Popped by the beautiful new @Synthesia office this afternoon to talk shop with one of the newest Tech:NYC members! Obv needed to jump in their studio to generate our own digital avatar (stay tuned for results). ICYMI: synthesia.io/post/why-synthe… Thanks for having us, @joeciarallo!

Every day we are seeing private funding deals at 15, 20, 40x ARR. Is it a bubble? No one knows. Some of these companies will go on to justify these valuations. Some will become cautionary tales. What is the right comparison? Dotcom bubble? I don't think so, too much revenue and scale this time. I actually think it is staring us right in the face. 2021 SaaS was a bubble. Its so obvious in hindsight. 5B for Medallia, default 10x public ARR multiples (at the bottom of the growth curve). One of the many inflationary forces that drove that bubble was the revenue being driven for early stage SaaS from selling to other high growth SaaS. Funding, hiring, seat inflation, etc. This is how we wind up with dozens of unicorn GTM tech startups all selling to each other, with seat based license growth. What drove this was ZIRP + massive PE demand/dry powder. What's happening today in private markets has a lot of similarities - but the dry powder is coming from Venture instead of PE - which makes it feel different. Venture can be just as aggressive, with longer windows. There is also some real form of "token round tripping" happening in the AI Native ecosystem that is reminiscent of the seat inflation the funding and hiring of 2020/21 gave us before the rationalization of 22/23/24. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some really great companies will be built. Also, there will be embarrassment. I think the biggest downside is for teams building really nice companies and raising way ahead of any kind of fundamental value curve. This will absolutely create broken capital structures much like those we see in the 2021 growth round companies. The execution required to grow into the 20-50x ARR multiples eliminates any "good" downside cases for founders/teams, and we'll very likely see another large batch of "zombie" unicorns in the coming years. My guess is that there will be enough winners in the VC portfolios that it all works out - but founders don't have portfolios, and thats where the risk/pain lies.

This was really fun, and felt a little raw and very honest. Featuring my favorite new t-shirt with thanks to my @yext team. piped.video/ZkmoG-j9uKU?si=XWSZ…

Breaking: New York Knicks center Mitchell Robinson has suffered a broken right pinky finger and there is no timetable on his return, sources tell @ShamsCharania.

I'm 19 years old. At 16 I sold my unblocked gaming website for $100k. At 18 I sold Cal AI while at $40M ARR. Now, my co just hit $300K MRR a month after launch. The most important lesson I've learned to be successful in consumer is to dumb everything down. 1) Demonstrate the value of your product in 3 seconds or less in any advertising material. 2) Write messaging as if you are talking to a 3rd grader. 3) Make buttons so obvious that you can't get lost. The is the key concept that makes apps viral and also high converting.

Big shout-out to @roam. A teammate had a product suggestion. Nothing big - just a little idea to remove a minor, annoying point of friction that crops up most days in using Roam. I passed the suggestion along at 3:02 PM on Tuesday. It was built by 10:30 AM Wednesday. Wow.

April @roam !nvestor Update +ARR +123% YoY, $3.25m +ARR +6.8% vs last month +1,006 logos +1,000,000 meetings, ~5,000,000 chats -115% NDR *The Office That Thinks* ... Where People & AI Agents Collaborate.

Respectfully, @allinpod and @davidsacks @friedberg and @chamath are getting it wrong on the Medallia meltdown. Tying to AI eating their business is premature and doesn't reflect what is most likely driving this. There's plenty to pick on here, and if they're not innovating the AI risk is FUTURE risk - but too much emphasis on that in the breakdown. The actual problems here are a bit simpler: - exorbinant entry price 11.5X revenue and 145x EBITDA for a business growing less than 20% per year - slowing growth rate (like everyone else) - not profitable enough to sustain debt and allow refinance - tough choice for Thoma Bravo to either put more equity in or let it go. This deal was a catastrophically bad entry point, into a business that had to assume growth acceleration to EVER get to an exit price that worked. Absolute top of market that has fallen precipitously since the deal.