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 1,982 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 10 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
Parr: A $300 subscription price is 'no man's land' and kills conversion
“300 dollars. What I learned early on is no man's land. You should either charge thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars or like a 150 bucks. 300 dollars is no man's land. That's, it was a bad, I really screwed that pricing point up, and the res…”
Success comes from copying proven business models, not inventing entirely novel concepts
“The name of the game is basically like, that's why I read biographies. It's just copy what others have done that's worked and try to avoid the mistakes that cost them a lot of like headache. And I'm not trying to invent anything new. We can, I can get real phi…”
Hampton generated $1M in the bank before launching a website or posting
“Hampton had a million dollars in the bank account before I even shared it online. We didn't even have a website.”
Founders can reach $1M revenue with six months of full-time manual sales
“Hand-to-hand combat stuff, like, really works, and it's still really effective, and it's not that hard to get to a million a year in revenue doing that stuff if you give it six months of, like, every day, 40 hours a week.”
Podcasters should monetize audiences directly instead of relying on advertising
“The best way to turn a podcast into a business, if that's what you want to do with it, Is not through advertisements, but by monetizing your audience directly.”
Lieberman: Short-form video agencies will commoditize and suffer poor retention
“I fear those agencies are going, they're going to be super commoditized because they're very easy to spin up. I worried that retention of customers wouldn't be high because it would be hard for customers who are, let's say, paying 3000 dollars a month to actua…”
Lieberman: 98% of writers on the internet are mediocre
“98% of writers are really bad, are really mediocre, and I would never trust them to create content for our business, for StoryArb, whether it's our website copy, our social copy, you know, articles we write, et cetera, and so then I shouldn't trust them with a…”
Alex Lieberman: More founders regret selling too late than too early
“Far more entrepreneurs regret selling their business too late than entrepreneurs who regret selling their business too early.”
Alex Lieberman: Gut feeling is an undervalued decision-making tool
“Gut feeling, I think, gets undervalued because we live in a world where you need to put metrics to everything, or everything needs to be, like, quantified, or it has to be, like, super thoughtful, and by definition, your gut is not thoughtful because it is not…”
Lieberman: Content only goes viral by evoking LOL, WTF, OMG, AWW, or WOW
“Every time we create something, we work backward from an emotion, and he said the only thing that people will share are the following acronyms. LOL, WTF, OMG, AWW, AW, or WOW, W-O-W.”
Industry naivety is a huge advantage for early-stage founders
“Being naive to an industry is actually a huge advantage, and he gave me reassurance that I could enter an industry that I am, quote, unquote, unqualified to enter.”
Lieberman: B2B SaaS differentiation does not happen at the feature level
“It seems like differentiation does not happen at the product feature level.”
Lieberman: People waste time through passive routine rather than bad decisions
“We don't waste time by making the wrong decisions. We waste time by falling victim to routine and not making any decisions.”
Wilkinson Spent 2-3x Flow's Monthly Revenue From Personal Funds
“I was consistently spending two to three times our monthly revenue and losing money, and not venture capital out of my personal bank account.”
Flow Failed Due To Inexperience, Product Myopia, And Capital Constraints
“We lost the war due to inexperience, product myopia, and a lack of capital in a highly capital-intensive and competitive space.”
Bootstrapping Works Best In Niches Or With Unfair Advantages
“Bootstrapping works best in uncompetitive spaces or niches or if you have an unfair advantage, i.e., a personal brand, Unique customer acquisition channel, et cetera.”
LTV-to-CAC Is Paid Acquisition Arbitrage, Not a Business Strategy
“LTV and calculating LTV is not a business strategy. It is a way of optimizing your marketing channels. And at the end of the day, LTV to CAC, lifetime value to acquisition cost, is simply just an arbitrage game. It is an arbitrage between what you can pay to a…”
Companies Heavily Emphasizing LTV Metrics Frequently Suffer Massive Pre-IPO Losses
“It is no coincidence that companies that put a heavy emphasis on LTV are also the ones that have massive losses as they scale, frequently even through an IPO.”
Lieberman Slams Kissmetrics' Flawed LTV Formula as 'Voodoo Math'
“Not only do they include a version of the model that specifically ignores future costs, but also they recommend taking an average of three different results, two of which are clearly flawed. This voodoo math has no place as part of a multi-million dollar marke…”
Scaling Ad Spend Exhausts Top-Tier Customers and Forces Higher Churn
“And as you spend more and more money to acquire customers, you are going to exhaust The best quality customers, which means you're going to either have to pay more to find good quality customers, or you're going to acquire lower quality customers who are going…”
Heavy Marketing Spend Creates Pricing Vulnerabilities Against Word-of-Mouth Competitors
“When you spend a lot on marketing, you have to charge more for your product to account for having enough margin such that you're able to spend on marketing while having a, you know, good profitable product. And so that means when you spend a lot of marketing, …”
LTV-Driven DTC Startups Like Casper and Away Harmed Late-Stage Investors
“By the way, this essay was written before the DTC boom, but this is the story of so many direct-to-consumer companies, whether it's Away Luggage, Casper, Warby, et cetera. Ton of money was given to these brands early on to spend a ton on paid marketing. The ea…”
Lieberman: The willingness to ask directly drives immigrant entrepreneurial success
“Having this ability to ask is the reason so many immigrants or children of immigrants fare well in business.”
Lieberman: Being macro correct outweighs being micro correct in investing
“Being macro correct about an industry
Is more important than being micro correct, especially as an investor, but also as an entrepreneur.”
Why Spotify Is a Fundamentally Worse Business Than Netflix
“Think Spotify is just a fundamentally worse business than Netflix because they don't have the luxury of owning their own content and turning variable costs into fixed costs.”
Why No Successful Consumer Social Network Launched Since 2019
“There is a reason why basically no successful consumer social network has been created in the last five years, and the biggest social networks, Meta, Snapchat, etc., just continue to accrue value and power.”
Why Brand Is the Least Understood of the Seven Powers
“Brand is arguably the most powerful and least understood of the seven powers. It's so durable because of how Complicated, time-intensive, and lucky you have to be to build a brand.”
Most leaders fail to demand urgency by prioritizing popularity over performance
“I think the reason that most leaders do not quote unquote amp it up is either because they settle into and get comfortable with a lower than exceptional standard that just becomes the norm for them, so they don't spot what exceptional performance looks like, o…”
Enterprise value in the technology sector is fundamentally driven by growth
“In tech, value is a function of growth, so we ran our companies for growth, period.”
Lieberman believes every founder has a price before hitting financial freedom
“But no matter how much you love what you're building, I do truly believe everyone has a price, especially if they haven't yet hit their financial freedom threshold.”
Lieberman: Founders claiming they lack ego are lying or lack self-awareness
“When founders say they don't have an ego around being an entrepreneur, I generally think they are lying or they aren't self-aware enough to know that it is a large subconscious driver of their behavior.”
Closing off as many options as possible drives startup success
“In fact, I believe the best way to succeed is to close off as many options as possible once you have high conviction in one thing.”
Lieberman: The Most Original People Never Try to Be Original
“What this means to me is that the most original people are never those that are trying to be original, and in fact, I think there's a core formula of attributes that ironically can be imitated that lead to unintentional earned originality.”
Lieberman: Great founders aren't delusional, they expose society's delusions
“Delusion is defined as a, quote, false belief or judgment about external reality, but I actually think you need the exact opposite of delusion as a founder. I actually think the best founders prove that the rest of the world is delusional, stuck in their ways …”
Lieberman: A vision not widely derided likely isn't a vision
“A vision that's not widely derided likely isn't much of a vision.”
Lieberman: Healthcare Tech Founders Must Face Higher Scrutiny Than Other Founders
“I do think the level of rigor by which we look at healthcare technology founders who are drawing blood and diagnosing patients just has to be a higher standard than what we hold other founders to, just by nature of what the business is.”
Lieberman: Venture capital is predicated on promising things that do not exist
“The entire venture capital industry, in fact, is predicated on promising things that don't exist.”
Lieberman: Promising unbuilt products is central to Silicon Valley culture
“Promising something that doesn't exist is as central to the Valley ethos as late night coding sessions, hoodies, and the hallucination that the public has asked you to solve the world's problems versus just do less damage.”
Lieberman: Fraud Is Defined by the Potential Harm of Founder Dishonesty
“The extent to which something is fraud is basically What is the possible damage that is created by not telling the truth?”
Lieberman: Swarming critics is built-in when valuations get overextended
“Swarming anyone who questions the narrative is a built-in feature of stocks and sectors that have gotten too far out over their skis.”
Lieberman: The early 2024 tech market favors fundamentals over storytelling
“As of this recording, which is February 1320, 24, we are a lot closer to the fundamental phase than the story phase.”
Girouard: The Fastest Company in Any Market Invariably Wins
“All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win. Speed is a defining characteristic, if not the defining characteristic, of the leader in virtually every industry you look at.”
Girouard: Timing of a decision matters more than the decision itself
“The key takeaway when a decision is made is much more important than what decision is made.”
Girouard: The vast majority of decisions are not worth over 10 minutes
“There are decisions that deserve days of debate and analysis, but the vast majority aren't worth more than 10 minutes.”
Girouard: Quality Is Rarely a Valid Excuse for Sacrificing Speed
“There's not always a stark tradeoff between something done fast and done well. Don't let you or your organization use that as a false shield or excuse to lose momentum. The moment you do, You lose your competitive advantage”
Remote knowledge work perfectly fits the definition of a video game
“If you're working remotely from a computer, what you're doing perfectly fits the definition of a video game.”
Lieberman: The internet is a true meritocracy free of politics or favoritism
“And it's amazing to me how the internet is a true meritocracy. There's no politics or favoritism. There's simply better or worse products, better or worse prices, and how long you've been around doesn't matter. It's about what you offer to the customer today.”
Lieberman: Future Vision Pro generations could replace phones, computers, and TVs
“As technology continues to improve, I would not at all be surprised to see a future generation of this product that not only is mass market, but is delivering society a better new version of phones, computers, TVs, and gaming consoles in a single experience.”