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 54 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Mitchell Green: Multi-billion VC funds are insane and require hitting next Google
“I think it's insane. I think these funds are way too, and they, just do the math, the fund math on like how, they're clearly, you have to have the next open, you have to have the next Google, effectively, or the math doesn't work, I don't think.”
Lacaillade: Founders Fund, a16z, Greenoaks, and Thrive proactively marked down valuations
“In my core relationships Founders Fund's the most extreme, because Peter Thiel's very contrarian and he wants to reset the mindset of his team. Which I think is great. But Andreessen Horowitz, Green Oaks Thrive, they've all proactively marked down their compan…”
Thrive, Lerer Hippeau, and First Round have abandoned true seed investing
“Many of the best VCs in New York have moved up the stack. And what that means is they've raised dramatically larger funds in the last two years. And so, Folks like Thrive Capital, and Lyra Ventures, and First Ground, and folks that you might consider as tradit…”
Frankel: The jury is out on post-2020 venture fund DPI performance
“A little less since twenty-twenty. Like, if you look at the DPI analysis, like, the jury's out from twenty-twenty onwards.”
Frankel: Post-2020 mega funds boast high TVPI but lag on DPI
“Subsequent to twenty-twenty, like the TVPI is there, and some, in some cases, they're on steroids. The DPI is less there, if you look at the actual stats.”
Jake Paul: Anti Fund Aims to Manage $10B to $20B Eventually
“Yeah, I think if the 30 mil fund was, like, the end goal, it would be like, no, but, like, we want to run 10, twenty billion dollars at some point, and look up to people like, you know, Josh Kushner at Thrive, who started with, you know, I think it was four, f…”
O'Driscoll: Thrive Capital specifically declined Anthropic investment due to OpenAI stake
“They actually specifically, unlike some of the other funds that have invested in both, they've Specifically our fund that said, no, we backed open AI. We're not going to back on tropics.”
Lemkin: Open Evidence will raise at $30B-$40B valuation next year
“Open Evidence will probably do a round at 30 or 40 next year. I'm actually going to suggest that Thrive is very smart. And they've probably done the math and this is the right insertion point for them. And they believe in it. And someone else is going to do it…”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI Gains Little Tangible Benefit From Thrive Capital Deal
“The advantage to OpenAI is much less clear. I'm not sure they're putting in money. In one of the press releases, they said they're going to get a lot of specific data from some of these verticals that Thrive is pushing into, but my guess is I know who was ecst…”
Stebbings: VC Winners Will Be Mega-Platforms or Specialized Boutiques
“To me, I think it's like a specialization in leadership that's kind of correlated to actually the winners and losers in venture in the next 10 years, and I think the winners are Walmart, which is your mega platforms, it's your Thrive, it's your Lightspeed, it'…”
Stebbings: Top mega-fund partners will make over $1B in distributions
“Well, I think if you are one of the top one to three carry participants in one of the large mega platforms, be it Andreessen, be it Thrive, be it GC, I would argue that you will have more than that in distributions in the next few decades.”
Stebbings: Recent top breakout VC firms are all single-person led
“When you look at, Bundly, the best performing managers, or the breakout managers the last few years, I think you put probably Thrive, Green Oaks, Founders Fund, and Eli Gill definitely up there. And all four of them are one person led.”
Grimshaw: Building AI copilots is an incumbent strategy, not a startup opportunity
“I think Copilot is an incumbent's strategy. Incumbents own distribution, they own data, they own the UX, and they own a business model that all aligns to a Copilot.”
Hankes: Waiting for Clear Proof in Tech Means Getting Priced Out
“The scalability properties of what they have built are so good that, you know, we'd rather bet on the compounding upside of that scalability Than sit on the sidelines because once it's clear, it'll get priced up very quickly.”
Hankes: Many Venture Capital Firms Passed on Investing in OpenAI
“Well, you know, I think there's a lot of people that said no. So at the end of the day, I, you know, there, as much as I like to think we want a really competitive deal, I do think It was not obvious to everybody, and even now I don't think it's still obvious …”
Hankes: Thrive Separates From Quantitative Rigor for High-Upside Bets
“We're able to kind of separate ourselves from the kind of quantitative rigor that, you know, we rely on for a lot of investments we do and hold the tension of what could go right.”
Hankes: AI Moats Will Be Ecosystems, Not Model Outputs, Within Five Years
“I do think, again, the dimension by which people are going to think about this in five years from now, looking back, isn't going to be about The commoditization of the model and the raw output, it's going to be, oh, the ecosystem around the model has become mu…”
Seed Investments From Multi-Stage VC Funds Carry Major Signaling Risk
“One thing we did do that has a trade-off is we took on some signaling risk by including large funds like Thrive, And Coastal and our seed round that can cause an issue down the line where if they don't end up supporting you, it makes it challenging for a new i…”
Stebbings: Thrive Capital's growth fund outperforms 90% of seed funds
“Their numbers are better than 90% of seed fund numbers on their growth growth vehicle.”
Stebbings: Josh Kushner Proved Multi-Stage Venture Capital Investing Works
“I think Josh, who's a dear friend at Thrive, has proved that actually that's not the case, but other people still very much hold that true.”
O'Driscoll: First venture rounds for OpenAI and Anthropic were $23B and $4B
“The first venture round at OpenAI was twenty-three billion pre with Thrive, and the first venture round at Entropic was four billion pre with Spark and Menlo, you know, right?”
O'Driscoll: PE firms pivoting to minority late-stage tech deals is stupid
“Going from what they do to making non-controlled late stage investments Just because, you know, pick a name, Thrive do that well would be, in my view, stupid because Thrive are really good at that, and they're not.”
Stebbings: Thrive and Greenoaks made $500M+ buying distressed Carvana stock
“They made half a billion dollars plus from Carvana in the public markets buying when it was in the dumps and then writing that up.”
Stebbings: OpenAI revenue reached nearly half its $30B valuation round
“When you look at their revenues today, it's we questioned it and I questioned it and he pushed back quite rightly, but their revenues are about half of that valuation today, just showing the scale and trajectory of the revenue that they've had.”
Hankes: VCs Should Withhold Capital Until AI Product Value Becomes Clear
“If you're really answering that question, you're struggling because you think in two weeks from now, there's a chance that the customer doesn't care or the product won't have any value. Well, that's hard to build a company around. And so in any of those enviro…”
Hankes: OpenAI Delayed GPT-4 Release by Five Months for Safety Testing
“On GPT four, we saw the demo in the fall. They didn't just release the product then they took, I think four or five months To test and learn about safety in the edges of the model and then ultimately released it to the world.”
Hankes: Many VC Firms Lack Structure for Massive, High-Risk Investments
“And frankly, I think there are a lot of firms that Could not have done this because their organizations are not set up to make these kinds of big decisions.”
Hankes: Iconic Companies Always Get Priced Ahead and Look Cheap Later
“No iconic company, you know, at least that we've been a part of, was it clear and obvious in the early days of that technology, they always get priced well ahead. And they look cheap in hindsight because they defy the gravity of the model.”
Hankes: Early AI Startups Were Thin Wrappers Around Underlying Models
“Many of these companies and we spent a bunch of time with them and we kind of kept coming back to the fact that they were thin user experiences on top of this cool thing, which was this model”
Thrive Capital's Only Rule: Back Category-Defining Companies With Multi-Decade Tailwinds
“Again, there's one rule at Thrive, and that's to be a part of category-defining companies with multi-decade tailwinds.”
O'Driscoll: Thrive executed exceptional stock-picking with Stripe, Databricks, OpenAI
“I mean, I think, we said it in one of the shows earlier on, Thrive has done an amazing stock picking job of backing Stripe, of backing Databricks, of backing OpenAI, and of backing them at scale.”
Stebbings: Open Evidence raised at $12B valuation led by Thrive and DST
“Open Evidence raises at twelve billion dollars, labbed by Thriving DST. It's a 12 x valuation step up to where they raised at a billion dollars from Sikora at the start of the year.”
Lemkin: VCs Should Focus Almost Exclusively on Top Winners
“There's like only a couple of deals that matter to VCs. So when you, you'll see a VC stay on a board for 20 years and you'll see them always hanging out with this one CEO and Thrive has a lot of winners, right? But this is a big winner, right? And so anything …”
O'Driscoll: A VC's Best Marketing Is Staying Close to Top Winners
“First of all, I think it's a great deal for Thrive because Jason's right. The whole trick in venture is we try and pretend we matter, but in our hearts, we know our best companies matter and the best marketing you can do is get as close as possible to your big…”
Stebbings: Gong has surpassed $400M ARR and a $7B valuation
“The company has raised over six hundred million dollars from some of the best, including Sequoia, Thrive, Salesforce, and more, and Gong has surpassed Four hundred million in ARR, and serves thousands of customers, including multiple Fortune hundreds, and is v…”
Paik: Thrive Capital backs young talent better than venture peers
“One of the things that Thrive does really, really, really well In my opinion, maybe even better than anyone else in the industry is it leans into people's potential regardless of their age, regardless of their credentials.”
Hankes: Investors Over-Extrapolate Good Times and Under-Extrapolate Bad Times
“In good times, people over extrapolate in bad times, people under extrapolate.”
Hankes: Investors Over-Attribute Startup Success to Execution During Market Booms
“This is probably more, this is not for the rapid fire, but you know, one thing that's become clear as we've kind of come out of or gone into this more difficult environment to operate in is in the good times, we probably over attribute to teams and products, h…”
Hankes: Asking Operator-Level Questions Fosters Deeper Founder Empathy
“The way we'd ask that same question is, if I'm a SDR on your sales team and I'm trying to qualify a prospect, you know, what am I looking for? At the end of the day, it's really the same question. You could even argue that the way we do it at Thrive is less ef…”
Thrive Capital passed on DoorDash due to market depth and pricing concerns
“One of the ones that comes to mind is DoorDash. We had a chance to invest pretty early on in the business, even after it was kind of obvious that it was And we love the founder. We obviously thought it was an amazing experience. One of the things that held us …”
Thrive Capital grew AUM from $40M to over $10B
“If you actually think about Thrive, yes, we're a venture firm, and we've grown a lot from the forty million of fund at the time to managing more than ten billion of AUM, but we've really done it without any rules.”
Zaki: Thrive Capital rarely meets startups for the first time during fundraising
“Because our lens is so narrow, we're rarely meeting a company for the first time when it's fundraising.”
Thrive Capital invests across pre-IPO, public equity, take-privates, and incubations
“We do pre-IPO rounds like Zoom or Zillow in the public markets, or spinning Vimeo out of I see you're taking Collector's Universe private, took that company private, and we actually build companies as well.”
Top VCs on a Cap Table Primarily Serve as Hiring Signals
“So, to start, I will say that I think it is very true that one of the most important things that great investors do for you is Is that they make other people want to join your company. And so for better or for worse, if you have miles from thrive or say benchm…”
O'Driscoll: Thrive Capital turned $2 billion into $6 billion
“Thrive has proven they can take two billion and turn it into six billion”
O'Driscoll: Thrive Capital doubled its Instagram investment in just days
“Thrive invested in Instagram, and like, literally four or five days later, it sold for a two X, right?”
Grimshaw: Josh Kushner combines hyperactive daily urgency with long-term patience
“The third one would be this again, The greatest gift of things you sort of carry with you as ways of being would be what I might call impatiently patient. Again, sort of a little, a duality that almost shouldn't exist which is why not now? Why not yesterday? L…”