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9 Jan, 6 tweets, 2 min read
1/ This was the most heated debate on Ep 16 of @theallinpod so I wanted to provide my sources. The main one is @nfergus, a prominent historian and commentator who wrote The Tower and The Square on the influence of social networks.
2/ Ferguson acknowledges that Russian disinformation ads reached a lot of Americans on Facebook. But if you look at the total number of impressions, it was such a small percentage that it was a drop in the ocean. See for example:

bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/1…
3/ Ferguson also looked at the actual ads that the Russians created. They are so patently absurd that it’s hard to imagine them working too effectively as propaganda. One example...

politico.com/story/2017/11/…
4/ One ad showed a picture of Satan and Jesus arm-wrestling, with the caption:

“Satan: If I win, Clinton wins!
Jesus: Not if I can help it!
Press ‘Like’ to help Jesus win!”

Imagine Russian operatives trying to come up with memes on American culture. Not exactly “Mad Men”.
5/ So did Russia try to interfere in our election in 2016? Yes. Did it work? No. Did Trump collude with it? Not according to the Mueller Report. Do I approve of what Trump did in the Capitol this week? Absolutely not. I’m just setting the facts straight on 2016.
6/ When a party loses an election, it needs to look in the mirror and ask what it did wrong. Trump failed to do that in 2020. Many Democrats failed to do that in 2016. It’s always easier to invent conspiracy theories than to accept defeat. We shouldn’t let them get away w/ that.

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More from @DavidSacks

David Sacks Profile picture
24 Dec 20
1/ Logical implication of the war for knowledge workers:

Well-run cities will start to resemble SaaS companies. They will have ARR, Sales, CSM, Marketing, and R&D.

Here’s what I mean...
2/ ARR - successful cities will view taxpayer revenue as an annually recurring subscription by residents who are free to cancel at any time. Accordingly they will try to delight customers, not vilify them. They will focus on delivering a product that people want.
3/ Sales - successful cities will sell job creators on moving there. That’s why @FrancisSuarez is killing it right now. He’s selling unopposed. It’s pretty easy to win competitive deals when your rivals aren’t even bothering to counter-sell against you.
Read 8 tweets
David Sacks Profile picture
8 Dec 20
1/ This was a very interesting case study so it deserves its own little tweetstorm.

Q: What is the proper way to analyze a SaaS company that has revenue from both Individual and Team plans?

Founders: I'm about to reveal a trade secret of Craft.

Other VCs: pease stop reading.
2/ Craft evaluated a Series A investment that had 85% annual revenue retention across the Overall business. It didn't look particularly impressive.

But when we separated cohorts for Individual and Team plans, we saw a very different picture. The average masked two extremes.
3/ The Individual plan had about 60% annual revenue retention, which is poor (but not uncommon for Individual plans). The Team product had roughly 200%+ net revenue retention, which is fantastic.
Read 6 tweets
David Sacks Profile picture
8 Dec 20
1/ A common dilemma for SaaS founders is whether to focus on individual users or teams as the primary customer. This has important implications for pricing & packaging as well as product design.

TLDR: Team plans are where the money is & where founders should focus. Here's why:
2/ First, Deal Sizes.

Team products have larger contract values (b/c multiple seats). Small CVs of Individual products often can't justify the cost of a sales team. Unless the Individual product is highly viral, it will be easier to build distribution for a Team product.
3/ Second, Retention.

Team products are stickier than Individual products. Multiplayer mode is more engaging than single-player mode. And it's harder to leave.

Account-level churn rates for Individual plans are typically 5% per month, but only 1-2% per month for Team plans.
Read 7 tweets
David Sacks Profile picture
3 Dec 20
1/ Ok since you asked, here are my reactions to the Slack deal and @levie comments to the effect that “the idea that workers would someday choose all their own tools was always a fantasy... Best product doesn’t always win, you also need the biggest sales force.” My thoughts:
2/ Bottom-up is still the best way into enterprises for startups. If Slack had to sell top-down, they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Especially true for products whose advantage is usability, rather than checkboxes. “Show, not tell”. Proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.
3/ Bottom-up works best for new categories of software. Once IT makes a wall-to-wall decision, it settles the matter. In other words, bottom-up works best when there’s no top-down. Nature abhors a vacuum. In this case, an IT vacuum gets filed by “shadow IT.”
Read 10 tweets
David Sacks Profile picture
1 Dec 20
1/ Let’s say you're a SaaS founder who’s looking to build a sales team for the first time. How do you structure quotas & compensation for the initial sales reps and their manager? Oftentimes, the biggest hurdle in hiring the first rep is not knowing how to incentivize them.
2/ There are actually a number of simple math-based rules that you can use to set up a sales team.

First, the standard commission rate for SaaS products is 10%.

Second, in constructing an OTE for an AE, a 50/50 split between base and variable compensation is typical.
3/ Taken together, these standards generate a third rule: the typical quota will equal 10x base salary. I call this the Rule of 10. This generates the following pay scale for AEs: Image
Read 8 tweets
David Sacks Profile picture
14 Apr 20
1/ How to survive a depression:

If demand for your business suddenly drops 30%, 50%, 80% overnight, what do you do?

Cut costs by a commensurate amount to stay solvent.

This is very sad and tough to do but the answer is clear.
2/ Who can’t cut the requisite amount? Those with big fixed obligations. Eg:
— debt service (highly levered businesses)
— fixed payrolls (union contracts; govt workers; tenured staff)
— big leases (real estate, planes, capital equipment)

Expect those entities to need bailouts.
3/ Startups should do OK because they don’t have big fixed obligations. They can cut if they have to. Assuming they have the state of mind to do that and haven’t saddled themselves with fancy offices, venture debt, etc.
Read 5 tweets

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