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 6,239 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
Chirls: VC is a Ponzi scheme guaranteeing 20% fees regardless of performance
“The venture Ponzi is you raise a fund, you take two percent management fees for 10 years guaranteed, it does not matter how well that fund does, and you've taken 20% of that fund and put it in your pocket.”
Kolter: AI models contain an unpatchable buffer overflow vulnerability
“This is sort of like these models have a buffer overflow in all of them that we know about, and most importantly, that we don't know how to patch and fix. We don't know how to fix this yet with models”
Narayanan: Restricting global access to AI models will fail
“Even if one country decides that models should be closed, the odds of getting every country to enact that kind of, ah, ah, rule are, you know, just vanishingly small. So if our approach to safety with AI is going to be premised on ensuring that quote unquote b…”
Peets rejects sales reps unwilling to make a 30-minute commute
“If a sales inside salesperson is not willing to make the sacrifice of a 30 minute commute every day to further his own career, I don't want that person.”
Mollick: Open-source AI safety guardrails will be breached immediately
“And I do think that open models will immediately have their guardrails breached.”
Grady: 10 years of Sequoia data shows consensus doesn't drive startup outcomes
“So we have actual data on this going back to 20 14 where we started recording the votes numerically on every single investment. So we have about 10 years worth, which believe it or not is not conclusive because there are so few outliers that have emerged even …”
Matt Clifford: Local Councils Blocked US Tech Giants' UK Data Center Investments
“And the number one issue that these companies had, and I'm really not exaggerating, was we want to invest billions and billions of dollars to build compute infrastructure in the UK, and your local county councils in the middle of nowhere keep vetoing our data …”
Eisenberg predicts more private equity software investments will see Pluralsight-style zeroes
“I'm not concerned. I'm certain. It's happening.”
Microsoft Board Approved $1B for OpenAI Despite Having No Clear Product
“The very first OpenAI Microsoft deal was, you know, Satya and Kevin Scott brought to the Microsoft board. We want to put a billion dollars into the investment in this vehicle. From a five one C three that doesn't really have any particular plans at making its …”
Siroker: Top VC funds will break ownership minimums for hot startups
“Yeah, the best investors benchmark and recent, they will invest less than their supposed minimums for the right company.”
Mathrubootham: No enterprise software company has successfully transitioned down to SMB
“Oh, start high and go down never, never works. In the history of software, you can tell me which company has succeeded in starting at enterprise and actually winning in SMB. It's not happened. But if you look at many companies, including Salesforce and Freshwo…”
Billy Hult predicts Donald Trump will win the presidential election
“I think he will, and I, you know, it starts with he can, but I think it ends with he will.”
Rabois: Donald Trump will not win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination
“You know, as you've probably seen on Twitter, I don't even believe he's gonna be the Republican nominee for president.”
Rabois: Ramp will beat Brex and become 10x more valuable
“Ramp is absolutely going to be the winner. Probably will be two, three, four, five, 10 times more valuable.”
Tomaino: Donald Trump will run for president and win from a jail cell
“I think he'll be running and winning from a jail cell as well. The entertaining, the most entertaining outcome is is the most likely, right?”
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…”
Shebat: Traba requires 12-hour in-office workdays Monday through Thursday
“So what it means in practice at Trava is we're all committed to at least 12 hour days, Monday through Thursday. Friday, we're working late, but people do tend to go out on, on Friday night. But it's an in-office culture”
Mostaque: Only 5 or 6 foundation model companies will exist in 3-5 years
“I think that there's only going to be five or six foundation model companies in the world in three years, five years. I think it's going to be us, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft OpenAI, and Meta and Apple probably are the ones that train these models.”
Mostaque: No AI models available today will be used in a year
“The reality is no models that are out today will be used in a year.”
Kaden: Seed-stage startup valuations will decrease in the near future
“I think seed valuations are going to go down.”
Prince: The story of eBay starting with Beanie Babies is PR BS
“So, so the eBay example, you're like eBay started with Beanie Babies. So I've talked to the founders of eBay about that. That's complete and utter PR retrospective BS.”
Eisenberg: Mark Rowan asked UPenn donors to withhold checks until leaders are fired
“Mark Rowan wrote, wrote yesterday that he's calling on pen to fire two people, otherwise he's telling people to hold their checkbooks.”
Maples: High-Priced Seed Deals Like Character.ai Won't Return 100x
“Expensive, high-priced investment, and hopefully it works, but you're not going to make a thousand times your money on that deal. You're probably not going to make a hundred times your money, even in the best of circumstances.”
Emad Mostaque: No Current AI Models Will Be Used in a Year
“The reality is no models that are out today will be used in a year.”
Socher: Bing and Google copied You.com's AI chat features
“Bing and Google copy, you know, what we have launched last late last year with you chat. And you know, they may have worked on it before, like some people, you know, claim, oh, for, I mean, we've also met the prompt engineering in 2018, but like, they've copie…”
Socher: Prompt engineering was invented at Salesforce Research
“When we invented prompt engineering, we actually did it at Salesforce research when I was chief scientist there.”
Stebbings: Threads will stall at 5M DAU while Twitter grows
“I would say threads does not work. Maybe it teases along at five million DAU with hardcore small numbers. And I would say Twitter has modest growth to Two 75, 300 with election spikes.”
Lemkin predicts 26 tech companies will IPO in H2 2024
“And I may have the timing all wrong. I'm too optimistic, but I think there's 26 of them, which is one a week. I think there's 26 good companies at 200 that can IPO in 26 weeks in the back average.”
Claure: Pitching Steve Jobs Created the Mobile Phone Trade-In Model
“So back then, I used to own Brightstar. And I had an idea of how could Apple actually double their sales. And after many emails to Steve Jobs, which he wrote me back, no interest. One day he got tired of everybody pinging him that he had to meet me. So he agre…”
Epic Systems Spent Millions Lobbying to Block US EHR Interoperability Laws
“Epic spent billions to millions to try to block, but it finally was after, I think, 20 years of battle was passed”
Mostaque: 50% of All Code on GitHub Is AI-Generated
“50% of all code on GitHub is AI generated now.”
Kohli: A tech startup M&A acquisition spree will not happen
“The appetite to Just do rapid set of acquisitions in this market. I don't think it's going to happen. And then in the private markets the key question that's going to come up is what price do you believe? Right? Meaning if you're a private company and you've r…”
Carney: Recent Regional Banking Failures Put a Silver Bullet Into Stablecoins
“I think this probably puts a, you know, a silver bullet into stable coins.”
Kohli predicts all 15-minute delivery startups will go bust
“A hundred percent. Because the cost of capital goes up. And when the cost of capital goes up, you can't invest into launching new cities. And you can't invest into what typically ends up being the J curve of this type of a business where you end up losing mone…”
Tunguz: DeSantis will win the Republican primary over Trump
“I don't think so. I think, I bet DeSantis wins. I think it will be tough for him to circumnavigate all the legal troubles, and I wonder if the RNC doesn't get involved.”
Braun: No Industry Peers Backed Taylor Swift's Claims Against Me
“Was that no one else said it. You know, a lot of times when someone comes out and says, oh, this whole time, this person's been this way, there's an onslaught of everyone coming out and being like, I agree. I agree. And no one did that. You know, no one actual…”
Braun: Jeff Bezos Created More Jobs During COVID Than Anyone Else
“Jeff Bezos created more jobs in COVID than any human being on the planet.”
Stebbings: 97% of Capital Invested in Uber Will Not Return 1x
“97% of the money that's gone into Uber will not return one X, just given the quantum of money.”
Jordan: Amazon was the only profitable e-commerce business due to low defensibility
“Early on, I was a big proponent of that e-commerce was going to clean the clock of the department stores. I got the thesis half right. Share did shift. No one could make money other than Amazon because of there's just no defensibility, no barriers to entry.”
Lemkin: Venture funding and valuations will never return to 2021 peaks
“For founders, you have to understand that will never lead to a return of 2021. Never.”
One-third of Basecamp employees quit within two weeks of political talk ban
“Ultimately about a third of the company quit in a matter of is it a week or two.”
Olteanu: AI foundational models will commoditize like compute power
“Foundational models. I think they will get commoditized like compute, and I think the companies who deliver the last mile will be the ones to capture most value.”
Ilishayev: GoPuff will achieve full company profitability by 2024
“That balance for us at least meant that we're profitable in 20, 24.”
Singerman predicts Founders Fund's $200M Anduril check will turn into $2B
“Enduro is going to be an extremely valuable company. I am, there's, yes, quite sure of that. We are not going to lose that two hundred million dollar check. That two hundred million dollars will turn into, you know, two billion.”
Emil Michael predicts Uber's Postmates and Careem acquisitions will be total write-downs
“I think we, instead of buying Kareem in the Middle East, Postmates, Jump Bike I think all of those will be a hundred percent write downs. Those are some of the worst acquisitions done in tech. Maybe Postmates may be the worst acquisition done tech in the last …”
Steve Jobs told Dropbox it was 'a feature, not a product' in 2009
“He was like, well, you guys are a feature, not a product. And now we're gonna have to like compete with you and kill you and you don't have distribution and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.”
Monte Carlo reached $1B valuation and 80 GTM employees without HR
“One funny thing about Monte Carlo is we managed to get to like a billion plus valuation. We managed to get to an 80 person go to market team, and we still hadn't hired a recruiter or a head of HR.”
Fadell: Remote employees lacking face time will be fired first during downturns
“Two in, especially now in a financial disaster that we have on our hands, who's going to be the first one to get fired? The ones who don't come into work are the ones who do come into work and have some face time and show value beyond just coming to a meeting.”