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 55 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
Gurley: Anthropic leaders believe they are midwifing a deity, not writing software
“I don't think they think they're writing software. I think they're midwifing a deity here, and I don't know which one I'm more afraid of, the regulatory capture or the second theory I call the Dr. Frankenstein theory.”
Gurley: Rest of world will run on Chinese AI if open source is restricted
“Same, same exact conclusion, which is rest of the world ends up running on Chinese models. If they're able to succeed at what you just said.”
Gurley: Silicon Valley succeeded because of its distance from Washington, D.C.
“The reason Silicon Valley has been so successful is because it's so fucking far away from Washington, D.C.”
Gurley: FDA antigen test chief previously worked at Quidel and Abbott
“Now, he works for the FDA, and he runs the group that oversees which antigen test gets approved. I know this because he would write scathing letters to the ones he rejected that you can also look up online. Now, guess what? You're not going to be surprised. Fi…”
Gurley: AI incumbents attack open-source AI because it threatens their market power
“They're spreading a negative open source message, and I think it's precisely because they know it's their biggest threat, and I think what Meta's done with Llama II.”
Gurley: The US cannot move past COVID under a Trump presidency
“I think that we can't get past COVID With Trump, because the TDSers are so convinced that it has to be problematic”
Gurley: Labor unions hold more regulatory capture power than corporations
“The difference that a union has versus a company is it's a natural monopoly, and so it actually has more power to write regulation than a company does”
Gurley: Anthropic is uniquely negatively outspoken about its own field
“I've never, ever seen a company that is both leading their field and the most negatively outspoken commenter on what they do.”
Gurley: Anthropic is one of the most aggressive lobbying startups ever
“And we know that Anthropik's one of the most aggressive lobbying companies, startups of all time.”
Gurley: Claude for Excel is far superior to Microsoft Copilot
“Claude for Excel. Is better than Copilot by, not by a little, by a lot.”
Gurley: 100% automated fleets are unviable, human driving jobs won't decline
“I think it's impossible to go with a hundred percent automated solution because the economics don't work well. And so I think like some of the other examples that were given ATMs and whatnot, I think the use of non-ownership cars is going to go way up, so it's…”
Gurley: Dodd-Frank halted the creation of new US banks
“Number of new banks in the US, 2009, nothing. Dodd-Frank. Like, that's what happens.”
Gurley: Obama appointed Epic CEO Judith Faulkner as sole corporate IT council member
“In 2009, Obama put her on his Health IT Council. She was the only corporate representative.”
Gurley: Germany approved 96 rapid test vendors, dropping prices to €0.75
“Germany leaned heavily into rapid tests. They got their scientists together, and they, Evaluated a 122 different vendors and validated 96 of them. Here they are on the right. 96 different vendors that they okayed. And as a result, in the German market, you cou…”
Gurley: US COVID rapid tests cost six times more than UK tests
“This is Walgreens and CVS antigen test. There's seven tests. They're all exactly 23 99. What is that? That's not a marketplace. That's not open competition. I also went on Boots, the famous UK. There, the tests are about a dollar 50, dollar 60. Per today. So y…”
Gurley: Four of Elizabeth Warren's top ten donors are big tech companies
“Four of the top 10 contributors to Elizabeth Warren are Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.”
Gurley: Silicon Valley succeeded because it is far from Washington
“The reason Silicon Valley's been so successful is because it's so fucking far away from Washington, D.C.”
Gurley: LP bonus structures disincentivize GPs from marking down valuations
“Many LPs are actually bonus on the paper mark, and this is something that a lot of people don't realize, and so they don't have an incentive to dial around to the GPs and say, get your marks right, because it's actually gonna reflect poorly on them if they wer…”
Gurley: 2021 hyper-competition eliminated IPO liquidation preference protections for investors
“Because of hyper competition and investing in 99, 2020, 20, 20, 21, there was a term removed from most term sheets that gave Investors the right to protect their Lickpref on IPO. That's gone in most of these cases.”
Gurley predicts more tech IPOs in late 2023 to resolve cap tables
“I think you will see. There's two things. I think that complex, cleaning up complexity is a great reason for the public market, and Brad already said, we've seen a massive recovery in, in software stocks, like the marks are better than they were two years ago.”
Gurley: VC outperformance depends on rare speculative market peaks
“A vast majority of the reason venture outperforms other asset classes has to do with these tiny windows when you have a super probably market, and if you don't, if you aren't around for that part, you know, if you strip those years out of a forty-year assessme…”
Gurley: Only 10 to 15 VC-backed companies ever generated massive post-IPO returns
“I think the total number of companies that meet that criteria in the history of the venture industry is like, 10 or 15.”
Gurley: 49 out of 50 startups using negative unit economics fail
“I think if 50 entrepreneurs try that trick, 49 are gonna auger in.”
Gurley: Over 100 industries were exempted from California's AB-5
“So by the time AB five was set to be put in action, there were over a hundred industries that have been carved out because it was a stupid law written just to target and a single industry.”
Gurley: PAGA drives more companies out of California than AB5
“The rule, the law that's causing more companies to leave from my perspective than AB five is something called PAGA.”
Gurley: Lobbyists, not citizens, killed Philadelphia's municipal Wi-Fi plan
“There were no voters or citizens up in arms about this.”
Bill Gurley compares Comcast lobbyist David Cohen to Bob Marley
“Now, David Cohen is to corporate lobbying what Bob Marley is to reggae.”
Gurley: AT&T helped outlaw municipal broadband in over 22 states
“AT&T would join this fight. Within two years, they would outlaw municipal broadband in over 22 states.”
Gurley: There is no more innovation in telecom equipment
“There is no more innovation in telecom equipment.”
Gurley: Government paid $38B in subsidies for doctors to buy EHR software
“Doctors would receive 44,000 dollars each if they bought software. Thirty-eight billion dollars.”
Gurley: Capitalism is most broken where regulatory capture is highest
“I think where capitalism's broken is where the capture's the highest, right?”
Gurley says investing is now a hobby and rejects new board seats
“This is more of a hobby thing for me. And I don't want board seats anymore.”
Gurley: IPOs are the easiest way to clean up complex cap tables
“When you get to that place, sometimes going public is just the easiest way to clean it all up.”
Gurley: VC market cycles resemble a sawtooth, not a sine curve
“It doesn't happen like a sine curve, which is what we all imagine when we think of a cyclical business. It's more like a sawtooth. Risk, risk on is a very slow process, and it, and it's reflexive, so it grows, and grows, and then risk off tends to be very abru…”
Gurley: VC returns depend heavily on peak market cycle performance
“What I realized was that the IRR numbers and the ROI numbers on the venture capital category were heavily dependent on performance in the hottest That's part of the cycle”
Gurley: Super Pumped TV series was inaccurate and fabricated scenes
“Super Pump was not accurate just because they made up a lot of scenes. Like, Drummond wasn't very active at all, but he's in a lot of the scenes, so a lot of them were made up.”
Gurley: SEIU spends more money lobbying than any other US organization
“They spend more money lobbying than any other organization in our country and have for many, many years.”
Gurley: Coastal elites lack empathy for rural and center states
“I do think there's a true lack of empathy for the center states and the rural areas from the coastal elites”
Gurley: Social bias against rural Americans is uniquely accepted in urban cities
“There is a, there's unquestionably a type of social bias against rural Americans in, in urban cities. There's just no doubt. It's the only joke you're allowed to tell without getting Rebuked.”
Gurley: Regulation protects incumbents and impedes innovation
“Regulation is the friend of the incumbent and it's the opposite of innovation. It locks in things and it's very resistant to change.”
Gurley: Workers receive only about 10% on average from PAGA claim settlements
“The supposed victims are getting about 10% on average on PAGA claims.”
Gurley: Anti-business, anti-tech policies will cause economies to grind to a halt
“If any state or country wants to move forward in, in our new economy, they can't just be completely anti-business, anti-tech. I have a strong point of view on that, but like, it won't work. You're gonna grind to a halt.”
Gurley: The best protection against AI is becoming AI-enabled
“I think the best way to protect yourself from AI is to be the most AI enabled version of yourself you can be.”
Gurley: Early advantage in using AI will persist long term
“And I think that, I don't think it goes away because I think you learn how to get better at it over time. So having an early advantage, I think will extend for a while because you can learn more, more and more things you can accomplish.”
Gurley: Tech progress since 1891 radically improved global living standards
“The work week went from over 60 hours to 34 hours globally. Real wages went up eight to 10 X adjusted for inflation. The medium worker now earns more than a doctor did in 19, in 1891. Global GDP per capita went from 1500 to 20 K. Child labor in the U.S. Went f…”