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 13 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
Lessin: Founders who ask VCs for help are weak
“Because I, if you're coming to me for help, my view is you're almost by definition, or you're saying, I need help or whatever I want help. I think you're a weak founder.”
Lessin: Venture fund paper markups are irrelevant and often negative signals
“I know full well, I know this is an investor. That the marks that you made up or the marks of SoftBank listed something somewhere are completely irrelevant. In fact, the negative signal in a lot of cases. So like the marks are irrelevant and stupid.”
Lessin: $1 billion venture capital funds operate in a death zone
“I don't know how you make multiples on a billion dollars consistently, right? In VC. I think once you're doing 10, you're playing a completely different game of asset gathering and asset deployment where you no longer have the same Goals. So I personally think…”
Lessin: Most capital deployed into Series A rounds is completely wasted
“Most of the money at Series A is completely wasted, right?”
Lessin: Chime is not an important or paradigm-shifting company
“Is Chime an important company? I just don't see it, right? Like, is it, you know, it's good company? Like, they provided some banking products to unbanked people or underbanked people. I get it. It's not bad. They did a good job. They built a good app. But lik…”
Lessin: AI is extremely overhyped and largely fictitious
“We think AI is extremely overhyped. And also kind of fictitious.”
Lessin: The internet has failed as an information platform
“I personally believe the internet has mostly failed in its mission to become an information platform. It's a great content platform. It's super engaging, but it doesn't inform the way I expect it to. I'm super disappointed in Wikipedia.”
Lessin: The most obvious AI bets are Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft
“It's like, you want to bet on AI? Bet on Facebook. Bet on Amazon. Bet on Microsoft. It's so obvious.”
Lessin: Public markets ignore $200M revenue companies with 30% margins
“No one gives a shit about a company that does two hundred million in top line and grows with 30% margins, right? No one cares.”
The electric scooter market is not winner-take-all
“No, I don't think it's a winner-take-all market.”
Lessin: Augmenting memory is the most compelling bot use case
“I'll tell you the thing that I love the most is augmenting my memory. I don't have the world's greatest memory. I like to take lists. I try to keep lists together and things like that, but I find it really, really hard to keep track of all The ideas and people…”
Lessin: Conversational bots are not new and recur in cycles
“The bots thing is, you know, look, it's not new. It's the Asian bot ecosystem has been around for a while. There's a bunch of reasons why people are now excited about it, but these things come in cycles. Like, you know, I remember very distinctly the days of a…”
Lessin: Amazon Echo is the best glimpse of the tech future
“It's the future. I mean, it's a total taste of the future. I cannot tell you how excited I am about Echo. I have five in my house, literally. I've built applications for it myself. Finn has an incredible integration with it. It isn't there yet, but it's the be…”