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 10 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
Varden: Arcane Guaranteed Clients at Least $15 Return per $1 Spent
“We were one of the first to really put that emphasis out there and say, we're going to guarantee results. We're going to put a dollar in and get a minimum of 15 dollars, you know, back in terms of your marketing investment.”
Varden: Arcane sold results instead of discussing agency margins
“Often we wouldn't get into margin conversations with clients. We knew we would be profitable. We knew that we had to obviously monitor our cashflow and expenses and all those fun things that, that lead to it, but no, it was mainly around results. We focused on…”
Varden: Institutional capital should scale proven businesses, not fund early experimentation
“Depending on the type of product and the type of business that you're in, any good investor is going to want to make sure that you have proven your business first and you've grinded and you've sweated out and that, you know, the product, you know, there's a fi…”
Varden: Agency Valuation Rises When Clients Are Tied to Business, Not Founders
“In a relationship based business, if all of the clients are attached to the owners, that it's hard to ever get out of the business. And it, we also felt that it would add more value if those relationships were tied to
The business, not to ourselves.”
Varden: Arcane Was Never More Profitable Than After Founders Stepped Aside
“Best decision we ever made, the business was never more profitable until we actually got out of the way.”
Varden: Do not disclose acquisition talks to employees during the LOI stage
“Trying to make sure that you're not disclosing too much to the wider team because you'd never know if it's really going to happen and you don't want to disrupt the business because ultimately everybody needs to make sure that the business is still, you know, r…”
Varden: Arcane's margins were hurt by accumulated micro-inefficiencies, not one major bottleneck
“It wasn't one thing that was impacting our margins. It was a whole bunch of things in, in a minute percentage. So it was, you know, too much analysis through analytics and spending too much time on the data. Pulling reports and then making decisions.”
Varden: Arcane never took or needed outside funding
“We really never needed outside funding whatsoever.”
Varden: Arcane was among North America's fastest-growing businesses for multiple years
“That's really where the scale came in and that's how we were, you know, be able to become one of the fastest growing businesses in North America for a couple of years running was results focused and ultimately doing what we said we were going to do in a world …”