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 9 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
Most active mutual funds underperform decades-long benchmarks, guaranteeing indexers top-quartile performance
“85 to 90% of actively managed mutual funds underperformed the benchmark they have sought to be. Not every year, but every decade, every 20 years, and if you want to be in the top half of the top quartile, all you have to do is index, and you'd be there.”
Bloom: Mid-tier generalist VCs are a wasteland lacking clear value props
“The venture landscape had fundamentally changed. You were having this disruption where a barbell had formed, where on one end of that barbell, you have the Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen, Tiger Global, these like big name cache firms who, when they write a che…”
Top VC funds could monetize future access rights via tokenization
“Well, all of a sudden, to raise a dollar of capital, somebody might pay a dollar 25, because not only are they putting the dollar into this current fund, they're also buying the access right to the next fund.
It actually would allow benchmark to raise more cap…”
Elite VC Mega-Funds Trigger Copycat Fund Bloat Across the Industry
“So Sequoia goes out and raises four billion dollars, and then, you know, Billy Bob Joe's venture firm thinks they can raise four billion dollars, and by the way, there's a lot of money coming to the asset class that, that they can. So, you know, this kind of v…”
Trigg: Active management struggles because career risk drives groupthink and benchmark-hugging
“I think these really counterproductive behaviors that largely explain why active management struggles, and it's a lot of group think. People are worried about standing out from the crowd. They're worried about careers. So they play it safe. They hug the benchm…”
Douvos: The 2000 vintage venture benchmark ended slightly positive
“I think the benchmark actually is like positive, like one point of seven percent or something for the 2000 vintage.”
Wellcome Trust invested $10M in Benchmark's first venture fund
“One of the first venture investments we made was the guys at Benchmark were in their first fund. I think, welcome, we had ten million dollars in that.”
Williamson: Benchmarks should serve as communication devices, not rigid constraints
“The thing with a benchmark is it's a communication tool, and there are times when managers don't perform or go way off of where they're supposed to be, way out of their mandate, and so there has to be a communication device, and the benchmark is that. Now, tha…”
Benchmark allocates equal carry to newly hired and senior partners
“Benchmark says that it achieves the same effect because it has this equal partnership structure where If there are six partners, let's say, and they bring in the seventh, even if the seventh is inexperienced and younger and so forth, that new partner gets the …”