Alex Rampell

You have to be able to walk into a room.

The number one question you're going to get is, what was your last round price?

And people should be wanting to compete to pay three times that price.

They will have to be like, oh my God, what will it take to do this deal?

And if you say like, hey, my Series A was raised at a billion and I have a million dollars in revenue, you have ended the conversation.

The psychology of that round is all wrong.

So I give this speech and it just doesn't work, unfortunately.

But I think the smart entrepreneurs, they kind of have this risk balancing thing.

It's like they're irrationally exuberant.

That's why they quit their job and started the company.

But they realize, oh, wow, there actually is a good point around like my whole team now says we have $100 million in the bank.

They're going to be wasteful.

That culture is something that I don't want.

Yeah, I guess I would want the option of maybe selling the company for a billion dollars and having Salesforce come in and say, what would it take to buy the company?

What was your last round price?

Because I will tell you 100% of the time in every M&A conversation, in every fundraising conversation, the number one question, the first question is, what was your last round price?

And if it's like insane, they're like, ooh, that's not good.

And then as an entrepreneur, you're like, oh, no, no, no, but I would take a discount because my company sucks.

You can't say that.

It just destroys the entire conversation.