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 43 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Tom Blomfield: AI applications are 80-90% traditional software and 10% AI
“Most people building application layer stuff in an AI say it's 80 to 90% traditional software with 10% AI.”
Blomfield: Monzo received 96 consecutive investor rejections for a 2020 flat round
“And I had 96 no's in a row for that fundraise to try and do a flat round.”
Blomfield: European neobanks N26, Revolut, and Monzo failed initial US expansion
“N-twenty-six has failed, Revolut's failed, Monzo's, the first go's failed”
Blomfield: YC partners gather enough evaluation data in 3 to 4 minutes
“Get enough in three or four minutes, but it seems rude to finish the interview so quickly.”
Blomfield: Shutting down Continuity improved YC's relationships with multi-stage VCs
“Shutting down continuity, our growth fund, has enabled to have a, enabled WIC to have a much more collaborative relationship with multi-stage VCs.”
Blomfield: YC maintains an internal database rating 10,000 venture investors
“So YC has an investor database, which has 10,000 people in. I'm sure you're in there. We can perhaps look it up. And it has reviews from all of the YC founders that have taken investment from them, both on their process and what they would like to work with af…”
Tom Blomfield: YC founders deny meetings to poorly rated investors
“And all YC companies have a huge amount of inbound investor interest, and before they book meetings, they will look each investor up in the database and see, I, have you treated found as well or have you not? And if you've not treated found as well, you're not…”
Tom Blomfield: AI innovations will be replicated across competitors within months
“The US has made like non-competes even less enforceable now. People, talent is going to jump between these places so quickly. So you discover an innovation at one place, and if weeks or months later, it's replicated everywhere else, I think.”
Blomfield: OpenAI will not displace specialized vertical AI startups
“And like, I don't think OpenAI is going to come and steamroll, like, the construction company, AI companies, because they're not going to deeply integrate into the processes and software that exists in each of those industries.”
Blomfield: Every computer worker will have an AI assistant by 2027
“So I really believe everyone who works with a computer will have an AI co-pilot assistant thing in the next two or three years, whether you're like an oncologist or a law professor.”
Blomfield: Monzo survived COVID by raising $100M in a 40% down round
“It was a sort of 40% down round. I think about 1.3 billion And we got a hundred million, and the company survived.”
Blomfield: Top UK CS students prefer finance and consulting over startups
“I've been talking to students for the last few days at our top universities, and the high status thing to do as a university CS undergrad is to go and work at Jane Street or Goldman Sachs or McKinsey.”
Blomfield: YC requires 18-month visiting partner role before full partnership
“YC has this interesting model where they make you do a, be a visiting partner for 18 months, which is The, like, the most brutal job interview I've ever done.”
Blomfield: A single YC partner can unilaterally decide to fund a startup
“Each of the partners has access to the entire application pool, but if I read an application and I, I'm the first one to say, yes, that's mine, then I get to interview it. And if I interview it, and I'm the sole person who says, yes, we will invest, then it ge…”
Blomfield: 80% to 85% of YC startups successfully raise their target funding
“The vast, vast majority of YC companies end up raising their target anyway. Some might take a little longer than you expected, and some might go very fast. But something like 80 or 85% will raise their full, sort of, target amount, which might be two or three …”
Blomfield: AI startups hit $1M revenue from Fortune 500s within YC batch
“I've seen companies go from zero to like half a million or a million of revenue within the YC batch. With really, really big companies, like Fortune, 500 companies, and turn them into recurring contracts.”
Tom Blomfield: I will absolutely never found another company
“Absolutely not. I love it, but it ruined... It ruined my life in a way.”
Monzo board blacklisted predatory investor who attempted last-minute valuation cut
“He has been blacklisted from, he's tried to invest even after I left. And to their credit, the Monzo board have said, we're not working with you.”
Monzo acquired 99% of its 1.2 million users through viral mechanics
“And here we are, 1.2 million customers, 99% through viral mechanics.”
Monzo's early product was so buggy that 10% of card payments failed
“The very early Monzo product was so buggy that people used it because they believed in this mission that we kind of talked a lot about, but the actual product experience was kind of crappy, actually, and it didn't really work, and probably 10% of payments fail…”
Monzo's early user base was 95% male and 95% London-based
“Well, I have to say, primarily amongst, it was 95% male, and 95% London so very, very skewed to a certain demographic but it was really powerful and kind of kickstarting that community, so just a lot of hard work.”
Blomfield: London tech lacks scale-up executives compared to Silicon Valley
“So execs with that kind of scale-up experience is something I think you get a lot of in Silicon Valley, and really not a lot of in London yet.”
Blomfield: Monzo will launch a third-party marketplace financial control center
“I'm really, really excited about building out this marketplace of products from third parties on the Monzo platform to be a real control center, to let our customers manage all of their money wherever it sits within a single place.”
Blomfield: Monzo burned $100 million annually in early 2020
“We were burning a hundred million a year at the time.”
Blomfield: Monzo's revenue dropped 50% in one week during COVID lockdown
“Our revenue in the next week halved, went down by 50%.”
Blomfield: Monzo acquired its first million customers with zero advertising spend
“But we got to a million customers with no advertising.”
Blomfield: Roughly 60% of Monzo customers deposit their salary into Monzo
“So then we spent the two years getting everyone to put their salary in, and now it's something like 60% of customers put their salary in.”
Blomfield: Monzo revenue grew nearly 10x from $100M at departure
“I left at a hundred million revenue or so, and it's now almost 10 X that.”
Blomfield: YC requires founders to relocate to San Francisco for batches
“Yes, they, we more or less require everyone to relocate now to San Francisco in the dog patch where we have our office, and spend three to four months there.”
Blomfield: Founders Were Selling 25% to 30% at Seed Stage
“The advice we've seen, or the trends we've seen over the last few years is that founders were getting way over diluted in their seed round. They're giving away 25 or 30% of their company at seed.”
Tom Blomfield: Most YC startups are pre-product-market fit at Demo Day
“Because most of our companies at Demo Day are pre-product market fit.”
Blomfield: Offhand Founder Remarks at Monzo Sent 30-Person Teams Off Course
“At Monzo, anytime I said anything, A whole team would, like, spring into action, and even if I didn't intend them to do it, I'd be very careful what I said, because literally I'd come back two weeks later and find 30 people had gone off in crazy tangent.”
Traditional banks face customer acquisition costs of £100 to £150
“Typically you're seeing CACs of 152 102 150 pounds.”
Blomfield: Monzo doubled growth rate over recent months via product optimization
“So our growth rate in the last three or four months has doubled based on product growth alone, which is free zero cap.”
Blomfield: Preemptive mega fundraising rounds are extremely rare
“You hear about these mega fundraising rounds that were done preemptively and blah, blah, blah. That's so, so rare. Don't think about that. Think about if you can raise money at all, you're doing better than most startups, actually.”
Blomfield: GoCardless couldn't raise any investment in London in 2011
“We couldn't raise a single penny of investment in 2011.”
Tom Blomfield: Y Combinator batches are sharded into four mini-groups
“YC spit into four groups, so it's not a whole YC, it's four separate mini YCs, it's sharded, and you'll get a very different experience in each one of them.”
Eileen Burbidge Worked as Monzo's Interim CPO for Six Months
“When we lost a chief product officer, sorry, chief people officer, she came and did an exec job at Monzo effectively for like four days a week for six months.”