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
Tim Harris: Uber is a business model innovation, not a tech company
“So the venture capitalists have been investing in mostly business model innovations as a distinction from technology innovations, and those are things like, when you think about it, Uber isn't really a tech company, right? They build a, an app, so they use tec…”
Tim Harris: AI will drive more business model innovation than tech innovation
“AI is actually going to drive more business model innovation than it is actually technology innovation.”
Harris: Many LIDAR investors lack necessary technical competency
“There are so many LIDAR companies, and there's, more importantly, there's so many investors who don't really have the competency to understand which LIDAR innovations are meaningful, and really what it even takes to make a LIDAR company successful, right?”
Harris: Silicon Valley startups break unit economics to chase rapid growth
“The big lie is fundamentally around unit economics. What I see out there in the market is people, they go out and they prove product market fit, right? They have a product or they have some business model innovation and it's going to work. The next question is…”
Harris: VCs care more about company size than profitability
“At the end of the day, I think everyone's just going to keep accepting this big lie, because as long as markets still appreciate size over return, they're going to continue to support these types of companies. And if you look at it, proof is in the pudding. Th…”
Harris: Deep tech attracts capital because business model innovations lack defensibility
“Now, that said, the deep tech companies, the reason why you see lots of investment in them is because the business model innovation companies themselves are not Not particularly only a few of them work as well. They're not particularly defensible, a lot of the…”
Harris: Deep tech startups must partner rather than attempt full disruption
“I think, yes, I think a partnership model is actually more appropriate, because you can't win at everything now. It used to be, the rules have changed, things are harder, so you want to figure out what is the thing that you can do better, and just that thing, …”
Harris: Deep tech cost curves should tie to Moore's Law
“For deep technology, you need to understand what aspects of the bomb they're looking to come down, right? I think a lot of it tends to be external and dependent on startups. I see this a lot. Oh, there's a lot of companies innovating around X, Y, or Z, and tho…”
Harris: Deep tech startups must build discrete saleable products during R&D
“If you can build a business that is sustainable from a revenue standpoint, and then grows from a revenue standpoint in deep tech the same way that you would in any other business, you can still build that deep technology, but you have to fill it, figure it out…”
Harris: Startups beat incumbents by picking new directions and out-accelerating them
“In reality, you can only really win by picking a new direction, and then accelerating towards it faster than anyone else. So everyone else is running in another direction at a very high speed, and what you want to do is pick a new point on the horizon and Acce…”
Harris: Corporate partnerships fail unless tied to the core business
“What you need out of a partner is some value that you can offer them on their main product line, is what I personally believe, because a lot of them have these innovation departments, and they want to explore lots of other things, but politically, they just ca…”