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.
why aren't all 3,289 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Latka: The most bankable software companies usually start as agencies
“The most successful software companies we see that are most underwritable, bankable, they usually launch an agency.”
Omnisend CEO warns against buying cheap backlinks to avoid Google penalties
“Shall you buy backlinks? Yes. Shall you buy from the low authority website? Please don't do that because Google recognized it and then you can be penalized, yeah? So if there is something for cheap in the market, usually there is a trap.”
Omnisend CEO: AI models will not recommend brands lacking general awareness
“But, you know, now I believe that in the world of AI, general brand awareness will become more important. It's the same as, like, human brain, yeah? If artificial brain will not see you as a market player, they will never recommend you.”
Schumacher: Well-managed SaaS companies almost never go bankrupt without excessive VC funding
“If you manage the SaaS well, it's almost impossible to get into bankruptcy. It usually only happens if there's a VC pouring too much money. Founders go crazy. The environment tanks.”
Making BDRs do lead research indicates a broken data model
“One of the things here is don't let your BDRs do lead research. Give them the leads and make sure, and if they say they need to do anything with them, it means your model's broken.”
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.”
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 …”
Chellappa: Founders should lead sales and close the first 10 accounts
“I'm a firm believer that this, that the founder should be doing sales, and doing some other marketing for the first two years. They should be the one closing the first 10 accounts. If you're not doing the, I closed the first 40 accounts, because we were bootst…”
Martin: Prioritize Marketing Channels by SEO, Paid Ads, Then Email
“Do SEO, paid ads, and email in that order. If your CMO tells you to do anything different, they don't know what they're talking about.”
Isilay: UK startups should wait until $10M ARR before US expansion
“Whereas we stayed focused on the U.K. Market and his advice was stay focused on the U.K. Market until you get to ten million AAR and then look at the U.S. Market. And that real, that was invaluable advice and stopped us blowing through our money too quickly.”
Zero-MRR startups can run outrageous marketing because they lack a brand
“You don't have a brand when you're zero MRR. Like, you can do outrageous things with zero consequence, as far as I can tell. Like, The worst thing that happens is you just start over and everyone forgot what you were doing in the first place.”
Burns: Sell to buyer objectives and personal bonuses, not pain points
“No one's going to care about solving pain points right now, but everybody needs to hit goals, right? And if we can identify their objectives and sell to objectives as opposed to pain, certainly not features, right? Because that doesn't matter. People are going…”
Anupam Rastogi: Most SaaS Should Be Built Without Venture Capital
“Venture capital is not, For everyone, I'd say, in fact, for a very small percentage of founders and companies, I'd say a lot of SaaS can be built without venture capital and should be built without venture capital.”
Maryasin: Fintech infrastructure has no viable low-cost MVP
“For us, what we see is that there is no real MVP in this market. Like if people come to us and say, Hey, I want to be a build.com for my clients. I can't give them like a scrappy little solution that doesn't really work. I have to give them something a lot mor…”
Sanwal: Giving early employees C-level titles causes organizational friction later
“If somebody's gonna be a CTO when you're three people, and then you get to 30, and that person no longer is relevant in that role, then you're gonna have to top them, they're gonna look like they took a demotion, it just creates all sorts of agita and anxiety …”
Sanwal: Consensus-driven culture results in a 'shit brown culture'
“If you give everybody input into what the culture's gonna become, you're gonna have a shit brown culture. And so what you got to do is say, nope, this is our culture, and we're going to spike on these two colors, and that's it”
Sanwal: Do not hire candidates with a track record of startup failures
“When you see somebody who's taking a lot of L's, like, you know, hey, I was at a startup, it failed, my prior startup had this problem, and you look at their resume, and it's just like a string of losses, like, don't hire that person.”
Maruthavanan: "Save time" SaaS pitches fail in time-rich, money-poor markets
“So there are some geographies which are time rich, but money poor, and if you sell save time there, it's not going to work. But some geographies which are money rich and time poor, then save time value proposition and messaging is going to work.”
Kalyanaraman: Reaching $2M ARR does not prove a repeatable sales motion
“If you're still at two million ARR, trust me, you haven't really created a repeatable sales motion. You've created some validation. It ain't repeatable sales motion yet. You've just had your founders sell stuff, right?”
Diaz: Velocity is the only true sustainable competitive advantage
“More opportunities, resources, and tooling reduces the barrier to entry. Increases competition, resulting in velocity being the only true sustainable advantage.”
Western European and Nordic Buyers Pay 20% Higher SaaS Prices
“Companies in the Nordics and Western Europe are willing to pay 20% higher prices for the exact same product relative to the U.S. So, go increase your price by 20% in Western Europe and watch your conversion rates stay the same.”
Patel: Agency service churn is typically much lower than software churn
“Churn in our space is typically much lower than software churn.”
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…”
Monetization and retention offer significantly higher revenue impact than acquisition
“We gather data on what they're spending time on, and we basically found that you know, there's way more impact on spending a bit more time on monetization, a bit more time on retention, compared to spending time on acquisition.”
Suski: SEO in competitive niches is impractical for early bootstrapped startups
“Our niche was highly competitive, so we were to compete with Ahrefs, SEMrush, HubSpot, big domains, big players, so if that's the case, you will need to wait for results for a long time, like a year or so, and you'll need to invest a lot of money, and if you a…”
Suski: Startups should wait until $1M+ profit before investing in SEO
“If you're profitable over one million dollar a year, you do invest in SEO, so we just waited for some time.”
SaaS double-digit multiple expansion triggers at $60M to $70M revenue
“I think the kind of like the trigger is in the 60, 70 range where people can look at that and say, like, can we get this to 203 104 hundred, really, right? And that's a linear argument. I mean, it's still a pretty, Pretty big lift, but it's a linear argument, …”
Pang says Chinese founders treat investors as debt, not equity
“A lot of founders in China grew up being under a different, very different regime. Their mentality is that let me grow it and let me take control of it. The investors are just, you know, capital money. They're debt. They're not equity.”
Cutting R&D preserves software revenue growth better than cutting marketing
“So when the lever you can pull is R and D expense, right. And you feel like you're just going to, the pace of innovation will just slow down a little bit. Then you can actually keep your revenue growth, but then drop your OPEX growth, right? The second that yo…”
Ghatge: Elite Indian sales reps effectively close US software deals
“I think like five years back, the story was very different, but they've learned, they've trained themselves and the really good ones have figured it out. And of course that pool is much smaller than what you'd like it to be. But it's still much cheaper than ha…”
Kaevand: AppSumo brings the wrong customers for long-term SaaS retention
“Yeah, because like if you launch there you get wrong kind of customers. You don't get the kind of customers that are going to be with you like long-term. They don't count towards churn like retention. It's a lifetime plan. It's like only good for like very spe…”
Carpel: VCs frequently retrade deal terms at the last minute
“I've seen so many times where they say yes to you at first, and then they will retrade you, so your terms get worse at the very, very end, right? So a yes is never a hundred percent.”
Olson: Startups must let systems break to know what to fix
“Sometimes things have to break and fall over to actually see what you need to fix.”
Elfond: 'Fail fast' dogma fails in niche markets where failures are remembered
“In all the startup schools, they'll say, they'll tell you fail fast and learn from it. Great learning when you have a huge industry and you can sell to as many people as you can and you'll never remember the people that you failed with. Not in the smaller indu…”
Benson: Engineering delivers higher long-term ROI than sales but takes longer
“Sales or marketing or anything on the revenue side pays off at a pays off faster, but at a lower ultimate rate engineering resources and actually making the product better, creating that extra feature that wins you extra deals pays off at the highest rate, but…”
Benson: SaaS startups should always take debt before equity once generating revenue
“I think that the rule is debt before equity. If you can get it, it's cheaper. Equity capital is super expensive. You can't get debt until you already have revenue. Once you can get debt, you should get debt. You stack equity on top of it. But even if you just …”
Arrigoni: Remote work is a talent strategy, not a cost-saver
“When people say, oh, we're going to save a bunch of money by running a remote company. Not necessarily. Running a remote company could be expensive. It's a talent tech. Strategy. A hundred percent because now the total addressable market of people that you're …”
Hauser: Startups should only use venture debt for proven marketing channels
“My number one takeaway on that is only use it for Things you know are working. Marketing channels you know are working. It's not for testing. It's not for hiring. It's not for growing product. It's none of those things. It is, I know that if I spend a dollar h…”
Pokros: Recruiting scorecards are stupid and merely reinforce preexisting choices
“We firmly Believe that scorecards are stupid. I think that scorecards make you feel like the choice that you made makes you feel better about the choice you made. It only reifies your existing values and your existing choices.”
Osgood: Small AppSumo Users Have Identical Launch Problems to Large Enterprises
“Yeah, because honestly, the problem, the problems that are That, that user versus the problems that are a larger company user, they're almost identical when you're talking about launching products. Like I actually fundamentally disagree with the idea that they…”
Lemkin: Price increase warnings are the only event marketing CTA that converts
“Prices going up. That's the only CTA that works, too. Nothing else works. Prices, discounts don't work. Great speakers, you know, nothing works but prices.”
Corwin: Sustainable hedge funds require at least $500M to $1B AUM
“The minimum you need five hundred million to a billion to make it a long-term business, sustainable business”
Keeley: Embedded fintech can increase vertical SaaS platform valuations 3x to 10x
“We really have a lens on the world that says vertical SaaS platforms are literally worth three to five to 10 times more if this strategy is implemented well with the right technology”
Ashkenazi: Fundraising ability is the ultimate determinant of startup success
“I think it's absolutely critical to raise money from external investors, even if you can fund it, or you think that you can fund it, your ability to raise money is the number one thing that will determine your future success.”
Latka: Modest early revenue hurts VC-backed startups more than zero revenue
“It's almost a problem that you have revenue because then people want to harp on you about how low the revenue is when really you should just eliminate the revenue and just focus on user and engagement growth”
Gig platforms outsource embedded credit to avoid debt bondage reputational risk
“At the end of the day, it's still quite heavily regulated in consumer credit business, meaning the barriers for entry are quite high and you do carry underwriting and default risk, meaning that you need to have a proper treasury collection and credit risk func…”
Upfront cash is the only real financial risk for acquirers
“Whatever price tag you give, you can divide it between what you pay today, and what you pay tomorrow, and what you pay the day after. And whatever you pay tomorrow and the day after usually has some contingencies, right? If you think about it, like, yeah, I me…”
Abel: Legacy software analysts don't use the software they evaluate
“You know, I said it's like a restaurant critic that literally can't eat the food, right? The analyst can't use the software, and they just stand outside the restaurant asking other people, how is your meal? And I'd rather ask the people eating the meal, right?…”