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 136 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
Andreessen: Early academic tracking could have routed him to a machine shop
“I very easily could have ended up being tracked onto the vocational track, mostly kids I grew up with, you know, certainly. Could have as well. And so again, there's like an alternate universe, Marc Andreessen, that got tracked into a machine shop curriculum.”
Dixon: Early crypto expected market protocols to use Bitcoin, not new tokens
“It's interesting because four years ago, probably you and I would have thought this might have happened using Bitcoin and not using a new token.”
Dixon: The internet could have funded itself by pre-selling domain names
“Had they not, you could imagine alternative model, which is sort of internet co sells domain names as a way to fund itself.”
Dixon: An asset tied to Linux adoption would have been legendary
“If you could have invested in something that, that, that had some correlation to the adoption of Linux, it would have been one of the all-time great investments.”
Early Black female NASA hires' success enabled subsequent hiring
“If NASA had hired black females and they had not done the job well, they probably would have stopped hiring them.”
Chokshi: Restricting early internet commerce would have destroyed modern tech economy
“And if people had said like from the very get go, cause no one predicted the internet would lead to all these different businesses. And to be able to say then like, oh, but we have to proscribe the use of it for commerce. It wouldn't have created this economy …”
Buterin: Adding full scripting early would have collapsed Bitcoin in 2010
“Way that the Bitcoin community would be able to kind of manage itself and all these different things that I can think Satoshi probably definitely would have had way too much on his plate if, you know, we're getting hacks and collapsing in 2010 because all at t…”
Russell: Generic Pokémon game mechanics would have produced only short-lived success
“They could have slapped it on almost any gameplay concept, say, like, an endless runner along the lines of what was, what's the one that we all, or everyone played Temple Run. You know, you can imagine, like, in the same way that there's, like, a Spider-Man ga…”
Dorado: Early internet program managers would have permitted commercial use initially
“If they knew where we were today, they would have allowed Commercial use from the inception.”
Grant: Galileo wouldn't have discovered lunar mountains without artistic training
“And in that case, if he had not been an artist, he never would have made that discovery.”
Butterfield: Slack would not have taken off if launched three years earlier
“If we had started Slack three years earlier, we just, it wouldn't have taken off the way it did. It might have been a moderate success, but it wouldn't have taken off the way it did.”
Hobson: Early frugality cost Ariel talent that would have accelerated growth
“That was making a decision based upon money, and he probably lost people who would have accelerated the growth had he hired them.”
Reshma Sohoni: Early US Capital Unlocked TransferWise's Growth Trajectory
“I do think the trajectory of that business has changed. It would be in a very different curve. Had it not been for some of that American capital that came in very early.”
Patrick Byrne: Overstock should have prioritized tech over retail initially
“If I had to do over again, I was probably wrong, or at least my emphasis was on the wrong syllable. I should have been more focused on the technology to begin with.”
Dixon: Web architecture should have included built-in identity and payment protocols
“That said, rewinding it would have been really nice to have built identity and payments in the first place.”
Nguyen: Apache Spark Would Have Failed Earlier Due to Memory Costs
“Now Spark, if it was created six, five, six years before its time would have completely failed because memory was so much more expensive.”
Vigna: The 2008 financial crisis spurred Bitcoin's rapid early growth
“It helped it because I think that that's part of the reason why it's grown so much faster than other technologies would have.”
Zenefits should have recognized the Utah dispute was political, not legal
“I think what I probably would have done differently in the case of Utah is I probably would have, I wish I had realized earlier in the process that we were in sort of a political battle rather than a legal battle with the Department of Insurance.”
Early Board Service Improves Operating Executive Performance
“I wish I had done it earlier, because I would have been a better operating executive.”
Evans: Adopting ten different social networks was impossible on desktop browsers
“Which would have been impossible on the desktop. No one would have used 10 different social networks on their web browser.”
Thiel: PayPal would have grown much larger had it stayed independent
“Certainly, if you'd been able to keep it going as an independent company, it would be a lot bigger. 1012 years later”
Hoover: Product Hunt would not be successful without email and Twitter
“And oftentimes people think that you can just build a good product and a good experience. But I believe product wouldn't be successful without email and without Twitter because people would come to the site and they wouldn't remember.”
Johnson: Microsoft's Surface 3 would not be successful without physical stores
“Without those stores, that Surface Three wouldn't be where it is today.”
Evans: A $150 iPhone Would Collapse Apple's Revenue Averages
“The corollary of that, of course, is that if Apple was to make a 150 dollar phone, their average would collapse, because they'd be getting loads of people who don't care.”
Instagram and YouTube Adoption Curves Are Nearly Vertical
“If we were to add Instagram, if we were to add YouTube onto here, you would just see straight lines straight up because of how fast these things get adopted.”
Zuegel: Crypto networks allow platforms to internalize third-party developer value
“If it were a crypto network, they'd be able to capture it.”
Moon: Strategic finance could have saved $65M startup from shutdown
“A strong finance team would have understood that there were bad unit economics in play and help the company course correct before it was too late. And before they had to shut down completely.”
Connie Chan: A Chinese Craigslist would have added transactions long ago
“If Craigslist was in China, they long ago would have added a number of other transactions, either built by themselves or through partnerships.”
Mt. Gox insolvency would have been detected earlier with ZK proofs
“If Mt. Gox had run this protocol, their problems would have been detected much earlier than they were.”
Evans: In 2005, Airbnb would have tried selling software to Hilton
“10 years ago, Airbnb would have tried to sell software to Hilton, and that probably wouldn't really have worked at all.”
Kim: Building OpenAI's launch demo manually would have taken her a week
“I'd literally, I think that would have honestly taken me, like, a week to actually build, like, fully interactive”
Balaji Srinivasan: Thiel, Graham, and Page would be jurists and professors earlier
“Peter Thiel would have been probably, they'd be more than 20 years earlier, probably would have been a Supreme Court jurist, right? Probably would have been like, you know, chief judge of the Supreme Court or something. Paul Graham would have been a professor.…”
Evans: Saturn might have saved GM if GM fully transitioned to it
“The kind of the Saturn thesis would have been that we'll shut down all of GM and Saturn will become GM. At that point, maybe it would have worked.”
Horowitz: Growth planning should start from operational limits, not top-down targets
“If I had to go back and play it again, I would have thought more when I planned growth, starting with, well, what are the limits of my ability to operate this company, and keep communication where it needs to be, and know what people are doing, and so forth.”
Oyelowo: Disney's 'Queen of Katwe' wouldn't exist without Tendo Nagenda
“There is no way, I think, that this film will be getting made if he didn't make it his passion and he didn't walk it down the halls to get it made.”
Goldberg: Box failed to cycle off unproductive advisors due to missing clauses
“And so, you know, what happens if you have vocal advisors, and so this is also where it goes back to the point about refreshing the board every couple of years, because I got advisors on that seemed great on paper, but didn't contribute and so I would have lov…”
Madam C.J. Walker's business model would qualify as impact investing today
“If Madam C.J. Walker was an entrepreneur today starting her business, for us, that would be an impact investment given that she's empowering these women, she's created this national network, She's providing them an opportunity to generate income.”
Gaston: Blue Nile accidentally bought a warehouse vault that would collapse floors
“We were doing a big expansion in our fulfillment center at Blue Nile, and we needed to buy a second vault, and we have these big, you know, very secure vaults that we built, and long story short, the person I put in charge of that didn't, you know, do a lot of…”