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 13 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
Hannah: Steve Jobs' biographies have done entrepreneurs a massive disservice
“I think the Steve Jobs biographies have done a lot of entrepreneurs a disservice with this notion of a reality distortion field that, you know, you can just, you know, if you believe it hard enough and convince a cult of people around you to believe it, that y…”
Hannah: Y Combinator gives bad advice by prioritizing traction over idea quality
“One element I don't like is this rejection of the notion that Ideas are valuable. You know, they, there's sort of this feeling that says, come in here and build some, build anything, build something you would use, build anything you can get traction on in your…”
Hannah: Bootstrapped eHow and VC-backed Betfair yielded equal personal financial returns
“Both ended up creating a similar amount of financial gain for me in the end it through completely different courses.”
Hannah: Premature scaling in cheap capital environments sabotages startup success
“But I think a lot of entrepreneurs in these markets with relatively cheap capital have a tendency to be aggressive and put their foot on the gas, even when they haven't truly got their business figured out. And not only is that highly wasteful of resources, yo…”
Hannah: eHow operated with zero employees throughout his entire ownership
“Over the course of our ownership of that business, we never had a single employee in that business.”
Hannah: Venture boards should stay out of pricing and product decisions
“And then there's a whole host of decisions that boards weigh in on, you know, on specific initiatives or products or pricing or management, you know, all these things that I think they should probably, the board should largely stay out of and just put great pe…”
Hannah: Average venture-backed startup CEOs lack capital allocation mastery
“I think the average CEO, which is a good person, a venture-backed CEO, the kind of people we invest in, and we, you know, we try and be choosy about who those are, still often is not a master of this issue of capital allocation, and so they will, you know, the…”
Hannah: eHow was bought for $100K and paid back in two months
“We bought this site for a 100,000 dollars. And I told people about it and they last smart people, people, you know, household name VCs from Sand Hill Road laughed at me on this idea that I would buy this site and saying, what the hell are you going to do with …”
Hannah: Founders do not need pre-existing passion to build great companies
“Contrary to some others, I wouldn't tell someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, who wants to be their own boss They want to start something and create something, and they don't have an idea they're passionate about, that they should just go home, or they sho…”
Hannah: Betfair will process over $100B in bets in 2016
“I think we'll do north of a hundred billion dollars in bets through the exchange this year.”
Hannah: A founder's willingness to share bad news is a critical trait
“A founder who is just as happy to bring you bad news at the board meeting as good news, because it's a step on the path to figuring out the right answer, is to me one of the most important characteristics, and is not something you reliably find”
Hannah: Venture capital lacks the compounding flywheel momentum of entrepreneurship
“It's a job where I think unlike an entrepreneur's job, you don't get as much a sense of the flywheel working, right? Like you don't sense that you don't get the sense that you've got this thing going and you're building strength to strength. Like it's a, you k…”