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 30 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
Cyan Banister: San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin refuses to prosecute crimes
“We have a DA, Chesta, who will not prosecute crimes. I just found out yesterday a friend of mine whose house was burglarized. The perpetrators were let out of San Quentin for COVID. They robbed his house, almost kicked in the door of his neighbor who had a chi…”
Cyan Banister: Uber could not build a world-changing company by being nice
“They pushed people to move fast, break things, and challenge all regulations, etc., but in order to be Literally a world-changing company, they had to do that, and they had to have those behaviors. They weren't going to be able to do it by being nice all the t…”
Cyan Banister: Multi-stage funds invest early to block rivals like a16z
“So it's a strategy, and it's a strategy to cut out the seed ecosystem and other Series A investors down the road. So there are certain firms like A-Six, Z, et cetera, that have ownership targets. And so if you want to ruin their chances of getting the ownershi…”
Cyan Banister: High taxes and safety issues drive tech exodus from California
“There's a reason startups aren't staying. There's a reason that people are fleeing. That's because of San Francisco and frankly, all of California, you can only tax people so much. And then eventually they're just like, gosh, every dollar I'm making, I take ho…”
Cyan Banister: Gun ownership and support for self-defense are surging in SF
“If anything, the silver lining of all of this is that there's more gun ownership and more people who are pro home and self-defense than ever before.”
Bannister: Overpaying VCs face weak returns and a reckoning in 7-8 years
“What's going to happen is there's going to be a reckoning and there always is one market will work itself out where people look at their returns seven, eight years from now, and they're not going to be great. I think that will create some discipline in the mar…”
Bannister: $250M exit with strong economics beats $1B exit with poor ownership
“A company that exits for a two hundred and fifty million dollars that you have better economics on is a better return profile than a company that exits for a billion dollars that you don't.”
Bannister: Weak VC returns in seven years will force market discipline
“What's going to happen is there's going to be a reckoning, and there always is one, market will work itself out, where people look at their returns seven, eight years from now, and they're not going to be great. That will create some discipline in the market.”
Cyan Banister often evaluates founders within ten minutes of meeting them
“A lot of the times I make up my mind about the person before ever hearing about the product within that 1:10 minutes of them telling me their story.”
Cyan Banister: Lyft benefited from Uber doing the regulatory fist-fighting
“So Lyft has benefited from Uber, and Uber definitely helped pave the way for Lyft to exist. So Lyft had the luxury, if you will, of being the nice company with the pink colors and the fist bumping. So does that make them a better company? No. It was a duopoly,…”
Cyan Banister: High seed valuations will cause poor VC returns by 2027
“Well, what's going to happen is there's going to be a reckoning and there always is one market will work itself out where people look at their returns seven, eight years from now, and they're not going to be great.”
Cyan Banister: HQ Trivia failed entirely because of co-founder conflicts
“So that company failed entirely because of founder conflicts.”
Bannister: A $250M exit with strong ownership beats a $1B exit
“A company that exits for two hundred and fifty million dollars that you have better economics on is a better return profile than a company that exits for a billion dollars that you don't.”
Cyan Banister: Qualitative intuition and pattern matching beat data-driven investing
“I'm more qualitative, and I'm definitely driven by pattern matching, gut instinct, watching trends, reading things constantly, but it's not necessarily data-driven. I just have hunches that things are going to work, and I have a good feeling about the people w…”
Cyan Banister will never demonize anyone for wanting to make money
“You'll never find me ever demonizing a single human being that wants to make money.”
Cyan Banister: Sole-investor seed rounds create dangerous follow-on signaling risk
“I think having one person in one fund can be detrimental because if they don't follow on, you're kind of dead in the water.”
Cyan Banister: Nearly every venture firm issued an HQ Trivia term sheet
“So that was one of the most competitive deals that was out there. I think there wasn't a single firm that didn't issue a term sheet.”
Cyan Banister: Spouse and sibling co-founders succeed due to shared conflict resolution
“This is why I also love husband, wife, and brother, sister, and brother, brother, sibling teams is often they've had an entire lifetime or many, many years to resolve conflicts, right?”
Cyan Banister: Silencing dissenting voices accelerates political radicalization to opposite extremes
“The more we try to silence other people, the more radical they're going to become. It's just going to push each other to the opposite extremes.”
Banister: Wealthy on paper, cash-poor from reinvesting all exit proceeds
“Even though I'm wealthy on paper, often cash poor because I redeploy almost every dollar back into the ecosystem that I don't live off of.”
Cyan Banister says late-stage venture investing makes her deeply unhappy
“I also discovered that I'm not cut out for late stage investing. It makes me deeply unhappy.”
Cyan Banister refuses to Google search founders before meeting them
“I don't Google search people before I meet them. It's a hard and fast rule for me.”
Cyan Banister asks every founder for their personal story before pitching
“The first question I ask every single founder is, tell me their story. Like, not the business. I don't want to hear about the business. I want to hear about how they got to where they are.”
Cyan Banister: Long Journey Ventures targets 5% ownership at the seed stage
“And so I think that at Long Journey, we're often the first check-in. We have led deals now that we're excited about, and we have to get our target ownership, which is not as bad as high. I just wouldn't say bad, but as high as some other firms are. Some need 1…”
Cyan Banister: Science fiction books are among the best business books
“So I think some of the best business books, believe it or not, are science fiction books.”
Cyan Banister acknowledges an investment bias toward backing immigrant founders
“So I admit that I have a soft spot for immigrants. If anything, I lean immigrant biased. I tend to like people that come to this country who still understand why this country is so precious and understand what they're leaving behind and why there's opportunity…”