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 9,132 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 128 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
Podjarny: Everyone who tested Cognition's Devin says it doesn't really work
“From everybody that I talked to that has tried Devon, they all think it's really cool and that it doesn't really work.”
Villig: VCs refused to invest in Bolt at $25M ARR
“We probably got to the point of doing about twenty-five million ARR, growing multiple hundred percent a year, and still no VCs wanted to invest.”
Grimm: The West lacks munitions capacity for a prolonged nation-state war
“The US right now does not have the production capacity, nor does the UK, nor does Australia, kind of the West at large, to make enough munitions to fully equip a prolonged nation on nation conflict.”
Vlad Tenev: Robinhood received a $3B deposit demand during GameStop saga
“We got this we got this bill in the automated clearinghouse system for three billion dollars.”
Many enterprise customers say Microsoft Copilot is falling flat
“Look at like Microsoft Copilot, I mean, Many customers are saying it's falling flat. Like, it's just not delivering the value that was advertised.”
Kant: The vast majority of interesting open AI research comes from China
“The research that still gets published openly, right, that doesn't get held back, that is most interesting, is all coming out of China in vast spades and majorities.”
Tang: SHEIN survey data shows only 10% throw away clothes after one use
“We have the data to, the survey to say that's incorrect. But that doesn't mean that people don't throw it away. There are still that 10% of people, they still do.”
Chirls: Junior partners at big VCs are compensated on deployment speed
“Your junior partner at these big firms, sort of like a VP at Goldman, they are compensated and promoted based on money velocity, not money returns.”
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.”
Chirls: VCs can raise new funds by matching NASDAQ returns
“The returns need to just look like about the NASDAQ. It just needs to be, it just needs to be roughly in line with the NASDAQ for them to continue to raise. And by the way, that's true for all of venture. That's true for all of venture, which again is why, lik…”
Chirls: No VC firm has ever determined a startup's success or failure
“I have never found that any investment we've made ever, or really any, I've never seen any VC Be truly the difference between success and failure of a company. Period.”
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: No AI model has meaningfully surpassed GPT-4 in 18 months
“And what we've seen in the nearly year and a half since GPT-IV came out is that we haven't really had models That have surpassed it in a meaningful way.”
Narayanan: Fears of spontaneous AI consciousness have no basis in reality
“When we look at the way that AI is architected today, that kind of fear has no basis in reality. Maybe one day in the future, you know, people are going to build AI systems where that becomes at least somewhat possible. And we should, you know, we should have …”
Maguire: Multiple people tried to get me fired from Sequoia Capital
“Many, many different people tried to get me fired in many different ways.”
Maguire: Climate activists targeted Sequoia over Doug Leone's Trump support
“In my Sequoia inbox, the last 12 hours probably 20 Like climate people have emailed most Sequoia partners saying that like Doug Leone is problematic for supporting Trump and that Trump has anti-climate positions and they don't know how they can support, like h…”
Shaun Maguire: A non-Sequoia VC firm mandated backing female founders yearly
“There is a venture fund that I know very well. It is not Sequoia that, For a period of time had a policy that every investor was to boast to back at least one female founder per year.”
Asparouhov: Founders Fund outperformed Sequoia, a16z, and Benchmark with fewer debacles
“If I were to look over the past sort of five years, I think generally the Founders Fund decision making has led to Generally superior returns and also less gaffes in various ways, whether it's the, you know, sort of FTX type, you know, sort of fraud debacles, …”
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: Value of Scaling Compute and Data for LLMs Is Flattening
“I think that we are seeing the flattening off of the value of just adding more compute and more data to language models.”
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 …”
Luan: Leading AI companies are already lobbying for regulatory capture
“I think I think the move to go pull up the ladder behind them is already beginning. And I think that lawmakers don't really understand this technology at all. And so their default instinct is sort of listened to the most credible source. And usually those cred…”
Eisenberg: US Nvidia chip bans have not meaningfully slowed China's AI
“The U.S. Put a banner on Nvidia chips going to China. I don't sense that it slowed China down in a meaningful way.”
Eisenberg: China is 10 years ahead of US in TikTok AI psyops
“I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. On AI and psyops using TikTok. I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. In sophistication of how to manipulate the minds of young people.”
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 …”
In-office SDRs significantly outperform remote peers, says Ashley Kelly
“We pivoted about nine months ago, I want to say, and started hiring in office more. And you do see the in office SDRs perform much higher than the ones that are remote, especially for outbound, just because there's so many learnings sitting next to each other.”
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.”
Suster: SoftBank, Tiger, Coatue, and Insight marked 60% of 2021-2022 unicorns
“Of the 1260% were marked by four firms, ok? SoftBank, Tiger, Coachu, and Insight.”
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…”
No Net Value Has Been Created in E-Commerce Over Five Years
“E-commerce, there's been probably net, you know, no value created in five years.”
Stephens: Top Startups Excel at Every Stage Without Late Unlocks
“If you go back and you look at the best companies in any portfolio, they were kind of the best companies at every stage. Like they were incredibly awesome at A, they were incredibly awesome at B, they were incredibly awesome at C. Very rarely do you see a comp…”
Stebbings: Two VC funds carried the same startup at $800M vs $10.2B
“I was looking at one today and one was valued at eight hundred million and the other person had it at 10.2 billion.”
Harry Stebbings Self-Censors 90% of His Thoughts Fearing Woke Backlash
“I don't say 90% of what I think because of the backlash that would come from the one percent woke. I think every CEO that I speak to have on the show is the same.”
Lonsdale: China Controls TikTok's Algorithms to Brainwash Tens of Millions of Americans
“Yeah, I would force them to divest of Tik Tok. I think that, I think that's fine for Americans own Tik Tok. I think right now, China controls the Tik Tok algorithms. I don't care if the guy's based in Singapore, some of the data's here. It's very clear China c…”
Lemkin: Emerging VCs Promised Unrealistic 8x Net Returns to LPs
“Emerging managers for the last four years thought it was so much easier. Every emerging manager promised their LPs eight X net.”
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…”
Levels shares meeting notes and performance reviews internally with all staff
“We share basically everything, including all of our one-on-ones and team meetings are all shared within the company. So you can see all of the one-on-ones between every other person at the company performance is shared within the pump within the company. So yo…”
Series A and B startups cannot hire top-tier growth leaders full-time
“They're, like, of the one 20, a third is, like, semi-retired in VC and other things. A third is in, like, great walls, like Luke, and you're not gonna poach Luke from, like, Shopify, right? And there's a third, like me, who's, like, doing, like consultancy and…”
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”
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.”
Prince: Almost all successful startup founders begin with broad, ambitious visions
“It is very hard to find an actual startup founder that, that started out saying, we're going to do this small niche thing, and then it grew into this, is this big task. Almost everyone early on, you know, it's why founders, you know, can come across as so, so …”
Higher Founder NPS Inversely Correlates With VC DPI Returns
“There is an inverse correlation between the NPS of the manager and the DPI provided. Most often, the higher the NPS, the lower the DPI, and vice versa.”
Stebbings: Multiple VC general partners earn over $10M in annual base salary
“I have many friends who are doing like 10 plus a year base.”
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.”
Stebbings: High-valuation pre-seed rounds by former VPs are my worst investments
“But like, my worst performing, and I've done a 150 investments now, the worst performing ones are always the stellar VP that comes out of the stellar company and raises 10 on 40 as the pre-seed. They are always the ones which slowly meander to either a bad hac…”
Rick Zullo says he hasn't taken a startup pitch in eight years
“I haven't taken a pitch in eight years because I think pitching is bullshit because I think it's all about sales, salesmanship and rather than actually like me understanding your understanding of a company.”
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…”