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
A seed lead only taking pro rata in Series A signals failure
“I fully believe if they're like, hey, Sequoia led our seed, and I'm like, hey, are they doing your A, and they're like, Well, they're doing their pro rata. I'm like, this is not a good company. Like, objectively is not a good company.”
Tech workers should ignore mission and join the fastest-growing company
“Don't care about the product, don't care about anything, just go work at the fastest growing company because winning feels great.”
Altman: Traditional VC firm hierarchies distort associate incentives away from fund returns
“I don't know if they're fucked up cultures, but I don't think they're incentivized to have the best returns. If you're an associate at a firm, and you're maybe there for five or six years, your job is to get a deal done that's gonna get marked up quickly so yo…”
Max Altman: Seed funds competing for Series A face adverse selection
“I'm clearly gonna Lose the deals that I want to lose, and if I win them, it's probably not the ones that I want.”
Altman: Founders care about investor portfolio prestige, not check size
“And founders don't care if you did a 25 K check or a million dollar check at the seed. They just think that you've invested in the best companies.”
Altman advises seed funds to model receiving only 70-80% of pro rata
“So I think a lot of the times that I've learned is like, hey, model in the pro rata, but you're only gonna get 70 or 80% of it.”
Altman: Building products close to OpenAI's roadmap is naive
“If you have, like, the naivety to think you're gonna build something that's really close to what OpenAI is building, And they're not going to build it. You're crazy. Like, you know what I mean? So I think we've really stayed away from things that OpenAI will e…”
Altman: Seed VCs have a 15-year window before being replaced
“Yeah, we have to compete with them, we have to do better than them, there's not room for all of us, and Frankly, I kind of think, Harry, you were younger when you started, so you might have a little more time. I got, like, 15 years of this until I'm really goo…”
Altman: Founders Must Rely on Intuition Over Customer Requests
“The founder needs to have intuition of what they want. The customers aren't going to know.”
Altman: Mid-sized $700M VC funds face severe structural challenges
“I think it's really challenging to be like a seven hundred million dollar fund. Now I think you're either a really massive, powerful platform like an Andreessen or a GC Or you just have the legacy cachet, like a Sequoia or a Kleiner, or you have to be a boutiq…”
Altman: Scaling Silicon Valley venture capital degraded interpersonal trust among VCs
“There are still some. There are less. I think when I got there in San Francisco in 2013, it looked a little more like a small, smaller town, maybe Austin or St. Louis, where everyone really trusted everybody. And had deep connection, and naturally it's grown. …”
Altman: Successful startups must target at least the entire US market
“Yeah, and I do believe that the majority of the best companies are going to be built from San Francisco, but the people need to be a little bit outward looking in what they're building, because Your market better be the entire United States at a minimum to be …”
Altman: Lead Series A VCs walk away if non-leads pre-fill two-thirds of the round
“People do these wonky things where they're like, we raised five from this person, and we have this thing soft-circled, and then you get to your lead, and they're like, there's only room for us to do under half of this deal. We're out. And I'm like, don't do th…”