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 1 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: Salesforce risks becoming another IBM if its AI agents fail
“Unless it gets its shit together and makes great agents, it's another IBM.”
Startup Reps Who Join Legacy Tech Will Never Be Recruited Again
“You went to IBM for five years. We're never talking. I'm never recruiting you. Not because you're not a good rep, because by that move, I know what I need to know. You're done with, you don't want to do the heavy lifting anymore.”
O'Driscoll: Microsoft enabled OpenAI just as IBM enabled Microsoft 30 years ago
“The role of IBM has been played by Microsoft. They set this Viper in motion, and they've allowed it to exist, and in one sense for a while it looked like Microsoft got a good deal because they got access to OpenAI's technology early on, and they got a little b…”
If Jake Saper Were to Short a Public Stock, It Would Be IBM
“If I were to short a stock publicly, it'd be IBM.”
Leaving startups for legacy tech companies permanently disqualifies sales reps
“Hey, you were at this startup company and you did really well, and then you went to IBM to use an extreme example. You went to IBM for five years. We're never talking. I'm never recruiting you. Not because you're not a good rep, because by that move, I know wh…”
O'Driscoll: Anthropic Sales Force Will Resemble Oracle's Within 5 Years
“The entropic sale force in five years will look like the Oracle sales force, the Microsoft sale force, and the IBM sale force, 50 years ago”
Modern tech ad monopolies are stronger than historical tech incumbents
“I think so. The scale of the market, and the way that the kind of advertising auctions and data asymmetry is in place is just much stronger than kind of these previous generations.”
IBM acquired Red Hat because AWS was crushing them in public cloud
“This record acquisition by IBM of Red Hat is really all about Amazon Web Services crushing them in public cloud, them trying to make a play for hybrid cloud more aggressively and essentially draw a buffer line where they can be relevant and aspirationally they…”
O'Driscoll: Every Tech Company Either Fails or Becomes Next-Gen IBM
“Every technology company either goes bust or lives long enough to become next generation's IBM.”
IBM's brand is irrelevant, but its business will flourish
“I don't think the IBM brand is that relevant anymore in terms of like evoking an emotion and people to go use their products. But as a business, it's going to be awesome.”
Torres: 400,000-person corporations cannot move fast despite Lou Gerstner's claims
“What I learned was that a four-hundred-thousand-person company just can't move as fast. Lou Gerstner was the CEO at the time and wrote a book called, like, Why Elephants Can Dance, right? And I don't think, I disagree with him. Elephants can't dance.”
Lemkin: Only two SaaS companies have gone public since late 2021
“I'm concerned that we've only had two SaaS-ish IPOs since twenty-twenty-one. We've only had two since HashiCorp was the last one of the bubble of December of twenty-twenty-one, right? Just got bought for IBM. If only had two, we've only had Klaviyo and Rubrik.”
Seibert: IBM ridiculously charged enterprises for useless blockchain consulting
“And like IBM's at fault. IBM was consulting, like charging for services to consult on how to adopt blockchain into your enterprise. That's ridiculous.”
Job Candidates Inspired by IBM Are Not a Fit for Coinbase
“I will often ask people that I'm interviewing, what other companies would you interview at? What other companies are you inspired by? Now, no offense, but if they say something like IBM, which I've definitely had, they're not going to be a fit for Coinbase. If…”
Lerman: History's Greatest Companies Are Built Organically Bottom-Up
“I will say that I think if you historically look back at the greatest companies in history, they typically have come from more of a grassroots organic type of feel like Microsoft or Apple or even IBM or going back to the Ford Motor Company, going back eons ago…”
Legacy bank contracts with IBM will unwind, creating fintech opportunities
“The web bank is a media, and nobody's using it as a media, and it could do a lot of interesting things, from accounting to all kind of interesting things, and the banks are just sleeping, and they're locked in in stupid contracts with IBM, managing their whole…”
Fillmann: Competitive Sales Roles Build Bulletproof Skin for Beginners
“And then my first role at IBM was a competitive sales rep. So every account I talked to didn't want to talk to me. So you get to kind of have this like bulletproof skin on you, which is a really, really great way to get into sales.”
Masad Shares Zuckerberg's Test for Meaningful Corporate Values
“Zuck said something very interesting. He said, one heuristic to know whether you're saying something meaningful is that, like, reasonable people can disagree with it, and the opposite of it is also reasonable. So, like, move fast and break things could be, lik…”
Emil Michael: No US consumer tech company operated in China before Uber
“Think about what consumer tech companies operate in China. Zero. There was, there's enterprise tech like Hewlett Packard and IBM and all those guys, but no one else had done that.”
Des Traynor: Follow-the-Money Forces Horizontal Software Into Enterprise B2B
“Inevitably, like, the problem with most of those use cases is, once you start to follow the money, you end up back in B to B SaaS land, right? Like, or at least B to B land anyway, right? There's not a lot of money selling software to wedding planners. There's…”
Sandell: Tech startups founded today will rival ExxonMobil and GM
“The result will be that some very iconic companies are being built today that will be the Exxon's and General Motors of tomorrow, or the IBMs, and we've already seen a handful of examples. The FANG companies have already shown us what kind of upside is availab…”
IBM's engineer-to-designer ratio dropped from 72:1 to 8:1 in five years
“For IBM, for example, we saw a shift from 72 engineers to every one designer in 2012. Again, 72 engineers to every one designer. And then in 2017, five years later, they were at eight engineers to every one designer across the company. And on mobile, they were…”