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 24 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Eisenberg: Secondary market buyers claiming interest are mostly fishing for startup data
“Over the last three or four weeks, we've decided to do a little experiment. We reach out to them now. We used to ignore them. But now it's interesting because, like, you discover there are actual buyers there. There aren't, ok? There are not actual buyers ther…”
Eisenberg: Aleph raised an insane amount of foreign capital post-October 7
“We've raised an incredible amount of foreign money into our company since October seventh, an insane amount of money. It's wide open for business right now. Investors are on the ground every day.”
Michael Eisenberg: Massive funds like Tiger Global overwhelm down-market cap tables
“What we often don't pay attention to is if you've got the largest war chest at the table, you've got a shot to overwhelm the cap table in a down market. Meaning, if I'm Tiger and, you know, I'm taking a large round from Tiger at a company, then the company nee…”
Eisenberg: Equal partnership structures foster safer, more collaborative VC firms
“One of these about the equal partnership is you're not worried about your economics or even negotiating them subconsciously. And that makes the partnership more of a safe space and more of a collaborative space. And I think it's one of the really powerful thin…”
Eisenberg: Partner time, not money, is a VC's most precious commodity
“And the reason you need to stay small and focused is your most precious commodity is not your money. It's your time.”
Early-stage VCs must maintain a steady investment pace through market busts
“But it turns out that the best time to invest is when it busts. And so you need to maintain a constant investment pace, no matter what the external circumstances are around the bust in early stage venture capital.”
Aleph's motto: being different is better than being better
“Our motto at Olive is different is better than better. Everything we do should be different, not better. Everything our companies should do should be different and not better.”
Eisenberg: Only 1 of Aleph's last 17 deals was horizontal SaaS
“Of the last 17 investments we made at Aleph, one was a SaaS company.”
Eisenberg: My biggest ZERP mistake was not selling 100% of peak-valuation positions
“One of them was not selling a hundred percent of one or two positions when the prices were high.”
Eisenberg: I stopped proactive deal sourcing and rely solely on referrals
“I've stopped sourcing. I get all my deals right now through referrals of 30 years of being in this business. And so I actually don't do proactive sourcing anymore.”
Venture funds should target 15 to 25 portfolio companies, says Eisenberg
“In the venture business, I think about it as shots on goal, which is a portfolio should have somewhere between 15 and 25, call it, shots on goal.”
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins backed Aleph at a $35M post-money valuation
“Or another example is Syed Ali at Aleph. You know, I think we did that also at, like, 35 post. And Syed had come off of a company just sold for six billion dollars.”
Eisenberg: Aleph's largest check ever went to AI defense startup Dream Security
“We wrote this giant check to a company called Dream Security, which is AI infrastructure for protecting critical assets in countries. It was the biggest check we wrote.”
Fintech investors initially passed on Lemonade for lacking insurance experience
“When we first invested in Lemonade, I called a bunch of fintech investors and said, who's the insurance guy? I said, nobody. That's the beauty. So none of them would invest.”
Aleph Closes Investment Despite CEO And 25% Of Staff In Reserves
“There's an investment that I've been working on for a long time. The closing's tomorrow, and we bet we're going to issue a capital call. The CEO is in reserves. He's one of the first people called up. And I called him up, and I called his two co-founders. I sp…”
Eisenberg: Aleph will prioritize target ownership over low pricing
“So what we're doing is even if we have to pay more, we're optimizing for ownership and we'll continue to do that.”
Eisenberg: Aleph Will Prioritize Ownership Stakes Over Price Discipline
“So what we're doing is even if we have to pay more, we're optimizing for ownership and we'll continue to do that.”
Benchmark partners all invested in Michael Eisenberg's Aleph at launch
“My agreement when Benchmark, as Peter Fenton has so famously said, decided to get out of the imperial era of venture capital and focus locally, the partners at Benchmark were super supportive and went out on my own, so to speak, found a partner, Eden Shohat, a…”
Aleph remains a single-stage fund to avoid multi-stage signaling risks
“We are a single stage, basically C to A fund. We're not doing the big, big fund with the multi-stage thing where I think you have a lot more risks around reserves and around signaling risk when times go get bad.”
Aleph doubled down on travel startup BookAway during the COVID-19 crash
“We have a company in the travel space that was Slaughtered by COVID. We got a pile of money reserved for it. We plowed in. We think this is going to come back, and when everyone else was not there, we are. And I think that's enabled us to be nimble. A company …”
Aleph took half of Lemonade's $13 million seed round
“It's a thirteen million dollar seed round. We put six and a half in the term sheet.”
Aleph invested in an AI and synthetic biology rocket fuel startup
“We just backed a AI to synthetic biology and chemistry rocket fuel company”