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 60 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: White House officials claimed they could classify math to control AI
“And literally this was, this is verbatim. This is we did, we classified a whole entire areas of physics in the nuclear era and made them state secret. Like, of the, like, theoretical physics, science physics. We classified them and made them state secrets and …”
Andreessen gave a $50,000 Bitcoin grant to AI bot Truth Terminal
“I gave it a 50,000 dollar no strings attached grant this summer in Bitcoin.”
Andreessen unilaterally created the HTML image tag as a fait accompli
“We weren't making progress on it, and then I just did a, because I controlled, you know, I controlled Mosaic at that point, so I just did a fait accompli, and I just declared it, and I created the image tag.”
Andreessen knows of only two Trump supporters in Silicon Valley
“I know of exactly two Trump supporters in Silicon Valley.”
Andreessen: Frontier AI synthesis outputs have been 100% accurate for months
“What I'm looking for is like, yes, explain this to me in like the Like, the clearest, most sophisticated, most complex, most, like, complete way that it's possible for somebody to, you know, for a real expert to be able to explain things to me. And that's what…”
Andreessen's new California city project acquired four times Manhattan's acreage
“We have a project to build a new city in California. We've bought, you know, four times the acreage of Manhattan in Solano County.”
Andreessen: a16z launched an ambitious political program to defend startups
“We've launched a sort of a really ambitious political program in the last year, because we've just had it with people basically taking free shots on goal on startups, and so we're trying to support a lot of the politicians on the right side of these issues”
Andreessen: VCs treat admission to elite universities as a standalone credential
“For VCs like us, like it actually, the fact that you got admitted MIT is itself a credential. Yeah. Even if you never went right. Even if you never actually completed the thing.”
Andreessen: a16z is becoming directly involved in political policy and lobbying
“We are getting increasingly involved directly in politics which is not something that we would, you know, prefer to do if we didn't have to, but you know, we are doing it in this category and a few others as sort of these challenges have gotten more intense.”
Andreessen: a16z partners can approve investments even if everyone else objects
“One of the things we have in our firm is we have an ethical veto. And so the way our firm works is we actually don't need unanimity. We don't vote on investments. The person sponsoring the investment can pull the trigger, even if everybody else is opposed to t…”
Andreessen: a16z attempts to outpace venture competitors via speed
“You know, this is what Elon does, you know, to his competitors, like in the defense, you know, in the aerospace industry. This is what Andrel's now doing in companies in the defense industry. You know, this, quite frankly, is what we try to do, you know, to ou…”
Andreessen: Early investments Twitter and LinkedIn became the censorship machine
“You know, I was, you know, I was an angel investor in Twitter angel investor in LinkedIn, you know, they both, you know, became kind of key parts of the censorship machine at certain points.”
Marc Andreessen: a16z never invests purely for social or political reasons
“We never make investments for just purely kind of social and political reasons. Like, so the, you know, the goal obviously always as sort of fiduciaries is to generate returns.”
a16z Funds AI Startups Founded by Sutskever, Murati, and Fei-Fei Li
“We funded you know, we funded Ilyas Eskiver out of OpenAI to do a new foundation model company. We funded Mira Mirati also out of OpenAI. We funded Fei Fei Li out of Stanford to do a world model, foundation model company.”
Andreessen uses AI to steelman both sides of controversial issues
“Here's the thing I do a lot with this, is I just say, like, take, take a provocative point of view and then steel man the position. Take your COVID thing. Steel man, so I often, I have a pair of these. Steel man the position that it was a lab leak and then ste…”
Andreessen: Two AAA-list Hollywood directors plan to fully embrace AI
“I know of, like, two, like, A, triple A-list, like, directors, filmmakers, you know, top-end people who are, like, very excited about what's possible and are gonna fully embrace it.”
Andreessen claims to be the first angel investor in an AI agent
“I'm the first angel funder, or sort of donors, angel funder of an AI agent living its own best life online.”
Andreessen: a16z avoids investing in self-improving AI because nobody can build it
“Like it's, and by the way, like, I think it's fair to say if we knew how to do it, we would invest in that. And we have not yet.”
Andreessen bought a $1,500 Unitree Chinese robot dog for his son
“My nine-year-old's favorite toy slash companion right now is a 1500 dollar robot dog from China from a company called Unitree.”
Andreessen and Horowitz disclaim any financial stake in GOAT meme coin
“A-sixteen Z, Ben and I have nothing to do with it. We are not investors. We were not involved in creating it. We have no role in it. We own none of it. We have no economics in it. We are completely unrelated to it.”
Andreessen and a16z provide no-strings research grants to independent AI developers
“We have been giving grants, small grants, but we've been giving basically research grants to these people over time. A-sixteen Z has had a grant program for a while. I've done a bunch directly and, you know, just like no strings attached you know, grants to ju…”
Andreessen: Ben Horowitz and I had a three-hour dinner with Donald Trump
“Ben and I had dinner with the former president 10 days ago at Bedminster his golf club in New Jersey and had a three hour dinner.”
Andreessen: a16z is lobbying U.S. senators to federally fund AI infrastructure
“We've been spending a lot of time in Washington lately, and I've actually been telling the story to a lot of current senators and basically in, in encouraging them to basically do the same thing.”
Andreessen told Reed Hastings in 2004 that Netflix streaming was crazy
“I remember meeting with Reed Hastings in, I think, 2004 and, you know, Netflix was up and running and was very successful doing a DVD rental by mail. And he literally, you know, reads, reads a technical genius in addition to being a business genius. And he sai…”
Andreessen: a16z's mistakes stem from overestimating platform turnover speed
“When we make mistakes, it's Because we kind of overestimate the degree to which this is going to happen. But our whole thing is to basically try to get in front of this and try to, you know, basically make the assumption that you're going to have complete turn…”
Andreessen: Marc Andreessen homeschools his son using private tutors
“We've, you know, we're homeschooling, right? So one of the things we've done is we were, you know, we were homeschooling. We've gone back to the older model, which is actually the previous question, more of like private tutoring.”
Andreessen: a16z invests in tech meeting two core criteria
“The way I think about it, like for our firm is for every new technology that we're exposed to, right? It's like, okay, does it pass like the basic sniff test of like, okay, if this worked, would it be a big deal? Right. And then it's like, are there really sma…”
Andreessen: Replaced newspapers with a barbell diet of social media and books
“And so I've been running a big experiment this year, which is I've been trying to do a barbell. I've been trying to polarize it, and so I've stopped completely reading newspapers, magazines, basically anything that has a time horizon basically greater than, le…”
Andreessen: I told Reed Hastings in 2003 that video streaming would fail
“I said, yeah, it'll never work. So, you know, great foresight. But it was based on all this, well, actually, I said, someday it might work, but it seems awfully hard because There are all these technical impediments.”
Andreessen: a16z borrowed its operating model from talent agencies and advertising
“Like a lot of the ideas we have in our firm, we borrowed from other industries, and so we pulled ideas over from what had happened in the entertainment talent agency business, or in the advertising industry, or in other kinds of investment.”
Andreessen: Nicira scrapped its OpenFlow tech immediately after a16z investment
“So we funded this here at NetWeQ's networking lab, and it was the OpenFlow. OpenFlow was the sort of protocol was the approach and Martine had, had, had been one of the main people doing that. And so they start in Asira, and we're all excited, because we're li…”
Andreessen: a16z assumes a 50 percent failure rate on counterintuitive startup bets
“And, you know, and it's, you know, it, and by the way, it, even there we're gonna have, we assume we basically have a 50% failure rate. So, you know, we assume that half the time you know, we're gonna back the, what we think is a good idea, looks like a bad id…”
a16z targeting education, healthcare, and financial services for investment
“The big ones that we're working on right now that we've done some work in that we want to do more in are education, health care, and financial services. And those are the three really big ones that we think are up next.”
Andreessen Horowitz promised LPs a high-risk, home-run investment model
“We told our investors when we raised our first fund, we said, look, we're not in this to hit singles and doubles. We're in this, we're either going to give you know, grand slams or strikeouts.”
Andreessen Horowitz has a dedicated team testing big data startup sourcing
“So we're, we have a team on it. We're playing with it. We're trying to figure it out.”
Andreessen: a16z uses disruption theory to guide investment decisions
“We actually use this theory basically to tell us what not to invest in. As well as what to invest in.”
a16z is the largest outside investor in Substack
“You know, and they were very proud because we were the original investor and we're the largest outside investor in Substack.”
Andreessen: a16z aggressively invests across every viable AI strategy simultaneously
“In venture, we can bet on multiple strategies at the same time. We are aggressively investing behind every strategy that we've identified that we think has a plausible chance of working.”
Andreessen: a16z Does Not Invest Heavily in Chip Startups
“We're not really big investors in chips because it's kind of a big, it's kind of a big company thing”
Andreessen: Marc Andreessen voted for and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016
“I voted in 2016. I voted for Hillary. I supported Hillary publicly.”
Andreessen: Most a16z founders target Big Tech for disruption
“Most of what our founders are trying to disrupt is, is big tech.”
Andreessen: Netscape leaned heavily into US defense and intelligence contracts
“My company Netscape was always very active with defense and intelligence. We always leaned hard into it.”
Andreessen: a16z is actively investing in a potential nuclear energy renaissance
“There's a real opportunity with this administration for a nuclear renaissance that at least we would be, we're already investing into, but we would be super excited to invest into.”
Marc Andreessen buys $28,000 bipedal robot from China
“I just signed off by the way on a purchase of a, I think a 28,000 dollar biped robot from China.”
Andreessen refuses all outreach from University of Illinois administrations
“Every subsequent new administration at the university has attempted to reach out and repair the bridge. I have not returned the calls.”
Andreessen: I was strongly anti-remote work prior to COVID
“I was very, people who know me will confirm this. I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID.”
Andreessen: VC backs founder-led startups as throwbacks to bourgeois capitalism
“The way I view kind of what we do, like in venture capital, what we do is we basically are, we're basically the throwback. So the startups that we fund are being funded. We fund startups that fit that old model. Like we're trying to find the next generation of…”