20VC: Why VC is Distorting a Generation of SaaS Companies & With $900M in ARR and a Market Cap of $2.6BN is Lightspeed the Most Misunderstood Public Company with Dax Dasilva, Founder & CEO @ Lightspeed

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dax Dasilva is the Founder & CEO Lightspeed Commerce, one of the most incredible stories in startups. For 7 years they did not raise outside funding and ran a very profitable business. Ultimately they partnered with Accel and Innovia before going public on the Canadian Stock Exchange with just $70M in ARR. Lightspeed also undertook 9 acquisitions over the course of a four year period to consolidate the global market. Today they have a whopping $900M in ARR but are only valued at $2.6BN. Today we ask the question, is Lightspeed one of the public market's most misunderstood companies?

In Today's Episode with Dax Dasilva We Discuss:

1. VC Funding is Distorting SaaS:

Why did Dax decide not to raise money for Lightspeed in the early days?
Does Dax believe Lightspeed would have been successful had they have raised a seed round like many do today in SaaS?
Why does Dax believe venture funding is distorting a generation of SaaS companies today?
How does Dax advise founders scaling their business today from $0-$1M in ARR?

2. What Went Wrong: The Founder Returns:

Why did Dax feel he had to come back to the role of CEO in 2024? What was not working?
What was the single biggest problem that the public markets had with Lightspeed?
What were some of the biggest challenges that came with the intense amount of M&A?
What would Dax most like to do that the public market will not allow?

3. What Makes a Great Leader: How it Changes:

What required skills in leadership change with the changing scale of the company?
What skill does Dax have that he is slightly ashamed of but has most contributed to his success?
What did Dax not know when he founded Lightspeed that he wishes he had known?
What question is Dax never asked that he should be asked more?

Transcript

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0:00.0	The first two years, I coded till four in the morning every day.
0:04.8	When I wasn't coding, I was with those early four customers.
0:08.1	I'd sit with those customers and watch them use the software and then iterate quickly
0:13.0	so that if something didn't fit with their workflow or it didn't consider something that they
0:18.0	needed to do with their inventory. There would be another iteration
0:21.1	of the software that was outs, you know, within a week or so. I've mentored companies that are
0:25.8	building these SaaS solutions. In order to have attractive metrics that are going to be
0:30.8	interesting to VCs, they're short-cutting a lot of the product development and like the
0:35.5	bare and the basics of building a business like we did.
0:38.5	This is the story of Lightspeed.
0:40.3	Lightspeed with 900 million in revenue and a market cap of $2.6 billion.
0:45.9	The question stands, is this one of the most misunderstood companies in the public market?
0:52.0	Today we're joined by Daxter Silver, founder and CEO of Lightspeed,
0:56.2	who bootstrapped the business for seven years before raising from Excel. Years later, he took
1:01.3	the company public on the Canadian Stock Exchange at just 70 million in AERR before moving
1:06.5	years later to the New York Stock Exchange. But before we dive in today, all of you listening use tons of software every day.
1:13.5	Sometimes it fills us with rage.
1:15.2	You can't figure something out.
1:16.6	The chatbot in the bottom right is useless.
1:18.6	You keep getting bombarded with these useless pop-ups.
1:21.5	And for those of you who build products, no one wants their product to feel like this.
1:25.7	Thankfully, a company exists to help users without annoying them.
	...

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