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 62 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
Hamed: Airbnb ecosystem will evolve like traditional hotels with recognized brands
“And we think that the Airbnb ecosystem will end up much like the traditional hotel ecosystem, where you have property owners, you have property managers, and you have brands that You're going to start going to an Airbnb host and come out of the shower and see …”
Hamed: Banks lend to founders but ignore rank-and-file startup employees
“Banks have provided liquidity to founders all the time with PGs, but there's no one who's really been serving employee 20 through 2000.”
Hamed: Seed investing is B2C marketing; Series A is B2B sales
“Series A investing is a B to B business. You're investing in a company that's already a company. Seed investing is a B to C business. You're investing in a person that's about to start a company. B to B businesses can rely on sales, but B to C businesses have …”
Hamed: Target small frontier funds for 5x returns, mega-funds for 2x
“And if all I need is a two X on the portfolio, you should go to an established firm that's been around for a long time and has billions of dollars under management because they have the highest certainty of getting you there. If you're sitting there and thinki…”
Ali Hamed: Venture Capital Has Almost No Mediocre Funds
“And what happened was those people were either really good or really bad because that's how venture works, right? There's not a lot of mediocre venture funds.”
Hamed: In 2014, NYC had only six institutional sub-$1M seed deals
“And there was a time, I think it was in 2014 or 2015 where there were six deals in all of New York that were at a million dollars in size or under that had an institutional seed investor in them.”
Hamed: Reading a candidate's favorite book reveals their character and aspirations
“So now I've taken the practice of when we hire people or when we're even investing in a company, I try to read their favorite book. And the reason is people's favorite protagonists from a book is often someone they either aspire to be like or empathize with. A…”
Hamed: CoVenture deploys close to $100M per month
“I think now we're probably investing closer to a hundred million dollars a month.”
Hamed: Crossbeam maintains a tiered coverage list of 211 VC firms
“We actually have a list of 211 VCs. That we cover. We have coverage groups. So we have certain VCs who are high fidelity VCs, and we are in touch with them four times a year. We have lower fidelity VCs that we're in touch with one to two times a year.”
Hamed: Any fast-growing vertical SaaS with sub-one-year payback gets funded
“If we have a vertical SaaS company in our portfolio that's growing 15 to 20% month over month, it's got reasonable margins, it's got a reasonable payback period that's under a year, it's in a big enough market and the founder doesn't trip all over herself or h…”
Hamed: The average LP check takes 26 months of relationship-building
“The average check that we've ever gotten from an LP took us 26 months of knowing the person to get it.”
Hamed: Crossbeam's $25M Fund I deployed capital too quickly
“In Crosby one, it was a twenty-five million dollar fund. We co-invested with a hundred million dollars and we invested too quickly. Probably needed a bigger fund.”