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 70 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
Hamid: Organizational scaling is the biggest operational challenge post-product-market fit
“I'd say the biggest challenges that companies hit are along the organizational building. The people side of it is scaling of early employees, early leaders, To people who can help hyperscale and double down on what's working. It typically, that is where things…”
Deshpande: Building massive businesses requires prioritizing scale over equity dilution concerns
“Before Kleiner, I probably thought of it maybe a little more like a small business person, you know, where equity is obviously very precious and everything, but you're more worried about dilution. You're worried to raise some money and I, Take some dilution an…”
Deshpande: A massive gap separates category leaders from the next five entrants
“There's a big gap between the best company in a sector and the best entrepreneur and the best team and really the next five. And any big business and any big idea is going to have multiple entrants, multiple people in and around it. But you really Need to bet …”
Gordon: Kleiner Perkins requires a single passionate partner to champion every deal
“And, you know, but for us, there's got to be one person who pounds the table.”
Volpi: Benchmark proves VC success doesn't require heavy firm services
“I do think that firms like Andreessen and Kleiner and Greylock have done a phenomenal job building services organizations. And there is no question that there is value in doing that. And then there are other firms like say benchmark who have done a terrific jo…”
Kleiner Perkins Builds Internal Tech Tools to Detect Venture Signal
“Here at Kleiner, we have a bunch of interesting tools that help us look for early signal in companies, look for inflection points, look for interesting derivative movements on the app store charts, look for signals in transaction data.”
John Doerr Answered Flipboard Support Emails During Launch Crash
“I remember at Flipboard, for example, when the service first launched, The load was so tremendous that it actually took down the back end for a few weeks, and our board member John Doerr came by and actually answered customer support emails all night. He even …”
Zuckerberg: Joining VC made me evaluate people transactionally based on intellectual capital
“I feel like this switch has gone off in my brain where I start to think of people Based on their intellectual capital way more so than I did before, which is very challenging for me because I feel like I'm losing myself a little in a weird way.”
Zuckerberg: Angel investors must size portfolios around the power law
“You really have to do a lot of investments based on the power law, which is that one company out of your portfolio will probably return your entire portfolio. And you have to think that every company you invest in is going to be that company that returns your …”
Everett Randle joins Benchmark as GP from Founders Fund
“Topic number one, Everett Randall joins Benchmark. Benchmark don't add partners very often. It's a big news announcement that he's joining. Joins Benchmark as their latest GP. He was with Kleiner and he was with Founders Fund before.”
Hamid: Half of Kleiner Perkins' growth fund backs its early-stage winners
“Because our growth fund, even, half of the dollars are allocated towards, not allocated, but half those dollars are invested in our best companies from our early stage funds.”
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins spent millions building and maintaining an internal CRM
“We built an internal CRM at Kleiner Perkins, and I think it sort of cost us many millions of dollars, and then ongoing millions of dollars a year to just upkeep.”
MITIMCo backs Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Green Oaks, Y Combinator, and Initialized Capital
“So we're lucky to be in a lot of the big names you would expect, you know, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen, et cetera. And then, you know, there's some newer things as well that we've done in the past 10 or 15 years, like say, Green Oaks or Y Combinator i…”
Bedrock accumulated Rippling secondary shares leading up to catalyzing its Series D
“And after that screw up, we opportunistically bought secondary. Predominantly preferred secondary, because part of our thesis is this is going to be a relatively small preferred stack for the scale of the company that they're building at several junctures, and…”
Gumroad raised $10M from Kleiner Perkins, Levchin, Ravikant, and Sacca
“Raised ten million bucks from Kleiner Perkins, Max Lefgen, Naval, Chris Saka, the wonder kind of story, college dropout, everything like that.”
UiPath has raised over $977M in venture funding
“To date, UiPath has raised over nine hundred and seventy seven million dollars in funding from some of the very best in the world, including Sequoia, Excel, Meritech, IVP, Capital G, Kleiner, CoTo, and more.”
Hamid: Kleiner Perkins invested $10M for 10% in Google's Series A
“I think the Kleiner check was Ten million dollars for like 10% in the Google series A.”
Kleiner Perkins leverages dual venture and growth funds to defer risky deals
“We're very fortunate where we have two funds within one firm, and, you know, we invest across the stages, so If we, on the venture side, feel something's just not clicking here, and we think there's an, you know, excess, you know, there is some weird form of r…”
Jim Scheinman passed on Waze because Kleiner Perkins drove the valuation too high
“In particular, one that I got there just a little bit too late was Waze. I love Waze. And you know, Kleiner put a bunch of money and it was too expensive for me at that point”
Zuckerberg: Top founders demonstrate deep customer obsession and detailed market knowledge
“Another way to evaluate a team or a product is it kind of requires this obsession with the customer and understanding a complete understanding of the industry. So when I'm, you know, questioning a founder kind of like a detective and learning about the market,…”
Zuckerberg: Portfolio founders improved pitch deck by 20% between meetings
“They improved their deck by at least 20% every single, you know, consecutive meeting with them.”
Matt Mochary's coaching client list includes partners at Benchmark, Sequoia, and Kleiner
“On the VC side, Matt has worked with the likes of Peter Fenton at Benchmark, Several Sequoia partners, Hemond at GC, and Mamoon at Kleiner, to name a few. As for founders, Matt's worked with the founders of Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Reddit, Flexport, and many mor…”