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 10 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
Kurzweil: Pre-Sold ICO Demand Is a Better Success Indicator Than VCs
“I'm one of the ones that think it might, and I think the way it disrupts our business is it allows folks to transact directly with the buyer of their product before they have said product. So, In a block in, in these ICOs that we're seeing now, you can put out…”
Kurzweil: Efficient Developer Tools May Actually Shrink Total Software TAM
“So I think if anything, these products are more efficient. There's less waste. And so if anything, you may see actually a shrinking of TAM.”
Kurzweil: Accelerators Reduce Early Founder Screening Without Making Scaling Easier
“Being an entrepreneur has become sort of trendy in recent years, as I'm sure you're aware, and it's not for everyone. And so there, there's less of a natural screening process. It just comes with the leap now because there's so many accelerators and things tha…”
Kurzweil: Machine Learning Does Not Mandate Fundamental GTM Strategy Shifts
“I'm not sure I agree with that. I think new technologies open up new means of go to markets, but also they make existing ones more efficient.”
Bessemer Passed on Yammer by Overfocusing on Technical Buyers
“Well, one early on in my career was a company called Yammer that we missed. You know, I had a number of opportunities to invest, and I think the reason we missed is we were very focused in those days, the developer platform, on selling a sort of API-like servi…”
Bessemer Passed on Dollar Shave Club by Overanalyzing Unit Economics
“It was Dollar Shave Club meeting meeting Michael, the founder there very early on, and just, I was always very, he was just an impressive guy. You could see it in his videos. You can see it in his personality. This is someone that'll just will this thing to su…”
David Cowan Called Kurzweil's Startup Pitch the Worst Idea He'd Ever Heard
“And he told me it was the worst fucking idea he'd ever heard in his life and that I should not pursue that at all.”
Kurzweil: Next Developer Platforms Will Tackle AI and Deep Learning
“I think the next frontier is to take the deeper technical challenges, the data science, the artificial intelligence, which is, I know, a very hot buzzword these days, but the, you know, the practical applications of it are going to be real, as well as neural n…”
Kurzweil: Direct Pattern Matching in VC Creates Investment Traps
“A lot of people do look for the exact repetition of history, and they'll look for the pattern recognition of this type of founder, this type of company, and just applying it to some other area, and I'd say, you know, it's very tempting to do that, and I think …”
Kurzweil: Most Esports Equity Value Will Lie in Enabling Technology
“As far as a VC, interpreting the question is sort of where do we think the most equity value will be where will the biggest companies be formed? I think it is around the technology around enabling esports to become on par with traditional sports, and so all th…”