 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
YellowDog's peak valuation reached £14.5 million
“Our highest valuation was about 14 and a half million dollars. So 14 and a half million pounds.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 9:13 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation

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 Simon Ponsford on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

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

Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ponsford admits YellowDog's recent raise was a down round
“No, actually, I would say our most recent round has been a little bit lower than that. Just because of COVID and pandemic it's generally brought that down a little.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 9:26 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
Founder Simon Ponsford holds roughly 8% equity in YellowDog
“I'm at around eight percent.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 12:59 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog's pricing sweet spots are $5K and $50K monthly
“There's a sweet spot in the sort of mid, in the small and mid market, which is generally around about 5000 dollars. And then the upper end. Yeah. And then the upper end is probably closer to 50,000.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 2:35 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog's largest enterprise accounts pay over $250K annually
“You're talking those accounts are generally more than just about sort of quarter of a million, maybe a little bit higher.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 3:46 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Assertion Not checkable as stated
YellowDog has around 30 monthly recurring enterprise customers
“That market's only about 30 customers today.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 6:03 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Assertion Supported
YellowDog's peak valuation reached £14.5 million
“Our highest valuation was about 14 and a half million dollars. So 14 and a half million pounds.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 9:13 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog's core subscription MRR was around $30K in late 2020
“That would be about 30.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 11:18 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog is completing a $1.5M round at a $12.5M valuation
“No, no, we've just done we've almost completed one and a half on that one.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 12:12 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
Institutional VCs own roughly 43% of YellowDog
“VCs are in around just about, let's say about 43%.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 13:46 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
Crowdfunding investors own 7% to 8% of YellowDog
“Then also the crowdfunding, they come in as a group, they come in at somewhere at seven or eight percent.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 14:02 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog bills customers based purely on managed core hours
“The sales model is all, is, is all about licensing. So it's all about number of core hours that people use that we effectively manage for them.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 1:44 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Assertion Not checkable as stated
VFX studios chose YellowDog for cloud compute during 4K shift
“It was really that transition whereby studios needed to move from say HD filming to four K and they didn't have enough compute. And so they chose yellow dog in order to be able to get that compute generally from the cloud.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 4:28 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Assertion Not checkable as stated
YellowDog has served roughly 4,500 rendering customers
“In the render market, we generally had about four and a half thousand customers.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 4:54 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
YellowDog has raised about $8M in total funding
“We, we've done about eight million in total.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 7:26 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Disclosure
COVID-19 reduced YellowDog's annual revenue by roughly $400K
“That probably took a good 400 K off of that annual.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 10:57 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Seven of YellowDog's 12 employees are software engineers
“So engineering is seven people.”
Simon Ponsford Oct 23, 2021 ▶ 15:04 Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Buy Rendering Power with YellowDog, $1.8m ARR, $12.5m Valuation Oct 23, 2021 8m
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