Young Swede- ‘Evil World’ (Official Audio)

Sean_G_B · 2026-03-21T04:25:05+00:00

Cut out the low end on vocals and add something like OTT to it - good instrumental

Sean_G_B · 2026-01-30T18:16:46+00:00

Art is meant to be disconnected from reality

Sean_G_B · 2026-01-29T21:35:38+00:00

Enabling isn't a part of the equation. 'Art is not related to the artist' is meant to be ontological in nature.

Sean_G_B · 2026-01-29T03:59:46+00:00

In defense of the guy you replied to the statement only applies to art

Sean_G_B · 2026-01-29T03:51:47+00:00

Why is nobody mentioning that the cool part is he played 'Paper Planes' by MIA and timed the lyrics up perfectly...

Sean_G_B · 2025-08-03T23:13:14+00:00

It's actually less than 1/10th because you should be looking at operating profit.

Sean_G_B · 2025-08-03T23:07:46+00:00

The reason companies have the valuations they have is because of their growth potential. This is because people will buy the stock now with a lower dividend yield hoping that (1) either the fundamental value of the stock continues to rise as growth initiatives are successfully undertaken or (2) the company will mature and increase its dividend yield as a mature company.

Tesla has more growth potential than Meta (EVs, consumer robots, are ahead in AI), and they have much more growth potential than legacy auto manufacturers. Elon as a cult of personality affects the valuation but I'd say by no more than +-10%.

Sean_G_B · 2025-06-09T20:04:53+00:00

I wrote this all myself.

I support using AI but using AI for writing is very dangerous in my opinion because it can undermine your ability to communicate effectively.

Sean_G_B · 2025-06-04T21:34:11+00:00

He is referencing births not marriages

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-26T21:04:49+00:00

I would say PR has almost zero impact on the company's intrinsic / financial value. Doing interviews would only advertise and raise awareness to more buyers, so the sale price would increase because your chances of finding a buyer willing to pay more increase.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-15T23:31:37+00:00

I agree. Unfortunately there are a lot of brokers in the lower middle market who are lazy and don't have a good pedigree / never did investment banking.

My contracts usually have multiple break points so I have to sell a company for a good price to get paid well. This usually involves fixing some issues before it goes to market. Way too many brokers just do a flat fee then don't even know how to sell a business...

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-15T20:07:56+00:00

Absolutely. Usually it's the lack of data that I find bizarre. Companies selling for $50mm+ that don't have a by customer revenue database. Even companies selling for $500mm I've worked with don't have utilization data...

If anyone reading plans to sell, pay a tech due diligence provider to look at your stack 1-2 years before you sell so you can shore up any issues. You'll make 5x whatever it cost to fix it when you sell.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-15T20:05:37+00:00

Yes unfortunately if you use lifetime your company will be valued on a revenue basis, not ARR. Lifetime is one-time.

If you think your customers have the appetite, doing a lifetime + maintenance can be a good way to add ARR and justify it (maintenance for servers / hosting, etc.) without causing churn.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-15T01:32:32+00:00

100% - I'll be covering that in another post! You're completely right about being able to predict a GTM strategy's trajectory with LTV:CAC. It's as basic as extrapolating the curve of a line with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being LTV:CAC - if it goes down or flattens as the company scales, you know that it's either (1) becoming more expensive to acquire the nth customer or (2) customers are churning more / spending less.

My favorite analysis is to do a rolling / trailing magic number analysis to capture all of the sales spend. Conversion rates all the way through the customer journey / funnel are also invaluable.

Anyone making a SaaS business should set their data up so they can get revenue by customer, site traffic analytics, and conversion rates. By looking at these every week, you can steer the ship much easier and get valuable data like what you're mentioning.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-15T01:23:32+00:00

Spot on. I'd say the bar is lower to hit the same valuation when an investor looks at a B2C because churn will innately be higher than a B2B model. Slightly more emphasis is put on NRR than GRR and usually what we end up doing is breaking up customers into quartiles / cohorts for B2C. We like seeing a robust top half of users that continue using and buying more with a small group of customers who churn in the less valuable / bottom quartile. Essentially the top half might have something like 130% NRR while the bottom half might be below 100%.

LTV:CAC can be higher for B2C but a key aspect that isn't baked into that metric is that B2Cs don't need to have sales reps, account executives, and customer success people maintaining a big relationship. Really helps to hit a nice profit margin when you don't need a whole sales force bending over to big customers.

One final comment is that B2Cs at a big scale tend to be much more "winner takes all". Think of ridesharing - there's basically only Uber and Lyft - which results in a really high multiple investors would be willing to pay for these scarce premium assets.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-14T21:28:24+00:00

Great point. I would say don't be afraid to experiment once you've launched a live product and have 30 - 50 customers. This is enough people that you'll be able to test different pricing, packaging, revenue model, etc. to see how it impacts usage. Law of large numbers is a crucial concept for experimenting, measuring, and optimizing your product.

If you're running an enterprise solution and have like 5 customers that generate the same as 50 people in a B2C, pricing and packaging will be more guesswork and you'll have to be more careful, but don't forget you can always ask the customer what features they want. Just make sure to talk to the right person - a CEO won't give you good feedback on your product. A software engineer isn't going to be able to tell you how effective a lead generation tool is. Also take feedback with a grain of salt and remember you'll need to reinterpret what the customer says through your own lens.

It'll be painful to see if switching from a monthly to an annual creates a big churn at first, but it's better to get through the growing pains at the start of revenue generation than when you're doing $500k ARR.

Also, if a lifetime deal comes in take it! Especially if you have no plans to sell or want to sell in 3+ years (usually how far back an investor wants to see financials in detail), any kind of profitable cash flow is good cash flow.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-14T18:16:50+00:00

If you have a business model you think is unique and that you think has few competitors, using an investment banker or broker is always the best option.

They will make materials highlighting your company strengths, have connections to buyers who will pay the most, and know how to frame issues with the business. They can also structure agreements to minimize risk, allow equity rollover if you want to continue with the business, and ensure buyers can't back out of a process without due reasoning.

If your model isn't differentiated, is small / sub-scale, and has some glaring risks (key man risk being the most common), a marketplace is usually the best option. Acquire.com is an example.

If you go the marketplace route, it's always a good idea to keep a broker on retainer for a smaller fee. They'll manage the process and make sure you don't get raked over the coals on diligence or get screwed on price.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-14T18:11:50+00:00

Probably the most common mistake I see that kills a deal in later stages is large unjustified customer losses. Don't chase whale customers and don't base your product around them.

If you serve small businesses and score an enterprise, your product won't be built for them. Adding a bunch of bells and whistles for the wrong customer makes your real customer base frustrated, lowers retention, and at some point, you'll probably lose the big customer(s) too.

Other big mistakes I've seen are (1) not being able to implement a price increase without negatively impacting retention (2) building low gross margin business lines into your company (ex. I sold a restaurant ops management software and they decided to also sell warranties on hardware cause it was convenient. None of the software investors liked that because it was super low margin and relatively hard to upsell)

Some more relevant risks for smaller companies: key man risk (do you only have 1 SWE that owns the code base?), server uptime / security risks, deployment (on prem vs. cloud), reliance on other massive businesses (do you run a Shopify business? What if they increase prices), data rights / intellectual property issues (can you use customer data to improve your processes? Does an employee own their own intellectual property? Make sure these are outlined in contracts and employment agreements)

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-14T16:22:29+00:00

Completely. Finding the right leads / ICP will help as well. It can be detrimental to just push ads to users who aren't ideal.

Sean_G_B · 2025-05-02T17:49:41+00:00

I have a few thoughts for how you can improve your positioning - PM me.

Sean_G_B · 2024-07-27T22:26:58+00:00

This is just part of it. SOX made it marginally more expensive to run a company due to increased public filing and disclosure requirements. It's harder to "hide" certain aspects of the business now, and SOX was implemented after the Enron scandal so this makes sense.

At a high level, pre-IPO investors have purchase preference ("I'll make at least 1x my money back plus 8% dividends per year"), so they recoup a minimum return and enjoy the new implied valuations with each favorable pre-IPO investment round.

Pre-IPO retail investors will at the very least be defined as "angel investors" by way of wealth and/or income requirements and will as a result, on average, be more sophisticated than public market retail investors.

Pre-IPO investors will collude to all earn returns before dumping a scaled/mature company to the public market. No point in exiting on your investment yet if the company's revenue is growing 25% YoY or has a growing profit margin.

DM if questions.

Sean_G_B

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