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 19 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
Blomfield: VCs should back arrogant, obnoxious founders if they build massive businesses
“I don't think so. I mean, it helps, it makes your life more fun, but there are people who are just like a little bit scary, you know, it's like they're a little bit arrogant, perhaps a little bit obnoxious, a little bit too sure of themselves, and I wouldn't w…”
Blomfield: People who constantly call out broken systems make great startup founders
“I think it makes great founders, where they're like, just so annoyed if something's broken, they have to fix it, and they have to tell people something's wrong, and it's a, you can make a shitty employee, but a really good founder.”
Blomfield: Repeatedly pivoting a startup indicates the founder is the problem
“Pivoting is like divorces. Like maybe one or two is reasonable, but if you're doing it multiple times in a row, maybe the problem is you.”
Blomfield: Preemptive VC offers yield lower valuations than Demo Day auctions
“They give you a preemptive offer. But the valuation is not as good as you would get by demo day, because that's why they're doing this, right?”
Blomfield: AI B2B SaaS startups should target mid-market, not other startups
“Big companies are now more willing to spend money on this stuff than they ever were. So the previous advice of, like, go and sell to other startups, I think is actually not good for very, and maybe a dev tool startup, go and sell to other startups, but in gene…”
Blomfield: Passionate customer love is the single prerequisite for scaling
“Do your customers love this product? Is the, I think the only thing that actually matters at that point. I like this question of, to try and figure this out, asking your customers, how would you feel if we took this product away? And it's sort of like, I would…”
Boards should focus on operational execution rather than debating strategy
“I think actually it's not necessarily the role of a board to spend ages debating strategy. Often the strategy of a company can be outlined in two or three sentences. The real magic is in the iteration, the execution against that strategy. And so you use a boar…”
Blomfield: Weekly Zoom calls with founders feel transactional and empty
“But overall, the in-person experience is dramatically better. Having in-person office hours, group office hours, even cooking for people, like the act of cooking dinner for a group of people you've invested in, and then serving them with your own hands. It's j…”
Blomfield: Startups should launch with tiny, highly polished feature sets
“I would always encourage founders to go for a very, very, very narrow feature set, like, even narrower than they possibly could imagine, and polish it to a very, very high level of quality and get people, only a few people, a few hundred people, really excitin…”
Blomfield: Great founders simultaneously hold 10-year vision and daily execution
“This is a key skill of a founder, which is holding these two realities in your head simultaneously without the cognitive dissonance or driving yourself crazy. One is the big vision of 10 years. Say the one percent best outcome, if this really, really works, wh…”
Tom Blomfield: Excess capital pre-product-market fit slows down startups
“More capital pre-product market fit does not help. People just end up hiring tons of people which slows everything down and stops them being so nimble.”
Blomfield: Extreme work intensity works short-term but is unsustainable long-term
“I agree over a short to medium time period. I think, I don't know how founders do it over a 10 or 20 year time period, because I cannot work for that intensity for that long.”
Blomfield: Startups can scale successfully before establishing a business model
“I think there's actually a third phase now of sort of business model. I think a lot of companies Find product market fit, but without the business model. And you can scale very successfully without having the business model in place.”
Extreme working hours offer little incremental upside and risk massive burnout
“I think you can certainly take it too far and really Push people to work crazy, crazy hours, and I'm not sure there's a much incremental upside there, and there's a risk of huge burnout.”
Blomfield: YC visiting partners act as teaching assistants to professors
“Being a visiting partner is a great apprenticeship, but it feels like, a little bit like being a teaching assistant at a university versus being a professor at a university. You know, the professor sets the syllabus and the exam questions and admits the studen…”
Tom Blomfield: Peer group public pressure drives founders to work harder
“And like the public pressure, even though it's only 20 people in a room, pushes people to work harder than they ever believed was possible.”
Blomfield: The only way to test product demand is launching uncomfortably early
“And the only way of really figuring that out is to launch uncomfortably early and to test it with people. And they'll tell you pretty quickly whether they love it or they don't love it.”