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 14 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
Schalit: Lack of diversity in tech is a hard-to-cure cancer
“Diversity. More women, more people of color. That is a cancer running through the tech ecosystem today, and it's one that's really hard to cure.”
Schalit: Pure SaaS margins beat tech-enabled physical businesses on profitability
“When you think about some of the very large public or non-public companies like, you know, ride sharing and office space sharing, these are tech-enabled companies for which technology is somewhat important, but that structurally have very low gross margins bec…”
Schalit: Warehousing cash without fast growth puts equity underwater
“If you're not growing at an incredible rate, if you are not guaranteed to be worth way more money without using that capital, then you must deploy it because otherwise you will have raised your exit bar. You will have a lot of money in the bank, but you will n…”
Schalit: A startup board is not the CEO's boss
“With VCs, because your board is not your boss. You are running the company and you're running the board and you have to really understand that because you become effective at working with your board and your VCs. The moment you understand that the board is the…”
Schalit: Dashlane needs multi-billion dollar exit to justify $110M Sequoia round
“For us, you know, we need to build a multi-billion dollar company for this to make any sense, and when you look at the history of companies, not many people succeed doing that, so that's the first part.”
Schalit: Sequoia's Jim Goetz convinced Dashlane to raise equity over debt
“You know, we had just raised a thirty million round of debt with no plan on taking equity, and in the meeting, Jim made me see the opportunity I was potentially missing by not considering an investment from Sequoia, and he convinced me in that meeting to rethi…”
Schalit: New York is the top US hub for European entrepreneurs
“But today, the New York ecosystem, thanks to, you know, some of the investors we're fortunate to have, Has become, for me, the best destination for European entrepreneurs that want to expand or start in the US for the reasons I just mentioned.”
Schalit: Internet authentication and transactions remain as broken as 30 years ago
“The way we transact, the way we authenticate is as broken today as it was 25 or 30 years ago when the internet started.”
Schalit: Macro excess capital driving venture funding will persist long term
“So the thing that is fueling that excess of capital Is not about to go away anytime soon, whether we find it good or bad.”
Schalit: Pressure to raise Dashlane's mega-round came internally, not from board
“The pressure is not coming from the board and the investors. If you are A self-motivated executive. That pressure comes from inside. It's, you've just made the decision to take that round, and so as such, you have created that pressure for yourself. Nobody has…”
Schalit: 150 employees is the breakpoint where implicit trust fails
“Obviously, you have that number or that 150 limit, which is really, really very palpable because it essentially means when you are in an organization where you can't know everyone enough to trust them implicitly, and this is where vision and culture become so …”
Schalit: Dashlane headcount projected to reach 450 employees within a year
“Now, suddenly you're talking about a company that's going to go from a year ago, we were eight people to today. We are 250 in a year. We'll be 450.”
Schalit: Dashlane is adapting its culture to take higher risk
“And for us, it's a challenging shift because we've been frugal over the years, and now we have to relearn how we do things. We have to learn how to take a level of risk we're not used to taking. All the ingredients are there, the market, the leadership team, t…”
Dashlane sends board decks 10 days early to focus meetings on strategy
“I'd say the second advice is to prepare the board materials a long time in advance. Send to, send them to your board members a long time in advance. We do that 10 days before our boards, and have individual discussions with each of them in advance of the meeti…”