Founder/CEO @vLex — built Vincent AI + the world’s largest legal data platform. Sold to @goclio in the largest legal-tech deal ever. Tech & AI Investor.
It’s time to expose a huge scam in AI startups: Contracted ARR
The reason many AI startups are crushing revenue records is because they are using a dishonest metric
The biggest funds in the world are supporting this and misleading journalists for PR coverage.
The setup: Company signs 3-year enterprise deals. Year 1 is discounted (say $1M), Year 2 steps up ($2M), Year 3 is full price ($3M).
They report $3M as “ARR” — even though they’re only collecting $1M right now.
The worst part: The customer has an opt-out option at 12 months! It’s not actually a 3 year contract.
In the chart below, by Q5 the company is trumpeting ~$100M “ARR” to press, while actual cash-generating, in-effect ARR is ~$35M. That’s ~3x inflation.
On top of this, enterprise AI companies are bundling full-time “forward deployed engineers” into deals massively reducing margins, sometimes producing Year 1 negative margins.
At some point customers are going to start triggering their opt-out clauses or aggressively negotiating down Year 3 pricing.
And a wave of enterprise AI companies may collapse.
Thoma Bravo draws a line between two types of software companies:
More exposed: simple workflows, generalist knowledge, light regulation, easy to replace.
More protected: zero tolerance for errors, deep domain expertise, heavy compliance, proprietary data, embedded across customer systems.
this is actually insane
> be tech guy in australia
> adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live
> not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4
> pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA
> feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold
> zero background in biology
> identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets
> design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch
> genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own
> need ethics approval to administer it
> red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine
> 3 months, finally approved
> drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection
> tumor halves
> coat gets glossy again
> dog is alive and happy
> professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?”
one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline.
we are going to cure so many diseases.
I dont think people realize how good things are going to get
Exclusive: Billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are purchasing a newly completed waterfront mansion on Miami’s Indian Creek, becoming the latest California billionaires to buy a home in South Florida. https://t.co/VpmTXnqUyA
@theallinpod@friedberg Wealth confiscation to reduce the debt problem. It’s coming and will affect everyone. For context: Spanish wealth tax starts at 1.7% for those with a net wealth of €3m, rising to 3.5% for fortunes over €10m. Every year.
@eduardomanchon Muy de acuerdo. En España con poco se vive bien y si los founders no hacen caja con secundarios, lo racional es vender pronto. Salvo que ya seas afortunado o no te importe el dinero sino el reto (que también los hay). Y eso es compounding porque no hay muchos casos de éxito.
NEW - German police raided the home of a citizen, took biometrics, and demanded DNA for calling government workers "parasites" on X.
https://t.co/xCGkKXarAK
Today marks an exciting new chapter for vLex. We’ve officially joined @Clio, completing our acquisition, and together we’re accelerating a shared mission to transform the legal experience for all.
The news are out! @Securitize has filed to go public in Nasdaq via a merger with Cantor Equity Partners II lead by @Brandonlutnick at a $1.25B valuation 🦄🦄🦄
Proud to see @vlex featured in the latest Andreessen Horowitz (@a16z) article on building "walled gardens of data" as durable moats in AI.
https://t.co/i4eKeRIy7A