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 11 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
Justin Kan: Venture Capital Is Easy Because VCs Do No Real Work
“Because you don't do any of the real work. You know, like, this is, I can, I talk to founders all day, and I give them my advice, and they either do it or they don't do it. But at the end of the day, you know, I, you don't have any control. And so you wait, se…”
Kan: Founders have a fiduciary duty to investors to avoid burnout
“And if you burn out, you are not doing yourself or your investors or your employees or your customers any favors. You need to like retain yourself. And so you need to create a situation inside your company where you are going to be retained for a long time. I …”
Kan: It is a myth that founders must suffer to build startups
“I think people feel like they have to suffer in order to do a startup, and I actually just disagree with that. I don't think you have to suffer. You're going to experience pain, definitely. Things aren't always going to go right, but you don't have to suffer.”
Kan: Treating Atrium like an investor was my biggest early mistake
“I think I approached Atrium with a little bit too much of an investor attitude in the beginning, which was a little bit too much like hands off. Like I'm just going to build a team and the team is going to do everything without like really myself getting in th…”
Justin Kan: Navigating nightlife sober forces you to build real confidence
“I would never have thought that I could have fun without being hammered at nightlife before, but it's kind of like having to actually just live your life in Normal mode instead of easy mode, you know, and figure out how you can have the confidence and be okay …”
Justin Kan: Quitting alcohol is tech's easiest performance optimization
“Yeah, I think it's becoming much more socially acceptable and in this, I guess, especially in Silicon Valley, you know, where people are looking for all these performance optimization things and they're intermittent fasting and eating keto and meditating and l…”
Kan: Learning as a startup founder is an inherently painful process
“When you're the founder of a startup, you are forced to learn things. The thing I forgot about that process is that when you're learning is actually mostly a painful process. And what I mean by that is it's mostly involves failing at things until you finally g…”
Kan: Tying your entire identity to your startup guarantees burnout
“My entire identity was wrapped up in my company. And being an entrepreneur. And so the problem with that is that when things go badly, you feel badly about yourself. You transpose those feelings that you might have about what's happening in your company onto y…”
Kan: Naming emotions at work helps diagnose underlying operational issues
“Being able to name your emotions enables you to actually drive into the deeper issues for what might be triggering them in you”
Justin Kan: Successful Investors Need Platform, Selection Thesis, and Relentless Pursuit
“Well, I think investors have to have, you know, there's three qualities of investors that I, or of investors or firms that I think are important investing. I've thought about this a little bit. The first one is a platform that generates leads for them or reaso…”