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 49 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 8 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
Pishevar: Bill Gurley was the wrong VC on Uber's board
“We had the wrong venture capitalists on the board. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was Bill Gurley at Benchmark.”
Pishevar: Bill Gurley hired PIs and met weekly to oust Travis Kalanick
“We found out in our investigation that he hired Some private investigators had weekly meetings about how do we get rid of Travis.”
Pishevar: Benchmark Hired Private Investigators Against Naval Ravikant
“There's a history of VCs who have done this type of thing and in Benchmark's case, they did it against Naval. They hired private investigators and Naval Ravikant. He had a company called eGroups, and he got thrown out of it.”
Pishevar: Fusion GPS gave a fake police report to Fast Company
“We found out an investigation that two weeks after I won the case founding Partner of Fusion GPS was sitting at a cafe in DC with a reporter from Fast Company with a memory stick and a fake police report from London about me. And they gave it to the reporter.”
Pishevar: Uber would be worth $1T if Travis Kalanick stayed
“I believe if Travis and Emil had stayed at Uber, Uber would be a trillion-dollar company by now.”
Pishevar: Holder's investigation report found no personal wrongdoing by Kalanick
“And the report, by the way, didn't find anything wrong that, you know, Travis did, or I did, or there was nothing, nothing in there about, you know, him, you know, directly and the recommendation was like to go hire a Sheryl Sandberg, like a chief operating of…”
Pishevar: Firing Kalanick from Uber was tech's worst mistake since Jobs
“And so they got two, two of the greatest minds in Silicon Valley were taken out of the company. This is the greatest value destruction that's happened since firing Steve Jobs at Apple. And it was a massive mistake.”
Pishevar: Benchmark ousting Travis Kalanick was one of worst VC decisions ever
“I believe that it was, you know, one of the worst venture, ah, decisions ever.”
Pishevar spent millions investigating Fusion GPS smear campaign
“It was worth it to me to, you know, spend millions of dollars on a, legal fees and doing the, we filed seven, four, the latest one is against Fusion GPS, and the judge found with us last year, and is gonna force Fusion GPS to say who hired them”
Pishevar: Traditional venture capital model is dead
“Venture capital as it is today, especially with private equity coming downstream and what we've seen with the drunken era venture capital is dead. The venture capital that we grew up with and that we looked up to is that model is gone.”
Pishevar: Quantum and AI merger will cure all diseases within 10 years
“Quantum and AI, even at the chipset level, are going to merge. And then that's going to revolutionize all aspects of our lives. We'll find cures to every known disease known to mankind within, I would say, the next 10 years.”
Pishevar: Humans will achieve 150-plus year lifespan within 20 years
“Don't die in the next 20 years, because we're gonna reach a point of longevity where you'll be able to help, live a healthy life for 150 plus years.”
Pishevar: Steve Ballmer was a terrible CEO despite massive wealth
“Steve Ballmer. You know, the decade that he was CEO of Microsoft, Microsoft was completely just flat, right? And he's now richer than Bill Gates, right?”
Pishevar: New nation states will be established and populated in our lifetimes
“We're gonna basically see new nation states, new countries be started in our lifetimes, and you're gonna see a lot of people opt in to those new, new nations.”
Pishevar: Uber allies should have staged OpenAI-style employee revolt for Kalanick
“What I wish I had done or had the wisdom to know to do was what, you know, Sam and his allies did in getting the employees at OpenAI to back Sam and say, if he doesn't come back, we're gonna leave. . It was very powerful, and if we had done that at Uber, becau…”
Pishevar: Kalanick's six-month regulatory delay cost Uber 30% market share to Lyft
“Travis Basically for six months was like, you know, telling the taxi commission, the city, government, like, you know, hey, these guys are illegal, like, well, you know, why are you allowing it, et cetera, instead of launching it, you know, as well which was l…”
Pishevar: Uber nearly acquired Lyft, but Lyft demanded too much ownership
“Andreessen, having lost the Uber deal, ended up doing the Lyft deal, and we had, you know, Travis and Emil, you know, they were close to acquiring it acquiring Lyft which, you know but they wanted too much ownership so that luckily didn't work out”
Benchmark sued Travis Kalanick in Delaware court over Uber board seats
“About in early August They then sued in Delaware courts after they had already gotten rid of Travis. They then sued to get rid of him and his two board seats that he had gotten that he hadn't appointed yet. So three board seats. So they wanted, you know, effec…”
Delaware judge rejected Benchmark's effort to remove Uber board seats
“We make our arguments and the judge finds with us and rejects Benchmark's attempt to get rid of the three board seats.”
Pishevar: London police emails explicitly disavowed fabricated report to journalists
“And there were multiple emails from the London police telling the reporter, like, this is not our report.”
Pishevar: Kalanick and Michael initiated SoftBank's $12B Uber deal
“So the SoftBank conversations, ironically, Travis and Emil started those conversations, the ultimate twelve billion dollar investment from SoftBank Vision Fund.”
Pishevar: Trump administration will open VC to non-accredited investors
“So I think in the Trump administration, we'll see changes in that direction of like opening it up. And so that model I think is gonna change.”
Pishevar: Masa Son's thesis of $9T annual value from AI capex makes sense
“Massa in Saudi, one of the things he talked about is he did his calculations, and the numbers for me make a lot of sense that basically you need to spend, you know, trillions, single digit trillions, and then you're gonna get nine trillion of annual value comi…”
Pishevar: SpaceX will become a $10 trillion company
“So I think SpaceX will be a 10 trillion dollar company. It's just getting started.”
Pishevar: Menlo's $26.5M Uber investment grew to nearly $6.7B
“For twenty million at the time, later I got another six and a half million through secondary for Menlo. So that investment at today's prices is worth almost seven billion dollars.”
Pishevar sold all Facebook shares to bet everything on Uber secondary stock
“He allowed me to buy secondary shares from another early person, so I sold all my Facebook shares that had gone public at like, 53 bucks, 58 bucks a share, and I put it all I bet it all, everything I had, I put it all into Uber.”
Pishevar: Exceptional tech founders are 1,000x humans worth waiting to invest in
“These are people that are like, it's not even 10 X, you talk about 10 X engineers, these are like thousand X humans and so I've learned over time that it's worth waiting for the thousand X founders and investing in the future Travis's, or the future Elon's”
Pishevar: Kalanick and Musk are rare Nobel Prize-level founders
“Nobody can do what Elon's doing. Nobody can do what Travis is doing. No matter how great you are. These are, like, rare, rare Nobel Prize winning, essentially, founders.”
Pishevar: Uncovering who hired Fusion GPS will destroy careers
“Once we find out who've, who hired Fusion GPS, then, you know, I think careers are gonna fall.”
Pishevar: Passed on WeWork over flawed business model
“I passed on that company, that was ironically another benchmark company. I passed on that company because it didn't, I remember the dot com crash and all the office buildings being cleared up. And I was like, I don't get this business model. You don't own, own…”
Pishevar: Venture capital liquidity and IPOs will recover within four years
“Liquidity has been a major problem and especially during the four years of Biden and it just coincided with really bad policies and, you know, a derf of M&A lack of IPOs I think that's gonna change in the next four years.”
Pishevar: Chinese EV makers will stay competitive even with 100% tariffs
“Even with tariffs, these, the Chinese electric car companies have gotten to the point that, you know, their cars are like 15,000 dollars, and they're good cars. So even if you add a hundred percent tariff, You're still talking about 30,000 dollars, still affor…”
Pishevar: Hundreds of startups are currently attempting to build new nations
“There's now hundreds of startups starting new nations.”
Pishevar: Menlo Ventures passed on Snapchat seed and Series A rounds
“I, so, I brought Snapchat to Menlo. Evan and I hit it off. I really believe that. I was on it in the first 30 days, because my kids were on it, and so they showed it to me, and I was chasing it, and Evan and I hit it off and unfortunately Menlo passed on the, …”
Pishevar: Closed Uber, Warby Parker, Tumblr, and Machine Zone in 90 days
“In my first 90 days, I closed Uber, Warby Parker Tumblr, and Machine Zone.”
Pishevar: Deal-by-deal carry yielded higher returns than Menlo's fund carry
“I got more carry than I would have gotten in the fund by agreeing to do deal by deal carry.”
Pishevar purchased secondary Uber stock at effective 33 cents per share
“It was 33 cents a share, effectively based on today's prices, so it would be 33 cents a share.”
Pishevar: Emil Michael architected Uber's $15B fundraising efforts
“He architected the fifteen billion dollar raise he had a massive impact on the trajectory of Uber, and he became really Travis's right hand and sparring partner in building, building Uber.”
Pishevar's fund invested $50M in Uber China and $50M in Didi
“So I, ah, our fund, we put fifty million into the beginning of Uber China, and then later put another fifty million into Didi when they merged.”
Pishevar: TPG bought $83M of Garrett Camp's Uber shares via Waverly Loan
“Solution was I introduced them to Waverly Loans, and we did the largest Waverly Loan in history, which was eighty-three million and bought Garrett Camp's shares for TPG for that amount.”
Pishevar: TPG generated nearly $2B return on $83M Uber investment
“I think TPG on that eighty-three million made close to two billion.”
Pishevar turned $25,000 into $4 million investing in Lowercase Capital
“I would say it would be lowercase Chris Saka's fund. I put, you know, a little check in there and got four million out like, 25,000 turned into four million, so it was a legendary fund. I think it was like ten million and returned like 1.5000000000 or somethin…”
Pishevar passed on investing in Zimride before it became Lyft
“What happened was Lyft was, you know, Zimride, and I had passed on Zimride”
Pishevar: Sherpa Capital raised $200M in SPVs for Uber
“So I ended up doing, we ended up doing two hundred million dollars of SPVs for Uber, on top of these other investments, and”
Pishevar: Uber's Series D valuation was negotiated up to $17B from $10B
“So that Series D, like a year after the Series C, which Google and TPG did, that was at three billion. This was at seventeen billion, and we started off at 10. So, Emil was able to negotiate from, like, 10, eleven billion valuation to 17, because there was so …”