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
Gumroad reached $10M revenue years after Kleiner Perkins wrote it off
“Gumroad, it took me seven, eight, nine years to get to a place where Gumroad kind of is considered, like, you know, we're at ten million in revenue doubling every year, but that's because of a macroeconomic shift, namely COVID, that just happened out of the bl…”
Sahil Lavingia regrets taking Accel's $400K seed check over super angels
“Frankly, if I could go back in time, I would have said no to them. I would have given that 400 K a hundred K to four different people, super angels or angels, or even split it further.”
Lavingia: Career VCs Are Less Valuable to Founders Than Operators
“I think career investors are just not as valuable because frankly, like that sort of on the ground experience of building distribution, building a product, That stuff is just so difficult to read about. You just have to do it to really grok it.”
Sahil Lavingia says Reid Hoffman's early launch advice is outdated
“Yeah, I think Reid's quote was accurate maybe 10 years ago when he probably said something like that, but the truth is the bar for where your product needs to be today is so much higher, and yes, you should be embarrassed because I think the best founders will…”
Sahil Lavingia predicts rolling funds will never reach hundreds of billions
“We're never going to see hundreds of billions of dollars in rolling funds, in my opinion.”
Lavingia: Increasing startup supply will depress early-stage deal pricing
“If you see a lot more interesting companies, you might actually see a depreciation or sort of a depression in the prices and vice versa.”
Sahil Lavingia advises founders to raise as much capital as reasonable
“VCS want their same rough allocation, and that roughly means that a founder's gonna get hit with the same dilution if they're raising a million bucks, or five million bucks, or thirty million bucks, frankly, right? Everyone wants their 10, 15, 20, 25%, dependi…”
Sahil Lavingia: Unimpressive founders are the primary reason for passing
“Frankly, the number one reason I pass is the founders. I just, I'm not impressed by the founders.”
Gumroad laid off 75% of its staff to achieve profitability
“Did a round of layoffs, 75% of the company went from 20 people down to five people, got to profitable, got rid of the San Francisco office, and moved out of San Francisco, left six years in, moved to Provo, Utah.”
Lavingia: Post-PMF company employees become cogs optimizing and scaling
“Starting a company is just fundamentally different from working at a company. Even as hot as Pinterest was, like, I just felt like very quickly, sort of post-product market fit You kind of become a cog in the machine. You kind of figured it out, and now you're…”
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann rejected almost every early feature proposal
“Ben was so adamant every time basically I suggested we should build something new, it was rejected. And he was so good about staying true to this sort of the core mission of the company, keeping the product incredibly simple, hiring very, very carefully.”
Lavingia: Only about a dozen rolling fund managers will build large portfolios
“I don't expect to see hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of emerging fund managers all managing these really big, large portfolios. I think you'll see probably a dozen or so.”
Lavingia: Andreessen Horowitz isn't worried about rolling funds competing with them
“Andreessen Horowitz is not worried about rolling funds taking away their business.”
Sahil Lavingia says VCs lack incentives to give honest rejection feedback
“The incentives just aren't really there for VCs like us to sort of really say, look, you're just not impressive enough. You need to go work at a company, or do this, or do that for a few years before I really am going to be sold on this opportunity.”
Sahil Lavingia worked on Gumroad just four hours weekly post-downsizing
“I just started writing and painting and really just not thinking about Gumroad more than the four hours a week I was doing support.”
Sahil Lavingia invested in audio app Clubhouse
“Yeah, Clubhouse is probably the most recently announced one. I did a small check into that company.”
Gumroad raised $10M from Kleiner Perkins, Levchin, Ravikant, and Sacca
“Raised ten million bucks from Kleiner Perkins, Max Lefgen, Naval, Chris Saka, the wonder kind of story, college dropout, everything like that.”
Max Levchin invested in Gumroad after testing product with an MP3
“So Max Levchin, I wanted him on the cap table so bad for Gumroad. He was the last person to say yes, and he asked for all of these references. It was so intimidating meeting with him, and when he finally said yes, I asked him afterwards. I was like, what got y…”