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 15 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
Eisenberg: Only 1 of Aleph's last 17 deals was horizontal SaaS
“Of the last 17 investments we made at Aleph, one was a SaaS company.”
Eisenberg: My biggest ZERP mistake was not selling 100% of peak-valuation positions
“One of them was not selling a hundred percent of one or two positions when the prices were high.”
Eisenberg: I stopped proactive deal sourcing and rely solely on referrals
“I've stopped sourcing. I get all my deals right now through referrals of 30 years of being in this business. And so I actually don't do proactive sourcing anymore.”
Eisenberg Received Support From UAE Figures and Muslim Tech Leaders
“I have gotten incredible, but I mean incredible, support from people in the United Arab Emirates, Members of the Abraham Accords. People reaching out directly. I've gotten incredible support from Muslims in the tech community.”
Eisenberg: Aleph's largest check ever went to AI defense startup Dream Security
“We wrote this giant check to a company called Dream Security, which is AI infrastructure for protecting critical assets in countries. It was the biggest check we wrote.”
Michael Eisenberg Refused to Make Venture Investments Over Zoom During Pandemic
“You know, I didn't invest over Zoom. During, during the pandemic. I just, I met people out of a farm.”
Fintech investors initially passed on Lemonade for lacking insurance experience
“When we first invested in Lemonade, I called a bunch of fintech investors and said, who's the insurance guy? I said, nobody. That's the beauty. So none of them would invest.”
Aleph Closes Investment Despite CEO And 25% Of Staff In Reserves
“There's an investment that I've been working on for a long time. The closing's tomorrow, and we bet we're going to issue a capital call. The CEO is in reserves. He's one of the first people called up. And I called him up, and I called his two co-founders. I sp…”
Eisenberg: Aleph intentionally operates strictly as a single-stage fund
“It informs our investment strategy in general at Olive, which is a lot along the lines of benchmark, which is we like to work with partners. And that means we are a single stage, basically seed and a fund. We're not doing the big, big fund with the multi-stage…”
Aleph remains a single-stage fund to avoid multi-stage signaling risks
“We are a single stage, basically C to A fund. We're not doing the big, big fund with the multi-stage thing where I think you have a lot more risks around reserves and around signaling risk when times go get bad.”
Aleph doubled down on travel startup BookAway during the COVID-19 crash
“We have a company in the travel space that was Slaughtered by COVID. We got a pile of money reserved for it. We plowed in. We think this is going to come back, and when everyone else was not there, we are. And I think that's enabled us to be nimble. A company …”
Aleph took half of Lemonade's $13 million seed round
“It's a thirteen million dollar seed round. We put six and a half in the term sheet.”
Aleph invested in an AI and synthetic biology rocket fuel startup
“We just backed a AI to synthetic biology and chemistry rocket fuel company”