The Argument Index
Debate potential by speaker, the highest-scored statement each year, and the companies with the most bearish calls on record. All of it clickable, all of it playable.
People
Average debate potential by speaker
All 33 guests with 5 or more scored statements, ranked. 7 more have fewer than 5, too few for a fair average, and the host is scored on his own page. Sort or filter below.
| # | Person | Avg debate potential | Statements scored |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Austin Rief Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Morning Brew | 2.6 | 5 |
| 2 | Keith Raboi Managing Director, Khosla Ventures | 2.47 | 15 |
| 3 | Michael Girdley Chairman & CEO, Girdley Enterprises | 2.44 | 18 |
| 4 | Matt Mochari Founder & CEO Coach, Mochary Method | 2.43 | 7 |
| 5 | Greg Eisenberg CEO & Founder, Late Checkout | 2.4 | 5 |
| 6 | Sam Corcos Co-Founder & CEO, Levels | 2.4 | 20 |
| 7 | Rahul Vohra Founder & CEO, Superhuman | 2.27 | 15 |
| 8 | Brett Adcock Founder & CEO, Figure AI | 2.26 | 35 |
| 9 | Jason Fried Co-founder and CEO, 37signals | 2.24 | 25 |
| 10 | Sahil Lavingia Founder and CEO, Gumroad | 2.23 | 22 |
| 11 | Dan Siroker | 2.23 | 22 |
| 12 | Codie Sanchez Founder & CEO, Contrarian Thinking | 2.12 | 57 |
| 13 | Robbie Crabtree Founder & CEO, Competitive Storytelling | 2.1 | 10 |
| 14 | Ankur Jain Founder & CEO, Bilt Rewards | 2.05 | 22 |
| 15 | Isaac Medeiros | 2.05 | 22 |
| 16 | Sophia Amoruso Founder & Managing Partner, Trust Fund | 2.02 | 40 |
| 17 | Jonathan Swanson Founder & Chairman, Athena | 2 | 18 |
| 18 | Ankur Nagpal Founder & CEO, Carry | 1.97 | 34 |
| 19 | Jesse Pujji Founder and CEO, Gateway X | 1.95 | 169 |
| 20 | Sam Parr Founder, Hampton | 1.83 | 12 |
| 21 | Steve Gatina | 1.83 | 12 |
| 22 | Kian Sadeghi Founder & CEO, Nucleus Genomics | 1.78 | 9 |
| 23 | Harley Finkelstein President, Shopify | 1.71 | 7 |
| 24 | Jeff Bezos Executive Chair, Amazon | 1.7 | 10 |
| 25 | Tyler Denk Co-founder & CEO, beehiiv | 1.67 | 33 |
| 26 | Ahad Khan | 1.67 | 12 |
| 27 | Michael Sikand Founder, Sikand Media | 1.67 | 6 |
| 28 | Justin Kan General Partner, Goat Capital | 1.67 | 6 |
| 29 | Noah Kagan Founder & CEO, AppSumo | 1.57 | 7 |
| 30 | Brian Scudamore Founder & CEO, O2E Brands | 1.57 | 14 |
| 31 | Urien Timmer Director of Global Macro, Fidelity Investments | 1.53 | 15 |
| 32 | Jesse Poogee Founder & CEO, Gateway X | 1.45 | 11 |
| 33 | John Gagliardi Regional Vice President, Fidelity Investments | 1.38 | 8 |
Companies
The most bearish calls
Debate potential is an AI score of how much a statement invites disagreement. Bearish counts tally what was said about a company on the show; they describe the conversation, not the company. Every count opens to the exact tape. full disclaimer →
All 101 companies, funds and products with at least one bearish claim on the record.
Highest debate potential, by year
2025
Rippling sues competitor Deel alleging a corporate espionage scheme
“Parker Conrad, the CEO of Rippling, the HR software platform, tweeted on March 17th that Rippling was suing its competitor deal for running a corporate espionage scheme and stealing trade secrets from Rippling for months.”
Rippling caught a Deel insider using a honeypot Slack channel
“Rippling's general counsel sent a legal letter to three Deal executives mentioning a fake Slack channel called D Defectors that had supposed reputationally damaging information about Deal. Prior to general counsel sending this letter, the channel did not exist…”
2024
Creating wealth for employees delivers more social justice than DEI hiring initiatives
“Good people don't want to be hired because they fit a demographic. We made a lot of money for our people, and we delivered more social justice this way than we ever could have pursuing other people's ideas of that.”
Lavingia: AI will enable 1-hour workdays generating $800 hourly value
“I want to get Gummer to a place where the average person works like an hour a day. Maybe they make like 800 dollars an hour but they work like an hour a day. They're producing an hour, you know, 800 plus dollars of value. They're assisted with AI to write thei…”
2023
Jain: Founders should avoid early VC because partners lack operational understanding
“I think entrepreneurs should do everything in their power to not allow venture capitalists to come into their business. VCs don't generally understand how to run a business. They generally don't understand what your business needs are, and their incentives are…”
Pujji: Generating $1M SaaS ARR is as hard as $1M services EBITDA
“Getting a million dollar SaaS ARR is probably as hard as getting a million dollars in EBITDA, let's say in a services business. And guess what? They value those streams are valued exactly the same. So like the market is very efficient in terms of how it treats…”
2022
Lieberman: Stripe avoids official layoffs by forcing managers into a rating system
“Stripe, they're not doing layoffs. It's not called layoffs. It's what's known as backdoor layoffs, where basically they're requiring their managers to do a rating system of they're, they have to answer a question, would you hire this direct report if you knew …”
Sanchez: Angel investing is dumb for 99.9% of people
“I think angel investing is dumb for your first dollars. You're going to lose 80% of your takes. So I still think angel investing is dumb for 99.9% of people. Don't play a game where you bet on other people's ability before you've bet enough on your own and sta…”