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 13 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
Late-Stage Private Valuations Are Unsustainable and Face a Market Correction
“I'd argue it's probably not that healthy, and that you're actually seeing some very weird dislocations when, you know, the scarcity of equity in the private capital markets for the real dominant market players, you know, you end up bidding up the, in the price…”
Big Tech Dominance Makes Creating New Consumer Web Unicorns Difficult
“We're now in a world where, you know, we're seeing really dominant market power, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, you know, creating a new set of unicorns in the face of that market power is going to be very difficult, certainly in the consumer-facing web serv…”
USV's 2004 Fund Had Four Investments Each Return the Full Fund
“We made investments in Zynga, Twitter, Indeed, and Etsy within about a six month period. In our 2004 fund, each of those returned the fund.”
USV Created Venture Partner Role for Albert Wenger for Sourcing Etsy
“Been very actively involved in Etsy early on and brought Etsy to the partnership. And we created a venture partner role for Albert to, you know, to sort of compensate him for having brought Etsy to the partnership.”
USV Will Add Partners Slowly and Remain in a Single Office
“It'll always be a slow process for us. We think these partnerships are, you know, the dynamics of the partnerships are very, very important, and we'll continue to, you know, as we Add people. We'll do it very slowly, and we'll do it in a single office, and we'…”
VCs Spend More Time on Struggling Startups Than Winners
“It turns out that this is probably a truism in the business that you end up investing more time in your losers than your winners.”
Supporting Failing Startups Earns VCs Entry Into Future Winners
“And the willingness to do that is what gets you invited into the next winner.”
Expecting Past VC Investment Models to Repeat Is a Major Failure Mode
“I think one of the failure modes of venture capital is to assume that the past is the future and that you'll consider it, can you continue to see the same models?”
Infrastructure VC Relies on IP; Application Layer Requires a Thesis
“When you move from the infrastructure layer, where I think Investing is really defined by technical differentiation and intellectual property defensibility. You know, they're, I think, being more opportunistic, more deal flow driven, made perfect sense. When y…”
USV Avoids Direct Competitors to Enable Peer Collaboration
“Because we make an effort not to invest in direct competitors, they, they're perfectly comfortable sharing ideas with each other. So we've been able to organize, you know, because we don't do biotech For instance, you know, we can have a CEO summit where every…”
USV Took 80 Pitch Meetings to Raise First Fund in 2004
“It took us about 80 meetings and a heck of a lot of air travel to get that done, but we finally got the fund done in the early part of, I guess, 2004”
Fred Wilson Managed Flatiron's Portfolio Post-Crash Into USV Launch
“Thing about Fred, most impressive things I've ever seen anybody do is the amount of effort that he put into managing out the Flatiron portfolio after the crash in 2000 which I got to watch, you know, up close and personal because he was very much still doing i…”