Paul Bonnet (@PaulBonnet) “Salesforce acquires Listen Labs for ~$2b. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdow” — TopicDigg

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!