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 8 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
VC managers raise larger funds because management fees outweigh carry
“And the reason they move up market is that the fees for larger funds always outweigh the performance of smaller funds. The people running these funds have incentives to raise larger funds.”
Direct-to-consumer is for product testing, not scaling efficiently
“Most tech VC firms look at D to C, direct-to-consumer, as a way to scale a business efficiently. That is completely wrong. It is not a channel to scale a business. It isn't certainly not a channel to scale a business efficiently. DTC is a great channel to test…”
Quantitative VC models lack historical training data for early tech
“There weren't a thousand other examples where there's enough training data to train models to understand what success looks like. There might be two or four. That's a reason why I really struggle to understand how this could be successful in tech, but in other…”
Consumer VC requires $1M to $5M checks across many startups
“In consumer, you need to find a way to deploy one to five million dollars into each of a lot of companies. That's the answer. You can't be looking to invest in 50, seventy-five million dollars into an early stage consumer product company, you're going to get j…”
Quant fund models are the future of private consumer VC
“We think it's a different model, candidly. We think it's a model of developing systematic approach to private investing. So if you're familiar at all in the public markets with AQR, Two Sigma, Renaissance Technologies, any of the public quant funds, We think t…”
Cultural fit is a bad predictor of employee success
“I tend to find the concept of, oh, that person's just not a cultural fit to be a really bad estimate of whether or not that'll be successful.”
Once you start considering firing someone, the decision is made
“When you're thinking about whether or not to let someone go, to fire someone, the decision's already made, and that point is absolutely true. When you're having that consideration in your head, it has gone far enough, and you need to just make the decision.”
Founders should avoid VCs who require 45 minutes of market education
“Targeting investors, and this is, it sounds so obvious, but targeting investors that have an understanding of the underlying pain that you're trying to solve is critical, and when you go to an investment firm that has, that needs to be educated for 45 minutes …”