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 80 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
Kanji: Most European VCs Are Momentum Investors Seeking Quick Markups
“I think most of us become momentum investors in this industry. We write the check largely to get the next markup, not to build the long-term, durable, big company of tomorrow. And I don't think there are that many people in Europe who do those kinds of things.”
Kanji: European VCs are trained in private equity and focus on downside protection
“And I don't think people in Europe think in that kind of way. I think people in Europe are largely trained in private equity. They think about how do I minimize my downside.”
Kanji: Deliveroo altered legal docs to strip Hoxton's pro-rata rights
“And then we had a weird scenario in that particular company where our pro rata rights got taken away from us, and in the legal documents, they changed the definition of who would get the pro rata, To basically, I mean, basically singling us out.”
Kanji: European Investment Fund is too dominant and should be split into five
“I think if you have someone like the EIF where there's 30% of the aggregate capital of the LP commits, it's too big. What you should really have is what happened with AT&T in the US where they broke it down into the bells. You had five different bells kind of …”
Kanji: Europe needs dominant superstar VC funds, not micro funds
“I don't know if the world right now needs yet another emerging manager, yet another micro cap fund. I think what we need is like five to 10 dominant Superstar venture funds in Europe, kind of the way in the Bay Area, they're like, 10 or 15 of those.”
Kanji: Chinese EVs will wipe out the German car industry
“Yes, I'm really terrified that the German car industry is going to get wiped out by China. Like, by the EVs in China. I think they're asleep at the wheel.”
Kanji: Carried interest should be taxed as income, not capital gains
“I have no problems paying income tax on carried interest. Like, I think it's income, right? I mean, it's not my capital work doing it. It's because I'm doing my job.”
Kanji: Female VC partners are hard to poach due to high retention pay
“There are some great women who are very capable. It is hard for me to poach them because they're very well taken care of in their existing funds for very good reasons, because there's a shortage of them.”
Kanji: Venture VCs aim to build scale monopolies despite regulatory resistance
“We as a venture industry have to think about how to create monopolies. Like, the regulator doesn't want monopolies, but we want monopolies. We want companies with increasing returns to scale, with deep defensible moats. You build this thing, it has this huge m…”
Kanji: America is the best path for scaling a startup financially
“Your best path to scale from a financing perspective is America. The rounds are bigger.”
Kanji: Venture managers should fundraise for fixed time, not fund size
“Do not do a fundraise for a size of the fund. Do a fundraise for time of the fund. Give yourself 90 days. Whatever you get, go start investing.”
Kanji: VCs Should Sell Post-IPO Stock via a Three-Tranche Formula
“And so I think the formula that we now have is at the time of the IPO, as soon as you're out of lockup, A third of it you sell, a third of it you sell six months later, and then a third of it you sell another six to 12 months after that. Just make it a formula…”
Kanji: Multi-Stage VC Funds Treat Early Checks as Simple Call Options
“But these days, with the growth of those guys, it's all call options for them, right? They will invest into something and see how it plays out, so they can write the 30, fifty million dollar check, where it starts to get meaningful.”
Kanji: European startup conversion rates match US, but funding amounts lag
“And the biggest structural problem that we have in the UK and Europe, the conversion rate between series, between seed and series A to series B to series C, is basically these days on par with the US. But the capitalization of our companies from seed to series…”
Kanji: A $10M seed round doubles outlier odds versus $5M
“And there is a statistical, like, correlation between if a seed round raises, like, a hundred K, the probability of it becoming an outlier is very, very, very, very small. Kind of makes sense. If that seed round goes up to, like, ten million, the odds between …”
Kanji: Europe is on par with the US in AI for the first time
“When you look at what's happening in AI, you got DeepMind down the road in London, you got Meta running its AI stuff in Paris, like we are for the first time ever in European history on par from the company creation or technology creation as the US in not a ni…”
Kanji: I tried to talk Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus out of LSE listing
“And then right after that, Tavit went public with Wise on the LSE, and I tried to talk him out of it. I said, go, go in America.”
Kanji: Darktrace suffered severe LSE discount before $5B privatization
“I think it was trading at huge, a huge multiple discount. Seven hundred thirty-two million of revenue, like I said, trailing, trailing, got privatized at five billion.”
Kanji: Seed investors should sell early if offered a 50x return
“If someone offers you like, 50 X on your first investment, maybe there's actually a reason to take some money off the table. But, you know, normally you would have said, do that, you get your 50 X's at the IPO stage, or at the very late stages, and then the sa…”
Kanji: AI euphoria is driving venture investors to skip due diligence
“And I think we're seeing some of that same stuff in AI. Like, there's so much euphoria for AI that people feel they have to have some of these companies in their portfolio.”
Kanji: Capital injected directly correlates with startup probability of success
“There is a correlation between how much money goes in to a company and what the probability of success is.”
Kanji: Reaching unicorn status requires an average of $300M in funding
“The average is about like three hundred million to get to a unicorn status”
Kanji: VC Employees Optimize for Fast Markups Over Real Returns
“If you're the general employee, you optimize for getting to the next career ladder, and how do you show that you can get to the next career ladder? You do a deal, and then General Catalyst, or Index, or Kleiner, or Sequoia, or Andreessen, I mean, there are so …”
Kanji: Hoxton Would Have Been a 10X Net Fund on Darktrace at Peak
“We, that would have been, we would have been a 10 X net fund on, on, on, on Darktrace at the, at its peak.”
Kanji: Darktrace Reached $732M Revenue at Take-Private From $10K at Seed
“The company, when it got privatized, did seven hundred thirty two million of revenue. I mean, we, but when we invested, it was doing like 10 K.”
Kanji: Public SaaS companies outside top decile are growing and profitable
“If you look at the public markets today, and you go look at all the SaaS companies, between the first decile all the way up to the 10th decile, if you break it up, everything other than the first decile is both growing and profitable.”
Kanji: VCs get no upside arguing with non-portfolio founders
“Yeah, I'm kind of in the same camp. There's no upside from, like, arguing with people. I mean, argue with your founders who are, like, in your, like, they're in your family, right? You're an investor, you're a long, but, like, there's the outside world.”
Kanji: Founders avoid working with overly controversial VCs
“I think who wants to work with people who are too controversial or too unpopular? I mean, you want, like, especially when things are going up, right? You want people who are going to be cheerleading as much as possible.”
Kanji: Brexit's Article 50 wiped out EIF commitments to UK venture funds
“Article 50 got invoked, and everyone who had a check or a commitment from EIF at that point felt it. Seedcamp got one of the first calls, they tore up the document, and all of us lost the EIF commitment because they were no longer able to invest in the UK.”
Kanji: UK pension funds hold 10% US tech, 5% UK equities
“So the pension funds in the UK, so the defined contribution scheme, about 10% of the capital in the pension funds is invested in the top tech names in America. 10%. And about five percent of the pension funds is invested in UK equities.”
Kanji: VC partnerships outperform solo GPs due to error-correction mechanisms
“I think partnerships are way better Than solo GPs, because you get this error correction mechanism from other smart people.”
Kanji: Seed rounds of $5M+ now account for 20% of seed market
“The jumbo seeds, like, up six to seven times in volume than they were a couple of years ago, and the seed rounds that are five million plus are a fifth of the industry right now.”
Kanji: Darktrace generated more early revenue and staff in US than UK
“Darktrace made more money in America than it did in the U.K. From the very early days. It had more staff in America than it did in the U.K.”
Kanji: Unified European entity initiative 'Europe Inc' is unnecessary
“It's like people want to solve Europe Inc. They want to make it really easy to incorporate a company in Europe. Like, why? Incorporate in Delaware or the UK? Like, problem solved.”
Kanji: Author of viral LinkedIn post refused repeated requests to meet
“I reached out to the person who wrote the LinkedIn post multiple times to grab coffee. Before that went out, the day that it went out, after it went out, and I've chased afterwards, and she's never met me.”
Kanji: Trump administration will reopen tech M&A and IPO markets
“Yes, because I think JD Vance has made that very clear, that sub-five hundred million dollar deals, the FTC has no business trying to block transactions.”
Kanji: Global app platforms allow European startups to scale without geographic limits
“But once these distribution platforms became global, you know, the playing field completely changed, right? You put your app on top of the app store. It doesn't make a difference where you come from. You're going to get users all over the world. And Angry Bird…”
Kanji: Hoxton Ventures exited the J-curve within two years
“We're out of the J curve, which means we're kind of, you know, in the money now on, on the fund, you know, for a fund that's just going to become two years old in two weeks.”
Kanji: Two-thirds of London Series B capital comes from US VCs
“They're saying two thirds of all the money in, in, in London, at least in the tech community at the series B stage is, is now funded by American VCs. And when I say American VCs, I don't mean Accel in the UK. I mean, guys who are in the U S who are flying over…”
Kanji: New York raises in a quarter what London raises annually
“New York in an entire financial quarter raises as much money as London does in a year.”
Kanji: Founders must use social engineering to close seed funding rounds
“The best way to get any kind of round done is do the social engineering that you need to do to make sure other people in the market who are pretty well-regarded are talking you up, because that's the best way to get venture firms super excited.”
Kanji: Early European Seed Funds Eden and Pond Mismanaged Capital
“In fact, the seed funds of record here, you won't even remember the names. They were Eden and Pond. They're like a bygone, right? The people raised money in the dot-com boom, mismanaged their capital all the way through the collapse, and kind of left.”
Kanji: Winning VC requires contrarian bets validated by consensus within two years
“You kind of have to do things that are a little bit off-piste. You kind of have to build for the big outcome, and you have to be a little bit contrarian, and then very quickly, about a year or two later, you have, the world has to recognize that you're right i…”
Hoxton maintains quarterly acquisition buyer lists for portfolio companies in crisis
“And so every, every quarter we have like an immediate shopping list, which is if this company falls into trouble, I'm picking up the phone, I'm calling this person At this buyer in this level of the organization who wants this kind of product technology, techn…”
Kanji: Hoxton Ventures achieved a 34x realized return on Deliveroo
“The best investment on paper was, I mean, not paper, like, realized was Deliveroo. It was about 34 X on the first check.”
Kanji: Deliveroo grew 5-7% week-on-week prior to Hoxton's seed check
“And the, and he was growing five, seven percent, week on week.”
Kanji: Hoxton Ventures targets 15% to 20% ownership in top portfolio companies
“So if we see early traction in any one of our companies, we will figure out a way to put more capital in, and these days for our best companies, and our best companies are much higher concentrations than our average company. We're getting closer to like 15, 20…”