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
Nagpal: Core team hiring is an irreversible decision that complicates everything
“So on a very tactical level, that means for certain areas like marketing hiring freelancers more, hiring contractors more, but always being very thoughtful about, do we really want to increase the size of our core team? Because that tends to become an irrevers…”
Nagpal: Premium startup domains yield high ROI by establishing instant credibility
“I do think it's quite high ROI because you can spend tens of thousands of dollars, which is honestly not that much compounded over the lifetime of a startup if you raise money. And it buys you instant credibility because when you're a brand new company, credib…”
Lieberman: Future corporate branding relies on employee profiles over corporate accounts
“For large companies or just companies in general to build great brands in the future, it is not going to be by focusing attention on building the brand as in like the company. It is going to be by focusing attention on building up people who are representative…”
Corcos cancels 1-on-1s with direct reports if no agenda is prepared
“If I have one-on-ones scheduled for all of my direct reports, but I've made it very clear and everyone's on the same page that a one-on-one calendar hold is not an entitlement. It is a hold so that I don't double book myself. And if there's nothing on the agen…”
Lieberman: Many 2010s Founders Succeeded Solely Due to a Bull Market
“You have a lot of leaders of companies that succeeded in the last 10 years because we were in a ten-year bull market, and the business they were in succeeded in spite of them, not because of them.”
Lieberman: Outspoken Candidates Are Sometimes the Worst Hires
“Sometimes the most extroverted outspoken people are also the worst employees because they're great interviews and But horrible workers, and they get through their career via bullshitting versus actual substance.”
Lieberman: Endowment effect leads founders to run companies past incompetence
“I believe that this risk of endowment effect causes far too many CEOs and founders to continue running their companies past their point of incompetence.”
Lieberman: Founders Regret Not Selling Sooner, Never Selling Too Soon
“What I can tell you anecdotally is that I have talked to a lot of founders who regret not selling sooner, and I have never talked to a founder that regrets selling too soon.”
Lieberman: VC Investments in Crypto, Web3, and AI Were Herd Mentality
“When you saw VCs pile in on Crypto companies, and then web three companies, and then mental health startups, and then AI startups, you were likely watching a lot of herd mentality.”
Siroker: Rewind's public pitch deck got over 1,000 investment offers
“We got well over you know, we got millions of views over a thousand offers to invest, many from really great investors, and I spent the next week in meetings with folks.”
Siroker: Public fundraising reveals true market price and best matches
“And I think that's really the value of being more public in your fundraise, It helps you cast a wider net, which then you ultimately find the perfect match, the perfect marriage, and you end up, I think really getting a sense for your market prices. That's the…”
Siroker: Fear of copycats from public fundraising is overblown
“You know, it's true that since we did raise in public and we were successful, we've had some imitators and some copycats, but none of them really have affected us. You know, it was a little bit of like, oh, should I have Been so public about our success when I…”
Siroker: Rewind received 20 funding offers at $1B valuation or higher
“We had 20 offers at a billion dollars or more but 20 out of a thousand is pretty small.”
Most CEO books are feel-good theory rather than tactical advice
“The books that you buy that teach you how to be a CEO or teach you about business or Delightfully theoretical and a bunch of feel good crap and not very tactical.”
Great organizations rely on top-down alignment over bottom-up goal setting
“Great organizations set a vision and head in a direction, and everybody aligns to make that happen.”
Kleiner Perkins does not actually run its venture fund on OKRs
“When John Dorris didn't share, like, they don't run their venture fund on OKRs. Like if OKRs are so good, why isn't Kleiner Perkins running OKRs?”
Lieberman: Employee trust and loyalty are more powerful than corporate governance
“What's more powerful than governance is trust, is loyalty. It's, in a way, fandom from your people.”
Lieberman: Microsoft Learned of Altman's Ouster One Minute Before Announcement
“To cause the board to make this move, a move that Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, found out about one minute before the press release and ended up losing fifty billion dollars in market cap from as their stock continued to trade.”
Adcock: Retooling Archer's Board for NYSE Independence Rules Was a Mistake
“I took my company public on the New York Stock Exchange. You have to have the majority of all your board seats be independent. So I had to basically retool my whole entire board at Archer when I went public. And it was a, you know, I made like a, basically loo…”
Adcock: Truly Vetting Board Behavior Requires a Ten-Plus Year Relationship
“I think if you haven't had a relationship with somebody for like 10 plus years, you're never really going to truly understand how they're going to behave in certain instances on a board like this, to be really frank.”
Nagpal: VCs who pushed founders to sell secondary shares are now complaining
“Because a lot of VCs, frankly, are, they're the ones who Kept telling the founders to take secondaries because they wanted to buy into these companies that they weren't able to, and now they're upset about it.”
Nagpal: Founders should not move geographically just for tax optimization
“Don't let the tax tail wag the dog. So I would rather live where I want to, and then figure out my taxes. So again, to me, the whole point of having money is to be able to live where I want.”
Nagpal: Founders should optimize fundraising for medium-case outcomes, not high valuations
“It's what he said is it's best to optimize for the medium case scenario where things don't go absurdly well, but they also don't go poorly. So to ensure that you're protected, because if you do the opposite, right, where you just raise money at a super high va…”
Lieberman: Number of co-founders is likely the largest equity value lever
“Number of co-founders you have actually is probably the largest lever of what your equity is worth at the end of the day.”
Nagpal: Silicon Valley has partially lost its stigma against solo founders
“I think Silicon Valley has finally lost its stigma a little bit against solo founders. For a long time, YC and stuff were like, you have to have co-founders.”
Siroker: Pre-PMF founders waste time coding instead of talking to users
“They can convince themselves that they're actually meaningfully moving toward product market fit by just sitting in the room and coding all day. Most of the time, that time is wasted. You know, it's not getting you any closer to the insights you need to buildi…”
Lieberman: Scaling Morning Brew to 300 employees in 18 months forced layoffs
“I remember when I would tell people that Morning Brew post-acquisition, we scaled from 50 employees in October of twenty-twenty to 300 employees in a year and a half. People were like, oh my god, that is the most amazing thing, and then when I give them the pu…”
Siroker: Rewind holds six years of runway
“Yeah, and that's why we have six years of runway, and I hope to increase that, not decrease that over time, is I've learned that mistake, and, you know, it's great to raise money when you can.”
Siroker: Early Google promoted engineers for technical sophistication over customer solutions
“When I was there early on, a lot of people valued. You got promoted by the sophistication of your technology, not by the problem it actually solves for a customer.”
Girdley: The Lean Startup methodology fails founders seeking maximum impact
“So lean startup is not a good way if you want to have maximum impact.”
Girdley: CEO networks like YPO and Vistage do not teach execution
“No groups like Vistage or YPO or EO or any of those folks were like, they actually taught you like how to run a business. Like there's no class that teaches you how to fire people. Like nobody, nobody teaches you that stuff.”
Girdley hires and pays potential co-founders pre-idea with no strings attached
“So my model is I bring people on pre-idea. Like I go find co-founders first. So like I'm a big believer in like right people, right structure, right mission in that order. ... And so my associate model has been historically, I hire a few of them at a time and …”
Girdley: Entrepreneurs who accept a risk of ruin are failing
“Like, I think everybody gets the idea wrong that like entrepreneurs are like these like gun totem, like totally okay. Corral like betting everything all the time. Like it's the opposite of that. Like if I have a risk of ruin, I'm totally screwing up.”
Girdley: Having 10,000 customers is safer than relying on one boss
“The difference is For me, like, 10,000 customers have to fire me for me to be out of a job. For other people, only one boss has to fire you when you have a W-II job.”
Girdley: Most people should remain traditionally employed to be happy
“By the way, most people should have a job. That's my, I believe that. I think they'll be happier, but, like, it's also, you know, it's definitely not as risky as, like, people think. That's my opinion.”
Corcos: Software product quality deteriorates when leadership is detached from building
“I think when you have a software product, I think having leadership who knows how to build software is really important, and the further away you get from the actual building of what it is that your product is the worse your product is ultimately going to be.”
Corcos: Co-founder CEOs must be 80% good at almost every business function
“And so I think the nature of being a co-founder CEO is you have to be 80% good at basically everything. It's kind of a strange role. You have to be able to write a passable growth strategy and a passable clinical strategy and a clinical, you have to be able to…”
Founders should eliminate to-do lists and schedule tasks directly on calendars
“The biggest thing to do is to get rid of your to-do list and put all of your action items on your calendar. Block off the amount of time that you think it's going to take. You have a to-do list. Everyone has a list of things that they want to do, and just tran…”
Founders should delegate tasks they dislike to avoid executing them unreliably
“Really, if you don't like doing a certain thing, like writing investor updates, it means that you should probably have somebody else do it because clearly you're not a reliable person on this specific type of task.”
Denk: Founders paying themselves starvation wages harms executive focus and performance
“And so what I don't believe in at all is like, hey, pay yourself nothing and really prove like you're some harder that can live off like 25,000 dollars a month. Because at the end of the day, like as an entrepreneur, You want to make sure that all of your focu…”
Denk: Side consulting to pay personal bills distracts founders from scaling
“I know some entrepreneurs that actually get into, like, kind of pivoting their business to do consulting as well. And they kind of phrase it as, I'll do consulting to learn about the space a bit more, but it's really kind of to pay the bills. And I think it's …”
Denk: Focusing on building makes investors hungrier than introductory calls
“If you're heads down building and actually executing the business and growing it, those investors will be that much hungrier to speak to you in the future than if you took a 30 minute call with them now.”
Crabtree: Numbers are meaningless without narrative framing
“Numbers on their own are meaningless. I can make numbers say good or bad, no matter what.”
The average Kajabi creator makes about $40,000 per year
“Like average creator makes about 40,000 dollars a year because we take that commerce part of it dead seriously and making sure that we're getting the right kind of people on the platform.”
It is almost impossible to build early-stage startups remotely
“I think there's something to that, especially at those early days, which are an early stage company. I think it's almost impossible to do it remotely, though. There are a lot of examples of companies who have, like, I think GitHub from day one was remote all t…”
Lieberman: DTC startups will fail if they raise excessive venture capital
“I give it a seven out of 10 if this business stays lean and it raises as little venture capital money as possible. I'll give it a two out of 10 if it raises a shit ton of venture capital money in the early years. And the reason I say that is, you know, we have…”
Lieberman: US Mental Health Funding Is at Record Highs While Outcomes Worsen
“We've had more mental health startups created than ever before, more venture funding for the space than ever before, yet mental health in the United States has never been this bad.”
FDA Approved 3 COVID Tests vs Germany's 96, Keeping Prices High
“In Germany, there are 96 approved COVID tests. So if you want to, in Germany, get tests for COVID, there are 96 different products you can buy. Therefore, the average cost of a COVID test in Germany is like one to two dollars. In the US, there are only three a…”