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 9,656 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
OnStrategy measures customer success by client KPI attainment, not app utilization
“We built our own metrics based on not utilization because we don't really care about app utilization. We care about the fact that our clients are delivering organizational performance. So if they're not hitting their KPIs and their OKRs, We are failing as an o…”
Baker: Churnly requires five workshops before proposing or they walk away
“So we ask our customers to commit to five workshops before we even give them a proposal, right? If they can't do that, we're out. We don't talk to them.”
Baker: Churnly enforces strict rule against product demos on initial calls
“We hardly ever demo. We never demo on a first call ever.”
Allouche rejected a $4M term sheet that wiped out early investors
“I got a term sheet, a four million dollar term sheet from a green entrepreneur, a shark, who saw that we're struggling. That term sheet, if I took it, My company wouldn't be around anymore. That, that would convert all of the preferred to common. It wouldn't m…”
Rapid Funnel rejects employee tracking software, managing strictly by outcomes
“The truth is, in my estimation, putting your thumb on them doesn't do any good, because you can't see them. They're not in an office, and people are like, do you have all this tracking software? Do you know how many hours they're on their computer a day? I'm l…”
Maximoff: Belkins grants zero employee equity, opting for revenue sharing instead
“So this is how the cap table looks for us. So we don't give away equity to anyone. So me and my partner, so the way it works is the way it works is we are purely performance based and revenue sharing base.”
DocSales ties sales bonuses directly to global MRR and churn targets
“For instance, sales need to generate more than five K in new MRR, but we have global goals. The MRR growth rate should be more than 15%. The churn rate should be less than two percent per month. So if sales department hit that their goals, but the company does…”
Benson: Badger Maps secured $308K upfront via 3-year competitor exclusivity
“I traded for three years, paying three years up front it was like 308,000 dollars or something. I traded away, not, I promised not to sell the product to their two biggest competitors for that three year period”
Expandi artificially boosted its content reach by self-upvoting articles using VPNs
“And we used different VPNs to access it through different IPs and upvote all these articles to get a much more reach.”
Prados: Review Wave targeted $150M valuation with $15M in founder secondary
“Yeah, so, I mean, we were looking at, you know, pretty much a hundred fifty million dollar valuation, 20% deal 50% for secondary, which is where you take it off the table, and then 50% to leave on the books, so we were going to take that fifteen million. We've…”
Lemkin: SaaStr generates $27M total revenue, with $20M from event sponsors
“It's roughly, it's probably more, actually, it's probably more like 27. So it's roughly five million from tickets, which we can chat about, two million from sponsorship of podcasts and newsletters and twenty million from event sponsors.”
Mealy refuses to share internal metrics, citing a 'competitive intelligence' team
“And we have a competitive intelligence team and we understand how that information gets out. And we've chosen to keep a lot of that private. We're not Interested in debuting a lot of that on the public front. We're not really gonna expose that kind of informat…”
Distro books full developer salaries as its own top-line revenue
“That would be top line. So that's the full marketplace charge. So like the full salaries and everything. So the way we recognize revenues, we take the whole thing in.”
No members of Inflectra's leadership team hold equity in the company
“I've got a leadership team, but, you know, no one has any equity.”
Helfrich: Instarail technical co-founder owns only 5% equity
“Oh, no, no. He doesn't have 50%. He has five percent.”
Gaurav Seth owns 100% of WorkforceNext despite having a technical co-founder
“Right now I have a hundred percent of equity.”
Chili Piper raised $33M and sold $33M in secondary to Tiger Global
“We did a secondary with Tiger Global. We sold thirty-three million. So we raised thirty-three million, and we also sold thirty-three million.”
Chili Piper closed a $27M secondary share sale at a $625M valuation
“Yeah, so we did six 25, which was the highest of the market. We, that was in the end, well, at five hundred million with ten million worth of sale, at six 25 with twenty-seven million, so twenty-seven million secondary, and that's what happened.”
Darbyshire: Bain invested at $70M pre-money nine months before $200M exit
“Bain came in and invested, I think it was a seventy million dollar pre. It allowed me to take some money off the table. They bought about 20% of the company. They allowed the employees to cash out a portion of their stock options at that time, so it was It was…”
Darbyshire: SmartSuite contracted its entire design team exclusively via Upwork
“He is. His team. So he's got a team of three or four people that work with him. Very reasonable rates for that team. And they got rid of everything else about a year and a half ago, so they, that's basically our design team.”
Darbyshire: Personally invested $12.5M to build SmartSuite's MVP
“It's unusual to spend 12 and a half million dollars on a, on an MVP, but for the idea that we had here, it was something that we needed to do. I personally put that money in today.”
Abbott: 90 pays 10% of revenue to license EOS trademark terms
“Yeah, so we just pay a license fee to EOS to use the terms, so we pay 10% of our revenues to EOS to be able to use their trademark terms in our software.”
Maropost is executing a secondary round at a $1.7B valuation
“So I'm not even sure if I should share this, but we're doing a secondary round at a 1.7 billion dollar valuation.”
Burnside: LendingPoint raised an unprecedented $220M in friends and family rounds
“The team we have here raised about two hundred and twenty million dollars of friends and family just really no outside rounds, but friends and family, we raised that over, Yeah. Over about probably four or five different tranches that we re-raced it, but we di…”
Kossack: Aspireship Generates $275 per Active User on a $20 CAC
“So it currently costs us about 20 bucks to get an active user, and within a 120 days at least over the last 12 months, we've averaged 275 dollars per active user.”
Medina: Outreach CSMs have renewal targets and upside commissions without firing quotas
“They are not quota carrying per se, meaning they don't get fired, they don't hit quota. But they do have a renewal target.”
Jackson: Early Braintrust investors bought SAFTs converting below $1 per token
“These investors bought staffs, simple agreement, future tokens. Safes have conversion caps. Safes have conversion caps, right? And so there was a conversion cap in the staff. It's different levels for different staffs, but They were all, you know, somewhere be…”
Radius Agent reaches $50M post-money valuation, eyes Series B in 6-8 months
“We have a fifty million dollar valuation right now, and we want to close the series B in the next six to eight months.”
Lauritzen: raffle.ai employee warrants only vest upon 50% company exit
“It works the way that you have you have the option to, or you have warrants that will be released the day that we actually exit, which is the day where we sell more than 50% of the company. So you have to stay to the end, so to speak, or to the day that we exi…”
Black: Maximizing investor value is more important than preserving founder equity
“I'm personally not focused on preserving my equity and then actually I'm doing the opposite. I'm focused on creating as much value for my investors as possible.”
Practice Ignition rejected higher Series C valuations to partner with JMI
“When we did this round, we turned down higher term sheets to work with JMI.”
Kumar pays his CrawlQ team members under $600 per month
“I get everyone which is under 600 dollars per month, which who are working with me.”
Freeverse targets €10M funding round at a €40M valuation
“So if we're targeting ten million euros at a and want to dilute by 20%, then the valuation would be around about forty million, but we're still, are still in debate with the VCs.”
Evans used a $5M convertible note to net 30% more equity
“Well, so I put in a cap at five million. So that, so essentially I was investing at a five million valuation. And then when we invested at two hundred million, your nerds, your notes convert at that same, I mean, I got like another 30 or 40% of the company.”
SoftBank offered up to $300M before Flock Freight reduced the check size
“SoftBank was about half of the check in this round. You know, we had another hundred million dollars come in on top of what SoftBank wrote. SoftBank wanted to write a much larger check, initially up to three hundred million. And from around construction standp…”
Sidhu: SPIDR Tech turned down a Series A to be acquired
“In fact, we had the potential of competing term sheet. We had a term sheet for a series. I mean, we were we actually ended up turning things down because we felt like this was a very, very rare type of acquisition that we could have easily walked away from.”
Ferber: Britech Global's Brazil venture debt carries an 18% annual interest rate
“It's like it's like 18% a year.”
SalesImpact prepares to raise funding at $80M pre-money valuation
“So we're about to raise again now at an AT pre.”
Chili Piper's Tiger Round Split $33M Primary and $33M Secondary
“The thirty-three million went into the company. The same amount went into the secondary.”
Estated only hires competitor sales reps with extensive industry experience
“And so now I'm only going to hire someone from a competitor that has five to 10 years experience.”
Why Guy Koston would reject a $40M all-cash acquisition offer for Dakota
“No. No, no. We're even, even, even one guy made a comment, like the thing that makes the product great is that we're in it and using it. And it's like this culture right now. So no plans to sell right now.”
Easygenerator hosted a single webinar for all interested VCs
“So we actually held a webinar for all the VCs that wanted to invest in us, but we didn't ever really talk to them.”
ScholarshipOwl scaled before nailing unit economics and spent 2020 fixing it
“The thing is that one of the big mistakes we've done in the history of the company is basically we started scaling before we fully nailed our unit economics. And in a way we kind of woke up too late for that. And we dedicated 20 20 into fixing that.”