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 86 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Belsky: AI future will not be dominated by a few mega models
“I think it's actually common belief that there are going to be a few mega models in the future that are going to do everything for every company in the cloud. What we're saying is actually it will probably be the opposite.”
Belsky: AI hallucination is a feature, not a bug, in creative tools
“In, in some ways, listen, for some practices hallucination, hallucination is a bug, but in some areas it's also a feature, right? So if I'm trying to discover some cool new music, I mean, I can imagine that might be a feature as opposed to a bug. You know, whe…”
Belsky: Companies should only build AI models they can lead globally
“Actually, I think that's sort of the right answer is you should build models if you're the best company in the world to build them.”
Belsky: AI platform shift uniquely favors incumbent tech giants over startups
“I do think we executed well, but I also think that there's some nuances of this platform shift in particular that do favor those companies that know their customer well and already reach them.”
Belsky: Per-seat pricing for enterprise SaaS is obsolete in the AI era
“The idea of selling seats function by function, like how many people in procurement, how many people in financial planning? I mean, it's such an old antiquated way of Building a business to some degree in the age of AI.”
Belsky: Founders should delegate everything except their core superpower
“I think you should abstract yourself out of almost every function. Except for the one that is your superpower, that you are the unique person in the world to do, and you should keep doing that as long as humanly possible.”
Belsky: Celebrating financing rounds and press drives non-productive startup behavior
“We can't celebrate fake wins. You know, I see some teams celebrate financing, celebrate getting an award that frankly they paid for, or getting some press coverage that they clearly paid for, and that is dangerous because what you're doing is you're getting th…”
Belsky: I never ask seed-stage startups for total addressable market upfront
“I actually never try to ask Tam up front. I never try to think about the existing market, because when you're a seed investor in the early stage, at least I feel like I'm in a business of exceptions.”
Belsky: Overcapitalization prevents startups from building operational resilience and resourcefulness
“And those companies oftentimes fail and they fail because they never build the muscle memory, the instincts around how to mine difficult moments, how to run postmortems, not because you want to, but because you need to, because you can't screw this up again or…”
Belsky: Venture capital is inherently a non-scalable business
“I think one thing I also learned from the team is that it's not a scalable business. I've always admired how the team over the years has defied many of the spotlights of seduction, whether it is building an online database or a website for a Entrepreneurs to u…”
Belsky: Every user in their first 15 seconds is lazy, vain, selfish
“The failure of the first mile for most products is that the teams fail to remember that every user in his or her 15 seconds is lazy, vain, and selfish.”
Belsky: Product designers are more important, not less, in the AI era
“It's not the technology that makes us successful. It's the user's experience of the technology that makes us successful. And that's why I think the role of designers is more important, not less important in this modern world.”
Belsky: Adobe never trains AI models on customer creations without opt-in
“We don't ever train our models off of the customer's creations. So, like, what the customer makes does not train our models, unless they submit it to stock and want it to train our models in which case they get compensated for it.”
Belsky: Founders should retain direct control over their superpower function
“I think you should abstract yourself out of almost every function, except for the one that is your superpower, that you are the unique person in the world to do, and you should keep doing that as long as humanly possible.”
Belsky: Exclude engineers from initial product reviews to protect ideation
“I believe that some of the initial product reviews should only be with the product and design team, because engineers are really there to discuss the cost of something.”
Belsky: Intuition identifies the mountain, but data helps you climb it
“Intuition is what brings you to a mountain to climb. Data is what helps you climb it.”
Belsky: Users in the first 90 seconds are lazy, vain, and selfish
“Every customer, at least initially in their 1:30 seconds of a product experience, is lazy, vain, and selfish, right? You know, you don't want to read stuff, you don't want to watch a video, you don't want to take a tour. You kind of want things done for you.”
Belsky: Initial product reviews should exclude engineers to preserve creative freedom
“First of all, I believe that some of the initial product reviews should only be with the product and design team. Engineers are really there to discuss the cost of something, but how can you reconcile the cost of something while you're actually first starting …”
Belsky: Design solves product performance issues faster than engineering replatforming
“You know, even when it comes to the speed and performance of a product, you know, design is actually oftentimes a solution before engineering is a solution, just based on the fact that sometimes you have to replatform something, right? Sometimes you have to ch…”
Belsky: Existing teams must adjust to accommodate star hires
“I think that's a mistake most leaders do, because you hire an all-star, and then you're like, oh, she's an all-star. She'll figure it out, when in fact, if she's in a great team, you know, the team needs to adjust in order to accommodate her.”
Belsky: Most startups' competitive advantage is simply surviving long enough
“The competitive advantage of most businesses is that they stick together long enough to figure it out.”
Belsky: Define brand narrative and positioning before building the product
“I love the idea of building a splash page before even building a product of thinking about the brand language and the typography and just the one liners of value proposition before starting to build the product. Because to me, these are parts of your compass f…”
Belsky: Greatest investments create new markets rather than exploiting existing ones
“The greatest investments typically made markets as opposed to, like, We've exploited a common knowledge, large existing market that everyone's excited about, and in order to make a market or expand a market vastly beyond what it is, it has to fundamentally cha…”
Belsky: Initiative matters more than experience when hiring leaders
“I think I believe more in initiative over experience, and I think that there's just, everyone's obsessed with resumes, and everyone's obsessed with what the experience is Someone has and how those can help them be the most effective leaders in something new. A…”
Belsky: Micro direct-to-consumer brands are poor fits for traditional venture capital
“These companies aren't necessarily great candidates for venture capital backing. However, they have a much lower risk ratio than a lot of typical venture backed companies. So the expected outcome is maybe smaller, but the risk is lower, which may be called int…”
Belsky: Angel investing bets on potential; traditional VC demands momentum
“I think as an earlier stage angel seed investor, it's all about investing in the potential of a product or the potential of a team. When you start to do more traditional venture capital And certainly venture capital at the benchmark level level. It's a lot mor…”
Belsky: Startups gaining momentum too quickly often fade fast
“Oftentimes the trouble with momentum also is that when something has too much momentum too quickly, in my experience, at least it tends to fade out.”
Belsky: Silicon Valley Distracts Founders With Headlines Over Execution
“I think Silicon Valley actually confuses or dissuades people from focusing on the unsexy stuff that matters in exchange for all the headlines we're bombarded with.”
Belsky: Uber and Lyft's data and route optimization will be their moat
“Because I think that the data that is being collected and the optimization of the routes based on the data is a moat, so to speak. And I think a lot of the technology for managing these dispatch systems and autonomous vehicles will be created by those companie…”
Belsky: Future transportation will not be accessed via individual branded apps
“I think we're failing to think about how people actually interact with these services in the future, and I just find it hard to believe that it will all still be through their individual branded apps.”
Belsky: AI-suggested variations will yield better UI design with fewer cycles
“We're in a world where AI will suggest alternative scenarios. You can try variations and just look and, you know, with the mistake of the eye, find a better solution. That, or at least something you want to A-B test. And so I think that the product development…”
Belsky: Future UI design is evolving into persona and tone design
“UI in some cases should disappear, but there's new UI these days in the form of the tone of a product and the way that something is is the inflections that are used, the persona. You know, I'm like thinking about UI design in the future as in some ways like pe…”
Belsky: Adobe's design team led the early development of Firefly
“You know, we had our design team actually build a team within that did all of the early developments of Firefly. It was a very like design driven exercise to figure out the interfaces and how they integrated into the products.”
Belsky: Adobe recently re-centralized its design team into a single organization
“Recently I re-centralized design in one organization because our strategy, you know, required it.”
Belsky: Software products directly reveal the organizational DNA of their teams
“A product always speaks to the DNA of the team behind it. You can tell who wasn't talking to one another, you know, what the values were, whether there was a designer outsourced, or in the room, sufficiently empowered, etc.”
Belsky: A working prototype is worth a hundred meetings
“I deeply, deeply believe in the fact that a prototype is worth a hundred meetings, and if you can have a discussion around a PowerPoint with bullet points and stuff, I mean, you're gonna miss so much”
Belsky: Bloated products are inevitably disrupted by simpler new alternatives
“I mean, life cycle, the life cycle of a product is somewhat perverse. It starts simple, And all these people, you know, flee the products they're using because they're fascinated by this new simple alternative on the market. And so customers flock to a simple …”
Belsky: Snapchat consistently rethinks its first-mile onboarding for new cohorts
“You know, Snapchat, I think, is probably one example. Of a company that I feel has consistently rethought their first mile experience for a different cohort of new customers.”
Belsky: Successive cohorts of new users become increasingly pragmatic
“What few teams realize is that every new cohort of new customers is increasingly pragmatic. You know, needs a different type of first mile experience.”
Belsky: Twitter persisted with outdated onboarding even as user motives shifted
“You know, Twitter really persisted with making people build their own timelines, even past the moment where people weren't joining Twitter to follow people. They were just joining Twitter for news, and then they were faced with this prospect of having to culti…”
Belsky: A prototype is worth a hundred meetings
“A prototype is worth a hundred meetings. And if you can have a discussion around a PowerPoint with bullet points and stuff, I mean, you're going to miss so much. You're going to have unnecessary disagreements and debates, and you're not going to have everyone …”
Belsky: Most product teams review features without full customer journey context
“If the product review is about a particular part of the product, you're not doing the customer service if you're just jumping in and looking at that, which is, by the way, what most teams do.”
Belsky: Company misalignment stems from discussing generalities instead of customer experiences
“I think most companies, you know, suffer from a lack of alignment because they talk about generalities, but they're not all really anchoring on the exact experience we want to enable for customers.”
Belsky: Real-time feedback tracking during reviews dictates product success
“I am maniacal about capturing things during these conversations. So, you know, if there's a piece of feedback shared, but I don't see the pen move of the designer that's on that area, you know, I will say, like, did you capture that? Because I feel like that's…”
Belsky: Defer feature enhancements until after achieving product-market fit
“You should not try to do those things for launch. You should not try to do those things before you have product market fit. It's really important. They're great ideas, but just do them later. The things you need to do now are the things that would get in the w…”
Belsky: Guiding users through the first mile puts products in top 10%
“And if you can just get people through that first mile and then get them to some level of success quickly, you are already in like the top 10% of products out there.”