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
Waterhouse: Entrepreneurship requires a degree of irrationality and blind belief
“If you're completely rational, then I think it's, it can be very hard to be an entrepreneur because being an entrepreneur, it requires you convincing yourself and other people that you're going to do something which frankly is highly unlikely to succeed. And s…”
Waterhouse: Long-term investing experience matches direct operator backgrounds for VCs
“I think it's important to have been close enough to what it takes to build a business so that you can truly empathize with entrepreneurs as they go on that journey. Now, whether you do that by having done it yourself in one particular field, one particular sec…”
Waterhouse: 2015 European seed market has too much capital chasing deals
“If we look today, there's probably A little bit more seed capital than potentially is there to find the great deals.”
Waterhouse: Growth-stage venture capital in Europe is oversaturated
“The growth phase is getting more, more intense, and there's maybe too much capital chasing the few really high quality deals.”
Waterhouse: AI self-awareness and existential risk are still far off
“I think we're a long way from a way where suddenly the AI becomes self-aware and, switches on the nuclear bombs.”
Waterhouse: Why Balderton decided to invest in Curious AI in 40 minutes
“The last one was actually Curious AI, which we talked about which is as you mentioned, is a new AI company in Finland. And I made the decision in 40 minutes because the entrepreneur is extraordinary, and the ambition of what he wants to do is, is very compelli…”
Waterhouse: Venture success requires evaluating human factors over pure metrics
“I've learned to be less metric driven. I think as a kind of mathematician and then as a, something I do quite a lot of finance stuff in some of my other earlier career, you become very obsessed just about numbers and data, and the reality is that's important, …”
Waterhouse: Too much experience makes founders overly cynical and risk-averse
“And there's no perfect answer to this, and we're back to all sorts of entrepreneurs and who've been successful and they don't all look the same, but it seems to me that it's often, there's a benefit of some experience because you know, you've learned some of t…”
Waterhouse: Every small business owner will run on smartphones by 2020
“And so this is a huge opportunity, and I think every small business owner will have their own bespoke software suite, which sits in their phone in the next five years.”
Waterhouse: Autonomous vehicles require unsupervised learning to handle unexpected scenarios
“Self-driving cars need to have unsupervised learning because there's no way you can tell them every situation they're going to expect.”