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 16 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
Rathmann: Founders Should Take Capital Whenever It Is Available
“I have generally a saying that's drink when you're fed. And so maybe more saying, you know, you take money when it's available, but it really comes into the circumstance, comes into the problem you're trying to solve.”
Rathmann: The boardroom belongs to the CEO, who must take control
“It's my boardroom. It's a founder's boardroom. It's a CEO's boardroom. And so, you've got to take control, and you've got to build a team around that.”
Rathmann: US small business market will be partnership-driven, not winner-take-all
“There's twenty-nine million small businesses just here in the U.S. I think that it's a variety of key players looking to evolve, and if anything, this is going to be a strong partnership market before it would ever be a winner-take-all market.”
Rathmann: High-performing startup teams must operate between 80% and 130% capacity
“A great team, I have a saying and a philosophy that the great team is always throttled at between 80 to 130%. You can't run at 130% forever because you really start to break things. You can't run at 80% forever because then you become complacent and you might …”
Rathmann outlines the five core ways venture capitalists add value
“If you boil it down, I think VCs in general can do about five things for a company and varying levels and varying levels of expertise and execution. But the first would be they can write checks. The second is they can make intros to talent. The third is they c…”
Rathmann: Founders must actively extract value from VCs rather than expecting hand-offs
“As a founder, you have to know that all those things are available. It's really your job To extract it. I think folks get into trouble when they think that a lot of these things are these kind of marketing elements of a particular VC or particular firm are goi…”
Rathmann: Managing VCs is a competition for their time against portfolio peers
“It's my job to make sure that the board and that the investors are continually working for the company. And quite frankly, I kind of view it as a competition for their time, right? They've got other portfolio companies, and I want to make sure that they're spe…”
Rathmann: Physical office density directly dictates a startup team's energy
“If you have too much space, the energy level is not there. Obviously, if you don't have enough space, the energy level is there. It's just not the right type of energy you're wanting.”
Rathmann: Separating objective data from empathy helps employees self-correct
“It's important that you show the data which you're operating off of, and then you can bring in the human empathy and, you know, relational component, and if you can Keep those separate. It does wonders for how people are, will self-correct, and they'll realize…”
Rathmann: CEOs must travel in person to recruit top executive talent
“As a CEO, if you're really going to recruit, you've got to get on a plane. You've got to be willing to get on a plane for almost everything.”
Rathmann refused Zoom partner meetings with Bessemer and Coatue
“Byron would tell you, and I think Thomas from KOTU as well as, you know, as we were going through the partner meeting process, it was, you know, they're sending a zoom link over and saying, Hey, you know, just zoom in at this time. And that'll be that. And I s…”
ScaleFactor Oversubscribed Its Seed Round From $1M to $3.5M
“We set out to raise a million dollars. We ended up oversubscribing that round to three and a half”
Rathmann spent upwards of four years recruiting key ScaleFactor hires
“There's folks that have joined scale factor that I've been recruiting for upwards of four years.”
ScaleFactor Operated Three Years Before Raising Venture Capital
“We've been around for six years, And so you could say that it actually took a long, long time to fundraise venture-backed dollars. It took three years to do that before we were operating for three years before I ever took any type of venture money.”
Kurt Rathmann connected QuickBooks to a Palm Pilot via 3G in high school
“I had a company in high school, it's a landscape lighting company. And so at that Well, not a tech company. What I was trying to do is solve a real time inventory environment. So I had a garage full of inventory and I had a QuickBooks desktop computer and I wa…”