The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Yampolskiy: The best investors won't help you; founders are on their own
“The best investors are not going to bother you. They're not going to help you. Nobody's going to help you. You're in by yourself, no matter who promises what to you, but the worst investors will actually give you better advice and really create more headache f…”
Yampolskiy: 50/50 founder equity splits are a huge mistake
“And then I do think it's actually a huge mistake to have a fifty-fifty split with your founder when you start a company, because even if it's 51, 49, somebody needs to be in charge and control the board.”
Yampolskiy: Startups under $10M ARR probably lack product-market fit
“Like, I mean, I think if you're under ten million in ARR, you actually probably did not reach your product market fit yet.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard grows over 50% while competitor BitSight barely grows at 20%
“We're consistently exceeding 50% plus growth rate much faster than our direct competitor. Direct competitor is barely growing at 20% rate. Nathan Latka: Who is your direct competitor? Alex Yampolskiy: Bitsite is our primary direct competitor.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard beats BitSight 70% of the time in bake-offs
“Well, look, we beat them. We beat them. 70% of the time in a big off.”
SecurityScorecard: Valuation will triple or quadruple within 18 to 24 months
“We believe that within the next. 18 to 24 months, again, we're going to triple or quadruple evaluation of a company or more.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's Worst Hires Were Polished Amazon and Google Execs
“My worst hires were polished executives with Amazon, Google. They would come in, I start micromanaging, they would tell me, I'm a terrible CEO. And then I leave them alone for three months, and they fuck everything up. And then I have to fire them, and I get m…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard Uses Former Jobs Coach to Screen VP Hires
“We actually have a psychologist who interviews, he used to be a coach to Steve Jobs, actually, and Larry Ellison, but he interviews every VP higher and above, and I get a forty-page report on what is a person like, not like, culture, curiosity”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard will easily surpass $100M ARR in 2022
“Next year we plan to continue the same growth rate. So we're going, and more. So we're going to by far surpass, you know, the hundred plus next year and beyond. We actually anticipate to be able to grow faster next year.”
Yampolskiy: Companies with bad ratings are 7x more breach-prone
“We've demonstrated historically that companies with a bad score have a seven times higher likelihood than companies with a good score to suffer a data breach.”
Yampolsky: Great marketing cannot save bad tech, but great tech overcomes weak sales
“Half of our company is dedicated to product and engineering because we believe that ultimately, I mean, if you have crappy technology and really good sales and marketing team that's only going to last you so long. If you have an amazing technology and crappy s…”
Yampolskiy: 70% of Fortune 100 are paying SecurityScorecard customers
“Today, where 70% of the Fortune 100 uses us. Nathan Latka: As a paying customer. Aleksandr Yampolskiy: As a paying customer, about 500 employees, 70% of Fortune 100”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard topped $100M ARR, expects 50%+ growth in 2023
“We exceeded a hundred million run rate last year, and we're gonna probably grow by at least 50% this year.”
Yampolskiy: A startup's deadliest competitor is customer inaction, not rivals
“The deadliest competition is actually not competitors and not your adjacent solutions, but it's doing nothing.”
Yampolskiy fired an executive for failing to speak with customers
“I parted ways with an executive who was a smart, talented executive about a month ago, and it caused a big turnover in a team. I asked her, how many customers have you talked to? She showed the calendar, not many. I said, okay, next week when I talk to you, I …”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard will finish 2021 between $70M and $73M ARR
“We're going to finish this year at about, you know, anywhere from. 70 to seventy three million annual recurring revenue.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's data resale model has zero marginal cost per customer
“If I charge you to monitor Lotka magazine, right? And I charge 20 other people to monitor Lotka magazine, I don't incur any additional costs because I recompute the scorecards once a day, and then I just resell the data. It doesn't cost me anything more to, yo…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's moat is historical breach calibration data, not code
“Even if I gave you all our source code, all our architecture, all of our 25 plus patterns, and said, go compete with us, you're not going to have this historical dataset where we calibrate what datasets map more accurately to likelihood of a breach, and the mo…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard holds almost $200M in cash reserves
“And we're still sitting on almost two hundred million in cash. In the bank.”
Yampolskiy: Weekly executive standups create the accountability needed to make OKRs work
“We made only one small tweak. Now, every Monday we have a standup exec meeting for all VPs and above, and we start that meeting by going over the OKRs. What did you say you were going to do last week? What did you actually do? And so it creates social pressure…”
Yampolsky: SecurityScorecard should currently be valued above $250M
“I mean, right now, given that we made more headway, we should be above that valuation right now.”
SecurityScorecard projects $25M to $30M in ARR for the current year
“We're in the 25 to thirty million ARR this year.”
Yampolskiy claims SecurityScorecard's valuation should currently exceed $250M
“I mean, right now, given that we made more headway, we should be above that valuation right now.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard will hit $130M-$140M ARR and grow 25%-30%
“We're going to do this year, one 31 40. Next year, we're probably going to grow at 25, 30%.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard spent millions on a feature that generated zero revenue
“A ten-person team, four months, cost us millions of dollars to build a feature, and then I didn't bother training the sales team, I did not bother marketing, did not add a single dollar of revenue, even though when I was starting this, I was so sure it's gonna…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard targeting tuck-in M&A of $20M-$40M ARR
“Yeah, so we're going to grow organically at 25, 30%, and we're going to look actively at tokens as well, at 20, forty million era range.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard is growing cash-flow positive
“And cash flow positive, by the way... We're all growing in a cash flow positive way.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard Serves Over 2,800 Customers at $30K-$40K Average Deal Size
“Our security scores are used by over 2800 customers worldwide. Nine of the top 10 banks, governments in 46 different countries, insurance companies, but the average deal size is about 30 to 40 K.”
Yampolskiy: Weekend project widget remains SecurityScorecard's top lead generator
“He just went and coded it on a weekend and became our number one lead generation tool, actually even today.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard has multiple customers paying millions annually
“I can tell you, but I can tell you we have, A whole variety of customers across government, insurance, private equity, right? Like, and you know, we have a whole slew of customers and those guys are paying us millions of dollars a year and deploying us on, on …”
SecurityScorecard Reaches 1,700 Paying Customers and 25,000 Freemium Users
“So we are right now at about 1700 plus paying customers, right? So people who use our scores to rate others, we have over twelve million companies in a data set that we rate, 1700 paying customers, and then there's over 25,000 freemium users.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's average contract value is around $40,000
“So the average contract is about, you know, 40,000 bucks a year paid upfront. Some people pay us millions dollars a year paid upfront and some people There's 10, 20 K. The average is about 40,000.”
SecurityScorecard: Net retention rate is hovering between 115% and 120%
“Our net retention kind of like a growth on net retention is hovering between one 15 to one 20%.”
SecurityScorecard: Gross margins are between 75% and 80%
“Our gross margins are, you know, our gross margins are very healthy between 75 to 80%, and we're not worried there.”
SecurityScorecard spends over $1M per year on events and conferences
“Yeah, we're spending more than a million in events.”
Yampolsky: SecurityScorecard is on track for $25M to $30M in ARR
“We're in the 25 to thirty million ARR this year.”
SecurityScorecard ACV ranges from $80K to $100K paid upfront
“You know, average contract value could be around 80 to a hundred K per year, paid up front.”
Yampolsky: SecurityScorecard maintains an LTV to CAC ratio over 3x
“I mean, we see in, look, I mean, we see in LTV to CAC over, over three, which is good in the enterprise space.”
Yampolsky: SecurityScorecard has negative 15% net churn
“We're net 15, like we're around net 15%.
Negative, negative, -15.”
SecurityScorecard reaches over 450 enterprise customers
“So we have over a 450 customers and rapidly growing every single year.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard spends over $1M annually on events
“Yeah, we're spending more than a million.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard charges $2k per vendor, up to $1M per customer
“So on average, it's 2000 dollars per year to monitor a single company. So, but, you know, big companies have Tens of thousands of vendors. So some people are paying us a million bucks a year.”
SecurityScorecard ACV is around $80k to $100k per year
“Average contract value could be around 80 to a hundred K per year.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard enterprise LTV to CAC is over 3x
“We see in LTV to CAC over, over three, which is good in the enterprise space.”