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
Lieberman: Comcast Lobbied for Years to Block Free Public Wi-Fi in Philadelphia
“Another example is Comcast, who basically has lobbied for years to have citywide Wi-Fi blocked in Philadelphia. So there can't just be general public free citywide Wi-Fi, because of course that would hurt Comcast business.”
Lieberman: B2B creators are a better opportunity than B2C creators
“I am more bullish on B to B creators versus B to C one, because I think business to consumer companies are way harder to build than business to business.”
Lieberman: Marketing-driven creators should be treated like paid ad channels
“I also think purely marketing driven creators have to be compared to any other paid marketing channel, like Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Snapchat ads, et cetera.”
Special ed teachers face America's highest burnout rate due to government paperwork
“Special ed teachers have the highest burnout rate of any job in America, and they have such a high burnout rate because there is so much government mandated paperwork that has to be filled out for every single student that you have.”
Lieberman would always bet on 'desperate and wildly smart' founders
“If I meet someone who is, let's call it desperate and wildly smart, I would bet on that person every day of the week to succeed.”
Lieberman: Exploring fringe 'Edge City' subcultures is mandatory for finding ideas
“Because I want to set the foundation such that you understand why Edge City is mandatory for finding great business ideas.”
Lieberman is bearish on cold plunges, pickleball, and 99% of AI startups
“And then I said, I'm bearish on cold plunges. Sorry to people who enjoy cold plunges. Pickleball, 99% of AI startups, and BTC creator businesses.”
Lieberman paused his new business's customer growth to secure product retention
“I think the right thing to do with this business right now is to not grow our customers. It is to make sure, going back to, you know, the first thought I had, it is to make sure we have the right product, we know who the right audience is, and we are serving t…”
Most of the world's richest people built wealth through acquisitions
“Most of the richest people in the world Are there through acquisitions? Some version of buying and selling small companies or private equity deals.”
Sending voice notes unfairly transfers your time burden to the recipient
“I fucking hate voice notes. And the reason why is I think you're transferring your time to somebody else.”
Cash-strapped founders should prioritize market demand over personal passion
“However, if you're poor, like I was, if you're just getting started out, I would rank The passion part the lowest, and I would rake the, what the world needs and what they're willing to pay for the highest.”
Sikand: Short-form video businesses are unsustainable without owned audience
“The space we were operating in, short form video, is a very challenging category to be in, right? You don't control the views. You don't control the audience. And you're built atop these layers of social media platforms. So it's very hard to have A sustainable…”
Lieberman: Founders should protect ideas from investors more than social media
“So I actually would be more protective of my idea when talking to investors because I would say they have more layered agendas than someone you just tell about on Twitter who's an individual who's interested in entrepreneurship.”
Alex Lieberman believes building a B2B business is easier than B2C
“It's B to B, which I generally think is easier than building a B to C business.”
Lieberman: Pre-recorded courses will remain the dominant online education format
“And so I think asynchronous education or prerecorded courses are not going away and they'll actually continue to be the most common way that people learn online.”
Andrew Huberman podcast ads scaled Momentous Protein to $30 million annually
“They ended up having Andrew Huberman promote Momentous Protein on the podcast as an ad read, and for those of you that don't know Andrew Huberman, he has one of the largest podcasts in the world where he focuses on talking about Science and health and things w…”
SpaceX's 99 percent launch cost reduction enables Varda's space manufacturing model
“What they're doing is only possible because the cost of launches of things into space has come down by 99% since 1970.
This business was not possible two years ago or 20 years ago, and it's only become possible because Elon Musk and SpaceX have brought down t…”
Two B+ friends make better podcast co-hosts than A-player strangers
“I would take two B-plus players that have a deep friendship over two A-players that are complete strangers and Every day of the week.”
Lieberman: Give co-founders substantial equity but never split 50/50
“Give your co-founder a lot of equity. And third, don't split your equity, 50, 50.”
Lieberman: Only four of Y Combinator's top 100 companies had solo founders
“And then Gary Tan, who's now the CEO of Y Combinator, he said of the top 100 YC funded companies, only four Were solo founders, and those founders were able to create their own MVP on their own.”
Former Clearbit CEO Alex McCaw lost two companies to 50/50 equity splits
“Alex McCaw, who is the former CEO of Clearbit, he's a serial entrepreneur, he's one of Matt's clients, he wrote that the idea of not splitting equity Fifty-fifty is key, and he went on to say two of his previous companies were destroyed by a fifty-fifty split.”
Lieberman: AI and automations can scale ghostwriters from four to 15 clients
“And I would say historically ghost writers could only service maybe three or four clients. And I want to create a more automated process such that ghost writers can service 10 to 15 clients and the quality of the content doesn't change at all. And to me, you d…”
Lieberman: Social media content can generate nearly unlimited agency client demand
“I think the first thing is generating demand, meaning I think that just by me creating content on Twitter and LinkedIn, I can generate unlimited or close to unlimited demand from clients such that clients should never be the bottleneck.”
Traditional venture capital avoids high-risk, capital-intensive deep tech startups
“There's, you know, some folks at the big groups that focus on D tech, but they really focus on like kind of the ancillary businesses. They're not focused on the businesses that need a ton of cash that have potentially low odds of success that could be really g…”
Electric aircraft range depends on three core physics levers
“You can boil almost everything down to three big levers that the business had or the product had on the aircraft side. You basically had we basically, I basically built an, like, you know, electric range equation that amounted to how much powertrain efficiency…”
Electric aircraft remove thousands of parts and improve safety over helicopters
“When you moved electric, you were basically removing thousands of parts that are not necessary in a helicopter. You're changing the dynamics, like, the aerodynamic dynamics of the rotors and the blades that Change, like, the acoustic signature significantly. Y…”
Figure aims for human-speed robot performance by the end of 2023
“We actually have a full warehouse built in our lab here, and we want to do full end-to-end human speed performance of the robot by end of year.”
Silicon Valley cultures split between lifestyle perks and mission-driven execution
“And I think there's like, there's, like, there's basically two bifurcated cultures out here in Silicon Valley. There's the culture of like, you know, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, that like, you know, we're here for you. We'll pay you as much money as possible,…”
Airbnb Shifted From Traditional Product Management to Product Marketing
“They have a product marketing function versus a product management function.”
Brian Chesky Restructured Airbnb From Divisional to Functional During the Pandemic
“During the pandemic, Brian rethought the entire organization's design so things could move faster, so he could be closer to the product, and so the company would operate on one single product roadmap. And so what he did is he moved the company from being divis…”
Offices Should Only Be Used for Trust Building and Collaboration
“If you're looking to bring people in office, his view is there should be two reasons why you bring people in office. Otherwise you should be fine with remote. The two reasons to bring people in office are for trust building and collaboration, and that's it.”
Pujji: The biggest AI winners will dominate narrow vertical matrices
“I think the most successful companies is somewhat obvious or not obviously, but it will take one square of that matrix. Like I said, customer service for banking and go, that is a very specific solution. I'm going to have the best models. I'm going to teach, I…”
Pujji: Advisory boards distract founders from selling to customers
“Building an advisory board is one of the, I'd put it as one of the many distractions that entrepreneurs create to think that they're going to build a better business instead of just selling stuff to customers.”
Pujji: The Plunge could be a $10M business generating $2M annual profit
“Cause I think it, I still believe what I've said to you every time, which is, is this going to be a hundred million dollar business? I don't know, but do I think it could be a ten million dollar business that made one to two million dollars a year? A hundred p…”
Pujji: Internal company initiatives often yield higher returns than outside investments
“Inside of a company, oftentimes the returns on capital are way higher than even an investor ever gets. Like there's initiatives, hiring five salespeople can have a 500% return in a year if you do it well, right?”
Jesse Pujji: Every business problem can be solved with a weekly meeting
“I think every problem can get solved with a weekly meeting.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff requires weekly meetings if leaders miss 20% growth
“Everybody submits a plan, and typically that plan has to grow a minimum of 20%, because that's just, like, Mark Benioff's thing. We grow 20% every year. And if you're hitting the plan, you meet with him once a quarter. And if you're missing the plan, you meet …”
Jesse Pujji: Executives should leave operational Slack channels to force team synthesis
“I don't think it's good actually for me to be in these channels. Like, I think it's important that I'm not, actually, because when I'm in them, then it feels like, oh, Jesse's alongside. He knows what's going on, and even we had our first version of those meet…”
Gatina: Advising founders against tying identity to startups ignores reality
“You start a company, it's your obsession, it's your identity, and you'll hear people tell you, like,
Oh, like, don't make this your identity, right?
But it's like, yeah, that's nice, but that's not the reality.
Like, this is who I am.”
Gatina: Scaling to $100M+ revenue requires a multi-business platform model
“What I saw there was that if you could combine the right mix of tools and technologies and talent that you could actually build this platform where you could have multiple businesses that grow at scale. Right. And like, that's how you're getting to like a hund…”
Pujji: Mid-career VCs mistakenly apply rigid expected-value frameworks to all founders
“The middle ones in my experience, you know, it's sort of the hammer and a nail thing, right? It's like, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So everything they look at us through the expected value of how big could this be? If I put a dollar in, w…”
Lieberman: Standard VC logic only leads to building B2B enterprise SaaS
“The way that I've always thought about it is if you were to build businesses as dictated by the way that VCs are taught to think, you would just permanently build enterprise level B to B SaaS businesses over and over and over. That may be right for some people…”
Ankur Jain: Commercial Moon mining and transport will occur in 5-10 years
“Now what we're doing with Moon Express is saying, how do you create the last mile solution to get, you know, whether it's satellites positioned or whether it's, you know, going to the moon and actually mining the moon for, you know, helium three or platinum an…”
Jain: Starting a company with a business plan sets founders up for failure
“I think one of the biggest problems with business school is it loves to tell people to set a business plan with objectives and goals. And like you have, the second you start with that, you have set yourself up for failure.”
Jain: Silicon Valley Has Damaged Its Goodwill and Trust With Regulators
“Silicon Valley has not done itself any favors in building goodwill and trust with the regulators.”
Jain: HUD reversed its denial to let Bilt points fund down payments
“Later that day, I got an updated letter from HUD. That said, dear Mr. Jane, you're pleased to inform that your use case requested is approved, and that was that.”
Jain: Bilt has had profitable unit economics from day one
“We have unit economics that are profitable from day one, right? So we can make money and not need capital.”
Jain: Bilt is rolling out full payment collection to lock in distribution
“So it's like right now we are rolling out a payment solution for every apartment building to collect all rent payments through built. So whether you pay by check or ACH or credit card or the built card, we collect a hundred percent of payments. That is my numb…”