🤖 Bottom-up SaaS is the dominant mode of business software
Sacks' one and only investing thesis, restated as a standing mandate: business software that any employee can start using and spread virally beats the top-down enterprise IT sale, and bottom-up has already become the dominant mode.
0
CONVICTION
peaked 36.0 EMBER
DORMANT
band · contested
▲ LONG TEAM
expression · bullish tech
RIGHT
result · return +23.7% · vs SPY +10.0%
2022-02-20
born 2021-02-20 (E23) → window closed
⚖ Why this result
fully deterministic — computed from daily closes on the scoring date; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2021-02-20 → 2022-02-20 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▲ LONG TEAM (primary play). TEAM rose 23.7% over the window → return (sign flipped for a SHORT) = +23.7% (the call made money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +13.7% → vs SPY = +23.7 − (+13.7) = +10.0% — what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the result uses.
- Rule fired:
▶ RIGHT — return ≥ +10% AND beat SPY by 5+ ✓ (return 23.7, vs SPY 10.0)· HALF — return ≥ +5% OR beat SPY at all· WRONG — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a RIGHT earn 1.0 each, opposers the opposite — this feeds the scoreboard. supported: Sacks | opposed: Chamath
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2021-02-20)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▲ LONG | TEAM | stock | PRIMARY | the canonical listed bottom-up/no-salesforce SaaS company; Slack (WORK) was the other obvious proxy but got acquired mid-2021, breaking its price series |
| ▲ LONG | ASAN | stock | adjacent | product-led collaboration software, listed Sept 2020, same go-to-market |
| ▲ LONG | DDOG | stock | adjacent | bottom-up developer adoption expanding into enterprise contracts |
Mention log newest first
Chamath
tech 45% · n=84
· E54 (2021-11-06) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 13:14
OPPOSE
“I felt this when I was on the board of Slack. When Microsoft put its gun sights on us, we always thought that they could not outcompete with us. And what it turns out is, when you have a massive distribution advantage, feature parity is enough, and you can actually be slightly less than good enough on the features, because distribution and bundling and packaging overpower a customer's desire to adopt a product. ... the only real long-term protective solution for Slack shareholders was to basically get bought by Salesforce so that you could be part of a bigger whole. ... This past week, Microsoft decided to go after Notion, and it's going to be, I think, a very similar story, where, you know, once they decide to sort of go after this product experience, they only need to be 80% as good, and then the distribution and bundling and packaging will take care of the other 20%.”
Sacks
tech 39% · n=53
· E23 (2021-02-20) · positioning · strength 3
▶ 1:00:17
SUPPORT
“so I'm focused on the area of bottom-up SaaS, which is basically business software that can go viral, very much in the mold of Yammer, which was a company I founded and sold back a dozen years ago. ... I already came up with the idea 12 years ago, which is to make business software viral. I'm just going to keep investing in that thesis.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total push on the score, in conviction points across every mention — supports and opposes · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -25.0 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E23 2021-02-20 | init | +36.0 | 36.0 | E23 born by Sacks (positioning x3) |
| E24 2021-03-06 | decay | -1.4 | 34.6 | E24 silent |
| E25 2021-03-13 | decay | -1.4 | 33.2 | E25 silent |
| E26 2021-03-20 | decay | -1.3 | 31.9 | E26 silent |
| E27 2021-03-27 | decay | -1.3 | 30.6 | E27 silent |
| E28 2021-04-01 | decay | -1.2 | 29.4 | E28 silent |
| E29 2021-04-17 | decay | -1.2 | 28.2 | E29 silent |
| E30 2021-04-23 | decay | -1.1 | 27.1 | E30 silent |
| E31 2021-05-01 | decay | -1.1 | 26.0 | E31 silent |
| E32 2021-05-13 | decay | -1.0 | 24.9 | E32 silent |
| E33 2021-05-22 | decay | -1.0 | 23.9 | E33 silent |
| E34 2021-05-31 | decay | -1.0 | 23.0 | E34 silent |
| E35 2021-06-13 | decay | -0.9 | 22.1 | E35 silent |
| E36 2021-06-18 | decay | -0.9 | 21.2 | E36 silent |
| E37 2021-06-25 | decay | -0.8 | 20.3 | E37 silent |
| E38 2021-07-03 | decay | -0.8 | 19.5 | E38 silent |
| E39 2021-07-09 | decay | -0.8 | 18.7 | E39 silent |
| E40 2021-07-16 | decay | -0.7 | 18.0 | E40 silent |
| E41 2021-07-23 | decay | -0.7 | 17.3 | E41 silent |
| E42 2021-07-30 | decay | -0.7 | 16.6 | E42 silent |
| E43 2021-08-06 | decay | -0.7 | 15.9 | E43 silent |
| E44 2021-08-28 | decay | -0.6 | 15.3 | E44 silent |
| E45 2021-09-04 | decay | -0.6 | 14.7 | E45 silent |
| E46 2021-09-14 | decay | -0.6 | 14.1 | E46 silent |
| E47 2021-09-18 | decay | -0.6 | 13.5 | E47 silent |
| E49 2021-10-02 | decay | -0.5 | 13.0 | E49 silent |
| E50 2021-10-09 | decay | -0.5 | 12.5 | E50 silent |
| E51 2021-10-16 | decay | -0.5 | 12.0 | E51 silent |
| E52 2021-10-23 | decay | -0.5 | 11.5 | E52 silent |
| E53 2021-10-30 | decay | -0.5 | 11.0 | E53 silent |
| E54 2021-11-06 | oppose | -11.0 | 0.0 | E54 Chamath opposes x2 |
| E55 2021-11-13 | decay | · | 0.0 | E55 silent |
| E56 2021-11-20 | decay | · | 0.0 | E56 silent |
| E57 2021-12-04 | decay | · | 0.0 | E57 silent |
| E58 2021-12-11 | decay | · | 0.0 | E58 silent |
| E59 2021-12-17 | decay | · | 0.0 | E59 silent |
| E60 2021-12-23 | decay | · | 0.0 | E60 silent |
| E61 2021-12-29 | decay | · | 0.0 | E61 silent |
| E62 2022-01-08 | decay | · | 0.0 | E62 silent |
| E63 2022-01-15 | decay | · | 0.0 | E63 silent |
| E64 2022-01-22 | decay | · | 0.0 | E64 silent |
| E65 2022-01-29 | decay | · | 0.0 | E65 silent |
| E66 2022-02-05 | decay | · | 0.0 | E66 silent |
| E67 2022-02-12 | decay | · | 0.0 | E67 silent |
| E68 2022-02-19 | decay | · | 0.0 | E68 silent |