The Ledger
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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
When a VC says they couldn't convince their partners, it is a lie
“The cop-out of every GP and every partner is always the, well, I love the deal, but I couldn't get my partners. No, that's actually a lie. They didn't have the conviction. They, they're using that for optionality for later, right?”
If a VC doesn't engage within 24 hours, they aren't genuinely interested
“I have a general rule I call the 24 hour rule which is in any, is there any engagement with you inside of 24 hours? And I might expand that to like 36, but generally 24 hours. And I'd even consider a favorite of a tweet an engagement. Right? It's something. Di…”
Fundraising is structurally stacked against founders because VCs default to no
“I think it's unfair, I think, in the battle of entrepreneurs, the VCs to get money in the sense that a VC has been doing this for years, right? They're getting a couple pitches a day, years, and so their default answer is a no.”
Science Inc. endured 3,000 rejections to raise $350M and build Dollar Shave Club
“At this point, I think I'm at 3000 plus no's. Right. And you know, what counts is the 83 yeses that we've had, and three hundred and fifty million raised against the portfolio, and now, of course, the Dollar Shave Club billion-dollar exit.”
VCs judge startups in hours, while studios evaluate founders over months
“If you look at venture, in a lot of ways, they're just kind of judging you inside of 30 minutes, and wow, I have data of thousands of hours with the CEO. In this company, and they're judging it in, in a 30 minute moment, whether it's just, they want to continu…”
Most venture capitalists do not actively think about their portfolio founders
“The reality is most VCs don't actually think about you all the time”
VC general partners expect Science Inc. co-founders to shadow portfolio pitches
“I think it's normal. All the GPs and partnerships of all the firms expect me to be there and are okay with it.”
VCs expect founders to answer pitch questions using standardized mental frameworks
“I think there's always a miscommunication a lot of times when, you know, a VCO asks a type of question, like competition, where you see growth, what does this mean? I think in their mind, they want to hear it An answer in, in a framework that they're going to …”
Most founders misunderstand what a VC rejection means and waste time
“The process of honestly understanding what a no means, which is, I think most entrepreneurs just have no idea and they waste their time, right?”
Series A and B venture capitalists complete only two to three deals yearly
“If you think about an A round investor or B round investor, right, they're doing three deals a year, tops, maybe four, but really two or three.”
Science Inc. operates as an LLC that co-builds startups for equity
“We co-build companies for equity. We're not, I don't have a fund. Mike and I, we, Our team, we don't not have a fund. We are an operating company. We're an LLC similar to beta works, but we don't have a fund.”
Startup customer acquisition costs never scale linearly as customer bases expand
“Whereas everybody's assumption is, I've acquired this many customers for the X. People believe that's linear. That's never true. Never, ever, ever true.”
Consumer startups must use broad advertising to achieve mass adoption after saturation
“At scale, Dollar Shave Club has to buy podcasts, television ads, because there is a saturation point on all places, and the only way you can reach mass adoption is kind of advertising.”
Top-of-funnel marketing is wasted without first optimizing retention and conversion metrics
“Before you dump everything at the top end of the funnel, there's a multiplier effect by increasing the retention by 20% or increasing the time for someone to do something by 20%. Like, those little things make the, before you dump everything at the top, whethe…”