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 34 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
Sacca: No reason to hire a financial analyst again after GPT-4
“I don't know why I'd hire a financial analyst again. It's a job I value, but at the same time, this thing in moments spit back compound annual growth rate analysis.”
Sacca: Akamai's fraud allegations against Speedera were 'trumped up garbage'
“Their primary competitor, Akamai, had accused them of all kinds of computer fraud and abuse stuff that was just
Totally trumped up garbage.”
Sacca: Google's $6B spectrum bid established net neutrality rules for wireless networks
“We went from zero to within a year bidding six billion dollars on spectrum and attaching openness rules to wireless spectrum. That's why the wireless networks are net neutral. It was because of this big hand of poker we'd played.”
Sacca: Founders who do not help clean dishes lack startup empathy
“If they couldn't empathize with the host, how can I be helpful? Then it just shows somebody who is not equipped to build a startup because a startup is constantly about empathizing with your customer and your user, and then showing how can I make it easier for…”
Sacca: Lowercarbon Capital is not concessionary; partners are largest LPs
“This is not concessionary capital. Crystal and I are the biggest investors in our fund. We are in this to make a lot of money.”
Sacca: Removing Carbon From Any Process Inherently Makes It Cheaper
“So anytime we remove carbon from a process, it just gets cheaper. Carbon has an inherent value. It's necessary for a lot of the stuff we do, And it has a monetary value. And so any way we could take it out of building a product or running a service, we just ha…”
Sacca: AI has turned nuclear fusion progress into a vertical curve
“AI and machine learning had so greatly accelerated progress in fusion that it was geometric now. It was a vertical curve. Because experiments used to take one to two years to run one experiment in a fusion reactor. Now they could run in high fidelity in the co…”
Sacca passed on Dropbox and Airbnb due to competition and safety fears
“I told the Dropbox guys that Google was going to crush them because we already had G Drive internally. I told the Airbnb guys that somebody was going to get raped or murdered and the blood was going to be on their hands when they were renting out a room in som…”
Sacca: Lowercarbon's Fund 7.81 will remove 7.81 gigatons of carbon
“We call that one 7.81 because we believe with that fund, we'll be able to pull 7.81 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere. And when we do so, we will reduce the parts per million in the atmosphere by one.”
Sacca: Lowercarbon's Swedish electric airplane startup has billions in orders
“We have an electric airplane company in Sweden that even Bill Gates said was going to be impossible. It's a 35 seat plane that's got billions of dollars of cash on the barrel orders. And the majors have invested in the company because it's just cheaper to oper…”
Sacca: We manage for return multiples, not IRR, and avoid credit lines
“I don't manage for IRR. I manage for multiples. So we don't run a line of credit, for instance. That would be a much better way to eke out another point of IRR, but that's not how I want to run the business.”
Sacca: GPT-5 will train in 2023 and be 6-8x better than GPT-4
“GPT five will be trained this year, and it'll be six to eight times better than four, maybe, maybe more.”
Sacca: Silicon Valley judges talent on ideas rather than seniority
“I saw Silicon Valley as the place that was most based on merit and least on seniority. Being in DC, you get exposed to politics, and politics is so much about have you earned your keep? Have you put in the time? Have you served? Have you risen up through the r…”
Sacca: Best founders project calm inevitability of success, not aggressive pitching
“When you spoke with them, even as the company was in its earliest days, they spoke with the voice of the inevitability of the growth and success of the company. And they weren't selling you. It wasn't that their heart rate rose, and they were trying to convinc…”
Sacca: Retired Lowercase Capital in 2016 at the peak of bankability
“When I retired lowercase, it was probably the most bankable I was. We walked away. Crystal and I retired it in 2016 to just say, This doesn't feel as compelling anymore for us personally. We don't love the impact we're having.”
Sacca: Lowercarbon stopped investing in carbon accounting software
“We don't really invest in carbon accounting software or anything anymore. And we realized, A, we're not that great at it. There are a lot of other people out there in the world who are better at SaaS than we are. And B, a lot of VCs came out of being locked up…”
Sacca: Minus Coffee beats all brands except Blue Bottle in taste tests
“It is so absolutely delicious. It beats everything but Blue Bottle now in taste tests. Stumptown, Pete's, it knocks them all out. All the hipster coffee. Blue Bottle's the only one at Cancer Mount, but it's made using no coffee.”
Sacca: Female entrepreneurs face a higher bar due to cultural discrimination
“I think female entrepreneurs right now have a higher bar because of cultural norms and discrimination against women.”
Sacca: Free markets are the most powerful solution for climate change
“Bless the activists and everybody else who cares about it. But I actually think the market is the most powerful solution to the stuff we're doing. And I think for the very first time in my life, I can have a massive impact on the planet while also making a ton…”
Sacca: I avoid socializing with other VCs because they cloud my thinking
“I don't hang out with other VCs. I feel like they cloud my thinking.”
Sacca: Focusing on negative downside over upside cost billions of dollars
“So the one mistake that I think has cost me billions of dollars is focusing on the negative case for an investment and not the positive likelihood.”
Sacca turned student loans into $12M before going $4M in debt
“And I took my student loans and I turned them into twelve million dollars. But that twelve million dollars I didn't send. I just kept rolling it back in and held material positions in these two stocks. And then within a 10 day period, I say it's black swan, bu…”
Sacca: Invested $25K into Twitter while employed at Google
“I wrote a check into Twitter while I was still at Google for 25 K. And that was one of the things I needed that money back. So I would show up at the company and work my ass off to try and make it more valuable because that wasn't break off 25 to be polite sit…”
Sacca: Early angel deals fail when backing fixable companies over great ones
“The first few deals I did with my own individual money once I got out as an investor were garbage because they would come pitch me
and I'm like, oh, I know how I can make this better because that's what I was used to doing at Google was just making things bett…”
Sacca: Founders should evaluate VC dilution exactly like granting employee stock options
“Every time a founder is considering taking money from a venture capitalist, there is the same process they should use when they're considering hiring an employee to whom they're going to give stock options.
Every single time you're making the calculus is the a…”
Sacca: Investors cannot back founders without knowing their personal scorecard
“There is no doubt sharing space with people and breaking bread reveals a lot about who they are. What drives them? And you can't really back somebody until you know their ambition and what's on their personal scorecard.”
Sacca: Lowercarbon Portfolio Company Reached $120M Run Rate with 60% Margins
“We have a company that In the year, maybe three of the company was doing a hundred and twenty million dollar run rate selling a commodity, but because they make it with enzymes instead of oil and gas, they have 60% margins.”
Sacca: Lowercarbon opens its investment committee and memos to all employees
“The one all hands meeting we have is everyone in the company is invited to our investment committee. The lead on the deal or the co-leads on the deal present the deal, but everyone in the company has access to everything we've done. All the diligence, the deal…”
Sacca: Lowercarbon team members are instructed to accept podcast invitations
“I also have this rule. If you get invited on a podcast, accept it, go on the pod. And as long as you say something that is true and authentic to yourself and accurately represents the values of our company, then you will not get in trouble for saying what you …”
Sacca: Investors must credit market timing on upside, question downside risk
“When things are going up, it's easy to convince yourself you're a genius. And when things go down, it's easy to tell yourself that it was bad luck. And so much of what we do for a living is inverting that. And when things are going up, giving yourself, hey, yo…”
Sacca: Speedera rejected $950M buyout before raising at $30M valuation
“This is a company that had turned down a nine hundred and fifty million dollar acquisition offer because it wasn't a billion dollars. And eight months later, I was raising at a thirty million pre for that company.”
Sacca: Financed early angel investment in Photobucket using credit card checks
“At Google, I personally did the photo bucket investment using credit card checks.”
Sacca discloses he and wife Crystal are LPs in over 100 funds
“Crystal, my wife and I, and we're business partners and we have an informal fund of funds. We're LPs and more than a hundred things.”
Sacca: Google published verbatim executive meeting notes for employees to subscribe to
“They were wildly transparent and their executive meetings, they had a note taker who would take the notes and then you could subscribe to the notes from that meeting. They would be published after the end of the meeting. And you could see almost like a script,…”