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 28 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
Bahat: A founder's personal financial situation heavily drives startup decision-making
“The founder financial situation is one of the most personal financial situation is one of the most important and under discussed aspects of the life of a company, because it's going to drive so much decision making.”
Bahat: Very few multi-stage VCs historically produce top seed-stage winners
“We did an analysis looking at the top company performers. And what you see is that since the era that seed funds have existed and who funded them at the seed. And what you see is that some of them were funded by seed funds, first round true others funded some …”
Bahat: Startup valuation is primarily a mathematical function of VC fund size
“The way it works is your fund has a strategy and you say to yourself, do I want to invest in this company? And if I want to invest in this company, then I have a check size. And the check size is usually determined by the fund size, because again, back to our …”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta requires one partner for initial checks, unanimity for follow-ons
“In our first check, We invest where anybody can say yes, and that's designed to produce good accountability and independent decision-making and avoid groupthink. But the issue with the follow-on checks is then you're serving that company, you become emotionall…”
Cham: The best venture investment decisions are always highly controversial
“The best investment decisions were always very, very controversial.”
Bloomberg Beta allows any single partner to individually approve investments
“In our firm at least, we've made the decision that anyone can say yes.”
Bloomberg Beta encourages founders to shop term sheets without exploding deadlines
“When I give people a term sheet, I say, go shop it. It's not going to explode. I only want you to work with us because we're the best choice for you, not because I've put you under some time pressure.”
Machine intelligence will eat software while software eats the world
“Yes, I think machine intelligence will eat software. While software is eating the world.”
Bloomberg Beta invests if a single partner says yes, ignoring consensus
“Any one person says yes on our team we do a deal.”
Bloomberg Beta backs founders who reject advice to step down
“If we thought that there was a better alternative than the founder for the business, we'd tell the person that. And then if they said, no, no, no, thanks. That's nice. That's your opinion, but I'm going to keep going. Generally, we would back them to keep goin…”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta never issues exploding offers and encourages shopping term sheets
“Our offers never explode, and we encourage founders to go shop our offers.”
Bahat: Formal seed-stage board meetings are ludicrous and distract founders
“And it's turned into this advice-giving, checking-in governance body, and at the stage at which we invest, where founders are making critical decisions daily, the idea of meeting once every month, or two months, or three months, and doing a PowerPoint presenta…”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta loses seed deals to multi-stage VCs at 2-3x valuations
“And when we lose on a two or three X price difference often because again, valuation is a function of fund size.”
James Cham: Groups are uniquely bad at making interesting decisions
“Groups are really good at Getting new diverse points of view and new bits of information. And groups are actually also really good at doing complex coordinated tasks. Groups are uniquely bad at making interesting decisions.”
James Cham: ML SaaS will enable cross-company insights without sharing raw data
“There's going to be something, some similar insight and some similar buzzword about the separation of models and the ability to share insights of models between companies while at the same time not actually sharing data.”
Roy Bahat identifies eldercare as the number one untapped startup opportunity
“We don't invest in the space of things that serve people's personal lives, but if I did, I think services for the elderly are the number one untapped opportunity, and just wait till we have more sixty-five-year-old tech founders, because they'll see the opport…”
Bloomberg Beta secures target ownership on initial check rather than over time
“So for us, it goes back again to the founder as customer. So our core model is own what we want to own the day we invest.”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta launches $75M Fund III
“We are today announcing our Third fund. And the exciting news is that it is precisely the same as the previous two ventures, a funny occupation where you get to like say, hooray every couple of years when you keep doing exactly what you've been doing. But when…”
Roy Bahat: Bloomberg Beta is comfortable losing deals on valuation price
“We're very happy to lose deals on price. We need to be able to be deeply enough enmeshed financially with the winning companies to That we make enough to make up for all of the cases where we take risk and companies don't work out.”
Bahat: Bloomberg Beta Will Never Back a Portfolio Company's Competitor
“The competitive lanes issue, which is if I back you, I'm not going to back your competitors. And so that means that every time we write a check, we're giving up the opportunity cost of serving another customer and of backing other companies in that space.”
Bahat: All Bloomberg Beta returns go directly to Bloomberg Philanthropies
“The returns we earn go to Bloomberg philanthropies, and that means they go to an organization whose mission it is to help improve the lives of people around the world and fight guns and fight climate change and fight for education”
James Cham: Standard SaaS pricing metrics fail for machine learning software
“The more data you get, the more valuable it is actually for the SaaS company, right? And so all the normal units of measure around how much you should charge are, don't really apply and don't entirely make sense.”
Machine learning is now a top agenda item for Fortune 50 CEOs
“Now, what's interesting, when we first started talking about machine learning three years ago, I think it was still seen as something that only tech companies were interested in, and what's changed over the last three years is that now everyone's interested. T…”
Bloomberg Beta avoids the term AI due to sci-fi humanoid connotations
“So we actually try to avoid talking about AI. And the reason is AI has come to mean both the cluster of all those techniques and the Like replicating human intelligence with something that feels humanoid and, you know, is out to get you like in Ex Machina or s…”
Method-only AI startups without specific applications usually end up as acqui-hires
“If what you're talking about is, I guess I'd call them method-only companies, you know, some technology that you think can be applied to a wide variety of situations, and you're not really building around any one of them, then yes, then I do think that is aqua…”
Bloomberg Beta publishes deal documents and diligence questions publicly
“If you go on our website, you can see our long form deal documents and the questions that we ask in diligence.”