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 14 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
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…”
Bloom: Private Equity Alpha Comes from Relationships, Not Spreadsheet Analysis
“The reality was alpha was being generated on the ground. Interacting with people, building relationships where they wanted to sell to you at a lower price rather than someone else at a higher price because they liked you.”
Bloom: Financial Experts Use Jargon Because Obfuscation Is a Profitable Business Model
“What I saw was this bifurcation, where on one side you had experts, quote unquote, who pride themselves on talking over normal people's heads. On using jargon, on using acronyms, on sounding really smart, and a lot of that has been built up because it's a good…”
Bloom: Very few markets are true winner-take-all outside consumer social
“Most markets don't have winner take all either. There's going to be a few people. Consumer social has been one of the areas where there's been real winner take all. Like Facebook existing meant that MySpace was not going to exist, but very few markets really h…”
Bloom: Market Growth Trumps Business Quality in Private Equity
“From an investing standpoint, I would say one of the biggest realizations I had was that it is very, very difficult to fight a bad market. And what I mean by that is you can invest in the best business in a shitty declining market. And really have a tough time…”
Bloom: Informal personal board of 5–15 advisors beats traditional single-mentor models
“I think in the traditional sense of the word, what it meant was you had one person who you had a fixed meeting cadence with, and you spent this number of minutes once a month with this person, you'd get together with them, and you'd talk about your set of Sche…”
Bloom: Senior leaders value thoughtful handwritten notes over $10K luxury gifts
“Those type of people, by the way, they get people that send them 10,000 dollar bottles of wine. They get the Dom Perignon champagne sent to them all the time, the beautiful gift boxes, whatever. But you'd be surprised, because a book with a handwritten note, s…”
Bloom: SRB Ventures will not raise a large fund over $25M
“A lot of people raise a small fund because they want to go raise a big fund next, and I am not going to do that. And the reason I say that is because at ten million dollars or at twenty five million dollars, probably max, you are collaborative with everyone.”
Bloom: Good startup markets typically have roughly ten competing teams simultaneously
“The reality with most startups is if you're building in a good market, there's probably like 10 teams that are working on the exact same thing at the same time as you.”
Bloom: Constant competition in PE and hedge funds prevents long-term perspective
“What I find is when you're in the heat of battle, it's very hard to like zoom out and say like, why are we fighting this war? Right? Zoom out because you're just in it. And that career path, private equity, hedge funds, you're in the heat of battle constantly.…”
Bloom: Digital side hustle earned more than PE day job by early 2021
“Basically I was making more money at the time on this side stuff that I was doing in my like 10 hours on the weekend than I was on my day job.”
Bloom: Wrote $5k to $25k angel checks in 2021 to amplify founders
“In 2021, I kind of accelerated it just doing more of that type of investing off my balance sheet, smallish checks, you know, like 5000 to 25,000 dollar checks into early stage companies, really with the thesis that I could write about them to help tell their s…”
Bloom: 2021 Evergrande Analysis Ignored the Psychology of Deleveraging
“I wrote this thread about Evergrande when the collapse happened in 2021, and everyone had been writing about the technical side of this collapse. Everyone was writing about the bankruptcy and all the different numbers and like Fintwit, as it's called, was cove…”
Bloom: 5 a.m. workouts led to relationships with Tim Cook and Hemant Taneja
“Also, I was showing up at the gym for six straight months at five a.m. Because I wanted to get to the office by six 30. And so I was working out five days a week at five a.m. Because I knew I wanted to get to the office then. It wasn't going to the gym because…”