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 11 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
Johns: Major technological shifts require vertical integration rather than horizontal efficiency
“When technology changes, like, I just didn't have a concept for the smartphone. So technology was about to change quite a bit. And in that change, you really want to be vertically integrated because you're not pushing efficiency. You're pushing sort of product…”
Johns: Leaving money on the table maximizes long-term total value
“When you leave money on the table, what you're doing is you're creating goodwill for your customers and you're buying the company duration, which is oftentimes the way to maximize total value, right?”
Johns: Emergent behavior makes exact future predictions useless
“We don't know how the future is going to unfold because the system is interacting together, and it creates what's called emergent behavior, and emergent behavior makes predicting useless in most cases, and we can have guidelines and heuristics, and those are a…”
Johns: Investing should prioritize biological resilience over predicting the future
“You know, it's really more about resilience than it is about predicting the future. And it's about adaptability. Like biology doesn't really care that much about the future. They care about adapting to this wide range of futures, right? Like my bees don't real…”
Johns: Investment 'conviction' is just a synonym for overconfidence and sunk-cost bias
“We use conviction as a synonym for overconfidence. I think that's what Really is the right way to, that's the right way to think about it. Conviction for us means, hey, I've done a ton of work, so I've got a lot of sunk costs, which means I've got bias, and I …”
Johns: Expensive valuations force investors to make predictions
“Valuation is a key piece. And this is the piece that we get every day as public investors and valuations, expensive valuations force predictions. I have to believe a lot more at 10 times sales than I do at 10 times earnings, right?”
Johns: No single company can vertically integrate advanced semiconductor manufacturing
“It's really this ecosystem approach that makes sense. No one can do all of this. It's just way too hard. It really does take a village.”
Johns: Investing is inherently a team sport because teams counter bias
“We think investing is inherently a team sport. It's a terrible solo sport for the most part. And the way we view team is our role is calling out bias in each other.”
Johns: Texas Instruments' moat is decades of catalog breadth, not technical superiority
“They're very hard to replicate, not because what they're doing so technically hard, it's hard, but it's because the breadth of what they have would take you decades to recreate.”
Johns: Samsung's consumer hardware division creates a foundry trust deficit versus TSMC
“Samsung is also doing logic, but it's, they have a different business model, right? They compete with their customers. So it's harder for their customers to trust them. Whereas TSMC doesn't have that conflict.”
Johns: Watershed research insights require wandering through 90% wasted time
“And the way we think about it is we can wander around not knowing what we're doing and waste 90% of that time. And 10% might be really useful and one percent might be absolutely watershed. And that's really all we're looking for. But you can't ever just get to…”