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 101 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Eisenberg Claims Woke Anti-Semitic Left Has Taken Over American Universities
“The kind of progressive, woke, anti-Semitic left has taken over a lot of American universities. And they don't like Jews, and that's just the truth.”
Eisenberg: College Is A Waste Of Money And Brainwashes Kids
“Not sending kids to college. It's a waste of time and money. I think it's worse than that. You send kids to these places, they are brainwashed with immorality.”
Eisenberg: Attackers Of Human Values Must Be Eradicated For Progress
“It's a human aspiration, except there are some barbarians that don't believe in this. And they need to be eradicated. And that's our job right now. And our job of our children is to go eradicate them so that we can have more weddings, more children, more grand…”
Eisenberg: Foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history
“Foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history.”
Eisenberg advises European tech founders to relocate due to regulations
“If I'm in Europe and I'm starting a company, I would get out.”
Eisenberg: FTC Chair Lina Khan threatens American capitalism and must go
“Lena Connell said openly is, I think, a threat to American capitalism. Whether Biden or Trump gets elected, she needs to go.”
Eisenberg: SaaS is riskier than deep tech due to competition and price erosion
“I don't think it's a more risky play than a SaaS thing. I'll argue that SaaS is way more risky. One, because of the competition and price erosion.”
Eisenberg: Companies will build custom software with AI instead of buying SaaS
“I think you'll see a lot of companies build their own software. Or you have tools that create kind of unique business processes software for a lot of these companies. I don't know if it's tomorrow or in five years, but I think there'll be more of that.”
Eisenberg: US Nvidia chip bans have not meaningfully slowed China's AI
“The U.S. Put a banner on Nvidia chips going to China. I don't sense that it slowed China down in a meaningful way.”
Eisenberg: China is 10 years ahead of US in TikTok AI psyops
“I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. On AI and psyops using TikTok. I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. In sophistication of how to manipulate the minds of young people.”
Eisenberg predicts more private equity software investments will see Pluralsight-style zeroes
“I'm not concerned. I'm certain. It's happening.”
Eisenberg: VC funds with only one strong partner will fail first
“I think the first style of funds that goes out of businesses is funds where there's three, four or five partners and only one of them is good. And then that person gets tired of holding everybody on their shoulders, and they leave and set their own thing up, a…”
Eisenberg: Mark Rowan asked UPenn donors to withhold checks until leaders are fired
“Mark Rowan wrote, wrote yesterday that he's calling on pen to fire two people, otherwise he's telling people to hold their checkbooks.”
Domain specialization blinds venture investors to disruptive insights, argues Eisenberg
“When we think we're specialists, we think we know a lot about something. If you think you know a lot about something, you have really expert questions, so to speak, to ask a lot of the founders. But my guess is if you were that knowledgeable in And specialized…”
Work-life balance is a failure of modern culture, argues Michael Eisenberg
“I've actually never, ever thought about work-life balance. I don't believe in it. I think it's a failure of modern culture to seek work-life balance.”
Eisenberg: The IPO market is wide open for realistic valuations
“I don't buy that the IPO window is closed. The IPO window is wide open. The question is, what's the price you're willing to take?”
Eisenberg: Financial reality dictates most AI foundation model companies will fail
“I don't buy that five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 of these are going to work. It's just not true. Financially, it's not true.”
Eisenberg: Users will rely on AI agents over direct publisher websites
“As you kind of play this forward, you're going to see a whole series of agents. Like I'm not going to go to the New York times.com to read it. I'm going to go to my AI screen and say, fetch me the articles that interest me from the New York times today.”
Eisenberg: Venture capital is a craft, not an asset class
“The venture business is completely sui generis. It's not a class. There is a small number of people in this craft who make money, and there's a small number of startups.”
Eisenberg: Only one or two foundation model startups will prove profitable
“There is, there are one or two companies. In there that will make their venture investors a lot of money and the rest of them will cost their LPs and GPs a lot of money.”
Eisenberg: Israel lacks talent density for foundation models due to military focus
“We didn't think there was a talent density in Israel specifically for foundation models. Because a lot of the Israeli technology comes out of the military and not academia.”
Eisenberg: Incumbents will find AI catch-up harder than internet adoption
“And I think what's going to be shocking about this, that's not like the internet, is it's going to be harder for legacy companies to catch up to AI companies, which is different from the internet.”
Eisenberg: AI will disrupt horizontal SaaS processes
“I think in general, horizontal SaaS processes are going to be disrupted by AI.”
Eisenberg: Strict AI regulation will further erode Europe's economic competitiveness
“I think that is going to set Europe back in competitiveness more than it's already been set back in competitiveness over the last 20 years.”
Eisenberg: US, China, and Israel will lead AI over Europe due to lower regulation
“And so when you look at kind of the key markets for AI development, where the US is first and China is second and Israel is third I think those are likely to be less regulated than most, and certainly than Europe, and so these, those will be advantaged economi…”
Eisenberg: 21st century geopolitics will be defined by AI capability
“If the 20th century was about nuclear countries versus non-nuclear countries, the 21st century is AI countries versus non-AI countries.”
Eisenberg: Investors will lose a lot of money chasing defense tech
“And so people will lose a lot of money chasing the new, new thing, which today happens to be defense in addition to AI.”
Eisenberg: Secondary market buyers claiming interest are mostly fishing for startup data
“Over the last three or four weeks, we've decided to do a little experiment. We reach out to them now. We used to ignore them. But now it's interesting because, like, you discover there are actual buyers there. There aren't, ok? There are not actual buyers ther…”
Eisenberg: A generation of ZERP-era venture funds will die
“A whole good generation of people grow up during ZERP. And, you know, now reality is biting. And so, yeah, of course.”
Eisenberg: Aleph raised an insane amount of foreign capital post-October 7
“We've raised an incredible amount of foreign money into our company since October seventh, an insane amount of money. It's wide open for business right now. Investors are on the ground every day.”
Eisenberg: Western VC investment in China was a ZERP phenomenon
“I think China was a ZERP phenomenon also.”
Eisenberg Predicts Venture Investment In Israel Will Surge Due To Resilience
“If you ask me what comes next in the next chapter of the State of Israel, I think I do know, and the Israeli tech community, and that is much more investment is going to flow here because people want to invest in resilient societies in the 21st century, as it'…”
Eisenberg: The best time to invest in early-stage VC is during busts
“The best time to invest is when it busts. You need to maintain a constant investment pace, no matter what the external circumstances are around the bust in early stage venture capital.”
Michael Eisenberg: Massive funds like Tiger Global overwhelm down-market cap tables
“What we often don't pay attention to is if you've got the largest war chest at the table, you've got a shot to overwhelm the cap table in a down market. Meaning, if I'm Tiger and, you know, I'm taking a large round from Tiger at a company, then the company nee…”
Eisenberg: Massive venture capital inflows will result in scarce investor returns
“There's no capital scarcity, by the way, but there could be, and this will take longer to play out, a scarcity of returns because of all that capital that's come in.”
Eisenberg: More startups die of indigestion than starvation
“You know, when I was at Benchmark, they used to say that more companies die of indigestion than die of starvation. I actually think that's still true.”
Eisenberg: Selling VC Secondary Shares Without the Founder Harms Reputation
“Founders talk to each other, and unless it's really obvious you're taking money off with the founder, and it's probably a small amount if you're a large stakeholder, I think that's reputation negative over the long term and not consistent with playing the long…”
Eisenberg: Equal partnership structures foster safer, more collaborative VC firms
“One of these about the equal partnership is you're not worried about your economics or even negotiating them subconsciously. And that makes the partnership more of a safe space and more of a collaborative space. And I think it's one of the really powerful thin…”
Eisenberg: Market bust will reallocate tech talent but won't reduce salaries
“A bust in the past and maybe now would reallocate some of that talent around. I actually don't think it would reduce the cost of it for what it's worth, given how scarce the talent is, but I think it could reallocate it to better places.”
Early-stage VCs must maintain a steady investment pace through market busts
“But it turns out that the best time to invest is when it busts. And so you need to maintain a constant investment pace, no matter what the external circumstances are around the bust in early stage venture capital.”
Overcapitalizing lean founders causes them to explode, says Michael Eisenberg
“When you overstuff founders who are better at lean with capital, they explode. And conversely, if you've got guys who can press on the gas and play the game on the field when everyone's got capital, you ought to load them up.”
Tech companies have become long-duration assets like bonds, argues Eisenberg
“But the second thing is technology has become a long duration asset, which it never was before. So you used to think of bonds as long duration assets or Refrigerators is long duration assets. Houses. But now people look at Amazon and go, whoa, 30 years plus so…”
Eisenberg: Partner time, not money, is a VC's most precious commodity
“And the reason you need to stay small and focused is your most precious commodity is not your money. It's your time.”
Aleph's motto: being different is better than being better
“Our motto at Olive is different is better than better. Everything we do should be different, not better. Everything our companies should do should be different and not better.”
Eisenberg: Companies get premium multiples when they are sole plays on trends
“Companies get premium multiples when it's the only way to play a future trend in the public markets.”