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 129 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
Mitchell Green: 50% to 60% of VCs add negative value
“I think 50% of people in the venture business should not actually be in the business. There's too much money and there's like too many tourists. 50, 60% of people in this industry that actually probably add negative value to companies.”
Mitchell Green: China will win the global AI competition
“Don't count China out. I bet they win the AI world.”
Mitchell Green: $2B valuations for AI spinout ideas are complete lunacy
“People that spin out of Like, Anthropic or OpenAI and raise money at, like, two billion dollars for a freaking idea. Like, there's nothing more than an idea and a napkin. To us, that seems complete lunacy.”
Mitchell Green: 98% of VC and PE investors have never run a company
“I've never run a company in my life. By the way, nor have, like, 98% of venture investors or private equity investors.”
Mitchell Green: Multi-billion VC funds are insane and require hitting next Google
“I think it's insane. I think these funds are way too, and they, just do the math, the fund math on like how, they're clearly, you have to have the next open, you have to have the next Google, effectively, or the math doesn't work, I don't think.”
Green: AI infrastructure investing today mirrors website investing in 1997
“I think investing in AI infrastructure today is like investing in websites in 1997.”
Green: The idea of a single-person AI company is comical
“The idea of a single-person AI company I think is, like, comical at best.”
Green: If a company responds to VC cold calls, it sucks
“And you realize if the company calls you back, the company sucks.”
Green: A Benchmark-backed Silicon Valley version of SafeSend would've fetched $500M
“Had that deal, been backed by Benchmark, like Vishra or Fett, Peter Fett, and one of those guys, backed a Benchmark, doing a minority deal based in Silicon Valley, it would have been five hundred million dollars.”
Green: Lead Edge bought ByteDance at 5x earnings
“Late last year we were buying ByteDance. We were paying five times earnings for it. It grows, like, 25, 30% a year.”
Green: Expecting consistent 3x net VC funds is a fallacy
“Please tell me where all these like three X net funds are all run. It's a complete fallacy.”
Green: DPI is the most important VC metric; marks are for suckers
“I believe I believe that, like, DPI is the most important thing, and marks are completely for suckers.”
Green: MicroStrategy's strategy of issuing debt for crypto is a house of cards
“The idea, like, from what I understand, microstrategy is effectively issuing debt to buy, to go in the market and buy more To go to buy more like crypto and they just keep doing it. But if that reverses, eventually got paid on the debt. I don't know. It just s…”
Mitchell Green: Lead Edge Capital is buying public software stocks like Procore, Workday, Appian
“We are buyers. We're buying software stocks right now. You know, a portion of our funds can be invested in public equities, so we're buying companies like Procore, Workday, Appian.”
Green: Software stocks will remain dead money for a quarter or two
“What you're going to see is they're going to take numbers down at a bunch of companies. Give it a quarter or two. Companies will start to then, you know, beat numbers. Then they'll raise the numbers, and the stocks will start to work. But it's probably dead mo…”
Mitchell Green: Internet stocks stay expensive due to stock-based compensation dilution
“Well, the reason a lot of these stock or stocks and internet stocks are actually still not cheap is because the stock-based comp, like, the stock-based comp in a lot of these companies is totally nuts. Like, the amount of equity compensation and dilution of, l…”
Green: ByteDance could reach $70B to $100B in earnings within five years
“I think it is possible to see in a few years that this company's doing, you know, 70, eighty, hundred billion of earnings in the next five years.”
Mitchell Green: ByteDance will list in Hong Kong, not the US
“Zero percent chance it'll list in the US. No, I mean, just to answer it, I have no clue, but no, it'll list in Hong Kong.”
Green: The biggest internet innovations of the last decade came from China
“Look, if you look at the internet, the biggest innovation in internet is usually over the last decade or 15 years to come out of China.”
Green: China can engineer and reverse engineer tech cheaper than Americans
“Don't underestimate, like, Chinese creativeness and, like, ingenuity to, like, figure out how to, like, reverse engineer and engineer things in much cheaper ways than Americans can do.”
Green: High 2020-2021 Valuations Destroyed Returns for Good Companies
“There are a lot of people that invested in good companies or great companies in twenty-twenty and twenty-twenty-one at really stupid prices and didn't make money.”
Green: Investors Will Still Hold Unsold 2012 Stakes in 2030
“At some point, I don't know if it's three years, or five years, or seven years, for sure. People are gonna wake up in 20, in 2030, in 2032, and realize it's, oh my god, they're still all in this stuff from 20 12 and 20 15.”
Green: VC liquidity crisis will persist until LPs refuse re-ups
“When LPs go to the biggest venture funds in the world, and private equity funds, and say, we're not investing in your next fund until you get liquidity in these names.”
Green: Growth VCs should re-invest in public shares of former portfolio wins
“But what surprises me is that more funds, like, you know, if you were an early investor in Toast, and you're fully out of it, and you love the company, and the stock's down, like, 60%, like, why not go buy it again? Like, it surprises me more people don't do t…”
Mitchell Green: Doubling a $100B VC investment requires $25B in earnings
“And you invest in something that's worth, like, it's worth a hundred billion dollars. You're effectively saying to make a double with dilution, it's probably two hundred and fifty billion dollars. Like, that's making the bet it's gonna do twenty-five billion d…”
Green: Venture capital was facing a rude awakening before AI emerged
“I think the venture industry was about to be in for a rude awakening, and then AI showed up.”
Green: Tech investors learned nothing from the 2020-2021 bubble
“People didn't learn a damn thing from 20 and 21. It's, like, shocking.”
Green: Prices for AI infrastructure are going to plummet
“Same thing's gonna happen. Prices are gonna plummet.”
Green: Only three $100B+ companies were created post-iPhone
“You know, since the iPhone came out in 2007, 2006, whatever it was, there's only been three companies built that did not exist before. That were a hundred billion dollar companies. ByteDance, Pindo Doe, and Uber.”
Green: Lead Edge would take 0.7x returns to exit slow-growth SaaS
“Yes, we have a prep so we would get our one X, but if you told me today I could take a .7 X just to get out of it, I would happily cut you. I would happily do it.”
Green: Early-stage investors should exit and sell upon IPO
“If you are a early stage investor, when your company goes public, you should get off the board and sell the company.”
Green: Venture capital GPs are complacent about returning LP capital
“There's just a lot of, like, I think a lot of people in this industry are very complacent. All of us as GPs, Need to do a better job getting money back to LPs and figuring out how to do it.”
Green: Emerging VC managers must utilize secondary markets
“What I believe like emerging managers and people starting venture funds need to do is take advantage of the secondary wind of the secondary markets.”
Green: AI software startups show shockingly low gross dollar retention rates
“We look at a lot of these AI software, tons of these AI software companies, and like, the gross dollar retention rates are just like, Really, really low. It's actually, like, shocking.”
Green: TA Associates generated the best tech returns over 30-40 years
“The firm that I think has generated the best returns in the tech investing world over the last 3040 years, and it's become more a buyout fund, but they used to do tons of minorities, TA Associates.”
Green: LPs must ask VCs why they held unlocked stock in 2021
“I believe a great question that people don't ask, that they should ask. Any manager who is around, who's been around 10 plus years, hey, in September of 21, September 30th of 21, how much unlocked stock did you have in your portfolio? And let's say September, …”
Green: ByteDance North America generates only single-digit percentage of total revenue
“ByteDance North America is a, you know, single digit percentage of revenue.”
Green: ByteDance will be a top global AI company within ten years
“I think they're gonna be one of the foremost AI companies on, on the planet over the next decade.”
Green: Supports banning social media for teenagers under 16
“Yes, I think we should. I think it needs to be way highly regulated.”
Green: Existing software companies will not be wiped out by AI
“Are all of our software companies going to be completely disrupted and all of them go away? And like, I don't know, like I'm taking a stand that it's they're not. But like, I guess I could be totally wrong.”
Mitchell Green: Believing software incumbents will disappear is a fool's errand
“These companies aren't going anywhere. Like, the incumbents have distribution, Data and balance sheets. You know, it's a fool's errand to think all these companies are going to go away.”
Green: ByteDance grows 30% annually with massive profits
“ByteDance Grows at, you know, 30% a year with massive profits.”
Mitchell Green: Stocks without earnings or EBITDA have no valuation floor
“If you don't have earnings or EBITDA, there is no floor in a lot of these things.”
Mitchell Green: Heavily leveraged incumbents are the primary targets for disruption
“Where I think the biggest opportunity to disrupt incumbents today is Soft software, tech enabled services, any company, it actually can be a manufacturing company, it doesn't matter, any company with a bunch of leverage on it, because those companies don't hav…”
Mitchell Green: Mark Zuckerberg is right to bet big on AI spending
“Mark Zuckerberg deserves to go for it. Like, he's, it's his business. He built the damn business. Like, I don't think you really have much to say to be like, oh, don't bet on the guy. And by the way, he kind of has to because his competitors are doing the same…”
Green: Lead Edge Capital has had only one or two write-offs ever
“I think we've had, like, two 10 X's ever, or something like that, but we've only had, like, you know, One or two zeros ever.”
Mitchell Green: VCs should avoid easy responses and target hard-to-reach CEOs
“So if you, if the company calls you back, it's like, hang up the phone. It's the CEO you call every two days for a month. That's who you want to get on the phone.”
Green: Markets irrationally heed random online research over top tech leaders
“It's incredible, like, why don't, it's amazing that people are listening to some random research firm versus listening to people like Stan Druckenmiller, Howard Marks, Ken Griffin, Steve Cohen, like, Mark Benioff, people like Mark Zuckerberg you know, Jensen W…”