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 12 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
Flomenberg: AI startups cannot build durable differentiation solely through algorithms
“A lot of the companies that I meet, they come up to me and they picked a spot that's very close to that algorithm dot on the top, and my concern with that is it's very hard to imagine an algorithm that's durably differentiable.”
Flomenberg: AI startups must build workflow software before building models
“It comes back to this notion of workflow first, data capture, followed by model building and iterations.”
Flomenberg: Prime vertical SaaS opportunities require zero initial data
“That's really where I think the bulk of the opportunity is going to be going forward, particularly in areas like vertical SaaS, where I can improve the current experience without any data, and any data that I can collect to improve your life is just gravy on t…”
Flomenberg: Data feedback loops provide stronger moats than initial dataset size
“That's where I think a lot of this feedback loop and sort of supervised learning around the data is Actually becomes a little bit more of an advantage than the original data set itself.”
Flomenberg: Synthetic data gets self-driving cars 99.9% there but misses edge cases
“In the instance of self-driving cars, It could make a lot of sense, and I think it can get you 99.9% of the way there, but the question is, how fully reflective is the underlying data set of the real world, and in the instance where it's not 100% fully reflect…”
Flomenberg: Google will compete with ad-data startups but unlikely cybersecurity ones
“If you want to use some Google-like or Google-specific dataset for an advertising product, it's a really uncomfortable situation because at any point in time, Google may very well decide to build that same product. Now, for instance, in security, could Google …”
Flomenberg: Independent public companies require at least a $1B TAM
“If there's not a billion dollar TAM for this thing, it's not possibly the basis for a product that could support an independent publicly traded company.”
Flomenberg: Standalone ML anomaly detection in cybersecurity is overhyped
“Getting back to our conversation around AI and ML, one area that I think is unfortunately slightly overplayed is this machine learning anomaly detection to rule them all off by itself.”
Flomenberg: Advising startups to raise whatever market allows drives risky overspending
“Raise what the market will bear. A lot of startups dig themselves into a lot of trouble by raising, and more importantly, behaving like They don't have to worry about the next round, and overspending can put you in very tricky situations.”
Flomenberg: Large organizations suffer from inherent inefficiencies of scale
“There's an inherent inefficiency of scale at any company, and it's no disrespect to Lockheed Martin. Once an organization reaches a certain size, the amount of overhead and planning makes it very, very hard to move nimbly, and quite frankly, the incumbent natu…”
Flomenberg: Startups must instill self-disruption values while young
“If we need to go back to the drawing board, if we need to give up this line of revenue stream for something that's going to be more exciting in the future, I think that gets harder and harder for you to do as the company grows. You really need to instill that …”
Flomenberg: Enterprise focus on cybersecurity is permanent due to nation-state threats
“Look, I think the focus and emphasis on security is here to stay. What we've witnessed over the past years, particularly from nation state actors, is reasonably new. And nation state actors, unlike your average hacker or scammer, they're not going after the lo…”