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 126 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
Sacks: David Sacks to chair White House crypto working group
“The members of this working group are going to be, there's me, there's the head of the SEC, the secretary of the treasury, and all the agencies and departments that have an interest in crypto. So we formed this working group. I'm actually chairing it, or I wil…”
Sacks and Chamath are hosting a fundraising event for Donald Trump
“We're hosting an event for president Trump... Yeah, we're hosting an event for the once, once and future president.”
Sacks says he would vote for Dean Phillips over Nikki Haley
“If it came down to a choice between Dean Phillips as the Democratic nominee and someone like Nikki Haley as a Republican nominee, I'd vote for Dean Phillips all day long.”
Sacks: I donated an additional $50,000 to the Chesa Boudin recall
“I donate another 50,000 dollars to the recall chasing campaign.”
Sacks challenges SF DA Chesa Boudin to a debate on crime
“Chesa, Mr. District Attorney, you don't have to come on the show, but I will challenge you to a debate. Anytime, any place, any format on your policies in San Francisco.”
Sacks: I am not a White House employee and was not involved in Anthropic letter
“I'm not a day-to-day employee of the White House, and I only got the readout of this once the letter was sent. So, you know, I wasn't involved.”
Sacks: Persistent threat of wealth tax pushed him to leave California
“I think a lot of people expect that some version this comes back in 2028, which is the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge in terms of leaving is I don't think this bomb is going away.”
Sacks divested his Grok shares upon joining the government
“I divested my Grok shares as part of joining the government back in like February or March.”
Sacks: Divested nearly 100 fund LP interests at a 50% discount
“At a discount to their firm market value, in the case of my LP interest in all these funds, I divested almost a hundred funds that I had invested in, venture funds, things like that, angel funds, at roughly a 50% discount to their firm market value”
Sacks: White House AI action plan led by Waltz, Kratzios, and Sacks
“It directs the creation of a AI action plan. And that study will be led by three people, the national security advisor, who is Mike Waltz, The director of the office of science and technology policy, who will be Michael Kratzios as soon as he's Senate confirme…”
Sacks and Chamath raised $13 million for Trump at San Francisco fundraiser
“13, and then 13, well, we got another million on top of it, so we ended up raising thirteen million that night”
Sacks: Marc Benioff is texting to defend SaaS against AI on All-In
“He's chomping at the bits to come back on the pod and Explain why AI is not going to disrupt SAS. He's texting me. He wants to come on.”
Sacks: Two recent startups with $10M ARR sought $1B valuations
“The last two companies that I talked to, which are exciting companies, they're at ten million of ARR and they want billion dollar valuations.”
Sacks reveals Craft Ventures is launching a Slack competitor soon
“We're going to be launching my Slack killer soon. I feel a lot better about that because Slack got acquired. Doesn't, hasn't really innovated in a few years.”
Sacks: Ukraine war approach is a litmus test for supporting presidential candidates
“For me, I'm viewing candidates as either being acceptable or unacceptable, and Vivek is acceptable to me. I think DeSantis is too. The ones who are unacceptable to me are the ones who would escalate this Ukraine war, because I think that avoiding World War III…”
Sacks: Would certainly support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over Donald Trump
“I would certainly take Kennedy over Trump.”
Sacks and Palihapitiya will host a fundraiser for RFK Jr.
“Chamath and I are actually doing an event for Bobby Kennedy soon, in the next two weeks.”
Sacks endorses RFK Jr. in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary
“In the democratic primary, I'm definitely endorsing RFK junior in the democratic primary.”
Sacks: I will not get another COVID booster unless it becomes Ebola
“Unless this virus turns into Ebola, I'm never getting boosted again. I'll tell you that right now.”
Sacks denies coordinating with Elon Musk prior to podcast media appearances
“I had no coordination with Elon before appearing on any of those shows. I just went on those shows and said what I think.”
Sacks reveals he will support Ron DeSantis for president in 2024
“So, look, I'm on the DeSantis train. That's what I'm supporting for 24.”
David Sachs: Craft's policy now is to be price takers on valuations
“Our philosophy now is just to be price takers and just to pick the companies that we want to be in and then the market sets the price.”
Sacks: Craft Ventures holds indirect exposure to $1B in Solana
“Kraft is the beneficiary because we invest, we're the first investors in multi coin. We were kind of like their seed investor invested in there. We put in something like 40% of the money for their special opportunity fund. They were one of the first investors …”
Sacks reverses stance, now advocates for breaking up major tech companies
“I got to say, you know, on previous pods, I've defended these tech companies, but I've come around. They are too powerful. And they are using their powerful, their power in too indiscriminate a way without power.”
Sacks: Salesforce offered $250M for Yammer before opting to build Chatter
“They were interested in buying the company for around two hundred fifty million dollars.”
Sacks: Trump executive order leaves data center decisions to local governments
“In the policy document that I worked on, the executive order that I worked on in December, we expressly said that data centers remain a state and local decision.”
Sacks vows to leave California if state enacts billionaire wealth tax
“But for me, I think the wealth tax, I'm going to have to jump out of the pot with this.”
Sacks: Craft Ventures sold $200M in crypto, including $85M personal stake
“So we basically sold, I think it was around two hundred million dollars of crypto, of which around eighty-five million dollars was personally attributable to myself. And we cleared that before day one, paid taxes on it, and basically so there wouldn't be a con…”
Sacks: White House is actively developing a new national AI action plan
“What the president said in his EO is that we should devise a new AI action plan to replace that Biden EO, and we're working on that right now.”
Sacks: David Sacks and Michael Kratzios to co-chair PCAST
“Me and Michael Kratzios, who I mentioned before, is going to be the director of OSTP. We're going to be co-chairing that, and this is an EO that provides the authorizing language to set that up”
Sacks confirms his firm does not run CrowdStrike, citing lack of trust
“Similarly, I had my IT department check and make sure that we didn't have it running anywhere. We don't. I'm just gonna be frank. I don't trust this company.”
Sacks denies asking his portfolio founders to defend him online
“No, I never asked anybody to do that, and a good reason why is I don't want to trouble my founders.”
David Sacks confirms he will speak at the Republican National Convention
“Well, I wasn't supposed to talk about that, but I saw that someone leaked it to the New York Times this morning, so it's out there. And yeah, I'm going to be speaking there next week.”
Sacks: Ukraine war policy is top 2024 presidential litmus test
“For me, the number one issue is whether the president, the next president will seek to deescalate or end the Ukraine war, or they will seek to escalate it.”
Sacks is paying off his $9M office building loan in cash
“So what I said is, listen, I don't need this loan. I'm just going to pay it off. So I'm going to pay off items on the loan. That's exactly right. And I just own the building a hundred percent. And when this credit crunch is over, whether it's next year or two …”
Sacks: Craft Ventures plans to hold SpaceX investment until IPO
“I think we're going to wait till the company IPOs. I think that would be our default.”
Sacks endorses RFK Jr. for Democrats and DeSantis for Republicans
“I've said that I would support RFK Jr. For the Democratic Party nomination, and I support DeSantis on the Republican side.”
Sacks co-hosted Ron DeSantis's 2024 presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces
“The DeSantis campaign connected with Twitter and Elon and I agreed to kind of co-host the space.”
Sacks: I never believed Sidney Powell's 2020 election fraud claims
“By the way, I never bought into those allegations. I said so at the time. I thought they were bogus. I thought the whole Sidney Powell thing, you know, the release of the Kraken or whatever was ridiculous.”
Sacks opposes Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination
“I don't want Trump to be the nominee. I support a different candidate”
Sacks: I did not tweet about SVB until after FDIC receivership
“I personally never tweeted anything about SVB until Friday afternoon when SVB was already in receivership, and the run on the bank had already started with Signature and First Republic, and we could see it with our own eyes.”
Sacks: Craft Ventures swept $45M from SVB right before its collapse
“We had about forty-five million dollars that we were about to distribute to LPs. And I'm like, whoa, that's crazy. So we were able to sweep that to an account we used to make in-kind distributions.”
Sacks denies leaving Craft Ventures for a permanent role at Twitter
“I've gotten all sorts of inbound from people asking me if I'm like leaving craft ventures to do something at Twitter. No, it's not true. We're just, Jason and I are just pitching in and helping out while Elon establishes his permanent team at that company.”
Sacks: Almost all Craft Ventures portfolio companies are now re-forecasting
“So after Q one board meetings, I would say about two thirds of portfolio companies We're hitting their numbers, and one-third were missing, and it still appeared to be, like, problems related to those specific companies, not a macro trend. I would say after Q-…”
Sacks: Craft requires $1M ARR and 15% MoM growth for Series A
“It really does start with a company hitting the metrics hurdle that we need to see for example, series a you know, it's a call it, you're roughly more or less a million dollars of ARR. You want to be growing 15% month over month, certain net dollar retention, …”
Sacks: Craft Ventures advises portfolio companies to maintain 2.5 years of runway
“So now what we're telling our portfolio companies is you want to have two and a half years of runway right now because you got to go raise six months before you run out of cash, and you really want to have two years of cushion because things could be choppy fo…”