How VCs and founders use inflated ‘ARR’ to crown AI startups
How VCs and founders use inflated ‘ARR’ to crown AI startups
风投和创始人如何利用虚高的“ARR”来包装人工智能初创公司
Last month, Scott Stevenson, co-founder and CEO of the legal AI startup Spellbook, took to X in an effort to expose what he called a “huge scam” among AI startups: inflation of the revenue figures that they announce publicly. “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,” he wrote in his tweet.
上个月，法律人工智能初创公司 Spellbook 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Scott Stevenson 在 X（原推特）上发文，试图揭露他所称的 AI 初创公司中存在的“巨大骗局”：虚报公开宣布的收入数据。他在推文中写道：“许多 AI 初创公司之所以能打破收入纪录，是因为他们在使用一种不诚实的指标。全球最大的基金都在支持这种做法，并误导记者进行公关报道。”
Stevenson isn’t the first to claim that annual recurring revenue (ARR) — a metric historically used to sum up annual revenue of active customers under contract — is being manipulated by some AI companies beyond recognition. Certain aspects of ARR shenanigans have been the subject of multiple other news reports and social media posts. However, Stevenson’s tweet seemed to have struck a particular nerve within the AI startup community, drawing over 200 reshares and comments from high-profile investors, many founders, and a few headlines.
Stevenson 并不是第一个声称年度经常性收入（ARR）——这一历史上用于汇总合同期内活跃客户年度收入的指标——正被一些 AI 公司操纵到面目全非地步的人。关于 ARR 的种种猫腻此前已多次出现在新闻报道和社交媒体帖子中。然而，Stevenson 的推文似乎触动了 AI 初创公司社区的敏感神经，引发了超过 200 次转发，并获得了知名投资者、许多创始人的评论以及多家媒体的报道。
“Scott at Spellbook did a great job of highlighting some of what you might describe as bad behavior on the part of some companies,” Jack Newton, co-founder and CEO of legal startup Clio, told TechCrunch, adding that the post brought much-needed awareness to the topic, referring to an explanatory post from YC’s Garry Tan about proper revenue metrics.
法律初创公司 Clio 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Jack Newton 对 TechCrunch 表示：“Spellbook 的 Scott 在强调某些公司的不良行为方面做得很好。”他补充说，这篇文章引起了人们对该话题急需的关注，并提到了 YC 的 Garry Tan 关于正确收入指标的解释性文章。
TechCrunch spoke with over a dozen founders, investors, and startup finance professionals to assess whether the ARR inflation is as pervasive as Stevenson suggests. Indeed, our sources, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that fudged ARR in public declarations is a common occurrence among startups, and how, in many cases, investors are aware of the exaggerations.
TechCrunch 与十几位创始人、投资者和初创公司财务专业人士进行了交谈，以评估 ARR 虚高现象是否如 Stevenson 所言那般普遍。事实上，我们的消息来源（其中许多人要求匿名）证实，在公开声明中伪造 ARR 在初创公司中确实很常见，而且在许多情况下，投资者也清楚这些夸大行为。
Not really revenue, yet
尚未真正实现的收入
The main obfuscation tactic is substituting “contracted ARR,” sometimes referred to as “committed ARR” (CARR), and simply calling it ARR. “For sure they are reporting CARR” as ARR, one investor said. “When one startup does it in a category, it is hard not to do it yourself just to keep up.”
主要的混淆策略是用“合同 ARR”（有时称为“承诺 ARR”，即 CARR）来替代，并直接将其称为 ARR。一位投资者表示：“他们肯定是在把 CARR 当作 ARR 来报告。当一个类别中的某家初创公司这样做时，为了跟上步伐，你很难不效仿。”
ARR is a metric established and trusted since the cloud era to indicate total sales of products where usage, and therefore payments, is metered out over time. Accountants don’t formally audit or sign off on ARR primarily because generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) focus on historical, already-collected revenue, rather than future revenue. ARR was intended to show the total value of signed-and-sealed sales, typically multiyear contracts. (Today, this concept tends to go by another name: remaining performance obligations.) Meanwhile, the term “revenue” is typically reserved for money already collected.
ARR 是自云计算时代以来建立并受信任的指标，用于表示产品在一段时间内按使用量（从而按付款量）计费的总销售额。会计师通常不会正式审计或签署 ARR，主要是因为公认会计原则（GAAP）侧重于历史性的、已收取的收入，而非未来收入。ARR 的初衷是展示已签署并确定的销售总额，通常是多年期合同。（如今，这个概念往往被称为另一个名字：剩余履约义务。）与此同时，“收入”一词通常仅指已经收到的款项。
CARR is supposed to be another way to track growth. But it’s a much squishier metric than ARR because it counts revenue from signed customers that aren’t onboarded yet. One VC told TechCrunch that he has seen companies where CARR is 70% higher than ARR, even though a significant chunk of that contracted revenue will never actually materialize.
CARR 本应是追踪增长的另一种方式。但它比 ARR 更模糊，因为它计算的是尚未入驻的已签约客户的收入。一位风投告诉 TechCrunch，他见过 CARR 比 ARR 高出 70% 的公司，尽管其中很大一部分合同收入永远不会真正实现。
CARR “builds on the ARR concept by adding committed but not yet live contract values to total ARR,” Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) wrote in a blog post back in 2021. Critically, though, BVP says, the startup is supposed to adjust CARR to take into account expected customer churn (how many customers leave) and “downsell” (those who decide to buy less).
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) 在 2021 年的一篇博客文章中写道，CARR “在 ARR 概念的基础上，将已承诺但尚未生效的合同价值加到了总 ARR 中”。然而，BVP 关键地指出，初创公司应该调整 CARR，以考虑预期的客户流失率（有多少客户离开）和“降级销售”（那些决定减少购买量的客户）。
The main problem with CARR is counting revenue before a startup’s product is implemented. If implementation is lengthy or goes awry, clients might cancel during the trial before all — or any — of the contracted revenue has been collected. Several investors told TechCrunch that they directly know of at least one high-profile enterprise startup that reported it surpassed $100 million in ARR, when only a fraction of that revenue came from currently paying customers. The rest was from contracts that hadn’t been deployed yet and in some cases may take a long time to implement the technology.
CARR 的主要问题在于在初创公司的产品实施之前就计算收入。如果实施过程漫长或出现问题，客户可能会在试用期间取消合同，导致所有（或部分）合同收入尚未收取。几位投资者告诉 TechCrunch，他们直接知道至少有一家知名企业级初创公司报告其 ARR 超过了 1 亿美元，而实际上只有一小部分收入来自当前付费客户。其余部分来自尚未部署的合同，在某些情况下，实施该技术可能需要很长时间。
One former employee at a startup that routinely reported CARR as ARR told TechCrunch that the company counted at least one substantial, yearlong free pilot as ARR. The company’s board, including a VC from a large fund, was aware that the revenue from the eventual paying part of the contract had been counted in ARR during the lengthy pilot program, the person said. The board was also aware that the customer could cancel before paying the full contract amount.
一家经常将 CARR 报告为 ARR 的初创公司的前员工告诉 TechCrunch，该公司将至少一个规模巨大的、为期一年的免费试点项目计入了 ARR。此人表示，公司董事会（包括来自一家大型基金的风投）知道，在漫长的试点项目中，合同中最终付费部分的收入已被计入 ARR。董事会也清楚，客户可能会在支付全部合同金额之前取消合同。
The obvious problem with using CARR and calling it ARR is that it is far more susceptible to being “gamed” than traditional ARR. If a startup doesn’t account realistically for churn and downsell, CARR could be inflated. For instance, a startup could offer big discounts for the first two years of a three-year contract and count the whole three years as CARR (or ARR), even though customers may not stick around to pay the higher prices in year three.
使用 CARR 并将其称为 ARR 的明显问题在于，它比传统的 ARR 更容易被“操纵”。如果初创公司没有现实地考虑流失率和降级销售，CARR 可能会被虚报。例如，一家初创公司可以在三年期合同的前两年提供大幅折扣，并将这三年全部计为 CARR（或 ARR），尽管客户可能不会留下来支付第三年的更高价格。
“I think Scott [Stevenson] is right. I’ve heard all sorts of anecdotes as well,” Ross McNairn, co-founder and CEO of legal AI startup Wordsmith told TechCrunch about ARR misrepresentations. “I speak to VCs all the time. They’re like, ‘There are some choppy, choppy standards out.’”
“我认为 Scott [Stevenson] 是对的。我也听说过各种各样的轶事，”法律 AI 初创公司 Wordsmith 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Ross McNairn 在谈到 ARR 虚假陈述时告诉 TechCrunch。“我经常与风投交谈。他们会说，‘外面有一些非常混乱的标准。’”
Most cases are slightly less extreme. For instance, an employee at another startup described a discrepancy where marketing materials claimed $50 million in ARR, while the actual figure was $42 million. However, this person claimed that investors had access to the company’s books, which accurately reflected the lower amount. The source said some startups and their investors are comfortable playing fast and loose with their public metrics in part because AI startups are growing so quickly that an $8 million gap is viewed as a rounding error they’ll grow into quickly.
大多数情况稍微没那么极端。例如，另一家初创公司的一名员工描述了这样一种差异：营销材料声称 ARR 为 5000 万美元，而实际数字为 4200 万美元。然而，此人声称投资者可以查阅公司的账目，账目准确反映了较低的金额。消息人士称，一些初创公司及其投资者乐于在公开指标上玩弄手段，部分原因是 AI 初创公司的增长速度如此之快，以至于 800 万美元的差距被视为他们很快就能通过增长弥补的“四舍五入误差”。
The other, more problematic “ARR”
另一个更具争议的“ARR”
There’s another issue surrounding all those public ARR declarations. Sometimes founders use another measurement with the same “ARR” acronym and a similar name: annualized run-rate revenue. This ARR is also controversial because it ext…
围绕所有这些公开的 ARR 声明，还有一个问题。有时创始人会使用另一个缩写同样为“ARR”、名称相似的衡量标准：年度化运行率收入（Annualized Run-rate Revenue）。这种 ARR 也备受争议，因为它……