Salesforce acquires Listen Labs for ~$2b. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdown below 👇
The company was founded in Sep-23 and had raised less than $100m. Investors will share ~$850m of profits on $96m invested, a ~10x blended.
From a huge pivot to a unicorn valuation term sheet they refused, this is truly a wild story ✍️. In the end an incredible outcome for all involved.
So let's dive in!
1) The boldest move: walking away from $1.5b 🎲
Listen Labs had a signed $125m Series C term sheet from Menlo at a $1.5b valuation... and walked away from it to sell to Salesforce at ~$2b.
This takes a huge amount of courage: few founders turn down a signed unicorn-plus round.
@itsalfredw and
@florian_jue did it 2.5 years after founding.
Huge congratulations are in order for the discipline and execution of the founders here.
2) Founders and team: a life-changing outcome in under 3 years 🥳
By my best estimates, founders and team still own over half the company.
At $2b, that's ~$1.1b for them to share. Specifically, assuming a 15% option pool, that is ~$300m for the team and ~$750m for the two co-founders.
And, as was the case with Hugging Face, this is all from a pivot. They originally built an AI customer-interview tool to understand why their viral app BeFake was growing, then realised the tool was the business!
3) Sequoia's Bryan Schreier did it again 👑
What few people know is that Bryan was an early backer of Qualtrics... the category Listen Labs is disrupting.
Now he led both the seed and the Series A here. By my estimates, those two rounds will return ~$670m combined, or ~25x on ~$27m invested, in under three years.
Pattern recognition and industry knowledge have their perks, it would seem!
4) Ribbit: 4x in 8 months ⚡
Ribbit led the $69m Series B in Jan-26 at ~$500m. At $2b, that's ~4x in 8 months. Unbelievable IRR and a great return on a meaningful cheque.
5) Neo does it again, congrats
@apartovi 🎯
Listen Labs went through the Neo accelerator early on, which came with a $600k SAFE. On my estimates, that cheque is worth ~$25m+ today.
This comes just three months after Cursor's acquisition (a cool >1,000x for Neo). What a hit rate!
This one is very straightforward: it is a massive win for everyone. And so congratulations to all involved: Sequoia, Ribbit, Conviction, Pear, Neo and the team!