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.
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Davidson: 'Build it and they will come' is false for startups
“One of the adages of Silicon Valley that I hear really often is build it and they'll come, right? It's this belief that if the product is good enough, people will find it on their own, they'll download it, they'll pay it, and the company will be successful. An…”
Davidson: Over $300 billion in US construction spend is managed on paper
“I mean, it's one of, pen and paper is probably the most common form in which more than three hundred billion dollars are managed. And you know, that's pen and paper in Excel. That's the main model that we see.”
Davidson: Construction productivity has grown only 0.1% annually since 1947
“0.1% a year since 1947.”
Davidson: Average construction foreman spends eight hours weekly tracking materials
“Right now, your average foreman is spending eight hours a week just calling up the office trying to figure out when is stuff arriving? Has something been ordered? Can they actually place a change order? All of that really eats into the amount of time that they…”
Davidson: Moving cultures prepares founders to rapidly adapt to unfamiliar systems
“When you have to move around so much, you constantly have to expose yourself to new cultures, and it's actually a very similar pattern to what I see in entrepreneurship, which is you constantly have to confront a new problem, which is you don't understand why …”
Davidson: Early-twenties founders do not need a decade of prior experience
“You don't need 10 years of work experience to want to solve a problem, and that if you're someone who's intellectually curious and willing to work really hard, you can, in your early twenties, start making a huge difference to solving these problems and actual…”
Davidson: Permission-seeking cultures like Goldman Sachs destroy employees' sense of ownership
“Goldman, there was this real sense of needing to ask for permission. Right. And that I think ultimately leads to you feeling a lot less ownership over your work.”
Davidson: Kojo processes around $1 billion in annual spend
“It is at a ballpark figure. It's around a billion dollars a year.”
Davidson: Kojo aims to power all contractor material supply chains by 2033
“You know, 10 years from now, we want any contractor in the US and in the world to be able to do everything tied to their material supply chain through Kojo.”
Davidson: Cement suppliers are booked three to six months in advance
“And if you think about what's happening today with the labor shortage, you can see industries like cement getting booked out three to six months in advance, right?”
Davidson: US construction workforce has a 650,000-person skilled labor shortage
“The Association of Builders and Contractors actually published, there's about 650,000 people that are missing from the workforce.”
Davidson: Capturing customer attention in legacy industries is a primary hurdle
“With a lot of these industries, people aren't spending their time thinking about you. They have their own problems going on. They have a huge array of fires that they're fighting every day, and so actually even getting their attention is a really, really inter…”
Davidson: Aspiring founders learn more from active builders than distant icons
“I think instead what is really valuable is hearing from people who are in the building process, right? Not people who are so far removed and so successful that you can't associate with them, but people who might be, you know, five or 10 years older than you, w…”
Davidson: Pessimism stems from helplessness and is solved by realizing agency
“I think a lot of pessimism tends to come from helplessness, right? It's this feeling of, well, I can't do anything about this and it sucks. Whereas actually when you realize that, no, you can, that is when you start feeling optimistic and you feel empowered.”