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 64 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Lonsdale: Israel Will Keep Fighting and Completely Wipe Out Hamas
“The way it stands now is, is we're going to keep fighting. We're going to wipe out Hamas and hopefully we can work with others to have a government there. That's not, you know, does not allow terrorism.”
Lonsdale: Anti-Israel Hatred in Gaza Stems From School Indoctrination
“I think basically what creates a generation of civilians that hate Israel is you have the schools in that area have been run by people who teach people that Jews are pigs and Jews are wrong and our religion hates Jews.”
Lonsdale: Silicon Valley cancel culture resembles 1970s Maoist struggle sessions
“What's really happened here is there's like five or 10% of people who are on one political extreme who've really hijacked the conversation and who've kind of pushed forward this kind of cancel culture, who have kind of pushed forward stuff that really resemble…”
Lonsdale: Donald Trump's Team Is More Likely to Fix Broken US Institutions
“I think Trump's extremely imperfect. He has all sorts of issues that bother me. You know, I think it's very problematic. I wish we had other people, but I think his side Is more likely to push these things in the right direction in terms of the stuff that's re…”
Lonsdale: China Controls TikTok's Algorithms to Brainwash Tens of Millions of Americans
“Yeah, I would force them to divest of Tik Tok. I think that, I think that's fine for Americans own Tik Tok. I think right now, China controls the Tik Tok algorithms. I don't care if the guy's based in Singapore, some of the data's here. It's very clear China c…”
Lonsdale: China Is Likely to Launch a Military Strike Within Four Years
“I'm very concerned about the geopolitical situation with China and Russia and the potential of war. When I was in, you know, a country in Asia, I won't say the name, seeing our ambassador there, who's on the other political side, but a very smart guy. Even he …”
Lonsdale: Lean startup methodology is useless for complex enterprise companies
“The whole lean startup movement I thought was bullshit when it was happening in terms of the things I wanted to do. There definitely was a lean startup movement. Didn't make sense at all for the areas I wanted to work on and focus on. You couldn't have done a …”
Lonsdale: Building a multi-billion-dollar company precludes healthy work-life balance
“You cannot have healthy worth life balance and build a multi-billion dollar company.”
Lonsdale: Top University Students Pursue Conformity Over Truth
“I think you're taught to shut up and virtue signal and be very careful what you say. And that's the exact opposite of what a liberal education is supposed to be. You think these kids at these top universities are pursuing truth? They're not pursuing truth. The…”
Lonsdale: SPC Will Buy a For-Profit Prison to Tie Profits to Recidivism
“We have a group we're sponsoring. Social, social profit corrections, SPC. What we're doing is we're taking a nonprofit. We're going to buy a for-profit prison and we're going to run it as if the only way to make profit was pay for performance was lower recidiv…”
Lonsdale: Wokeness Prioritizes Virtue Signaling Over Competence and Societal Function
“And it's a problem, Harry, because it's basically focusing on virtue signaling and focusing on things that, that don't matter as much at the sake of competence or the sake of a functional society.”
Lonsdale: Speaking Publicly Has Not Hindered Building Billion-Dollar Companies
“I say the vast majority of what I think, as you could tell when you go and look at things that I've gotten in trouble for now, it hasn't stopped me from building many, many billion dollar companies. It hasn't stopped me from raising a lot of great funds becaus…”
Lonsdale: Institutional Accountability Eliminates Wokeness by Forcing Operational Focus
“When you make these things accountable, whatever they are, they become less woke because they're now focused on, on actually getting things done.”
Lonsdale: Yale University Now Has More Administrators Than Undergraduate Students
“There's now more administrators at Yale than there are students, and almost as many at Harvard”
Lonsdale: Two-Thirds of University Students Report Self-Censoring Their Views
“The students, you know, two thirds report self-censorship to not just not say what they think because they're afraid to get in trouble at these places.”
Lonsdale: Elon Musk Leads the Resistance Against Ideological Conformity
“I think Elon Musk has done more than anybody else to model this behavior, to stand up to this nonsense and to call out things you're not supposed to call out and to reveal things you're not supposed to reveal.”
Lonsdale: China Is the Single Biggest Threat to the United States
“China is by far our biggest threat to have that kind of dictatorship. A lot of people like to pretend that it's just like, oh, Americans are just being like nativist or hawkish or whatever. No, this guy was hiring a lot of his best and brightest to build milit…”
Lonsdale: The Russia-Ukraine War Was Unnecessary Under Savvier US Leadership
“And I think that this conflict was unnecessary if we'd had a president who was savvier about how to handle it”
Lonsdale: Passing US State Legislation Costs a Few Hundred Thousand Dollars
“For a couple 100,000 dollars, you could take a law that's a really good law. It's going to help a lot of people and hire people and go testify. And there's a good chance you can get it done in, in a state where you're making a big difference”
Lonsdale: Venture Investors in Great Tech Companies Should Hold Shares Longer
“The lesson was that I probably should have held everything for an extra 10 or 15 years, and I, and Peter Thiel had the same lesson, and I've learned a lot from Peter, and he obviously sold out of Facebook too soon, too”
Lonsdale: 8VC's Bay Area investing share will drop to 40-50%
“I think when I first started the firm almost a decade ago, we were like 90% investing around here. I think the number is somewhere around 60% now around here, maybe, maybe kind of mid, maybe 60 to mid-sixties, and I could very easily see it going down to 40 or…”
Lonsdale: UK laws policing offensive online speech are a huge mistake
“First of all, I think the UK does have, like, strange online speech laws where, like, the police will visit you for saying things that if they find offensive, which I think is just absolutely unacceptable. I think you guys have been a huge mistake there.”
Lonsdale: The United States Functions Best as a Frontier Nation
“So America is best as a frontier nation.”
Lonsdale: 90% of United States Prisons Are Non-Profit Facilities
“People can blame for profit prisons, but 90% of them are nonprofit.”
Lonsdale: California's 2009 Probation Reform Saved $1B and Reduced Prison Re-Entry
“And you know, it basically saved the state a billion dollars over the next decade. It sent tens of thousands of fewer people back to stay at prison.”
Lonsdale: The US Administrative State Is Captured by Corporate Interests
“The administrative state has millions of rules. They've been captured by corporations. They've been captured by special interests.”
Lonsdale: Prolonging the War in Ukraine Is a Terrible Mistake
“I think the idea that we want to keep the conflict going is a terrible mistake.”
Lonsdale: Addepar Will Be Worth $20B to $30B by 2030
“I think it's going to be one of the biggest fintech companies. I'd be very disappointed if it's not like a, you know, 20, thirty billion dollar company at the end of the decade”
Lonsdale: For-Profit Startups Generate Greater Positive Impact Than Non-Profits
“OpenGov actually had more positive impact than the nonprofit ever could, because with OpenGov, you can get a bunch of best engineers, a bunch of the best business and salespeople, and you actually can get something that's self-sustaining to go to thousands of …”
Lonsdale Lost Hundreds of Millions by Holding Wish Stock Post-Distribution
“I personally did not get any out. My angel fund was able to get a lot out to, for everyone else. And I took the distributions, didn't sell them. So unfortunately I didn't end up, you know, I probably lost a few hundred million dollars from not, For not selling…”
Lonsdale: Founders and VCs Should Explicitly Target Weak Competition
“As an investor, as an entrepreneur, you want easy competition. You want To compete against things that are broken.”
Lonsdale: 8VC Identified 12 Sectors for $100B+ AI Service Displacement
“We've identified about 12 areas like this where we think there's gonna be more than a hundred billion dollars pulled out of those areas in terms of being able to go after them and create more efficient things.”
Lonsdale: 80% to 90% of top VCs are former founders
“The key in our generation, you've seen 80, 90% of the best ones have this background.”
Lonsdale: 8VC direct venture and incubation IRRs are around 30%
“It's hard to say whether or not it's outperforming the rest of it. It seems both sides look like they're in the thirties right now.”
Lonsdale: Equal VC partnerships struggle with startup incubation due to politics
“And I think it'd be harder to do this in a partnership because, you know, people do get upside on things they help build. So if it was a pure partnership where there was no one at all in charge, there'd probably be more politics. My guess is probably why a lot…”
Lonsdale: Venture theses are inadequate if McKinsey would publish them
“One of my rules is if McKinsey could have written this, that might be B or B plus work. It's not good enough for APC. It has to be something that's out there enough that McKinsey would have been maybe uncomfortable publishing it or writing about it.”
Lonsdale: The giant investment gap in ride sharing is mostly closed
“If you want to invest in ride sharing now, the gap's mostly closed. There's not, at least maybe as far as I can see, there's not giant gaps versus how ride sharing works now and how it could be working.”
Lonsdale: 40% of Bay Area land is zoned for cattle
“40% of the land around the San Francisco Bay Area is zoned for cattle use right now”
Lonsdale: Overemphasize employees' uniqueness to cultivate great talent
“Where the best way to interact with them is to help them discover their true skills and then calculate their true skills and to make them very proud of them to the point where they do see themselves as unique. And of course they are unique, but it's fine to ov…”
Lonsdale: 9 to 12 months cash runway is yellow alert, 6 months red
“And I generally say nine to 12 months is yellow alert and six months is red alert. And if you're a three months cash, you have to start exploring other alternatives. That's my general framework on these things.”
Lonsdale: Founders are too hesitant and casual about cutting burn rate
“So I think a lot of founders are a little too hesitant and blasÉ versus what they should be in this environment.”
Lonsdale: Venture firms cannot scale beyond core partner bandwidth
“Well, these things don't really scale that much because the whole point of them is the core set of partners are what you're betting on. And so if you just hire lots and lots of more people, eventually you're doing things that are not with the core and then I'm…”
Lonsdale: 8VC will maintain a $640M fund size every two to three years
“I've kept the fund the same size the last few times, just because it doesn't seem like I'd have time to do more than we're doing right now. So I think six 40 every two to three years to me is about right for what we do.”
Lonsdale: The University of Austin Has Admitted Its First Undergraduate Class
“We've been starting the University of Austin. It's going extremely well. We've admitted a big part of our first undergraduate class for this fall.”
Lonsdale: Chinese Technology Companies Are Now Innovating, Not Just Copying
“There's real innovation happening. They're not just copying there like they were 20 years ago, a lot more.”
Lonsdale: AI and Automation Will Enable US Manufacturing to Return Onshore
“I think there's some legit arguments that AI with manufacturing can bring some things back on shore in the U S and the U S more than any other nation.”