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 4,115 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 53 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
Lockheed Missiles and Space Had a Bigger Impact Than Skunk Works
“What LMSC, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, did, I honestly think, like, it is bigger impact to the country, to the world, and certainly on business to Lockheed and to Silicon Valley than Skunk Works.”
Lockheed Would Have Failed Without Its Missiles and Space Division
“And really, as we'll see, this division, you know, not Skunk Works, this division kept Lockheed alive. Lockheed would have absolutely died without this division.”
The Five Major Defense Primes Acknowledge Stasis and Rotate Contracts
“All these contracts kind of go to all of the contractors. They just rotate around who's the prime on it, and the prime makes the most money, and then it has the most sort of sway, and you don't want to be with a subcontractor, you'd rather be the prime contrac…”
Silicon Valley Wouldn't Exist Without Cold War Defense Competition
“All the things we just talked about, Silicon Valley itself, for God's sakes, wouldn't have existed without this.”
Top Defense Primes Lack Mutual Power But Block New Entrants
“So there really isn't power. Within the industry. But to the extent that you have already become one of these five, then together the five have power versus new entrants.”
Gilbert: Future breakthrough defense innovation won't come from Lockheed's Skunk Works
“It's very likely that the Skunk Works mentality ends up solving more problems for our country, but probably not from the Skunk Works division of Lockheed Martin.”
Ek: All media business models across all formats must move to freemium
“All media models ought to move to freemium. It's as someone who's Been saying that for 15 years. I obviously agree with him there, but I think that's true in all formats, right?”
Rosenthal: Million-view TikToks fail to convert podcast subscribers for Acquired
“We haven't acquired TikTok, we're on YouTube Shorts, we post on Twitter, and like, None of that drives the needle for us. Like, we've had videos on TikTok get a couple million views, and we don't know if it translated to a single new subscriber.”
Ek: Launching internet startups globally on day one is 99.9% wrong
“We all believe that these like sort of internet companies that go global day one, that's like the right approach. I actually think. 99.9%. This is just untrue and false. The entrepreneurs have to revise. We all, all are benefited from constraining ourselves To…”
Ek: Taylor Swift probably could not reach number one without streaming platforms
“Do I think she could have reached number one at that point without streaming? Probably not would have been the answer.”
Ek: AI will drastically lower the software barriers to music composition
“From there on to actually compose something, getting into the ID of the workflows, the plugins, all that kind of concepts, it's quite a lot to master. And I think that's the potential power with something like AI, obviously.”
Daniel Ek: Generative AI will wipe out the creative middle tier
“So my view is you're going to see both extremes. You're going to see the middle getting wiped out. More people participate, but the very, very top is probably going to increase in value as well.”
Ek: Pure content monetization is becoming auxiliary revenue for modern creators
“In addition to that, just monetizing the content in itself is probably becoming an auxiliary revenue sources around them. Three 60, very similar again to mom and pop shops, like where you could do live events. You could be doing merchandising. You could build …”
Ek: The era of artists living solely off recorded music was short
“There was a point in time where the majority of the revenue could be derived from recording music. But the challenge to that, what I would say is that the time in history where that was true was actually very, very short, right?”
Lasky: Nintendo engineered artificial Black Friday scarcity to create retail panic
“They were very clever about only releasing a limited amount of inventory for Black Friday, and then the parents would go because that was on the kids Christmas list, and they would go to buy the disc and it, and they would be sold out and panic would ensue. An…”
Lasky: Nintendo is about to meaningfully expand its app store business
“I think the next one to go is going to be Nintendo, right? I think they're, I think that's, if you're looking for a reason to invest in Nintendo as a company, it's, I think they're about to crack that nut, right? And enter the app store business in a meaningfu…”
Lasky: Microsoft's Activision deal mimics Netflix's exclusive content strategy
“And you look at the Activision deal, sixty-nine billion dollar acquisition of Activision. It's basically like, you know, Netflix or Apple or one of these other companies buying exclusive content.”
Lasky: Gaming VCs must back durable platforms, not sequential game studios
“I invest in businesses, not in studios. Right? And the, and those businesses have to have a strategy that transcends, I want to make a game and put it on Steam, or I want to make a mobile game and put it in the App Store, right? And I'm really interested in th…”
Lasky: Early Riot Games acquired DotA community websites to redirect player demand
“We bought the websites that we bought the Defense of the Ancients websites and just turned their editorial to-”
Lasky: Paid customer acquisition in gaming is a dangerous, addictive slippery slope
“I resist as long as possible going paid, although sometimes you're so profitable that you can with and not really mess your margins up too much, right? But I think once you start down the paid path for customer acquisition, it's kind of a slippery slope and it…”
Lasky: Annual LiveOps spending matches or exceeds original yearly game development costs
“Like, I think you can expect to spend as much or more on an annual basis than you were spending in development in LiveOps.”
Lasky: Web3 games must solve token-spending hesitation to succeed
“And so, when you're, when we're looking at web three related deals, like solving that problem, like incentivizing you so that you don't feel like an idiot for utilizing the token is a key, key factor in these games.”
Gilbert: Gaming revenue historically surpassed Hollywood and TV including arcade coin drops
“I was shocked to learn that the gaming industry has always been larger than TV and Hollywood, if you include the total coin drop in arcades, and I always just thought this was this new phenomenon of like, wow, video games have become so much a part of the fabr…”
Lasky: AI will not easily generate complete, satisfying video games from prompts
“There's a train of thought that, that has been advanced that, oh wow, this is really going to democratize the game industry in, in a way where now, kind of like you're seeing with mid journey, for example, where you can just describe a piece of art and it magi…”
Robbins: UGC platforms like Roblox will capture the most value from AI assets
“Maybe like a working theory that I have is the UGC platforms like the Fortnite creatives or the core or the Roblox's of the world might actually be the ones that accrue the most value in this AI asset generation time where, you know, if you can spin up these t…”
Tech Companies Must Prioritize Durability Over Growth For Long-Term Profits
“One thing that we do in Silicon Valley is we overrate, overvalue growth rates and undervalue durability. And he's like, that doesn't make sense for a technology company because all your profits, the vast majority of profits are 20 years in the future. And so i…”
High-Value Business Podcasts Forfeit Massive Revenue by Paywalling Feeds
“For the type of podcast that we are, where you have lots of founders and CEOs and hedge fund managers and these sorts of people listening, You could never ask someone to pay you in membership what they are worth to the most valuable advertiser for that slot. A…”
Munger: Wealthy Parents Must Inherit Wealth or Children Will Hate Them
“And he's like, he definitely feels that some of them are going to be less motivated because they're born rich, but he said this was the most surprising thing. But he goes, you have to give them the money anyways or they're going to hate you for it.”
The NFL Is the Single Largest Media Property in the World
“It's that the NFL is the single largest media property by value, and the funny thing is, if you go look at the, because we did this for the Nintendo episode, you go look at the largest media Media properties. They list Mario, they list Pokemon, and they, and t…”
Rosenthal: Walmart was the first applied technology company in America
“I still think that they were the first applied technology company in America.”
Rosenthal: Apple has been a terrible steward of the podcasting industry
“Apple has been such a terrible steward of this industry.”
Thompson: Micropayments Fail Due to Timing Mismatch Between Investment and Revenue
“From a microtransaction perspective, I think one of the issues is To create the piece of content is very time consuming. And then obviously you get the free distribution on the back ends. You have zero marginal cost on the back end. But the problem is you have…”
Thompson: Apple University was driven by Tim Cook, not Steve Jobs
“What is interesting is it was written a lot about as this sort of Steve jobs initiative and, you know, I'm sure he okayed it, but he had basically no involvement at all. Tim cook was very heavily involved.”
Thompson: Social media's value is giving readers a sharing platform
“If you have a new business model with a very low cost structure, Social media is a godsend because you basically get free marketing. What a lot of people don't understand is I think a lot of writers give away way too much content on Twitter and they're out the…”
Thompson: Twitter Should Have Had Disappearing Tweets from Day One
“I think actually one of the biggest mistakes Twitter made, and it's understandable. No one could have seen it at the time, but Twitter should have had disappearing tweets from day one. It should have always been a just in the moment sort of social network. I t…”
Thompson: Apple's privacy changes enhanced Meta's long-term ad moat
“The Apple changes were very devastating, and they're structurally devastating, and so they deserve a significant haircut on their valuation because of that, but I also think they were moat-enhancing in the long run, where I question whether any other company i…”
Thompson: TSMC cannot hedge against Taiwan geopolitical risk
“A core to their model, essential to the model of being so flexible, being so adaptive of incorporating new equipment of accommodating hundreds and hundreds or thousands of customers is all their engineering's in one place. And that. Place is Taiwan and that ha…”
The SEC let Enron recognize 20 years of future cash flows immediately
“The SEC allowed them to go out to 20 years that they could collapse into today revenue.”
Ken Lay's wife dumped 500,000 shares minutes before Enron's bailout deal collapsed
“At 10:20 a.m., 10 minutes before the news comes out, Ken Lay's wife sells 500,000 shares of Enron stock that the Kenan whatever her name is, that the Lay Family Foundation held.”
Gilbert: Sarbanes-Oxley shifted corporate fraud from public to private markets
“The result of Sarbanes-Oxley being stay private longer, that it's much more likely that fraud now happens in the private market than the public market, and that is basically what we saw with Theranos, with FTX.”
Gilbert: Enron's Rebecca Mark Sold $83M in Stock Without Charges
“She sold about eighty-three million dollars of stock. She actually got out early enough, and she was sort of cast out by the male executives at the top in a way where she was actually never accused of any wrongdoing and never really a part of the prosecution o…”
Rosenthal: Companies Stayed Private for Opacity and Profit, Not Sarbox
“Sarbanes actually raised the cost and complexity of being a public company. No doubt. I think, though, probably not as much as the stay private longer proponents were saying. And this might be related to what you're saying. I suspect, again, to the incentives …”
Blocking Broadcom's Qualcomm Takeover Was a Massive National Security Win
“This is one of the huge wins of the Trump administration you know, for like America was keeping Qualcomm an independent American company. Like whether it was Qualcomm calling in a favor or just what, like, I think we can all look back in 2022 and be like, this…”
Qualcomm's Best Days Are Behind It If It Remains Only Handsets
“I think if they continue to try to run the same playbook in just the handset market that they have been, the best days are behind them because people have caught onto their games a little bit and are gonna, gonna squeeze them from a bunch of different directio…”
Tavel: Benchmark bans memos because they function as pre-sell tools
“So you don't write a memo. And it's because the memo, you know, when you're, a memo really is a vehicle to, you know, obviously give background on a company, all the work you've done, but it is also a little bit a pre-sell before the company comes in to presen…”
Puttagunta: VC investment memos are crutches projecting partner ego
“I would say the memo. Is a crutch often because yes, it can force you into clarity of thought, but it also allows you to fill in blanks that the entrepreneur themselves are not saying. And it pushes a sort of bias and perspective that maybe the firm has, or ma…”
Fenton: Benchmark probably won't be around in 30 years
“Benchmark probably isn't going to be around in 30 years.”
Fenton: Docker's valuation plummeted from $1.5B to zero, stranding Benchmark
“So last time I did an all hands meeting at Docker was three years ago, and there were 60 employees that, that we'd spun out of the prior company, and the valuation was zero. So we'd gone from over a 1,000,000,004, 1,000,005 to zero, and I was working with some…”