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 79 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
Singlehurst: US Series C+ valuation multiples remain elevated despite post-2021 drop
“If you look at the data multiples in series C and beyond in the U.S. Are below twenty-twenty-one, but still at elevated levels.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford accepts liquidity risk if compensated on entry price
“On the sort of path to exit and path to liquidity, I think this is where Having a very long-term time horizon, like, we are willing to take a little bit more risk there, again, just provided we are being paid to take that risk.”
Singlehurst: ByteDance leads online ads and ranks third in Chinese e-commerce
“They're the market leader in online advertising in China. And I think at the moment they're about number three in e-commerce in China.”
Singlehurst: Public and Private Growth Investing Share Core Analytical Questions
“The core analytical questions I think are pretty similar. You have different sources of information, whether you're doing public or private, but like you're still looking for the same characteristics, right? Like if you make it very simple, you're still lookin…”
Singlehurst: SpaceX has an amazing management team beyond Elon Musk
“The thing that people forget about SpaceX is that there's an amazing management team there that is not Elon Musk.”
Singlehurst: Understanding business models over tech suits growth over venture
“There are people on my team who are much more interested in technology itself, and also love investing, love businesses, but my focus, and I think this is a focus that perhaps makes me better at, say, growth stage investing than I would be at venture stage inv…”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford requires 5x upside to double down on follow-ons
“So if you're going to double down on a company, then absolutely. Yeah. You need to see a five X on a reinvestment.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford Directs Carry to the Firm, Paying Partners via Bonuses
“So Cary goes to the firm. And then we remunerate people through, through bonuses, which is a synthetic carrier, I suppose.”
Singlehurst: Growth-stage venture-backed companies are at an all-time high
“There have never been so many venture backed companies that are sort of entering our part of the market.”
Peter Singlehurst: Growth equity capital availability is in an optimal golden mean
“But the final thing that I think is really important for like why now is an amazing time for growth equity investing is we're in this period of capital where there, and yes, taking the conversation we had earlier around there are some parts of the market that …”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford hires non-finance backgrounds to avoid narrow worldviews
“And so the reason we hire from a range of academic backgrounds is because we bring in people with lots of different perspectives. Perspectives on the world rather than hiring people who grew up dreaming of being fund managers where you might well end up with a…”
Singlehurst: Private investing gives public market managers a 5-10 year advantage
“They basically get a window into the future. They get to see the businesses that will be in the public markets over the next five or 10 years and just get insight and understanding and relationships with those companies that you could never get if you weren't …”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford's moat analyses look like dynamic meditative essays
“We are not trying to accurately nail down what a company's competitive advantage is or will be. Actually, if you look at the reports we write, the analysis that we do on competitive advantage, it looks more like a meditative, meditative essay than a set of ass…”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford usually leans toward continuing support during ambiguous struggles
“I think we probably fall more often on the side of continuing to back businesses and sometimes those are the best decisions we ever make, and sometimes they're the worst decisions we ever make but Founders and companies will more often find us leaning on the s…”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford avoids investing in M&A-focused companies
“Very few of our investments get acquired. And that's partly because we steer away from any company where we get a whiff of them potentially being bought.”
Singlehurst: High turnover prevents investment teams from developing true trust
“I think that just gives rise to a kind of level of trust and a level of working together that we couldn't have if this was a sort of organization where kind of people came in for a couple of years and then left. And if it was more of a kind of high turnover so…”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford investment teams do not use Bloomberg terminals
“You won't see a single Bloomberg terminal on the desks of investment teams.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford's one bankruptcy was late-stage diabetes company Intarsia
“So that company that I mentioned, the one that went bankrupt, was a business called Intarsia. It was a company that was developing a therapy for type two diabetes, and when we invested in it was a very, it was late stage in this, in the sense of being in phase…”
Singlehurst: High-Probability Investments Carry Far More Risk Than Investors Assume
“And that the things which appear to be low probability actually often have a much higher probability than you might think. And the things which you think have a very high probability, sometimes actually have a much lower probability than you might think.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford began researching and buying Tesla stock in 2012
“I was working on Tesla in 2000 and 12, and we went on to buy that for various strategies.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford passed on multiple private investment rounds in DoorDash
“One of the ones we really missed was DoorDash. We had a few opportunities to invest in that privately.”
Singlehurst: In-game purchases and digital distribution transformed gaming longevity
“Digital distribution and in-game purchases in video games completely changed the set of incentives for game developers and players and the potential longevity that could come from those businesses.”
Singlehurst: Intarsia Was Baillie Gifford's First Portfolio Company Bankruptcy
“Like, the first company we invested in that went bankrupt was a company called Intarsia. It was a, it was actually a biotech company that was developing a GLP-I. I mean, imagine if that company had managed to stay solvent, it would have been an astonishing inv…”
Singlehurst: Wise grew from $50M-$60M revenue at initial investment to multi-billions
“Wise was actually a little bit smaller than that when we first invested. I think it was probably about 50 or sixty million dollars in revenue. It's now a multi-billion dollar revenue business.”
Singlehurst: Bending Spoons achieved high profitability by avoiding overcapitalization
“I think that's an amazing example of this company that was largely bootstrapped Has created the most amazing scalable business model profitability like most companies would give an arm for. And they did it by sort of circumventing that, that world of over capi…”
Baillie Gifford is a shareholder in chip developer Tenstorrent
“We are shareholders in business, a company like Tens Torrents, which is working at the sort of the chip and the infrastructure layer.”
Singlehurst: Many 2024 Baillie Gifford Investments Were Already Profitable
“Last year, you know, quite a few of the companies we invested in, they were already profitable, or they were all turning profitable this year.”
Baillie Gifford reviewed 600 private rounds and made 11 investments last year
“So just as a team, we met a thousand companies. We looked at 600 private financing rounds. We did 65 first cuts of our diligence process. We did 30 deep dives, and we made 11 new investments.”
Baillie Gifford trims large private holdings to fund new growth investments
“So some of our large high profile companies that we have trimmed in the private markets and we've recycled that capital into new interesting high growth private companies.”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford evaluates deals via probability-tested upside scenarios
“We create scenarios in which we are deliberately contrived where a company can be a very high returning business and a high returning investment for our clients. We think about the probabilities or the things that would have to come to pass for that to be the …”
Singlehurst: Scottish Mortgage Fund is a century-old permanent pool
“We started, we set off doing that from within a permanent pool of capital that we've managed for the last 114 years. Called the Scottish mortgage funds, confusingly named. It's got nothing to do with mortgages. It's a hundred year plus permanent pool of capita…”