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 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 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
Sim: 2024 is the year zero-interest-rate startups face severe market fallout
“This is the year that the shit's hitting the fan because, you know, you can only extend runway so much and it doesn't mean much if you're not growing.”
Sim: The 2024 venture capital vintage will produce incredible returns in five years
“But the firms that are making capital calls in 20, 24, putting dollars to work. I think this is going to be an amazing vintage because people are valuation adjusted. I think founders have the religion of the ones starting from now. And I think this is going to…”
Sim: Great opportunities persist for investing in Israeli security and infrastructure startups
“I think that as people back away from Israel, cause they fearful of kind of what's happening there, I'm still seeing amazing teams there. And I think there'll be great opportunities to keep putting dollars to work in security and infrastructure deals in Israel…”
Sim: Boldstart will never fund AI startups spending mostly on Nvidia
“You will never find both start, for example, finding companies where, you know, they're raising 20 or thirty million dollars, and two thirds of that money goes to NVIDIA.”
Ed Sim: Boldstart will not fund AI seed rounds at $100M post-money
“Chasing anything with a dot AI in their domain or an AI thing, I think is insane. However, I do think there's some opportunities there, but I'm not going to be funding these things at a hundred posts.”
Ed Sim: AI hype mirrors dot-com bubble and $100M seed portfolios will fail
“I just think that this is just like I saw in the internet bubble. Everything had a .com on it back in it, because I saw that. I lived through that shit. And we're gonna see the same thing. There are gonna be some massive companies built, no doubt, but it's not…”
Ed Sim: Growth funds returning 1x on peak deals will outperform peers
“So I guess what I'm trying to say is I think those growth kind of funds that put the money at the peak I think the ones that deliver one X or slightly above will probably do very well. We'll be above, you know, cause there'll be a lot of ones that are underwat…”
Ed Sim: Venture money chasing LLMs will be vaporized
“Let's just say the money chasing all these LLMs, there'll be a lot of money vaporized for sure.”
Ed Sim: High-growth tech companies will never see 35x-40x multiples again
“So do I think we're going to move back to one of 35 to 40 for companies greater, going greater than 40%? Never again.”
Sim: Docker is positioned to go public in the next three years
“Docker is, is, is from what you see out there is a company that can go public the next two years, two to three years.”
Sim: Apple edge AI developments will not generate meaningful revenue in 2024
“My short would probably be, I mean, just what everyone's looking at now is just Apple right now. I think Apple, You know, you've got an iPhone growth issue over there at Apple, but the one thing that gets me excited about Apple is the idea of machine learning …”
Ed Sim: Tech M&A volume will increase as investors seek liquidity
“I think we're going to see a lot more M and A's kind of coming ahead right now.”
Ed Sim: Tech IPO window won't reopen until Fed cuts interest rates
“I think it's very simple. Mr. Jerome Powell signaling to the world that interest rates are under control now. And the air has been taken out of the balloon and the interest rates have to go down.”
AI will infiltrate every enterprise software category within five years
“I think I'm seeing a lot of kind of AI, not AI platforms, but AI being infiltrated across every segment of enterprise software. And I'm also seeing a lot of stuff where messaging is going from consumers to the enterprise as well. Messaging meaning you know, al…”
Sim: Cybersecurity will be exempt from the tech antitrust M&A freeze
“Very few, huge M and A's because of antitrust, maybe save cybersecurity, which has national security interests and those things tend to go a little bit faster.”
Sim: Unicorns will acquire private startups to build platforms before IPO
“You're going to see more private to private as well. And the reason why that makes sense for a private company is because if you're a one product company, going back to the platform play, you're going to go, you're going to have to buy another product or two a…”
Sim: Most 2024 tech IPOs will be down rounds from the ZIRP era
“Look, the margin majority of companies that go do go public this year will be down rounds from the prior rounds, especially if they're raised towards the Zerp era.”
Sim: Software net dollar retention will normalize to 110% to 115%
“From there, you know, this new cohort of customers, I think that retention is going to get back to a place where it's more like one, 10. So that can be one, 31, 40, but maybe healthy numbers like one, 10, one, 15.”
Sim: Microsoft's AI leadership will drive cloud market share and H2 revenue
“Because of their lead on everything AI that they're taking market share on the cloud side. So I think that that's going to drive a lot of their business. And I'm hoping that by the back half of the year, you know, you start seeing some of the revenue numbers r…”
Sim prefers structuring Boldstart inception rounds at $3M to $4M
“I would prefer Your classic structure of three to four million dollars, to be honest with you.”
Legacy enterprise IT will be replaced by micro-enterprise architectures
“I think the whole monolithic IT infrastructure is getting turned upside down. I like to think of the world as becoming You know, I almost call it the micro enterprise, right? Instead of kind of buying these monolithic, five million dollar, ten million dollar s…”