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 19 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
Rampell: The best software companies have hostages, not customers
“The best companies have hostages, not customers.”
Alex Rampell: Asset classes require being a large generalist or small specialist
“My view is most asset classes, you either have to be a large generalist or a small specialist.”
Rampell: Wanting $50M Is Insufficient Motivation for Large VC Funds
“The motivation has to be beyond just, like, I want to make fifty million dollars, because if that's the motivation, that's great motivation. You know, I'm a capitalist. Like, we live in a capitalist society. If that's the only motivation, like, it's not going …”
Rampell: Startups fail in EHRs because new hospital creation is too slow
“If the rate of company creation is very low, like, if I build a better EHR, like, electronic health records company it's just not gonna work because the rate of new hospital creation is too slow.”
Rampell: Giving Founders $1B Results in Bad Outcomes 99% of Time
“If I give you a billion dollars, what will you do with it? And 99 times out of a hundred, the answer is going to be bad news.”
Rampell: Permanent systems of record outperform hyper-growth AI wrappers long term
“I would much rather have a slower growing, permanent system of record that will never get ripped out than the fastest growing thing on the planet that has 9000 competitors that are all built and lovable by 17 year olds.”
Rampell: Corporate development teams execute transactions, they don't buy companies
“You don't want to spend time with the corp dev people because most people are like, oh, corp dev buys companies. No, they don't. They execute transactions.”
Startups Must Get Distribution Before Incumbents Get Innovation
“The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup can get the distribution before the incumbent can build the innovation.”
Proprietary Data Gives Big Tech an Unbeatable AI Recruiting Advantage
“It's also an HR advantage, because if you are the smartest person from your PhD program at Stanford, and you like machine learning and AI, where do you want to work? Well, you could go work for some startup, where they also downloaded TensorFlow, but they have…”
Rampell: Startup versus incumbent battle is distribution versus innovation speed
“The battle of every startup versus incumbent is whether the startup gets the distribution before the incumbent gets the innovation, right?”
Corporate Incumbents Counter-Strike Startups More Effectively Than Silicon Valley Admits
“I actually do think that the ability of large incumbents to go mount a counter-revolutionary strike is Is actually not as atypical as a lot of people in Silicon Valley mock them for.”
Alex Rampell: Back founders who materialize labor, capital, and customers
“I think you want to invest in people that can materialize labor, capital, and customers.”
Rampell: Winning Top VC Deals Makes Venture Capital Fundamentally a Sales Job
“The entire job of venture capital is to find, pick, and win investments. If they're good investments, the winning is very, very hard. And the winning therefore goes to the person that is, like, the best, like, you have to sell. Like, this is a sales job.”
Rampell: Top VC deals differ from PE because founders choose investors
“A lot of the best deals will go to the best firms. Like that's, what's very different about venture capital than like private equity. Like if you and I are trying to take a public company private, You know, you're KKR and I'm Blackstone. We're both trying to, …”
Rampell: Previous Valuation Is Always the First Question in M&A
“Because I will tell you a hundred percent of the time in every M&A conversation, in every fundraising conversation, the number one question, the first question is what was your last round price?”
Rampell: Big venture funds require high initial ownership due to dilution
“In order to make the math work for a big fund, you have to have high ownership, and you know that your ownership will get Depleted or will get diluted over time as option pool expansions happen, even if you take your pro rata in every single successive round.”
Modern Tech Incumbents Aggressively Acquire Disruptive Threats Early
“The newer companies are being much, much more aggressive about finding the potential disruptive threat and taking them out early.”
Data Network Effects Function Like Database Writes and Reads
“Think of it as a database with writes and reads. Those are the two actions that you typically perform in a database. As the number of writes goes up, the value of each read goes up as well, because the value of a read initially is close to nil, but as the numb…”
Point-of-Transaction Ads Outperform Facebook and Google Advertising
“What's the best place to advertise in the world? It's actually not when somebody's driving on the freeway and sees a big ad. It's not on Facebook. It's not on Google. It's often when people are in, they're actually buying something because, you know, the best …”