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 94 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Ohanian: NWSL will be bigger than MLS in 10 years
“That's why I think the NWSL will be bigger than the MLS in 10 years. Because we can tell a story of excellence in women's football in America using the NWSL. But not the MLS.”
Ohanian: Yates Report scandal was best thing for NWSL overhaul
“But it was actually the best thing that could have happened, because. Look, it brought, sunlight is a great disinfectant. And so it cleansed, it really forced the league to overhaul everything.”
Ohanian: Female athletes outperform male athletes at content creation and storytelling
“And so they're so much more sophisticated about storytelling, about content creation. And so when you give them the opportunity, they are They're out, outperforming the men, and it, it's a different, it almost looks more like an agency model built in to the te…”
Ohanian: Major League Soccer (MLS) is an overpriced sports league
“But I don't think, there are definitely some leagues that I think are overpriced. I'd say the MLS is one that's overpriced.”
Alexis Ohanian: Early NWSL owners treated franchises as charity
“I started talking to existing owners. And I found this very weird dynamic because all of them Basically had gotten the team because they had a daughter or a granddaughter who liked soccer, and they thought, oh, this will be nice for them. And they really thoug…”
Ohanian used GP 'silver bullet' to invest in Angel City FC
“And there are some companies that look like that, but then there are others, and I'd put those in the categories, where we needed to build a release valve to basically silver bullet, and just say, even though everyone is vehemently against doing this deal, you…”
Ohanian Gave Angel City FC Founders Majority Ownership Without Capital Contribution
“I actually made sure the three founders Natalie, Cara, and Julie actually had a majority of the ownership.”
Ohanian: Women's sports is the most brand-safe platform for advertisers
“Now in the world of sports, those conversations are so much easier because there's nothing more brand safe for these advertisers than sports, and specifically women's sports.”
Ohanian: Live sports is the one entertainment pillar AI won't disrupt
“I am very long in this age of AI on sports, obviously, because I, that's the one pillar of entertainment that is not going to be upended. Like, we will never want to see robots playing football.”
Alexis Ohanian labels Dan Snyder one of the worst sports team owners ever
“And again, one of the worst owners of all time.”
Ohanian: Tech Will Drive a 90/10 Power Law in Sports Franchise Valuation
“I think it will be a power law, but even in the big four in America, I think you'll see a power law where maybe it's ninety-ten even where so much of the value is going to very few of the teams because we know that's what software does.”
Ohanian: 80% of TV and movies will lose attention market share
“I think it is, let's go back to that Pareto, eighty-twenty action. I think 80% of movie, television, that kind of scripted, created, even non-scripted, that sort of entertainment slips.”
Alexis Ohanian: Top creators can build massive businesses around commodity products
“As long as Jimmy's happy, as long as you're making something you truly stand behind, I'm long on it all day. Even if it's a fucking commodity, right? You can break through with something that is solved in terms of making it.”
Ohanian: Beast Industries Is Worth at Least $5 Billion
“For sure. At least that. Today, at least that.”
Ohanian: Resigned from Reddit board in 2020 requesting Black successor
“You know, after the murder of George Floyd and really thinking about sort of the role that I want to play in the world, I realized I needed to step down from the board of Reddit. I did that in June and you know, was very relieved to see that they honored my re…”
Ohanian: Individual investor brands will supersede institutional venture firm brands
“Individuals are starting to supersede the brands of firms in a way that we're seeing across industries, right? Substack. I've got a friend of mine who left her job at fortune, you know, a great publication to start a newsletter and she's already making more mo…”
Ohanian: VC deals split between consensus access plays and contentious nascent bets
“There's the like intelligence test type deals where, you know, it's a repeat founder, really strong, obvious market. Maybe they're just taking a second swing at the thing they had done before. So you know, they're capable. You've worked with them before. Like …”
Ohanian: VC diversity is a capitalism issue, not a social justice one
“I would like to see more people doing this job who don't look like you and me, Harry, because I want to make more money because that's actually how we're going to have better things. Like, and this isn't like a social justice argument. This is a, we have 24 ho…”
Ohanian: Early-stage startups should only write code and talk to users
“Because the only two things they should be doing is either writing code or getting slash talking to users.”
Ohanian: US men's soccer has never won anything on a global stage
“American soccer is defined by women. And for non-American listeners, you have to understand, our men are terrible. All right. They've never won anything on a global stage.”
Ohanian: Not securing board control of Angel City FC was a mistake
“I didn't insist on any kind of board, and then as the board got developed with successive rounds, I was just fine with actually not having control, which was a mistake.”
Angel City FC made hundreds of thousands in merch before launch
“She said we did, I think it was a couple 100,000 dollars in revenue. That first year with fake merch, not fake merch, but like merch devoid of a logo with no team or players ever having played”
Ohanian: Sports lacking viral social media highlights missing long-term value
“If you can't show me a sport where the highlights go viral on social media, the freest market of ideas that has ever existed in the world, You might have some stuff missing, and I don't know what the there is, but there's something missing.”
Diamond League championship prize was only $30,000 in 2023
“Last year the top prize for the Diamond League was 30,000 dollars, like, the championship, and that's a solo sport, so you have to pay everything out of pocket.”
Ohanian: Angel City FC Will Become a Billion-Dollar Franchise
“Like I said, I, the reason I saw this opportunity in 2019 was I thought we could build a billion dollar franchise. So talk to me after that.”
Ohanian: English women's football league is still below NWSL level
“There's some great teams here, obviously, in England but that league's catching up, but it's still not, not at the level of the NWSL.”
Ohanian: Private equity entry into sports leagues is necessary and positive
“I think it's a good thing. On the whole, to have more dollars and more sophisticated managers involved I get the, there is this tension of, like, what are their incentives long term? And I think always gonna be some balance, but there's only so many billionair…”
Ohanian: Sports Teams and VC Firms Should Operate as Software Companies
“In the same way that I think venture capital should be run like a tech company, I think sports teams should have, they should be building software. They should be software companies.”
Ohanian: Legacy Sports Broadcast Protections Will Collapse Within 5-10 Years
“Probably on the order of the next five to 10 years, you'll start to see them just topple.”
Ohanian: 90% of derivative music will lose in the attention economy
“But imagine maybe even 90% of music that's created is so either derivative or pop or one hit wonder. Like, it's just that, that's the stuff that's gonna be the biggest loser.”
Alexis Ohanian turned $10,000 in pre-launch Ethereum into $17.1 million
“It would be Ethereum at the I think it was the pre-token sale, the token sale for Ethereum. So the pre-launch token sale. 17.1000000. Today's prices. 10,000 dollars.”
Alexis Ohanian: Initialized could have returned Fund I by selling Zenefits
“I should have sold, we got, we could have returned the fund once over in whenever the fidelity markdown was, like literally putting an SPV together to sell Zenefits and then the markdown, the fidelity markdown happened and it killed the SPV. That was one, that…”
Alexis Ohanian regrets doubling down on Clubhouse instead of selling
“Oh, Clubhouse. That's when I should have sold. Should have sold Clubhouse. I had like the series A and I remember when that multi-billion dollar round came up, I actually put more money in because I'm an idiot.”
Ohanian: Being an Elite Athlete Is Much Harder Than VC or Tech
“Being a professional athlete at that level is much harder than the work that we do, so I get that, like, it's just harder work as well”
Ohanian: Beauty and fashion underinvest in sports because male sports lack fit
“The two big industries. Are beauty and fashion, which spend a ton of money on brand marketing, but don't spend it on sports yet because men don't really drive that value.”
Ohanian: Universal basic income is necessary to prevent existential democratic threats
“I do think things like universal basic income and whatnot are going to have to come up more and more in this conversation because well, okay, it's an existential threat to our democracy.”
Ohanian: Online community relationships are often stronger than offline ones
“Online communities matter more to people than offline ones, and the relationships that people make, what I mean is, like, the community, like, capital C, like, you're my community, you're my people, you're my tribe, I want to hug you, like, people, like, that …”
Ohanian: Major social networks are actively being unbundled by Gen Z founders
“We're already seeing it. Absolutely. And I'm talking to founders every day. Gen Z founders who are like the way smarter versions of me graduating college. They've seen the mess that we've made over the last 15 years. They are actively building better platforms…”
Ohanian: Most seed investors lack founder and operational experience
“Turns out there were not a ton of people doing this kind of early stage seed investing who were willing to do the work or even could do the work. Because they just hadn't been founders before. They hadn't been makers or doers before.”
Ohanian: Investors with founder experience yield better venture results
“And the ones who can do that best are the ones who have actually done this stuff before, because they're coming at it from a place of being a practitioner. So there's automatic empathy. There's automatic respect from both parties. And I think it just yields, i…”
Ohanian: Kindness in venture capital is a smart long-term investment strategy
“A hundred percent. Yes, because kindness is a long-term investment, and if you're a smart investor, you are thinking about the long-term. Kindness does not mean being weak or being dumb. It just means looking at the world as though it is not this purely zero-s…”
Ohanian: Sports clubs must continuously market their players off the pitch
“And so part of the job of a club is to then tell the story of our players every minute they're not on the pitch.”
Ohanian: Eliminating default casual meetings was COVID's best outcome
“The best part that came out of COVID was at least defaulting to, and we see this culture internally, defaulting to not having the casual meeting.”
Ohanian: Sports franchises were historically family trophy assets without exits
“Historically, sports teams, certainly in the United States, and I think in the rest of the world, were just basically rich family toys, and they were inherited by multiple generations, and there wasn't really an exit for them.”
Ohanian: Institutional capital will make professional sports teams more sophisticated and profitable
“As those private dollars come in, these teams are going to get more sophisticated. Because people are going to show up and they're going to say, look, why are you here? Oh, because my daddy gave me this job. Okay, well that's nice, but are you the best person …”