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 7 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
Zanutto: Hedge funds use early checks as loss leaders for pre-IPO allocation
“Frankly, a lot of these hedge funds manage such enormous pools of capital relative to the size of the traditional VC fund. That for them, you know, writing a 25 or fifty million dollar check into an A or a B round is a rounding error, right? So for them, they …”
Zanutto: High valuations and easy money create severe downstream financing risks
“One learning that I've come away with from those conversations and experiences is if you take the money and it's at a very high price and it's easy money, there is a risk to that because you, if you take it at too high of a price, you get over your skis and th…”
Zanutto: Established VC firms lose performance sensitivity due to stacked management fees
“A younger fund's partners will make nearly all of their money based on how well their underlying portfolio companies perform, while older funds will be less sensitive to underlying investment performance given the steady stream of stacked management fees that …”
Derek Zanutto: Pursuing market breadth over depth in expensive markets fails
“What I worry most about, and I think what's most challenging is if in markets like this where prices are incredibly high, going for breadth and trying to chase everything, I think is a losing strategy because then you're going to, you know, not have enough, en…”
Derek Zanutto: Investors must form sector theses before companies start fundraising
“And I think what that means in reality is that for investors to make informed judgments On underwriting risks and making investments, you really need to have been doing your research and your work and developing your thesis on a category well in advance of a c…”
Zanutto: Novel COVID-era startup services are significantly harder to underwrite
“But a whole host of other startups thriving now in the COVID economy where they're offering services that didn't really exist a whole lot pre-COVID. And in my mind, those are much more challenging to underwrite And assess as an investor today, because then you…”
Zanutto: Test VC Deals by Risking Proportional Personal Net Worth
“Would you invest your own money in the deal proportionate to your own personal net worth? So if you are evaluating an investment for the fund that would account for five percent of the fund's capital, would you invest five percent of your own net worth in that…”