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 316 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
Liemandt: Alpha School pays middle schoolers $1,000 for top 1% test scores
“We will take any middle schooler, girls or boys, and we will pay them a thousand dollars if they get to top one percent.”
Sanchez struggles to find women founders building sufficiently large businesses
“I actively look for women to invest in, and I have a really hard time finding women who are building big enough businesses.”
Lonsdale: Fund managers hide conservative views to preserve pension fund LP capital
“And I have a lot of friends who in person are like, Joe, I totally agree with you. This is crazy. Like, I can't believe they're doing this. This is so wrong. But of course, I can't say that in public. I'd mess up all my fundraising with all these pension funds…”
Sanchez: Fired podcast vendor who refused to work on Joe Lonsdale episode
“So, Joe Lonsdale was gonna come on the show, and we had a vendor that was working on our podcast. They do some, what's called pre-production stuff, like come up with thumbnails or their interesting tidbits on the internet. And this young gentleman reached out,…”
Sanchez: Applicants must complete unpaid audition projects to prove authentic interest
“Now we make everybody do a creative project, and I don't like to pay people for it, not because of the expense. I don't like to pay people because I want to know how they feel about Doing work with us. Are they really interested? Or are they merely kind of cur…”
Gurley: FTX investors knew about corporate red flags two months before collapse
“I was actually at a dinner with some of the FTX investors about two months before it blew up, and I said, and I asked all the questions that are in the red flags, and they were aware of all of those risks but, you know, didn't have a way to manage it.”
Sanchez: Passed on early Robinhood investment over gamification concerns
“I remember back in the day, I had a chance to invest in Robinhood when it was, like, super, super early on, and I'm an idiot, and I didn't, but the reason why I didn't, I actually kind of stand by, which is that I really don't think you should gamify Stock mar…”
Liemandt has invested $1 billion to kickstart AI education projects
“Like I've put in a billion dollars as to kickstart this.”
Masad: Peter Thiel dismissed 2022 AI pitch as meaningless hype
“So I actually pitched Peter Thiel on AI back in 22, and he told me that I was engaging in buzzwords and hype, and he says saying AI is like saying software or saying a computer, it's meaningless.”
Daymond John: I am not leaving any inheritance to my children
“Because I'm not leaving them anything. You know, I put it in my kid's head ever since I was young that, and then, that they were young, that they were not going to get anything.”
Gary Vee avoids AI startups because rapid iteration causes obsolescence
“Also, real quick, because I know a lot of smart investors listening here, be very careful in investing in AI. The reason I haven't yet is every week, you think you just invested in the best X, and a week later, somebody crushes that.”
Ladjevardian: Delphi aims to reach IPO with fewer than 50 employees
“I mean, I tell everyone we hire, I want a sub-fifty person public company.”
Ramsey: Spouses of candidates and hiring managers must attend final interviews
“The spouses go on the final interview, both the person being hired and the leader leading them, hiring them, because the spouses can smell a rat a mile away”
Galloway's average tax rate over the last decade was 17%
“Once you make the jump to light speed, and you can have the privilege I have, where I basically buy and sell assets to make a living, I start companies, I sell them, I piece out to Florida because I have that kind of mobility, my average tax rate the last 10 y…”
Gabbard: Resigned DNC post to endorse Sanders over foreign policy stance
“I made that decision to resign as vice chair of the DNC and endorse Bernie Sanders around that single issue of war and peace. He was largely at that time more of non-interventionist view of the world, not an isolationist, but more, ah, exercising restraint. Ve…”
Peterson: Mikhaila met Andrew Tate in 2019 but declined to collaborate
“And he said he had some way of building online content, and I was running my dad's channels, and he was, like, in the middle of potentially losing his job, And I was like, well, maybe this person who says he has millions of dollars can teach me to do that, and…”
Adelman: Rejects fund managers who launch funds with minimal experience
“We're getting all these funds that are coming and looking for stuff, and I'm just like, stop with the funds. Like, what's your differentiator? You know, you ran a company for, you know, 10 minutes, and now you're gonna go launch a fund. So like, we say no a lo…”
Mann: Dhar Mann Studios granting company equity and 401(k) to actors
“Now we're releasing like an equity program where our actors, some of our longtime actors and employees actually have equity in the company. We have better for one K program rolling out than most traditional studios even do.”
Sanchez: Feedback at Contrarian Thinking is Delivered in Groups, Not One-on-Ones
“Any feedback I have to give goes to those two groups as opposed to one-on-ones. I do not do one-on-ones.”
Sanchez: San Diego is where young people go to retire
“We would never have an office there and we would never live there full time because We call it the place where young people go to retire.”
Sanchez uses real-time AI objection coaching to level up sales reps
“We take all the data from Avoma and actually feed it into something that in real time can give you feedback on these objections. And it sort of voice triggers based on what you say on the phone call. It's been a game changer, especially for, we had an underper…”
Pabrai: Pabrai Investment Funds Operates With Two Full-Time and Two Part-Time Staff
“They're just two people full-time. And they're two part-time.”
Jain: I only build businesses with my close personal friends
“If you start a company with people that you trust, I'm the opposite of the, hey, don't do business with your friends. I only want to do business with my friends.”
Jain: Bilt caps every cross-functional business line at 25 people
“And so we cap these teams of 25 people. We put engineering and product and business development and partnerships and account management and marketing all in that one team. Cap to 25 people.”
Jain: Bilt operates without managers and offers equity buybacks
“We don't hire managers. So that's, I'll start there. We don't do managers. Like, I just don't believe in that. In a world where everybody has to own a piece of this business, and by the way, when I say own, I mean the product succeeds or fails with them, and w…”
Sanchez: My company's strict rule is to learn AI or leave
“In my company, the rule is learn AI or move on.”
Sanchez attended a private meeting vetting US governors for presidential runs
“I sat in a room where these couple of guys literally brought in governors from different states, sat the governors down, listened to the governors get peppered with questions, And then in the end, they circled around. I don't know why they let me in here, you …”
Gurley: Benchmark committed to WeWork 30 minutes into Adam Neumann's pitch
“Benchmark's never done a real estate transaction in the history of the firm, and We're about 30 minutes into the presentation. This is series eight, right? So there's almost nothing there. And I knew we were going to do the deal, like without even talking to t…”
Blake Mycoskie lost $3.5M on Huberman-advised habit startup Madefor
“I started a habit formation company called Made For with a good friend of mine Navy SEAL, amazing. We had Andrew Huberman as one of our advisors. Like, it was locked and loaded, and I put three and a half million dollars in it. Zero today.”
Robbins: Refused to Appear in 'The Secret' Over Oversimplified Premise
“When they did the secret, they came to me to be part of secret. I said, I will not participate in a million years. This is bullshit.”
Serhant Aims to Build History's Largest Real Estate Brokerage
“Like, I'm sitting here saying, I want to build the number one real estate firm the world has ever known, so let's go try, because the opportunity is actually there. We have Inbound lead flow. We have great growth. We're moving incredibly quickly. I know how to…”
Robbins Retains Content Ownership Through Joint Ventures and Severed Audio Rights
“I own all my content. Publishers do not own my books. I do. Oh yeah, I do joint ventures. And I've severed all my audio rights.”
Sanchez: Employees saying "not my job" or "can't do that" get fired
“And I like kind of proactively will say to the team, if you ever say like, we can't do that, or that's not my job, like you're fired.”
Liemandt: A $1 billion investment is not enough to fix education
“This billion dollars that I threw in, that's not enough to fix education. We have to show what's going on, right? We have to show there's great businesses here.”
Kendra Scott Prefers Hiring Retail Staff Without Prior Retail Experience
“I don't care if you've had any retail experience. Quite honestly, sometimes I prefer if you don't. Because I have to unteach some of those policies and procedures and the phone book stuff, right?”
Koerner screens all hires with 30-day trials and explicitly predicts failure
“The only way I found is just 30 day trials for everyone. And just saying on day one, statistically speaking, this isn't going to work out. Nothing against you. You seem awesome or else we wouldn't even be doing this. I'm just looking at numbers, you know, 30%,…”
Sanchez enforces three strict governance rules on every acquisition deal
“Whenever I do a deal, I make sure three things are true. One, that there is no personal relation between the people on the cap table, the bank, and the accounting firm from my founders. We gotta make, it turned out he had like, 47 cousins, they were all involv…”
Daymond John uses one-year non-shopping agreement to screen Shark Tank founders
“After we do the deal, you know in a handshake, I walk over to them and I send, I give them a piece of paper, very short one, and say, take it to your attorney. And it says on there something like, you know You're not gonna publicly shop this deal for another y…”
Daymond John: Turned Down $1.3 Billion Credit Line from Major Bank
“I'm not a billionaire. I'm not a billionaire by choice. I'm offered often, ah, you know, ah, huge venture deals, ah, a bank, very famous, well, the one of the most powerful banks said to me, Damien, you know what? I'll give you a 1.3 billion credit line.”
Sanchez prefers executing business deals with founders in long-term relationships
“In fact, when I do business deals, I like to see people that can have a longterm partner because at least that guy can tolerate them.”
Vaden: Brand Builders Group makes multi-eight figures from 1,000 customers
“But we're generating multi eight figures and you're going how we only have a thousand customers.”
Graziosi: I pay people to pump gas and change lightbulbs
“I don't just pay somebody to take my garbage out. I pay people to change my light bulbs, to go fill up my gas in my car.”
Ladjevardian: Delphi requires all new hires to watch Whiplash
“The movie whiplash is like a great movie which I personally love it. We make all of our new hires watch it.”
Dave Ramsey immediately vetoes any job candidate if his wife dislikes them
“If my wife says that, we don't hire them. And that, she's probably said it three times in 30 years.”
Dr. Moore: I used GLP-1s to address stress-induced weight gain
“Even with my best intentions at 50 years old, my metabolic health was starting to become compromised because of chronic stress. There's not, you know, there's not much I can do outside. I'm doing the gym. I'm doing the food. I'm doing all the things. And I was…”