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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Guseinov: Equity dilution costs far more than debt for growing companies
“Because I value the equity far more than I value the debts. Very simple. Like, why would you do that if you think your business is growing and your equity is growing, arguably your amount of equity you're going to be giving up is, is far, is worth far more tha…”
Guseinov: Just-in-time marketing outperforms traditional monetization that annoys users
“It's just in time marketing and it performs really well. It's far more efficient than adding advertising or other forms of monetization that It pisses people off at the end of the day.”
Guseinov: Founders needing liquidity must not relinquish company control
“If you don't control the company, then you don't control the faith of your compensation. Just very simple. And so it, if you are okay with that, then you're okay with that. If you're not okay with it, meaning you need more liquidity, don't give up control or d…”
Guseinov: Stock-collateralized loans let founders access liquidity tax-free
“There's lots of ways to structure these loans, and that the money you receive from these loans is not income. It's debt. So you're not paying taxes on it. So it's, you know, eventually going to pay taxes on it when the stock is sold, but you are in a relativel…”
Guseinov: Commercial loans typically range from 2x to 4x EBITDA
“The most basic fundamental concept in lending is the turns of EBITDA to total debt value that you can borrow. So for instance, if a company is doing four million dollars with EBITDA, you can probably get loan between two times to four times of the total EBITDA…”
Guseinov: RealDefense Had Over $10M EBITDA in 2022
“I think at that time, our EBITDA was up more than 10. And so we would net, we didn't. Nathan Latka: Well, that was out more than ten million. Gary Guseinov: Was more than ten million.”
Guseinov: Operating roll-up acquisitions as standalone entities is inefficient
“Building businesses that are standalone entities and growing them individually is not an efficient use of your time and your resources, because they benefit from each other more than they benefit just from your technology that you bring it to the table.”
Gary Guseinov scaled AnchorFree revenue to $20 million in 18 months
“I helped them go from three hundred million users to four hundred million users. Grew revenues from zero to twenty million a year in about 18 months.”
Preparing for an IPO costs $500,000 to $1 million in upfront fees
“You've spent probably close to half a million to a million dollars just getting the company ready to go public.”
Separating webinar and conferencing tiers frustrates customers despite boosting ARPU
“Our competitors separate products such as web webinars and web conferencing are usually two different subscriptions. And there's also a lot of limitation. There's a lot of limitation on participants, limitation on presenters, and so they bifurcate the, you kno…”
Gary Guseinov acquired Business Hangouts for less than $1 million
“No, it's, it was less than a million dollars.”
Fully weighted customer acquisition cost for Business Hangouts is under $40
“It's minimal. It's an, you know, less than, it's a less than 30 to 40 dollars.”
Guseinov: RealDefense was bought back for under $10M
“Yeah, so it is, ah, a relatively small amount, less than ten million dollars.”
Guseinov: RealDefense has completed six acquisitions since 2017
“We've done six acquisitions since 2017.”
Guseinov: RealDefense generated roughly $7M ARR at 2017 buyback
“Oh, we were doing less than ten million. They were doing like seven million a year.”
Guseinov: CyberDefender went public via self-registration without an underwriter
“It was gone through what's called a self-listing. It's a little different now. There's a different, different regulations around that today. It's a little easier to actually do a public today, but back then it was a self-registration. So it's as if I go public…”
Guseinov: Stock-backed loans carry interest rates of 10% to 15%+
“I'll be between 10 and 15%. It could be even higher, depending on, well, again, how risky it is.”
Guseinov: RealDefense targets $100M-plus acquisitions from multibillion pipeline
“I have a multi-billion dollar pipeline. So we're looking for bigger deals now. So before we were doing deals under a hundred million, under fifty million. Now we're more interested in deals that are a hundred million plus.”
Guseinov: Founder retains less than 20% equity in RealDefense
“Less than 20, and the reason is, is because when we started the business, we started with multiple partners. It's not a dilutive effect that took place.”
RealDefense operates with roughly 300 personnel, including 200 outsourced
“We're at about 300 or so people. About 200 of them are outsourced organization, mostly in support and infrastructure, and then a hundred is marketing and R&D, a dev.”
Business Hangouts had 1.7 million users when Gary Guseinov acquired it
“It had over 1.7 million enterprise users, so these are people who, who've downloaded the application, installed it in their Google account. And it had, has over 700,000 registered users and has 70,000 enterprise users.”
Business Hangouts maintains an annual customer churn rate under 10 percent
“Our churn is less than 10%.”
Business Hangouts is entirely self-funded with zero outside capital
“We're so purely self-funded. No, no outside capital.”
Business Hangouts acquires 100 percent of its users organically without paid marketing
“All of our users are acquired organically. We don't go out any marketing.”
Gary Guseinov raised nearly $100 million for U.S. Tech Support
“I've raised close to seventy million plus, about close to a hundred million actually for this company.”
Most Business Hangouts customers choose the $63 to $79 Pro Plan
“Most of our customers choose the, ah, what's called the Business Hangouts Pro Plan, which is 63 dollars per month if it's billed annually, and, ah, if it's billed on a month-to-month basis, it's only 79 dollars, and that allows you to have up to a hundred atte…”