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 235 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
Bank: 60% of venture capital firms generate less than cost
“60% of venture capital firms generate less than cost. So not only are you not keeping up with equities, you're losing money in more than half of venture capital funds raised.”
Miller: 99.9% of global lithium reserves are in four countries
“99.9% of the world's lithium reserves are in the hands of just four countries, China, Chile, Argentina, Australia, none of which are the United States.”
Dixon: Multi-vertical Silicon Valley VCs made basically no crypto investments in two years
“There's basically no Silicon Valley investment in the last two years from multi vertical VCs.”
Milken: Private equity owns nearly 50% of America's 20,000 largest companies
“Almost 50% of the 20,000 largest companies in America are owned by private equity.”
Mullen: Pretium will likely acquire 15,000 to 20,000 houses in 2023
“And now in portfolios, as an example, we'll probably buy 15 to 20,000 houses this year. But almost entirely in portfolio form.”
Mullen: Pre-COVID data shows Americans stay in single-family homes until age 74
“If you went back to the data, you turned 60 years old, and you moved out of a single-family home, and it was like a rock dropping out of the sky how fast the curve goes down. And you looked at that same curve in 2019 pre-COVID, which is gonna make this even mo…”
Zandiyeh: Average upper-quartile venture capital DPI is only 1.76
“I think it explains why the average upper quartile DPI is 1.76. The fund sizes cannot even cope with generating that much enterprise value.”
Gave: Russia is the only nation to default on local currency debt
“The only country to ever go bust on its local currency bonds is Russia. In 98 or 99, they basically decided to stiff foreigners because that's how they are.”
Bitar: US Dollars Account for Over 60% of Venezuelan Transactions
“The government eventually made the dollar legal tender, and currently over 60, 70% of transactions in Venezuela are done in dollars.”
Citrone: US Will Enter Mild Recession by Late 2022 or Early 2023
“I think it'll be a mild recession. I think we'll be there very quickly by the end of the year, early next year in the US.”
Dixon: Tech and media are the United States' two main exports
“We basically have two exports in the U S right now. We have tech and media. Just look at the numbers. Those are the two killer products that we have.”
UBS was effectively insolvent before 1998 Swiss Bank merger, says Milgram
“UBS was effectively insolvent and there'd been a shotgun marriage forced by the Swiss national bank.”
Wolfe: Varda Will Launch First Space Manufacturing Mission in Late 2022
“Next year, this time, so it's gonna be a Q-three, Q-four, 20, 22, they will launch the first manufacturing thing in space, and that was wheeled into existence.”
Localiza Earnings Will Grow 25% to 30% Annually Post-Acquisition
“So we expect earnings to go at 25, 30% a year with synergies and the growth of the market.”
Mid-level engineers at Microsoft are making $1 million in total compensation
“I was just on a call where somebody was talking about mid-level, not even senior engineers at Microsoft are making a million dollars.”
Research shows 90% of alternative asset managers generate no excess return
“And if you look at the research, I think it's something like 90% of the managers in alternatives don't create any excess return. Not a fee and carry.”
Jain: Nestle and Lime use the Helium network for tracking
“Now there are a number of high profile customers that use a helium network, such as Nestle is using the network in order to track vending machine inventory. Lime uses a network to track location of scooters.”
Singh claims he first publicly proposed rolling up Amazon third-party sellers
“And so I think I was probably literally the first person to have the idea of rolling up Amazon sellers, which has obviously become this enormous business. I literally think I was the first person to talk about that publicly.”
Toomey: Private equity is the only asset class driving excess pension returns
“And if anything, it's the only place over the last decade where That has contributed the excess return when they're trying to meet their eight percent or seven and a half or seven percent total asset return. They're not getting returns in a lot of places, and …”
Housenbold: Made eBay Google's first advertising customer in the world
“In that role, I also became Google's first customer in the world. Having ran AltaVista and competed with them, they were starting to monetize their search, and I became the first customer, and that really changed the trajectory for both Google and for eBay”
Housenbold: Entry valuation is the greatest determinant of PE and VC returns
“If you look at all of the academic research and it doesn't matter if it's a private equity or venture capital, the greatest determinant of your returns With the highest R square is your entry valuation. Some people call that vintage, but it is your entry valua…”
Baran: Trillions of dollars sit idle on Japanese corporate balance sheets
“There's trillions of dollars sitting on Japanese balance sheets that are owned by Japanese pensioners who need the money.”
Baran: Symphony holds Japanese companies with 60% EBITDA margins
“We own companies that have like 60% heavy down margins. I mean, I'd be hard pressed to find that in the U.S. Market. And they're making money. They're profitable.”
Karp: Most commercial vapes use unsafe petroleum-derived carrier oils
“Most of the vapes right now use propylene glycol. They have other petroleum derived oils that they suspend the cannabinoids in that humans are effectively combusting and inhaling, which is definitely not safe.”
Druley: Cambridge Associates holds up to 60% of endowment advisory market
“So on the endowment and foundation side, as I think probably most of our listeners know today, we have significant market share. In most cases, we're 50, 60% of the market.”
Friedman: Port of Savannah is North America's fastest-growing port and 12% of GDP
“Savannah's the fastest growing port in North America. Period. No one's ever seen anything like it. It's now 12% of the GDP of the United States.”
Friedman: New Markets Tax Credit costs $200 to deliver $100
“Only to come up with a hundred dollars, it costs the government 200 dollars. It's a joke. It costs more to administer it, to put it together Then the net effect.”
Thomas Reardon single-handedly coded Internet Explorer and was Bill Gates's right-hand
“While he's at Microsoft, he single-handedly codes Internet Explorer, which we've all used, and he's also Bill's right-hand guy during the entire DOJ Monopoly trial.”
Computers drive 99% of combined cash and derivatives market trading volume
“That is, 99% of trading is done by computers in the cash market and derivatives markets added together.”
Egan: Betterment Aims to Be First Fiduciary Advisor to IPO
“I think that's, in the long run, what we see ourselves as being, is The first company that goes public off the back of being a fiduciary advisor rather than a broker or mutual fund company.”
Studies show capital-weighted fund returns lag time-weighted returns by 7.5%
“And so it's been documented that if a fund has a, say, for example, a 10% time weighted return, the studies have shown that the capital weighted returns about two and a half.”
Asset owner polling reveals 80% of asset managers provide poor service
“No asset manager thinks they're bad at client service, but when you pull asset owners, and we have formally pulled them, 80% of asset managers have poor client service.”
Dorsey: Academic Studies Show Corporate Share Buybacks Destroy or Neutralize Value
“There have been large academic studies of corporate buybacks, The favorable interpretation of the evidence is that they've neither created nor destroyed value. The less favorable interpretation of the evidence is they've unbalanced destroyed value.”
Baker: Google JAX and Meta PyTorch teams fought publicly on X until leaders called truce
“The JAX team at Google got into a giant fight with the PyTorch team on Meta on X, and the heads of each company's respective AI division had to make a public truce and instruct their troops to stop fighting.”
Lewinsohn: Unemployment among college graduates is currently nearly 9%
“Today, just sitting here with AI, not even really ready for prime time, and you have very high, I think almost nine percent unemployment from college grads.”
Korea, China, India, and Brazil make up over 70% of MSCI EM
“Now, if you look at equities, the MSCI global, Korea, China, India, Brazil, make up 70 plus percent of that index. So you are actually buying a very concentrated exposure, not a very diversified exposure.”
81% of emerging market private capital once flowed solely to China
“There was a period of time where of all the private money being invested in emerging markets around the world, 90% of that money went to Asia, of which 90% went to China. This concentration, 81% of all private investing money In emerging markets flowed to one …”
Founder decreed Lovelace family cannot own Capital Group stock after grandchildren
“When JBL founded the company, he said in 1931, when my grandkids, who didn't exist at the time, when my grandkids pass away, no one in the Lovelace family should own any bit of Capital Group stock.”
Kelly: Evergreen Funds Drive Secondary Demand for Endowment Private Equity
“If you take endowments that are looking at selling some of their private equity and venture positions, the primary demand for those secondary positions are coming from evergreen private equity vehicles.”
CPPIB Avoids Decision Committees Outside Core Investment Committee to Enforce Accountability
“And we delegate also a belief that people make decisions because we need accountability for decision making. So we don't have committees that are making decisions other than, let's say, the investment committee.”
Future Fund held 80% of its portfolio in cash when Lehman collapsed
“Fortuitously, and through some good decisions made by the people who were here before me, we were sitting with about 80% in cash when layman's went broke.”
Breach: Every Vista Portfolio Company Has Added GenAI Enhancements
“Every one of our companies has some generative AI enhancement to their core solution.”
Madorsky: Lower middle market buyouts historically outperform other PE classes
“And we also have the benefit that lower middle market, using Prequen data, that's historically outperformed all the other sub-asset classes.”
Madorsky: Retail funds dominated large secondary portfolio purchases in 2024
“When we've seen a lot of the larger portfolios and even a lot of the limited partnership positions trade in 2024, the retail funds have been the main connoisseur of this product.”
Forman: 80% of All Blockchain Transactions Involve Stablecoins
“80% of all transactions on blockchains involve a stable coin in one way, shape, or form.”
Forman: Eurodollar Market Exceeds Total US Domestic Bank Deposits
“Today, the euro dollar market exceeds the total quantity of U.S. Domestic banking deposits.”