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 63 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
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?…”
Abel: Hiring Young Generalists Beats Using Recruiters
“You just hire young, smart people, and then see who grows with you, and that's a much better way than using recruiters”
Godard Abel internally positioned SteelBrick rival Apttus as 'the bad guys.'
“In high level, we just said, we're the good guys, and we had a competitor. Well, I didn't use their name anymore, Aptus. They were the bad guys.”
Abel: Every employee and leader in a startup is ultimately replaceable
“And I've always found, you know, everyone is replaceable ultimately.”
Godard Abel says Salesforce's V2MOM framework is better than OKRs.
“And but just writing down every year, every quarter, what are your key priorities in some ways like the OKR, but it's better.”
Passing a startup 'Keeper Test' is only valid for one year.
“And really, a keeper test in high growth companies is only true for a year. Are they the right person in the job right now, this year? And if not, either rely on another job or move them out”
Abel: Initiating an acquisition process never leads to a good outcome
“Good companies are bought, not sold. I think that's true with good strategic outcomes. If you initiate it, I don't think it's ever good.”
Abel: G2 Gross Revenue Retention Is Running Around 80%
“And we're probably running, like a lot of marketing solutions, maybe it's too low, our retention's probably running around 80%. Higher in enterprise, lower in SMB.”
Abel: Vendors with perfect 5.0-star ratings are not believable
“A vendor with all five point overviews, I would never believe it. It's bullshit. The world isn't that way. Even if you're perfect, which maybe you are, Nathan. Nathan Latka: Thank you very much. Godard Abel: But even if you are, some people will perceive you a…”
Abel: Initiating M&A talks as a founder never leads to good outcomes
“If you listen to Mark Benioff or John Smorjai at Salesforce, they always say good companies are bought, not sold. I think that's true with good strategic outcomes. If you initiate it, I don't think it's ever good.”
Godard Abel scaled SteelBrick from $1M to $60M ARR in two years.
“But then, and at the time Max's original product had about a million ARR.
And then in two years we scaled it.
Actually we beat that plan.
That was a plan, but we scaled it to sixty million in two years and got acquired by Salesforce.”
Godard Abel predicts the software market will 10x over 30 years.
“And the good news for us, I think it's going to continue another 30 years. And this is, I think, some battery ventures data. But it's, you know, the market's going to 10 X again.”
G2 reviews power AWS, Azure, and IBM Red Hat cloud marketplaces.
“But I think partnering also with Giants, we partner with AWS Marketplace. We partner with Microsoft Azure. We partner with IBM Red Hat. So three of the four largest cloud marketplaces in the world are now powered by G-II reviews.”
Abel: The best acquisition strategy is partnering before buying
“I also think the best way to make acquisitions happen is to partner first, and certainly that's what Salesforce does, you get to know each other, you actually make sure your products work together, do customers love them together, and then it can lead to very …”
Godard Abel replaced G2's entire executive team upon reaching 500 employees.
“I brought in a whole new leadership team the last year, new chief product officer, Sarah, new chief revenue officer, Mike, new CMO, Amanda, new chief people officer, and I'm looking for a CFO, so I've kind of found, wow, once we hit five, 600 people, it just,
…”
Abel predicts G2's buyer solutions will surpass vendor solutions within ten years
“My 10 year vision,
Is certainly that the buyer solution becomes even bigger because the TAM there is literally every company in the world.”
Abel: SteelBrick reached a $360M exit to Salesforce in seven quarters
“Because there in seven quarters, we achieved, you know, a three hundred sixty million dollar exit to Salesforce.”
G2 CEO: Slack has never paid G2 despite ranking number one
“You can be number one on our quadrants, or we call them grids. You can be number one in our ratings, and also our sort is just based on reviews, so if you're number one, like Slack has never paid us, to my chagrin, but they've always been number one rated on G…”
Abel: Freemium B2B Platforms Retain Churned Customers for Easy Winbacks
“And the good, one good thing about churning, though, like my last company is, if we churned a CPQ customer, they went to a competitor after this, we couldn't get them back for 10 years. Beauty of G-II, it's a marketing platform. They just go back to free. They…”
Abel: Diversifying Salesforce stock post-acquisition was a mistake in hindsight
“I had a financial advisor, and unfortunately they encouraged me to diversify. So I did. So sold. A lot. I mean, I kept a little bit, but obviously in hindsight, but it doubled, right? Obviously, but you have such a concentrated financial position, every financ…”
Abel: Slack has never paid G2 despite ranking number one
“Like Slack has never paid us, to my chagrin, but they've always been number one rated on GQ, and we don't change that.”
Abel: G2 will finish its fiscal year over $50M run rate
“You know, we'll finish at certainly over 50.”
Abel: G2 Gross Revenue Retention Runs Around 80%
“And we're probably running, like a lot of marketing solutions, maybe it's too low, our retention is probably running around 80%.”
Abel: Perfect 5.0 product ratings are 'bullshit' and lack credibility
“And actually a vendor with all five point overviews, I would never believe it. It's bullshit. The world isn't that way.”
BigMachines took 12 years to become a Gartner category leader.
“But they're just slow, because I remember my first company, Big Machines, it took me nine years to get into Gartner Report, and 12 years to become the leader.”
BigMachines raised $20 million in year one based purely on internet hype.
“We were able to raise twenty million dollars the first year, just based on hype and the internet, and back then, VCs were not so critical. Like, there were no metrics, there was nothing. You just kind of had hype and a vision.”
BigMachines burned $19 million to generate just $1 million in revenue.
“In 2003, we kind of had our come to Jesus moment, because my co-founder and I, Chris, we sat down, we're like we have a million dollars left, we burned through 19. We only had a million dollars in revenue”
Abel: SteelBrick Hit Sales Plan for 17 Consecutive Quarters
“Steelbrick we never missed.
It was while I was running it, I think it was 17 quarters in a row.
First as a startup and then inside the Salesforce.”
G2 bootstrapped its first 1,000 reviews by handing out $5 Starbucks cards.
“And I think our first, we launched it at Dreamforce, we just put out a booth, because we decided to start with Salesforce and partner apps, but, and then we were just handing out five dollar startups, Starbucks cards, like, hey, please write a review, and we d…”
Abel: Slack ranked number one on G2 without paying a penny
“Like Slack has been number one on G-II for many years. They've never paid us a penny, to my frustration.”
Half of SteelBrick's 200 employees were Godard Abel's former BigMachines staff.
“I think of the 200 people we had when Salesforce acquired us, over a hundred were with us at Big Machines, and they were totally dialed in.”
G2 is evolving into a direct software purchasing marketplace
“I think now we're also saying G two is going to become a software marketplace and where people can not only discover apps, read reviews, get insights, but they can even buy software.”
G2 is partnering with Vendr to avoid direct software deal negotiations
“And that's actually where we've been talking to Ryan and vendor about partnering because they're great at negotiating deals with vendors, which is frankly something we don't want to do, but, you know, we do give a company their whole SaaS stack.”
G2 pauses new acquisitions after buying Siftree and Advocately
“And I think right now that we've chewed off so much, to be honest, we acquired Siftree, we acquired Advocately that I'm not looking to do any new acquisitions right now because we just have, we have enough of our own work to do.”
G2 serves over 3,500 total customers across vendor solutions and Track
“We have over 2500 software vendors that use you.
And I think on the track side, you know, we're well over a thousand.
So I think in total, you know, it's well over 3500.”
G2 currently categorizes over 100,000 software applications across 2,000 categories
“Because we categorize over a 100,000 apps into 2000 categories.”
Salesforce, SAP, and HubSpot spend over seven figures annually with G2
“You know, we do have large vendors also like Salesforce, SAP HubSpot as customers, and some of them frankly can spend, you know, over seven figures with us.”
Seven million software buyers visit G2.com every month
“Sellers love our buyer intent because, you know, now every month there's seven million software buyers coming to gtu.com and our buyer intent data can tell you what are they shopping for?”
Early 2020 was the only quarter G2 failed to grow revenue
“So that was actually the only quarter in our history where we didn't grow our revenue.”