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
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.”
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…”
Remote VC Investments Are Unraveling Faster Than In-Person Deals
“We see a load of VCs who made a load of investments without ever meeting the company and they are unraveling faster than ever now. And that is in large part because they didn't spend the time in person.”
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”
Wittenborn: The US has a higher caliber of venture investors than Europe
“That being said, I've met many more investors that I'm impressed with in the U.S. Than in Europe, right?”
Mostaque: 50% of All Code on GitHub Is AI-Generated
“50% of all code on GitHub is AI generated now.”
Delangue: AI Is Far From Becoming Autonomous or Humanity-Destroying
“I believe at the same time, we are very far from a world where AI is autonomous. And has conscience and is taking over the world and destroying humanity. I think this is more fear that is very sci-fi driven that we're very far from.”
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.”
Somerville: VC managers with most aggressive TVPI valuations need capital most
“And the ones that are the most aggressive in TVPI carrying value Are the ones that need the capital the most versus the ones that have been more conservative.”
Tisch: A tier-three VC attempted to personally bankrupt a startup founder
“I saw a VC try to personally bankrupt a founder.”
Cagan: Almost all innovative tech products come from domain outsiders
“My evidence for that is just look across our industry, across time, that all the innovative products, almost all of them, came from people and teams that had no real domain experience.”
Stebbings: Venture funds are refusing to write down inflated portfolio valuations
“What I'm seeing is no one's marking their books down, and they're keeping them all at the incredibly inflated prices, and claiming that that's still how it is.”
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.”
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.”
Basecamp is in a significantly better place following its political discussion ban
“I can tell you the company's in a significantly better place.”
Almost all innovative products are built by teams without domain expertise
“Look across our industry, across time, at all the innovative products, almost all of them came from people and teams that had no real domain experience.”
Harrison: Venture capitalists are avoiding self-criticism following the market crash
“I thought that it would be more humbling for more people I think that there's been this sort of, like, suspension of criticism. Like, people are desperately trying to avoid having to come to grips with what they did, basically, like, with what a lot of people …”
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.”
Söderström: Spotify has experienced negative growth and lost users at least twice
“I've seen Spotify have negative growth, actually losing users and contracting at least twice.”
Stebbings: Only one of 15 venture boards he joined provided value
“I've sat on many boards. I've only sat on one that has actually provided any value at all out of about 15.”
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.”
Samani: Tokens help distribute wealth rather than concentrate it
“Without question, tokens help distribute wealth.”
Fadell: iPod's original strategy was driving Mac sales, which failed
“We're going to sell the iPod. It's going to be so awesome that people will buy Macs so they could use their iPod. We're going to sell more Macs because they're going to need to buy one to use an iPod that they're going to have to have. Well, guess what? The fi…”
Fabrice Grinda auto-signed all investment legal documents unread for 15 years
“For 15, actually, probably for 15 years, every document that was ever sent to me, legal document that was sent to me, SPA, Anything like companies selling, et cetera. I auto signed, or my, actually, my virtual assistant in the Philippines, who had my signature…”
Fialkow: Distributors refused to buy 'The Dissident' over Saudi fears
“Couldn't get the film sold. It was one of the best films that we ever made, and no film company would buy it. No film company would distribute it, because they honestly were all scared of the Saudis. And it taught me a lesson. Right after winning an Academy Aw…”
Sacca: Travis Kalanick was ousted by 13 Uber managers, not VCs
“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter and said, dude, you gotta stay out of the company. You know, that's really the only force that Silicon Valley leader…”
Holland: Queensland government refused to pay Tow $17 million owed
“The government didn't want to pay for about seventeen million dollars worth of tows and impounds that we did for them.”
Holland: Stripe never engaged in mob attacks or criminality against Fast
“I have never once witnessed a mob attack by Stripe or any sort of organized criminality of any type, I'll tell you.”
Holland: Bolt raised checkout funding using legacy fraud product revenue
“And what happened was that revenue from the last couple of years wasn't for one click checkout. It was for their sort of old fraud checkout form thing, right? And, but they were able to raise a lot of money last year, now selling one click checkout, save one c…”
Vivas: Excess Venture Capital Is Funding Lower-Quality Founders
“Right now there is a lack of high quality entrepreneurs and there's an excess of capital. And so people, investors are trying to fund whatever they can.”
Whatnot Operates Without Product Managers, Jira, or Ticketing Systems
“Because we're in a world where we basically don't have PMs, there's so many decisions and bits of ownership that engineering is required to take control of. We don't have JIRA. No one writes tickets.”
Friedberg: Late-stage VCs reinvest in existing portfolio to delay write-downs
“A lot of VCs, as you know, have marked up their investments and marked up their books of Private companies significantly over the last couple of years with these later stage rounds and ballooning values, and they don't want to take a write down. So they're mor…”
Cuban: Hospitals lie about losing eight to nine percent on Medicare
“It's a shit show. You know, you don't need, you know, all these, building all these new buildings and buying all this real estate, and there's no, you know, lying about your cost to do something. Oh, our Medicare, you know, we provide Medicare. We lose eight, …”
Chris Sacca claims Lowercarbon Capital's current internal rate of return is 95%
“The multiples are already there. I think IRR is 95% right now, and so so we're already getting fucking rich doing it”
Gurley: Claims of Disrupting Traditional Venture Capital Have Been Proven False
“I think this whole notion that you're going to disrupt and fundamentally take over the business has just been proven false over and over again. AngelList is awesome, but it's not 20% of the industry, you know. Andreessen said, we're going to completely, you kn…”
Sacca: Commercial nuclear fusion is far closer than 30 years away
“I can assure you it is much, much more near term than 30 years imminent, maybe now, who knows, but it's been fucking fascinating to see these accelerating curves”
Amazon and Walmart lose trillions annually in inventory waste
“If you look into the inventory losses and the wastage costs of the likes of Walmart, or even an Amazon, or like normal supermarket chain, it's in the trillions of how much they're losing on a yearly basis of like food and other items that are actually being so…”
George: Aggressive crossover venture funds actually generate good returns
“First, I think there's a little bit of a misperception in the market about some of those firms who have been more aggressive recently. Their returns are pretty good. They've done a good job.”
Ek: US tech ecosystem outside Silicon Valley and Seattle lags Europe
“If you take Silicon Valley and Seattle out of it, the US actually would be worse than Europe if you took those two out of it.”
AngelList data shows more check-writers leads to more founders and innovation
“Is that when you have more VCs in the ecosystem, you actually do get more innovation, which I know is against what most VCs think, but we're actually seeing it play out in our data that when you have more people writing checks, you actually end up getting more…”
Cyan Banister: High taxes and safety issues drive tech exodus from California
“There's a reason startups aren't staying. There's a reason that people are fleeing. That's because of San Francisco and frankly, all of California, you can only tax people so much. And then eventually they're just like, gosh, every dollar I'm making, I take ho…”
Cyan Banister: Gun ownership and support for self-defense are surging in SF
“If anything, the silver lining of all of this is that there's more gun ownership and more people who are pro home and self-defense than ever before.”
Stebbings: Multi-Stage Funds Pay $40M Seed Valuations Versus Standard $15M
“Bluntly, if multi-stage funds right now is the way that I see it, it's like completely price insensitive. I'm doing deals now where I end up not doing them because bluntly, they'll pay forty million pre when everyone else is paying 15, because they just don't …”
Luckey: Over 90% of Silicon Valley supports the U.S. military
“I would bet that upwards of 90% of Silicon Valley is very supportive of the military, and the perception that it's not is a symptom of another problem, which is that a very small group of radicals have managed to hijack the narrative and convince everyone that…”
Gumroad reached $10M revenue years after Kleiner Perkins wrote it off
“Gumroad, it took me seven, eight, nine years to get to a place where Gumroad kind of is considered, like, you know, we're at ten million in revenue doubling every year, but that's because of a macroeconomic shift, namely COVID, that just happened out of the bl…”
Venture Funds With Over Seven Partners See Returns Plummet
“I don't think venture firms scale at all at headcount. One of the biggest things I've learned in the last 25 years is that team size is essential between two and five partners max. If you get to seven, you're at your limit. If you had more than seven partners,…”