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 8 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
Sales teams should reduce headcount if reps average under 15 weekly meetings
“So if your reps don't have 15 meetings a week, then what that means is one of the ways that you can drive improved efficiency is by reducing the number of reps. I'm sorry to be callous like that, but the point is great companies are routing more resources, mea…”
Sam Jacobs: If you ask your board what your company is worth, it is worth little
“One of the other lessons, by the way, is if you're asking your board what the company is worth, it's probably not worth very much, and if you want to sell the company, it's probably not worth very much. Companies get, ah, bought, not sold.”
Sam Jacobs: Fixing onboarding drives SaaS retention more than changing pricing or features
“The biggest thing that you can do To drive up retention is not change your price and is not add a new feature. It is fix your onboarding process to drive time to value.”
Startups should calculate unit economics after 10 customers or $1M ARR
“Is it logical to calculate unit economics? The answer is no, not really at that point. But once you get past 10, 15 paying customers, you're approaching a million in recurring revenue, then it does become useful and important to calculate them.”
Poor SaaS retention is usually flawed onboarding, not pricing and packaging
“You're analyzing your business. You're looking for profitable, efficient growth paths, and you think that the issue is pricing and packaging. Most of the time, it is not pricing and packaging, right? So most of the time, the reason that you have the easiest th…”
Sam Jacobs: Zero Interest Rates Made Aggressive Capital Burn Economically Rational
“And what happens when you have zero percent interest rates, when you have free capital, is that the optionality of future cash flows, even in years 1020, 30, are equal to the value of cash flow today, which is why it made sense in the old world to burn capital…”
Sam Jacobs: Profitable Companies Are Controlled by Customers, Not Investors
“The benefits of being a profitable company is that your customers control the company, not your investors.”
Jacobs: SaaS renewals must follow structured qualification methodologies like pre-sale pipeline
“We need the same kind of methodology for renewals. When we're committing a deal for renewal, it can't just be, I think they're going to renew. It has to be against a specific methodology in exactly the same way we would expect the pipeline pre-sale”