The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 88 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
O'Driscoll: Major Startup Breakthroughs Rely on Boundary Pushing Legalized Upon Success
“So many breakthroughs rely on a little bit of pushing the boundaries. I mean, Uber did with taxi regulation. Airbnb did with regulation. You're right. Polymarket did in terms of how they're regulated. So I'm actually going to get off my high horse and say you …”
The Airbnb myth of persisting without product-market fit is destructive
“Yeah, I think one of the most destructive myths in Silicon Valley is the Airbnb story and myth, because the story is basically that they hung on and didn't have product market fit, and then just eventually things started going well, and they didn't really chan…”
Carlson-Wee: Companies launching tokens must stop extracting direct network revenue
“The second thing is that if you are launching a token and you're a private company, you should be ready to stop extracting any revenue from your network. So however you were extracting revenue from the network, whether this was advertising or paid subscription…”
Stebbings: Capital concentration limits destroy top venture returns
“Capital concentration limits are the enemy of great venture returns, and that's why they have 33% of their fund in Airbnb.”
O'Driscoll: 2021 executive stock price targets like Airbnb's will never be hit
“All the ones that were put in place in 2021 Are stranded, because all those price targets, like the Airbnb price targets, ain't ever going to happen now.”
Omaze Beat WME, CAA, Airbnb, and Groupon in Celebrity Campaigns
“At one point we were producing 400 celebrity videos a year, you know, and our team, like, figured out that process, was really good at learning from that process. Like, that's why we, like, that's why we were the only ones who did a celebrity that made it. We'…”
Hacker: Opening an SF satellite office creates a talent drain to local giants
“It creates this internal funnel of your best employees moving from your HQ to Silicon Valley. Which by itself is not a problem. The problem is then they get recruited away by the whatever the hot Silicon Valley company is at the time. You know, like it could b…”
Founders Fund sold Spotify at $8B to double down on Airbnb
“It was Peter and Brian Zingerman and Napoleon that took what did they take? I think they sold Spotify at the eight billion dollar price, pissed off, what's his name? Daniel. Daniel Ek, and rolled it all into Airbnb at the two and a half billion.”
Hartz: Paul Graham rejected his exploding term sheet for Airbnb's seed round
“Little known secret is Keith, Javed and I gave an exploding term sheet to Airbnb, and Paul Graham said no bueno, and teed off on us.”
Uber, Airbnb, Meta, and Revolut didn't use event tracking early on
“I actually think that if you look at Uber, Airbnb, Meta, they don't use events, or at least not in the early days. We didn't use events at Revolut.”
Sorting search results by price always reduced Airbnb's conversion rates
“One of the most common requests that Airbnb gets is, and this has come from like day one, is like, I wish I could just sort my listing search results by price. Just like, show me the cheapest one, because I want to book that. So many teams have tried to build …”
Candidates Refusing Case Studies Lack Early-Stage Startup Execution Mindset
“So I think if somebody's unwilling to do a case study, you probably have somebody who wants to be running growth at a large established business like Airbnb, and they just want to come over and take over a team of 50 or a hundred people and not be at that leve…”
Gurley: Ignore Airbnb and DoorDash valuations until post-lockup expiration
“I wouldn't put too much on an Airbnb or DoorDash valuation. I'd wait until you get, you know, three to six months past the lockup release when you have full of”
Buchheit: Top founders like Page and Zuckerberg possess extreme, non-ordinary conviction
“One of the things that really strikes me about both Larry Page and Mark and, you know, a lot of the YC founders like Patrick Collison or founders of Airbnb is they just have a level of conviction that I think ordinary humans just don't have. They believe in th…”
Gross: Airbnb likely would not exist without Michael Seibel and YC
“It is less likely that Airbnb would have been created had Michael Seibel not recruited the founders to Y Combinator, introduced them to Paul Graham, the program had been set up in place, the investment been available, demo day being available”
Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter Could Be Profitable by Cutting Spend 10%
“Today, Uber or Airbnb want to be profitable, or Twitter wants to be massively profitable. If they were to cut their spending 10, 20%, all of a sudden those companies look massively profitable. The only reason they're losing money is because they've chosen to c…”
Srinivasan predicts Uber and Airbnb will become multi-hundred billion dollar companies
“I think it's quite possible that those become multi-hundred billion dollar companies.”
Srinivasan: Uber and Airbnb have created one trillion dollars in societal value
“The rest of it is probably on the order of a trillion dollars in value that's being created if you were to compare it to what happened before.”
Hamid: Airbnb Will Become a Property Manager and Housing Platform
“I think over time, Airbnb is probably going to take over, like, where people just live. Like, they will become the property manager for people who own homes, and it will become the place, like, the Craigslist for people who want to find a home.”
De Masi: Uber and Airbnb are burning massive cash defending network effects
“Other than Uber and Airbnb, I can't think of you with the same sort of network effects. And you can see how much money it's taking them to defend that. I mean, even the private company info that's leaked there is they're all hosing through cash.”
Top VC firms will be forced to adapt to new funding models
“Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, they're not going away anytime soon. This isn't like, we're out to beat them and kill them. Not in the same way Airbnb is not going to delete hotels overnight. It's going to change how hotels work. I think that's a bett…”
Nathoo: VCs hunting power-law returns should invest at almost any valuation
“At the end of the day, the investors want to be investing in the next Google, the next Airbnb, the next Facebook, and if they believe that this company is going to be that, then They should want to put their money in at pretty much any price, because it's a sl…”
Mac: Brian Chesky was right that chat interfaces suit hotel bookings poorly
“Brian Chesky got kind of roasted, but I thought it was an insightful point when he said, it's not clear to him that like the right interface for hotel booking is a chat interface. And he was kind of called a Luddite and this and that, but like, I think he was …”
Johannes Reck says Airbnb tried and failed at experiences in 2015
“Airbnb had tried experiences From 2015 onwards, they had failed.”
Sequoia outbid Hartz on Airbnb's seed round, but founders included him anyway
“I was angel investing with Keith Rubois and Javid Karim, and Javid is the co-founder of YouTube. And, you know, we just fell in love with those guys and made them an offer. And Sequoia out, out did us and got the lead, but they cut us in nicely because, you kn…”
Index Ventures missed investing in Spotify, Snap, Airbnb, and LinkedIn
“One is Spotify, another one is Snap, another one's Airbnb, another one's LinkedIn. Those are the four that we had real opportunity in some fashion or another to manufacture the opportunity for Index to be in the round, and we failed for different reasons.”
Danny Rimer: Apple and Airbnb are rare exceptions in product-driven marketing
“Most companies that have been successful, be they enterprise or consumer in the tech space, The marketing has been a byproduct of a great product or service. Really, the exception to the rule would be Apple, and probably Airbnb, and I'm, and I scratch my head …”
Index misjudged Airbnb by focusing on hotel cannibalization over market creation
“When one of the big lessons on Airbnb was when we were evaluating it, we were thinking, how many hotel rooms is Airbnb going to cannibalize? Rather than thinking, actually, Airbnb is going to create an entirely new market, an entirely, entirely new amount of i…”
Stephens: Every Big Founders Fund Win Had a $100B Advocate
“If you look at any of the big outcomes across our portfolio, whether it's you know, Spotify, Stripe, Airbnb, Palantir, SpaceX, Andrel stem centric. So if you look at all of these big outcomes for us, every single one of them, there was someone on the team bang…”
Rabois calls Airbnb the best network effect business he's ever seen
“They have the best network effect business I've ever seen.”
Hyman: Over 90% of Airbnb's traffic is organic
“Airbnb has said, let's forget everything about paid marketing. Let's take all of our dollars and invest it into the brand, into PR, into product innovation that's actually going to breed loyalty, and I think now, like, over 90% of Airbnb's traffic is organic.”
Jordan: Airbnb Was Cashflow Positive Early Due to Upfront Payments
“Airbnb raised way less money than, you know, the other leading marketplaces at the time. It's got a couple of characteristics and that are very nice. One of which is they get paid in advance. And so, you know, when you make your summer vacation over the holida…”
Jordan: Most Successful Marketplaces Are Permanently Supply-Constrained
“Most markets, even successful marketplaces typically are supply constrained. You know, Airbnb always is looking for new supply to enhance the user experience.”
Jordan: Upfront customer payments made Airbnb cash flow positive early
“Airbnb raised way less money than, you know, the other leading marketplaces at the time. It's got a couple of characteristics and that are very nice. One of which is they get paid in advance. And so, you know, when you make your summer vacation over the holida…”
Singerman regrets not putting $500M into Airbnb's $1.5 billion valuation round
“I wish I had written 500, I wish we had written a five hundred million dollar check into Airbnb at the, you know, one and a half billion dollar round instead of a, whatever, a hundred and fifty million dollar check.”
Chris Sacca passed on Airbnb fearing "blood on your hands" from crime
“It was a lack of optimism that cost me some money in the beginning when I met the Airbnb guys and I pulled them aside and was like, look, somebody's going to get raped or murdered and the blood is going to be on your hands.”
Sacca passed on Airbnb in 2008 fearing 'blood on your hands'
“It was a lack of optimism that cost me some money in the beginning when I met the Airbnb guys in And I pulled them aside and was like, look, somebody's going to get raped or murdered, and the blood is going to be on your hands.”
Doug Leone supported Sequoia's Airbnb investment despite never staying in one
“Now I've never stayed on Airbnb, but I supported the investment, but people of your generation, the Gen Z generation, you know, they go Airbnb first.”
Hsu claims DoorDash is the only major startup built from landing-page testing
“The only case where I know this might potentially have worked was I think it was paloaltodelivery.com or something, which then became DoorDash. I think it's the only sort of recorded case of this ever actually working, but if you look at all the other sort of …”
David Sze warned Reid Hoffman that Airbnb could be his learning failure
“David turned to me and said, look, every venture capitalist Has to have a deal that they cratered, and it is a disastrous amount of work, and that doesn't work in order to learn, and Airbnb can be yours.”
Levine: Sequoia's seed deals in Airbnb and Dropbox are history's best
“Two of the best deals of all time were seeds by Sequoia. I think an initial almost 600,000 dollar investment in Airbnb and a million dollar investment in Dropbox to get very large ownership positions.”
Maples passed on a $250K seed investment in Airbnb
“Brian Chesky at Airbnb at the time is called Airbed and Breakfast pitched me And I passed, and I had an opportunity to invest 250,000 dollars that would now be worth close to a billion.”
Vlad Magdalin: Users will build full software products on Webflow within five years
“So I can imagine five years from now, people building the next, not just MVPs, but entire software products on top of Webflow, like the next Airbnb, whatever that idea is, the next Twitter, the next product hunt, all of it.”
Motschwiller: Series A rounds for top consumer decacorns occurred pre-2012
“You look at the series A Funding times of the consumer decacorns that are out there, the Ubers, the Lyfts, the Airbnbs, the Snaps, the Pinterest, the Spotifys, those series A's were all done pre-二零 12.”
Zappacosta: Marketplaces do not inherently sacrifice NPS on one side
“I think that's bogus. I think that's definitely not true of Amazon. It's definitely not true of Airbnb, and it shouldn't be true of a service marketplace either.”
VCs passed on Airbnb because they ignored design as a differentiator
“So like Airbnb is a great example, like a ton of investors passed on them because they didn't understand design as a differentiation for them.”
Kris Jones argues 2015's high tech valuations reflect disruption, not a bubble
“I think the valuations right now are very, very high. But I don't believe so, and the reason I don't believe there's a tech bubble is because I believe that the period of time we're in right now is a period where you're going to see a lot of disruption, meanin…”