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 20 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
Clark: Venture capital should underwrite engineering risk, not science risk
“We're not that interested in investing in science because we don't know how that's going to turn out. I am interested in investing in engineering.”
Clark: Healthcare consumers will not return to pre-pandemic in-person visits
“After we've been on board in that experience, nobody's going back to the old way. Like the old way of, I pick up the phone. I punch a lot of buttons to go through a call tree. I finally end up with a human being. They send me up on a schedule four weeks from n…”
Clark: Post-pandemic employees will spend one to two days weekly in offices
“We will see, like, one to two days a week people go in and collaborate, but a lot of the time people will be spending independently working.”
Clark: SAP's core ERP will outlast all software from its generation
“SAP's core ERP, I believe, is going to outlast everything of that generation”
Clark: A manager's primary job is continuously developing team capabilities
“The job as a manager is to develop The capabilities underneath you at all times.”
Clark: Management can be taught, but leadership requires real-world practice
“Management is definitely something that more can be taught, like, at school. You know what I mean? Like, there's books to read, there's techniques to put in play, there's things that work for people. You can go learn those things. It's much more of a book lear…”
Clark: Phone calls build more intimacy with founders than Zoom
“Something about Zoom, while you get some visual cues, it also kind of creates this sense of, like, we have to be, like, working on this topic and whatever, yeah, and something about being on the phone puts people more concentrated, more focused on that person,…”
Clark: General Catalyst closed multiple deals without meeting founders in person
“I've done seven or eight investments, I guess, since I started. Four or five of those are during the pandemic, right? That ballpark. And I've done three or four of these now without ever meeting the founder.”
Clark: Former operators face schedule shock six months into venture capital
“The two spots are kind of six months in and two years in. At the six month in mark, it's kind of, what am I doing exactly? Especially for a lot of people that come into venture, they show up for their first Monday or whatever, and they literally have nothing t…”
Clark: Former operators in VC miss operational control after two years
“The other hump comes around two years in where most people after, you know, long operating careers, it's kind of a relief not to have to like drive and make decisions every day and be in that machine. But after a couple of years for a lot of people, that charm…”
Clark: The neurotech market unlock will rival the scale of genomics
“When we start to understand genes, to this day, we're still learning how to take advantage of that knowledge day to day in the medical industry, in the medical research industry, and the same thing will come for the brain.”
Clark: Check pre-pandemic traction to identify durable consumer demand
“I think that one of the things you can look at is there evidence of something working before the pandemic hit to distinguish between are we looking at acceleration because of the forced onboarding, or are we looking at something that has been created just duri…”
Clark: General Catalyst is Livongo's largest shareholder during Teladoc merger
“And you may know that we're the largest shareholders in Livongo. Livongo is merging now with Teladoc, and there's like a whole thesis behind that.”
Clark: Board members should guide founders via mentorship, not authority
“Our job is really to help them find their answers by being a focusing factor, right? Help them sort out their own thinking, not impose your own. It's leading without authority, and it's leading through mentorship, is sort of the mentality.”
Clark: Even positive unexpected surprises erode board trust
“The number one piece of advice I can give founders is around managing their boards is don't surprise anybody. Just no surprises. Even good surprises erode trust.”
Clark: Board management should feel like jazz improv, not an orchestra
“But I think when this is done well, for the board member, it feels like you have the space to think, to collaborate, to contribute. More like improv. If you want to compare this to different kinds of bands, right, it's more like jazz, less like orchestra.”
Clark: Microsoft's culture was insular and disconnected before Satya Nadella
“Microsoft before Satya was a little insular. Like, we're up there in the woods in Seattle, and we didn't really kind of get down to the valley very much, right?”
Clark: Winning a debate against Bill Gates was a Microsoft rite of passage
“And it was a rite of passage to be in a conference room with Bill and in a debate with him and win a point. Like, just to win a debate, right, was this major rite of passage.”
Clark: General Catalyst incubated healthcare startup Commure in-house
“Yeah, that's a great question, and Commure is a unique-ish example in the sense that Commure is a company that Hamath and I started within General Catalyst. It's a quote, what we call hatch, Right. It's an incubation from within the firm.”