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 15 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
Shakir: Fast VC investment decisions prevent founders from understanding investor dynamics
“The fact that these decisions can be made so quickly without any real insight into what that dynamic is like with the investor, I think is really problematic.”
Lux Capital struggled to raise funds for over a decade initially
“The founders of Lux Capital, everybody knows Lux now. And they've been oversubscribed many, many times, but literally for 10 years or plus had really hard time raising funds.”
Quintini: Sector-specialized VC funds risk missing tectonic technological shifts
“Number one, if that industry or that sector is out of favor, you have your glory days, but you kind of go away with that. And number two, you know, it's very hard to branch and think differently. And you might miss big tectonic shifts in other areas that becau…”
Quintini: VCs should evaluate startup pitches with a 'yes mentality' first
“I think for me, the biggest lesson was approach each conversation, each pitch with a yes mentality, right? So thinking about how does reality look like if this company is successful, let's leave the how aside for a minute. Let's get creative and let's stretch …”
Quintini: Startups must plan for massive scale at founding, not dynamically
“Because this growth is so exponential, companies need to plan for that day of a hundred million users or the ten million users at founding, not as they go, because I think there's a lot of trouble that can happen, and there are also a lot of important advantag…”
Lux Capital Missed a $4B Exit by Selling Nervana to Intel Early
“In that case, I think we would have loved, collectively, amongst the other syndicate investors as well, that maybe we waited for You know, a year or two, because we probably, instead of selling for four hundred million to Intel, could have sold for four billio…”
Wolfe: Lux Debates Small Checks More Than Large High-Conviction Deals
“Our internal partnership debates are usually the fiercest over the smallest dollars of what we have low conviction. When we have high conviction, our dollar checks are the highest, and everybody is near consensus.”
Arbesman: Combining specialists, T-shaped people, and generalists builds optimal organizations
“Bring all those different people together, specialists, teachers, individuals, people who are a little bit more general minded into an organization is going to make it the best version possible.”
Quintini: Winning frontier tech companies build end-to-end products with empathetic design
“What I see happening in Frontier now is a humanization of technology, right? Companies are building end-to-end solutions. Even if you're, you know, if you think about the big successes in Frontier, like a Tesla, Nest, Invest an Oculus or Cruz. They're going al…”
Quintini: Products competing solely on lower cost are unsustainable
“Things that exist because they're just cheaper for cheap sake and don't make anybody better off. I don't think it's sustainable.”
Quintini: Connected devices and cloud software must assume eventual hacking
“If you're thinking about this connectivity, the internet of everything, and when we're sending everything to the cloud, there are vulnerabilities everywhere, and we need to operate under the assumption that everything's going to be hacked.”
Wolfe: Lux Capital avoids early-stage fundamental science risk
“We're not funding true science risk, right? Those are things that are coming Maybe five, 10, 15 years incubated, often publicly funded government science out of universities, but there reaches a point where you can see that they're starting to do something in …”
Josh Wolfe: Lux Capital is willing to take market and tech risk
“You have some firms that will say, we don't take market risk, and you have other firms that say, we don't take technology risk, and we'll actually take both.”
Wolfe: Intel acquired Lux-backed Nervana Systems for $400M within a year
“And it leads us to a company called Nirvana Systems, and we fund those guys, and within a year, they're bought by Intel for four hundred million dollars.”
Bryan Johnson: OS Fund frequently co-invests with Founders Fund and Lux Capital
“Yeah, we, so quite a few. Like we like DC, VC, Founders Fund, Lux Capital. There's like, there's probably like a dozen or so we love that we love working with. They again are just Great people, good processes, smart minds, and very collaborative.”