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 51 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
Levels shares meeting notes and performance reviews internally with all staff
“We share basically everything, including all of our one-on-ones and team meetings are all shared within the company. So you can see all of the one-on-ones between every other person at the company performance is shared within the pump within the company. So yo…”
Corcos: Product management should play a much smaller role in tech
“Product management, broadly, should play a much less significant role than it does as a default in most software development companies.”
Levels publicly posts all investor updates and all-hands meetings
“We post all of our investor updates publicly online. All of our team, all hands are publicly posted online.”
Corcos: Founders Should Target Believer VCs Rather Than Convert Skeptics
“It's a little bit challenging because when you're fundraising, you're a prophet, not a missionary. You have the vision, and you're trying to get people who already get it. You're not trying to convert people to your religion.”
Corcos: Child stranger abductions are as rare as lightning strikes
“Say if you have a child, the odds that your child is kidnapped by a stranger Is about the same as them getting struck by lightning.”
Corcos: News consumption creates a false perception of global risk
“Ultimately the news is poison and it makes you view a, It gives you a perception of the world that is not real.”
Corcos: The Main Downside of Starting a Company Is Mild Embarrassment
“Like starting a company feels risky, but really what's the worst that can happen? Like it doesn't work and you feel like mildly embarrassed. It's actually the downside situation is not the worst thing that can happen.”
Corcos: Co-founders who cannot commit to CEO decisions should leave
“There's a point at which, you know, you can disagree behind closed doors, but once the path is defined, which is defined by the CEO, you've got to get behind it or you've got to leave. Frankly, like if you can't get behind the idea and you can't get behind the…”
Corcos: CEOs have a 1% impact on everything and no direct deliverables
“When you're the CEO, you have a one percent impact on everything, but you have Almost nothing that you can actually point to as your own work product.”
Levels eliminated corporate titles beyond basic functional roles
“We've done away with titles beyond just, yeah, beyond just functional definitions.”
Corcos: Job Titles Serve as a Form of Non-Monetary Employee Compensation
“Titles are a form of compensation.”
Corcos: Employees outside an immediate team rarely identify low performers
“They actually very often don't. The people who work directly with them, maybe like the two or three people who are closest to them know, but everyone else at the company, if they end up leaving, it's a complete mystery why they left.”
Corcos: Startup talent quality follows a U-curve as companies scale
“I think in many ways there's also a U-shape to this, where in the very early days, sometimes you just hire the best person that you can get. Because you don't have a lot of choices. And then over time, as you see some amount of traction, you can attract really…”
Corcos: Fundraising transparency works when founders build internal trust
“If you've built up enough social capital internally, think of it like you've built up the trust bank with enough of enough credibility that people know that you're not lying to them, then it's totally fine. And it's never been an issue.”
Corcos: Employees must know company financials so they can contribute
“People should know the financial state of the company. People should understand what's going on because people can contribute to these things.”
Corcos: Levels has 25% retention, which is insufficient long-term
“I mean, churn is still very high. It's like 25%. We have 25% retention, which is not what it needs to be for this to work in the long term.”
Corcos: Founders Should Take as Many Investor Meetings as Possible
“I think you should take as many meetings and do as many pitches as you can.”
Corcos: VCs spend only an hour a month thinking about your startup
“They spend maybe An hour a month thinking about your company and you spend all day, every day thinking about your company.”
Corcos: Levels sent over 3,000 targeted investor asks with 50% conversion
“I think we've had something like more than 3000 specific investor asks that I've sent people. And I think our conversion rate is maybe 50% from that group, but pretty high.”
Corcos: Founders Should Turn Down Capital From Unengaged Investors
“If it is a really an expectation of you that your investors will be engaged and respond to your emails and participate to some degree, you should set that as a clear expectation and say, this is what we expect from our investors. If that's not you, Totally. Ok…”
Corcos: Levels Has Extracted Value From Over 110 a16z Operating Partners
“I think our team has extracted value from, I think more than a 110 of the operating partners. From the Andreessen team.”
Corcos: Most VC Platform Services Fail, but a16z Is the Best
“I think part of the answer is that most firms are not good at it. It's sort of the short answer. I think most firms, they understand when they talk to founders, they say that it's the thing that they want, but they're not very good at delivering on the value. …”
Corcos: Pre-Meeting Rejections Are Wins Because Founder Pitch Time Is Finite
“The number of investors available is effectively infinite, and the amount of time that you have to pitch people is finite. And so if you can get them to say no before you have to spend any time with them, that's actually a win, not a loss.”
Levels found early post-IPO company employees were their highest-ROI investors
“When we did some analysis on who our most ROI positive investors were, one of the biggest categories was early employees at post IPO companies. And these are people who have some amount of capital that they want to deploy, but maybe, you know, five, 10,000 dol…”
Levels tracks investor engagement and has investors who ignored 17 requests
“We keep track of all of these things on how many emails we send, what the, Conversion rate is on those requests. And like, we have several people on the list that I've sent them 17 requests and they've converted on zero of them.”
Corcos: Roughly 80% of Couples Report Worse Marriages After Having Kids
“Something in the range of 80% of people say that their marriage is worse after having kids.”
Corcos: Dating Is a Matching Problem, Not a Sales Problem
“I think the biggest mistakes that people make is they treat Dating like it's a sales problem rather than a matching problem.”
Corcos: Six Months Provides Enough Data to Judge Romantic Fit
“Usually you have enough data points within about six months to know if it's the right fit.”
Corcos: Equal Equity Splits Are Not Required for Co-Founders
“As a rule, I would say, no, it's not required. I think it depends a lot on subject matter expertise. It depends a lot on also how you view the definition of what a co-founder is.”
Corcos: Prioritizing engineers is better than expanding product management
“Our product org got much too large, and I've learned that having more engineers is better than having more people in product.”
Corcos: Founders Mistakenly Treat Early Investor Contacts as Precious Gems
“I think one of the major mistakes that people make early on is they treat investor contacts like precious gems.”
Corcos: People Become More Afraid of Failure as Their Reputation Grows
“The more reputation you have, The more afraid you are of failure, which is ironic because it should be the opposite, but this is, this seems to be just a default state of human nature.”
Corcos: Keeping Performance and Compensation Secret Created Distrust at Levels
“And the two exceptions that we made were compensation and individual performance. So we kept those two secret. So one-on-ones were secret. If somebody was failing, it was secret. And when somebody would depart, they would write their own definition of why they…”
Corcos: Health tracking retention relies on accountability over learning
“The people who stay the longest They value the accountability of the tool more than they value the discrete learnings of each step.”
Corcos: Most founders treat fundraising as isolated events, not trend lines
“I think most founders treat each fundraise like a dot rather than a trend line.”
Corcos: VCs Have Far Greater Market Exposure Than Founders
“The reality is that VCs or investors broadly just have way more exposure than a founder does. If you're a founder and you're working on your one company for five years. You don't know what's going on outside of your company. You don't have the capacity. You're…”
Corcos: Founders fail if they don't maintain explicit lists of investor asks
“The first and most important thing is you need to know what you need. If I say, how can I help? And you say, I don't know, you've already failed. You need to have a list of things that your, you and your team need help with, because you'd be surprised at how o…”
Corcos: Average Founders Only Send Five Requests Per Year to Investors
“From the exposure that I've had to other founders, that they probably send something in the range of Five requests per year.”
Corcos: Sequoia's Vernal and Andreessen's Jordan Read Every Pre-Meeting Document
“The people who were most engaged was Mike Vernal at Sequoia and Jeff Jordan and Andreessen. They read every document. Jeff actually even fixed some typos like deep in like a 50 page document.”
Corcos: Founders pitching investors with only one deck are doing it wrong
“If you only have one deck with one pitch, you're doing it wrong. You've got to try different avenues of attack. You've got to try different language. You've got to try different pitches to determine which of these work.”
Corcos: Theater and performative salesmanship are critical when pitching big visions
“I think if you're trying to pitch a big vision for the future, theater is absolutely critical.”
Corcos: Founders must diligence prospective board members like potential marriage partners
“If you're taking on a board member, you need to do the amount of diligence that you would do if you're considering marrying this person.”
Corcos Prefers Direct, Full-Contact Investors Like Keith Rabois Over Passive Ones
“Keith from founders fund is known for being pretty full contact. And I. Talk to some people who really did not like working with him, but they didn't like working him. They didn't like working with him for reasons that I would actually enjoy working with him, …”
Corcos: Using your calendar as your primary to-do list maximizes productivity
“One of the biggest is using your calendar as your primary to-do list. That's probably the biggest unlock for me in terms of just being realistic about how much I can deliver in the course of a week.”
Corcos Manages Relationship Logistics With Wednesday Dates and a Notion Doc
“We do a weekly date night, which we have scheduled on Wednesdays. We do also every Saturday, we have scheduled family priorities where we have a running notion doc of logistics, things that we argued about that we want to talk about, just dedicated time just t…”
Levels ran around 15 cohorts testing loss disincentives for health goals
“Yeah, we've done something in the range of about 15 different, 15 cohorts with the wearable challenge, which we've been doing with Justin Mares, where you commit some amount of cash upfront, and then every time you miss your goal, you lose some amount of money…”