pstrazzulla

Just continuously think about 1) how much value you product brings and why this is good for them 2) most sales reps are pretty mediocre at best 3) many other founders have gone through this before.

Companies who are potential early customers are also usually growth stage startups themselves (100-500 people) and want to help out other entrepreneurs. Email the founders to tell them what you're up to, and tell them you won't be a drag on productivity. A company like this almost certainly also has extra office space as they rent for growth.

What made you change your mind to view it as so horrible?

You probably will. But I wrote the post so that people don't feel like becoming a sales person is this impossibly hard thing to do...

Hey man!

Ya it was written to be more evergreen content...hoping that the world reverts to normal at some point.

Better.com | NYC, LA, Oakland, Charlotte and remote| Full stack, front end, and variety of biz roles | https://better.com/about-us/careers

Helping average americans get the best rate on a mortgage. Grew 600% last year with profitable unit economics. Doing 2K+ mortgages/mo.

Dev team of 60 sits mostly in NYC.

Been using this for the past 4-5 months, ever since I saw a personal story of someone using it posted to HN.

It's been a game changer for me. I can WFH productively for the first time in my life, and have had 95% enjoyable experiences with the people on the other end of the chats thus far.

To those complaining about the pricing...they just started charging and I'm sure that's why it's not in the FAQ. Also, it's $5/mo, they aren't trying to get you hooked on something and then surprise you with $500/mo or something.

Completely agree. You can work 80 hours and get less done than an efficient person doing 40.

Thanks for sharing, I like the structure.

How did you build the audience?

What sort of biz is it?

This is a hefty revenue multiple, but I still think this platform is very under monetized. Of course I'm a shareholder and so am very biased :)

85.7% is very high, that'd be a great gross margin (revenues - variable costs, such as compute/network costs).

Very true. Especially since the equity value of a startup basically looks like an out of the money call option where you're paying a small amount now for a potential large payoff of our money (but high chance of $0 outcome). Also, more volatility will increase the value of this option (whether it's founder or market volatility - aka Travis from Uber or Cypto or Cannabis).

You're very spot on! DCFs are just one more way to triangulate. However, I think they can be very telling around where value drivers are, what what assumptions have to be in order to get to certain outcomes. It's definitely more useful than "SaaS companies trade at 7x forward revenues" as a DCF can help you capture the idiosyncrasies of your investment.

TWLO, SHOP, etc are all growing at >50% 10 years in. It's very likely and common, especially in b2b SaaS where it's challenging to capture all of a fragmented market and/or you have a case where you can continually upsell with more product over time.

Please share the script!

So essentially it's taking the average churn for a given customer, and running a monte carlo simulation to see what the expected scenario is?

Turns out, low churn and high margin companies are worth a ton! Especially with low interest rates and a public equities market that shouldn't return more than 4% real over the next few decades. Not a lot of other places to put your capital.

This guy is basically the god of the DCF: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/search?q=dcf

Growth is important, especially if gross margins are high and >50% of new revenues goes to the bottom line to decrease losses or eventually increase profits. It's tough though, the real questions becomes when does growth stop, which is a function of market size and profitable customer acquisition channels.

The discount rate is fairly arbitrary. You can use something like the CAPM to get to your cost of equity, but it's more designed for slower growth companies. I prefer to think of the gambler analogy where you're trying to figure out the percent chance of getting paid back. Of course, it's SO HARD to figure out the probability of a startup continuing on its current path given the many variables. This is where the "artists" of the world can capture a lot of value.

My dad is an eye doctor and loves it for this reason.