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 16 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
Heitzmann: Thousands of startups needing capital will fail by late 2024
“There's thousands of companies that are going to need capital between now and the end of 24. The investors at almost every stage have generally been hurt by the macroeconomic environment. The purse strings are pretty tight. But the amount of companies that may…”
Heitzmann: Most products people label as AI are not actually AI
“Most of what people call AI we consider not AI.”
Heitzmann: FirstMark has been generally unimpressed by recent consumer AI startups
“We're looking at some things in AI. We've been generally under impressed by some of those things recently.”
Heitzmann: Media appearances and branding primarily accelerate founder and investor matching
“And it's really just a way not to increase a personal brand or a firm brand, but accelerate the matching process in this grand scheme of things.”
Heitzmann: It is currently the best time ever to invest in NYC
“And it's probably been the best time to invest here that I've seen ever.”
Heitzmann: Discord will remain a massive company in chat and community formation
“Discord, which we think is going to continue to be a very large company in chat and community formation, originally around games, but now much broader.”
Heitzmann: Extreme venture returns require executing on multiple non-consensus theses simultaneously
“If you're doing multiple non-consensus things and you're able to execute, that's how you create the Grand Slam home runs, the Shopify's, the Pinterest's, the Riot Games of the world.”
Heitzmann: Admitting 'I don't know' disarms pushback and improves decision-making
“I find saying, I don't know, an incredibly empowering thing to say, very disarming, where if people want your opinion or trying to push you for something, just saying, I don't know, gives them no way to really push anymore, and also invites them into a convers…”
Riot Games brought League of Legends to market with just $6.7M
“Riot brought League of Legends, which again is a multi-billion dollar per year franchise today, to market with 6.7 million dollars of capital.”
Heitzmann: Two-thirds of global unicorns have FirstMark Guild members
“So I think two thirds of all unicorns in the world have a member of the guild and most companies in New York, but there's companies in China and there's companies in Europe.”
Heitzmann: VCs should treat pro-rata rights as options, not obligations
“We look at our pro rata as our option to fund. So we don't view it as an obligation and therefore There's a negative signaling around that or some obligation that we have that unfairly biases our opportunity fund.”
Heitzmann: Distressed investing is a knife fight over a shrinking pie
“At the same time, I realized distress was oftentimes a knife fight over a shrinking pie.”
Geographic focus and capital efficiency enable new venture capital firms to launch
“So if you get involved in the earliest stages in capital efficient businesses that you know really well in a geography that you think you could have some leadership in, that's a fine enough point and a focused enough strategy that you're able to raise some mon…”
FirstMark seeded Pinterest based on non-consensus mobile and social discovery theses
“Because we aligned with the way the entrepreneur was thinking, we decided to do a seed investment in Pinterest.”
FirstMark backed Riot Games on a non-consensus games-as-a-service thesis
“So all three of those things were non-consensus and why we decided to do the first round of Riot Games.”
FirstMark told all portfolio companies to scrap 2022 budgets in January 2022
“In the fourth quarter of 21, we were budgeting for 22, with still a consensus in the broader market that the top three things that matter for your company in twenty-twenty-two were going to be growth, growth, and growth. And we went back in January of 22 acros…”