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 16 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
Gerstner: LPs should mark down 2020-2022 late-stage venture portfolios by 50%
“I said, I would take everything in your portfolio that received a valuation over the last two years, over five hundred million dollars, and I'd mark it down by 50%. What do you mean? And I said, well, if I look at the average gross stock in the NASDAQ, it's do…”
Gerstner: Venture capital funds of $10B or more cannot generate alpha
“Deploying a ten billion dollar fund or, God forbid, a fifty billion or a hundred billion dollar fund like Masa tried to do, right? You already know you will not generate alpha in that. You are getting the beta of the global tech industry when you're investing …”
Gerstner: Portfolio diversification is a myth that fails to mitigate risk
“I think diversification in many ways is the greatest myth perpetrated on the investing public. The idea that risk mitigation is the equivalent of diversification.”
Gerstner: The bottom 20-40% of tech and VC workforces dilute results
“I would say the vast majority of organizations, ok, and I'm talking from Facebook and Twitter, all the way down to, ah, GPs. They would be well served, right, to be much smaller, to be essentialists in the people that they have. Because it's very likely that y…”
Gerstner: VCs must distribute shares unless projecting 3x-5x returns over 3-5 years
“So for us, when I think about distributing is, do we still have venture returns left in this over a reasonable period of time? And if the answer is we don't see a three to five X over the course of the next three to five years in that deal, then we're obliged …”
Gerstner: Altimeter analysts will be fired for unvetted FOMO pitches
“If you are an analyst who walks into my office with an idea a day because, you know, Johnny Mac down the street did the deal, like, you will be fired. Right? You better come in prepared, not with Dribbble, but you better have done your work because we're going…”
Gerstner: Starting a restaurant takes as much effort as building Google
“And the truth of the matter is it probably takes as much effort, emotional and intellectual to start a restaurant as it does to start Google.”
Gerstner: Spray-and-pray venture strategies produce uninspiring index-like returns
“If you have a diversified portfolio across hundreds of hundreds of investments, you will have an index like return, which as we started off by saying, it's not very compelling in this category.”
Gerstner: VCs Must Give Honest Feedback Directly in Boardrooms
“I'm not being a good friend to the founder if I'm blowing smoke up their ass in the boardroom, and then the second they walk out of the boardroom, all the investors have a different conversation. Right? So I think that being willing to tell the truth as I woul…”
Gerstner: High-status individuals almost universally surround themselves with sycophants
“The number of people in life who surround themselves with sycophantic others who are their yes people. Right tell them what they want to hear afraid of speaking truth to them. Like, it's almost everybody at a certain level. Right, because you can afford to do …”
Gerstner: Kids learn values from parent behavior rather than verbal advice
“It's not what you say to your kids. Like you can say, Oh, be humble. And then you go into your 18,000 square foot home. It's not what you say. It's what you do. It's the life you live. It's how they see you treating others. It's the choices that they see you m…”
Gerstner: Having a chip on your shoulder puts chips in pockets
“I think there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley you know, and elsewhere as entrepreneurs that grew up, whether, you know, they're first generation, whether immigrant, whether they grew up poor, that chip on the shoulder puts chips in pockets, as they say, …”
Gerstner: Proactive first-principles investors outperform passive trend-followers in venture
“The history in venture has really inured to the benefit of first principle thinkers, who frankly, rather than waiting for the founder to show up in their office, they identify what they want to invest in, and they go find them.”
Gerstner: Public market investing experience benefits venture capital investors
“I think being a public market investor is really a value add in terms of that type of culture when you're investing in a venture.”