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
AngelList syndicates pose a direct competitive threat to traditional VCs
“I think AngelList are more directly competing with VC.”
Bitcoin will succeed, but adoption will take longer than expected
“Fly, but it's going to take a lot longer than people think.”
VC investing is about tracking lines over time, not single dots
“Normally it's investing in lines, not dots.”
Moffat: Great VCs challenge assumptions rather than relying on pattern recognition
“In terms of finding interesting deals, I think the ability to keep challenging your assumptions. I think it's easy to get a VC to talk about pattern recognition and you have a bunch of sort of simple shortcuts in your brain on what a good entrepreneur should l…”
Zendesk disproved the $1,000/month minimum pricing rule for enterprise software
“Five years ago, it used to be the case that You enterprise products had to be something you could sell for at least a thousand dollars a month. Otherwise you couldn't sell them economically. And then Zendesk comes along and completely rips that apart.”
Junior VCs must start as hunters before trading or farming deals
“So I think when you start in VC, you have to be a hunter because you've got nothing to trade with. Farming hasn't had any results yet. And so, yeah, I think you always start off as a hunter and you're kind of chasing what you think are interesting new sectors.”
Moffat: Forced deal trading with other VCs does not come naturally
“I don't think I'm a very good trader. That doesn't come naturally to me, this kind of idea of forced trading deals and maintaining a kind of a balance of payments with other VCs.”
Moffat: Startups are being funded earlier and with less data
“And what you're now seeing is good companies are getting chased by VCs. They're getting funded before they were thinking about doing a funding round. They're getting funded on less sort of traction, less data than would have been the case a few years ago.”
Moffat: VC firms must commit to a distinct organizational model
“And I think all three of those models are valid. And I think every VC has to look at those and work out what makes sense for them, but they do need to make a clear decision on what their approach is going to be.”
VCs will launch separate seed arms to leverage AngelList
“I think a lot of this will be VCs probably having some sort of separate Seed funding arm, which probably uses AngelList alongside to help to do that early stage investing.”
Rob Moffat: Most venture capital recruits are headhunted
“Most people who get recruited into BC get headhunted so sort of chasing it is unlikely to work”
Balderton Capital invested around £4 million in Crowdcube
“As we did on CrowdCube, we invested four million or so pounds”
Google doubled its London headcount from 250 to 500 in 2006
“So when I interviewed in 2006, they had 250 people in London. And when I joined three months later, it was more like 500.”