Byron Deeter

Boom also had a board meeting where the board told me to shut the company down. XB-1 hadn’t broken the sound barrier yet. The team deployed in the Mojave desert was exhausted from months of fighting tough technical issues. We had only a few weeks of cash left and no one saw a path forward. My audit committee chair quit without notice. At first, I was pissed. I told her she would make it look as if we had an accounting scandal when in fact we were squeaky clean. But eventually, I realized the attrition was a gift. Hard times are a crucible for the truly committed. Boom had acquired some fair-weather friends, on the board and inside the company, and when times got tough, they all ran for the hills. It was some of Boom‘s darkest days, but we also found out who was really with us. I’m grateful for the team, the board members, and the investors that doubled down with us when the chips were down. We wouldn’t be here without you. Supersonic flight would still be illegal. Alex Gerko, @paulg , @sama, @reidhoffman , Michael Moritz, @jgebbia, @davidcowan, @avichal, @collison, @ycombinator saved Boom and gave the world a real shot at supersonic passenger flight.

Excited to announce the launch of Standard Metrics’ latest Private Market Report. We dive into one major question: how do private companies fare under the Rule of 40? @bfeld popularized the rule in 2015. @BatteryVentures built a framework on top of it in 2019. @BessemerVP argued for an adjustment to it, prioritizing growth over margin in 2024. All of these prior analyses, however, were built on public data or small private portfolios. This is the largest private-market test of this framework we've seen to-date. We cover: - Why 89% of private companies that clear R40 do it through growth alone (vs. balanced performance) - How AI companies distribute across four different zones of growth and profitability, and why Zone 3 (high growth, low margins) is the zone to watch - The interesting cohort dynamics and surprising results around churn and stickiness amongst companies in various other zones of growth and profitability The depth of analysis in this report is something we've been building toward since we started @metrics_co. @kochiko2001 is a large part of why we've been able to get there today. Huge shoutout to Ani and team for their work on this. Ani and I chat through the history of the rule in the video below, and full report is linked here. Give it a read and let me know what you think. standardmetrics.io/reports-and-wh…

🚨 BREAKING: A @FreeBeacon investigation reveals Rep. Ro Khanna—who rails against the ultra-rich who "hoard wealth"—lives in a $6M D.C. mansion with a four-story elevator while his family's $340M+ fortune sits in the exact trusts, hedge funds, and LLCs he condemns. Those trusts made 4,100+ stock trades worth ~$53M in 2025—even as Khanna leads the push to BAN members of Congress from trading stocks—while he claims "zero knowledge" of the trades. His kids (under 10) hold stakes in three private golf clubs, a $65B wealth firm, and a distressed-debt hedge fund—the same vehicles he attacks—while his wife drives a $190K Range Rover. Bottom line: Khanna's fortune is built and shielded exactly the way he says the rich shouldn't do it. freebeacon.com/democrats/ro-m…

.@fin_ai (formerly Intercom) has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by @salesforce. For any founder wondering what it looks like to transform a SaaS business into an AI-native platform, CEO and founder @eoghan and the Fin team provided the blueprint. When AI arrived, the team didn't just layer on new features and call it transformation. Nearly four years ago, the team jumped on weeks-old modern LLMs, and shipped intensely, to create and define the category we know as Customer Agents today. They reinvented Intercom, a leader in the SaaS era, to make way for Fin, the AI customer agent. Today Fin is a category-defining customer agent company. Once the acquisition has closed, Salesforce will gain Fin’s core capability, resolving complex customer queries end-to-end across live chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, phone, and Slack. At the center is Apex, Fin's proprietary AI model, purpose-built for customer support. Bessemer first invested in Intercom in 2014, when @bdeeter and @ethankurz led the Series B, just a few years after its founding in 2011. Almost a decade later, @TaliaGold doubled down on the company and joined the board as it entered the AI era. The early bet wasn't just on a messaging product, but also its founders: @eoghan, @destraynor, @ciaran_lee, who believed the relationship between businesses and their customers deserved to be fundamentally better. That conviction was clear from the first conversation. So was their willingness to do whatever it took, including the courage to know when it was time to build something entirely new. Congratulations to Eoghan, Des, Ciaran, and the entire Fin team on this milestone!

The Rule of X introduced by @BessemerVP explains roughly 50–60% of a public software company’s revenue multiple. I was curious how SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic would map onto it. All three are priced like the best public names — and SpaceX trades at a premium of roughly 200–300%. Makes sense if valued as a vertically integrated venture bet — launch → Starlink → AI compute — rather than a typical public company. Essentially, SpaceX is valued like an early-stage startup, but starting from a $20B+ revenue base. The Rule of (Space)X