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 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Paik: Taxing carried interest as ordinary income would redistribute tech talent
“You probably should tax carried interest like income tax. That would write, that would like break that structurally different incentive mechanism, and then it would defuse talent elsewhere.”
Paik: Companies that can be described in one sentence lack ambition
“If everything that a company is doing and building can really be accurately described in a single sentence, it's probably too one dimensional. It's probably not Ambitious enough.”
Paik: A company's virtuousness is inversely related to its enterprise value
“This is, like, probably contentious but one of my frameworks is, I think that the, like, virtuousness of a company is inversely related to its enterprise value.”
Paik: Most direct-to-consumer brands are not suitable venture investments
“I would say the vast majority of direct-to-consumer brands, not suitable venture investments.”
Paik: A 51/49 venture partnership split feels like 80/20
“I mean, like, the distance between a 51 49 split is way more than two percent. Like, it might as well be like 80%.”
Paik: Venture capital is not an asset class meant to scale
“We think that venture isn't an asset that is meant to scale. It's pretty hands-on.”
Paik: DoorDash and Instacart succeed by price-discriminating consumer laziness
“The genius behind Instacart and DoorDash and other companies like that is that they, Perfectly price discriminate laziness and the value of like a leisure hour.”
Paik: Social graphs are becoming obsolete compared to content recommendation engines
“The social graph works and worked because of the idea that who people select for in their social graph is a proxy for their interest. And so in some ways you are using somebody's social graph as spark notes for the integral, the fully like, you know, my new in…”
Paik: Market selection matters far more than founders in venture capital
“I tend to agree. I think that markets are significantly more markets are huge, huge, huge input into outcomes, particularly in venture.”
Paik: Excess venture capital subsidizes businesses unfit for VC
“With the glut of venture capital and dollars chasing returns, I think that venture capital Perhaps intentionally, maybe unintentionally subsidizes business building of companies that should never have been venture capital targets.”
Paik: VC is only for companies that cannot exist without it
“I think that is almost certainly like if the company Literally could not exist without venture capital. That probably is the area where venture capital is a suitable, like, spitballing this in real time. That's probably a good criteria to suggest that it is wi…”
Paik: Multi-billion dollar bloated VC funds will unwind over a decade
“I don't think all, I almost, like, definitionally, I don't think all of them make it. I think we're gonna see over the next, here's the thing, like, it's gonna take a long time, it's gonna take a decade plus for this stuff to unwind, but they're gonna get lost…”
Paik: Poaching creators from rival platforms using minimum guarantees never works
“On navigating competitive environments, I think seeing Twitch firsthand gave me one of my mental frameworks, which is, are like companies or platforms that start with the explicit strategy of poaching, like economically incentivizing supply from another platfo…”
Paik: Substack faces margin compression as top creators negotiate down take rates
“And I would expect that business model to have a leaky bucket at the top or at best get margin compressed at the top. So you have the best, like the people that have the most distribution that are the best for the platform from marketing perspective, dramatica…”
Paik: Founders cannot create market waves, only surf them
“I think that great founders are incredible at putting themselves in the position to surf waves, but I don't think anybody can make waves themselves.”
Paik: Senior startup executive hiring succeeds at best 50% of time
“I feel like in startups, right, like senior hires at best, Is a coin toss of whether or not it works out and that's okay.”
Paik: Investors break the most rules on their highest-conviction investments
“The highest conviction things that you get comfort with are the ones that you break the most number of rules on.”
Paik: All human behavior is driven by the seven deadly sins
“I actually think the seven deadly sins are really core motivators. They describe why people do things. And I would go far as far to say, like, honestly, They're the only reasons why people do things. I think it's possible to distill down any individual behavio…”
Paik: Startup moats are intentional and embedded in product from day one
“So if you were to look at the system design behind companies that ultimately developed modes at scale, it's not something that like happens magically overnight once the company's up and running. It's like embedded in the core product from day one. And so I thi…”
Paik: TikTok could not exist before Twitter due to bandwidth constraints
“There's a very clear reason why the order of founding went from Twitter first, to Instagram, to Snapchat, to TikTok. And it is because mobile as infrastructure and bandwidth in its earliest stages, supported the lowest packet size, text. And then next compress…”
Paik: Misalignments peak when venture participants play final-round games
“I think the Mac, the areas of maximum misalignment are when it feels like the reputation does not carry over in between iterations of the game, or that's the final iteration of the game that any one participant is playing for. Because then people are incentivi…”
Paik: Thrive Capital backs young talent better than venture peers
“One of the things that Thrive does really, really, really well In my opinion, maybe even better than anyone else in the industry is it leans into people's potential regardless of their age, regardless of their credentials.”
Paik: Pace Capital hits 20% ownership in 70% of portfolio companies
“We've been successful at hitting our ownership target in 70% of the companies we invested in.”
Paik: New UGC value comes from empowering disenfranchised creators
“If you are trying to create structurally new value, one, I think the best way and has proven in the success of user and content networks is to, you have to empower a previously disenfranchised set of creators.”
Paik: Being too early in market timing is as fatal as being late
“I think timing, like, being too early is just as bad as being too late. In many ways, it's kind of like rock, paper, scissors, where you kind of have to be just one step ahead. If you're multiple steps ahead, you lose.”
Paik: Optimizing fundraising for outcomes over alignment creates structural misalignment
“We had kind of a mantra, which is optimized for alignment, not outcomes. I think in many situations, people, companies can optimize for outcomes rather than alignment. And that over rotation ultimately over time leads to misalignment.”
Paik: Acquisition retention packages create founder-VC incentive misalignment
“One of the biggest areas of misalignment between founders and investors is probably management incentive in an acquisition. So management incentive in acquisition is basically when the acquiring company says you, the management team will have this compensation…”