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
Barrett: Silicon Valley mostly builds startups to flip and destroy them
“Silicon Valley, more often than not, and I would say vastly more often than not, is building something that gets flipped and destroyed.”
Barrett: Silicon Valley VCs act like gamblers, not real investors
“The difference is Silicon Valley investors aren't investors. They're gamblers. They're just throwing money at crazy ideas.”
Barrett: Founders must follow a playbook for single-company success, not VC portfolios
“And I think that as an entrepreneur, we don't have a portfolio. We have one company. We need to make it work, and so I think we need to follow a playbook For how to make your company succeed, not how to make your VC's portfolio succeed.”
Barrett: Top Talent Doesn't Care Which VC Backs Your Startup
“I think that the best people out there just don't give a damn about your VC. They're probably not reading Hacker News. They probably don't care about TechCrunch.”
Barrett: High Headcount Growth Signals Inability to Solve Problems Scalably
“Hiring is a solution to a problem. The more hiring you do means the bigger problems you have. And so it means you couldn't solve them in a more creative and scalable way.”
Barrett claims Travis Kalanick has an incredibly strong moral compass
“Travis has a complicated story, and I think he's sort of developed kind of this legend around him, which is perhaps surprising to the people who know him, because he's actually a really nice guy with, I would say, one of the most strong moral compasses I know,…”
Barrett: Venture capital as an asset class underperforms the S&P 500
“And I'd say like as an asset class, venture capital returns less than, you know, S and P 500.”
Barrett: Profit is essential for startups to achieve scale and sustainability
“And I think the only way to achieve a broad scale and a long-term sustainability is profit.”
Barrett: An IPO is just a state change to get capital, not an exit
“I think that an IPO for a truly successful company is just a state change. It actually doesn't really mean anything too much to the company overall. It's just a way to get money.”
Expensify Caps Annual Hiring at 12 Employees
“This past year we put in a cap. We said this year, we're only going to hire 12 people.”
Barrett claims Expensify has more customers than Concur
“We have more customers than Concur, and we're the fastest growing in our space”
Barrett: Expensify expense reporting was a Trojan horse for homeless aid card
“The expense reporting was entirely a ruse as a Trojan horse to build a product that just gave me the technology that I wanted for a completely different application.”
Barrett: Great startup ideas must look terrible at first
“Everyone wants a good idea, but the challenge of good ideas is they have to look terrible. Like, if it didn't look terrible, it wouldn't be a good idea. It would just be the thing that everyone does. And so a good idea is something that no one else is doing.”
Barrett: Business complexity is mostly invented jargon to justify roles
“Business is not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. I think most of the complexity that people experience is sort of invented complexity. It's a bunch of jargon for people to sort of justify their roles”
Barrett: Founders should work in secret until success cannot be hidden
“I think work hard in secrets because it keeps your failures private, and they're hard enough in private, but they're really hard when they're public. And so just work hard. Don't say anything to anyone until you are such a success that you just can't hide it a…”