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 33 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
Hockey: Most 1,000-person tech companies could achieve the same with 100
“I think as we're learning and have learned that most companies that are over a thousand people, you can probably do the same damn thing with a hundred people.”
Hockey: Fast hiring and execution speed are false goals for startups
“I do generally think that this desire for speed and this desire to, like, move quickly and hire a lot is a little bit of a false lie. I think companies can be built much more slowly than people think. As you look at value creation over a five to 10 year period…”
Hockey: US banking protocols can accomplish 95% of crypto's goals
“You can actually accomplish, I'd say, kind of, 90, 95% of what crypto wants and what people want by actually building this from scratch, by actually looking at the protocol layer and not getting distracted by how it's been implemented.”
Hockey: Non-financial software companies will dominate financial brands within ten years
“Over the next 10 years, the new financial brands that will win over time and that will be that dominant player are already probably brands today. They just aren't financial services brands. I think what will happen is these large banks that you and I have hear…”
Hockey: DOJ blocking Visa's acquisition of Plaid was unfair and incorrect
“Is I don't think it was fair. I don't think it was correct, but it doesn't, my opinion doesn't matter is, you know, the government is a decision maker at the end of the day.”
Hockey: Venture capital is just mutual fund management, not operating
“I think everyone should just admit that venture is just capital allocation and private tech and, you know, It's more like being a mutual fund manager than an operator maybe present company excluded, but I think pretending otherwise is probably anything but a d…”
Hockey: Building a regulated bank from scratch creates massive value
“What I realized actually is you can drive a huge amount of value if you actually jump in Be a regulated bank and actually build it from scratch.”
Hockey: Column will slowly reach $100M ARR but can hit $10B-$100B long-term
“It's not gonna happen in my space. I'm a bit the slowest company to like ever get to a hundred million dollars an hour ever. But I think if we look at it from a 20, 30 year perspective, the ability for us to generate 10, fifty, hundred billion dollars, I think…”
Hockey: Building on traditional banks takes 9-18 months and limits features by 90%
“However, anytime you build in financial services, you have to build on top of the bank. And to do this right now, it takes nine, 1218 months. It's extremely painful. It's extremely expensive. And you can only probably ship 10% of the products that you want, ri…”
William Hockey: Stricter regulation will make M&A harder, driving in-house software development
“Acquiring is probably gonna be much more challenging over the next 10 years. And so I think you'll probably see these people just build more in-house, right?”
Hockey: 99.9% of Silicon Valley builds outside financial regulatory perimeters
“What I was doing in a lot, like what, 99.9% of Silicon Valley is doing is building outside that regulatory perimeter.”
Hockey: Silicon Valley is not structurally set up for regulated businesses
“I think Silicon Valley really isn't set up. To build regulated businesses.”
Hockey: Silicon Valley disguises mundane practical products with grandiose, world-changing language
“I think we definitely celebrate intellectual elitism for sure, right? I think we celebrate couching what is probably a pretty boring practical problem in like large language, gonna go change the world, but like, I don't know, maybe like building like an API fo…”
Hockey: True high performance is grinding in the shadows without public validation
“Being able to be quiet, grinding and building in the shadows and be okay, not being recognized, I think is the highest sort of high performance.”
Hockey: Everyone craves external recognition, and anyone claiming otherwise is lying
“Everybody's vain, right? And so anybody that tells you that they don't need that, myself or otherwise, they're lying to your face, right? Everybody, everybody craves that.”
Hockey: B-players are often better long-term fits than A-players
“Not every role needs that a plus player. Sometimes it's actually the opposite, right? If you get an a plus player and they're in a role, they're not going to be super happy. They want to move quickly. You can have attrition risk or they want new responsibiliti…”
Hockey: 99.9% of my wealth is concentrated in Plaid and Column
“99.9% of my wealth is in platinum column.”
William Hockey: Column avoids new grads, average employee age over 30
“We don't hire a lot of new grads. Like, I think the youngest people on our team are like, 26, 27, and the average age is over 30.”
Hockey: Legacy bank implementation, not base protocol, flaws US finance
“What's broken is the implementation of the US financial system that's flawed, not the underlying protocols and product.”
Hockey: US dollar strength makes America's financial system the world's best
“The US has a massive, like the US has the dollar, right? Which is probably the strongest implement. And so that probably inherently bar none makes the US the best financial system, but it's really because of our currency.”
Hockey: 95% of Crypto Trading Occurs Overseas Outside US Regulation
“95% of trading actually just goes overseas outside of kind of that protective umbrella and ends up blowing up.”
Hockey: Restricting legit crypto companies drives consumers to harmful black markets
“I'm probably a hopeless optimist, but I think what it shows is actually, if we don't allow the good players, like a Coinbase, et cetera, to move quickly and actually be able to innovate, those people, like those people are gonna go somewhere, right? People wan…”
Hockey: Coinbase was punished for following regulations while competitors like FTX cheated
“I hope they do really well, because I think what they have tried to do very well is they've tried to embrace regulation and they've tried to do things the right way. They've tried to do things that are right by the regulators and they're right by consumers. An…”
Hockey: Traditional banks offering cradle-to-grave direct services are dead on arrival
“I think the banks that kind of view themselves as still like, hey, we know our consumers and we know our businesses. We're going to offer you cradle to grave. I think they're I think they're dead on arrival.”
Hockey: Persistent cold emails are far more effective than warm introductions
“Cold emails save lives. I think kind of, you know, no matter how powerful, rich or famous you are, I think just skipping the warm intro and going straight to a cold email and following up three times is like the most valuable skills that you have. I've kind of…”
Hockey: Co-founding a company with a spouse creates perfectly aligned incentives
“I think the best thing is, or you have aligned incentives. I think incentives, you know, they, it's the kind of the cause for most of our decision-making framework. And when you start it with a spouse, you have perfectly aligned incentives. And I think that's …”
Hockey: Almost every US fintech company works with Plaid
“Pretty much anybody building in financial services in the U.S. Is some way associated with Plaid.”
Hockey: Column founders personally purchased an OCC-regulated bank in California
“So what we had to do is we actually went out and we personally bought a financial institution. We bought an OCC regulated bank out here in California.”
Hockey: Grounded personal relationships enable founders to take bigger risks
“What they also do is if you're so focused on keeping that, you're never going to take the big risks. But if you have a base that you can really fall back on and that kind of loves you and your friends with you hang out with, Irrespective of kind of who you are…”
Hockey: Fintech startup Column is completely self-funded and employee-owned
“And I think we're in a different world right now, and we're completely self-funded and employee-owned.”
Hockey: Bank wire cutoffs stem from bank implementation, not the Fed
“A lot of this, like, hey, I can't send a wire past four p.m., that has nothing to do with when you can actually send a wire at the Fed. It's all about when the bank is open for you to send that wire.”