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 1,221 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
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.”
Lieberman: Software and Agency Valuation Multiples Will Converge in AI Era
“And also, why do I think that software and agency multiples will converge? Short answer is I believe the business is The agency business will look a lot better in the age of AI.”
AI makes expecting more output with fewer employees entirely realistic
“This question would have come off as unreasonable for Toby to ask pre-AI, but with AI, the expectation of your team to get more work done with no more or even fewer people is all of a sudden totally realistic.”
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…”
Product Quality Is Not A Long-Term Competitive Advantage
“The best product doesn't always win, and product is not a long-term competitive advantage.”
B players destroy companies because their mediocrity is tolerated, unlike C players
“Organizations are not getting killed by their C players. Everybody knows who they are, and performance eventually is addressed. The people who kill organizations are your B players. It's the scourge of the enterprise, because there are many, and they are gener…”
Modern companies coddle employees and prioritize internal satisfaction scores over customer success
“Performance-centric thinking like this doesn't trend well with prevailing attitudes. Companies have become more fixated on their employees' MPS scores than their customers. They coddle their people. They get caught up in things that have nothing to do with the…”
Lieberman: Founders Lie and Embellish Necessarily to Launch Businesses
“Founders do lie, and founders do embellish, and they do it necessarily to get their business off the ground.”
Chesky: Companies should have zero pure people managers without domain expertise
“I think that every leader should be an expert in what they're leading. There should be no people managers in the entire company. And when I say people managers, meaning your only responsibility is people, not the work or not the domain, because you can't manag…”
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 …”
Lieberman: Software Recurring Revenue Quality Will Decline
“And so I think what was typically considered to be a more quality recurring revenue stream in software products is going to be less true than it's ever been.”
Lieberman: AI consultancy Tenex can reach $100M in annual agency revenue
“I think Tenex just as a, an agency business can be a hundred million dollar a year business because I view the opportunity for AI transformation to basically be the GDP of the United States.”
Khosla partner Nikunj Kothari calls seedstrapping limits extremely short-sighted
“He basically said businesses that should be venture backed will always have an incentive to raise more and grow faster. He said, my hot take is that all of these amount raised and team size proclamations are extremely short sighted.”
Lieberman: An audience's greatest value for startups is hiring, not customer acquisition
“And I think the obvious benefit that companies get from partnering with a creator or someone who has audience is getting more customers. But I would actually argue that is like the least exciting thing about having an audience, When I think about the value tha…”
Competing In A VC-Funded Space Without Capital Is Foolish
“If you're in a competitive VC-funded space, it is foolish to compete without raising money.”
There Is No Moat In Productivity Software; Founders Should Avoid It
“There is no moat in productivity. Avoid it if you can.”
Good Product With Great Marketing Beats Amazing Product Without Marketing
“Good product with great marketing beats amazing product with no marketing.”
Employee pushback indicates leadership is raising performance standards sufficiently
“The shock to the system will be profound, or you are perhaps not taking it far enough. People may squeal, but consider that a sign you are bringing it on.”
The balanced scorecard management framework is academia's worst idea
“They were convinced a grown-up company had to have a balanced scorecard, arguably the worst idea to ever come out of academia.”
Lieberman: Sycophancy curdles founder confidence into a con
“Success begets acolytes who tell you you're right when you're wrong. Worse, you start believing them. This leads down a dangerous path where vision breaks from reality and, likely aided by a fear of failure, Curdles your confidence into a con.”
Lieberman: Elizabeth Holmes went to prison for defrauding investors, not patients
“Yes, claims about health care solutions warrant scrutiny beyond whether or not rich investors get their money back, but Holmes wasn't convicted for defrauding patients. She's going to prison because she ripped off George Shultz, not because her bogus blood tes…”
Chesky: CEOs should serve as chief product officers and stay involved
“I think that the CEO, unless they're not a product person, should think of themselves as a chief product officer, and they should be involved in the product.”
Lieberman: Companies will pay top creators as much as executives
“Individual content creators should be the highest paid people in a content org. I believe even though we are in an age of content abundance, the percentage of content that is truly exceptional is not increasing at the same rate. It is really hard to create tru…”
Lieberman: Small Businesses Are a Bad Customer Base for Agencies
“The fourth is that small businesses are generally a really bad customer base. I think agencies that serve small businesses are the worst type of agency. I think the only companies that do well by serving small businesses are what I would call electricity, mean…”
Lieberman: 99% of creator businesses will fail without product focus
“I also think that 99% of creator businesses will fail, not because I'm bearish on the creator economy or creators. I'm actually hyper bullish on them, but I just think a lot of creators are going to launch businesses as a short term cash grab. They're not goin…”
Airbnb Only Takes on Projects Brian Chesky Can Personally Focus On
“Brian now operates in an extremely hands-on way, where he is involved in every single project in the company, and the company only does as much as Brian can personally focus on.”
Airbnb Boasts Higher Free Cash Flow Margins Than Apple or Google
“I didn't have an exact reference point for is that a lot or a little, but he basically shared that on a percentage basis, Airbnb is more efficient than Apple or Google when it comes to how much cash they actually generate for how much revenue they do as a busi…”
Lieberman: ChatGPT plugins will be worth multiples of Shopify
“Shopify is a sixty billion dollar company right now. I think OpenAI is thirty billion. You would have to think that the plugins to ChatGPT, which are gaining some popularity now as they're opening it up, is going to be multiples of that.”
Lieberman: Creator economy venture funding will dry up in 2023
“Creator economy, economy funding is going to dry up this year.”
Lieberman: Very few creator economy businesses have venture scale upside
“There are lots of businesses to build in the creator economy. Still, there are not a lot of businesses that are what I would call venture scale creator Economy businesses right now.”
Lieberman: Musk will step down as Twitter CEO by end of 2023
“Elon will no longer be the CEO of Twitter by the end of 20, 23, but Twitter as a platform will be thriving.”
Lieberman: Twitter will not 5x revenue to $26.4B by 2028
“I just think that it is going to take more than Call it, let's call it five years to five X revenue, given they haven't even really proven that they can scale one revenue stream, let alone what I believe will need to be multiple to get it to twenty six billion…”
Lieberman: 100% remote companies cannot match in-person retention and connection
“I'm going to go with thumbs down. I just think it's impossible to build the connection that is necessary to have people have enough affinity for a company to stay there for a long time. So I think retention becomes really difficult beyond other things like com…”
Lieberman: Unlimited PTO is a farce employees avoid due to pressure
“I think it's an absolute farce, and I don't think I don't think people actually use it, because I feel the, they think they feel the pressure not to use it.”
Lieberman: AI Will Enable Testing New Businesses From a 20-Minute Quiz
“I ultimately think within entrepreneurship generative AI is going to make entrepreneurship significantly faster, meaning that the speed to be able to start and test a business is gonna go down, like, by multiples. So I think the cost of entrepreneurship came d…”
Lieberman: The best business for a creator is a commoditized product
“Actually the best business to launch as a creator is something that is completely commoditized. You know, there will always be product market fit for it because humans appetite for it really isn't changing. And so you'll be able to sell a lot of it because you…”
Lieberman: Cancellation and key-man risks are the greatest threats to Mr. Beast
“I think there's two risks that basically could dethrone him. One is just key man risk. So, you know like, God forbid it happens, but Jimmy getting hit by a bus, like, that would obviously be a huge shot to all of these businesses, because they are still inextr…”
Lieberman: Next Procter & Gamble will be a creator-led brand holding company
“So the whole thesis here is that I believe the next Procter & Gamble is going to be a holding company of creator first or creator led brands.”
Mailchimp Founders Split $11.7B in Intuit Deal While Employees Received $500M
“Ben Chestnut and Dan Curzius each owned 50% of Mailchimp. In 2008, Mark Armstrong, the other co-founder, was bought out of the business. Three hundred million dollars was given to employees as bonuses for the deal, and two hundred million dollars worth of rest…”
Lieberman: College Ambassador Programs Must Prioritize Quantity Over Quality
“The first secret, quantity over quality. It sounds counterintuitive, but being super selective in an ambassador program doesn't work. Why? Because college students, no matter how ambitious they are, no matter how impressive their resumes are, they are flaky. A…”
Lieberman: Scheduling a meeting is often a lazy substitute for working
“And I find meetings are oftentimes a lazy attempt to get something done. Something needs to be done, and the easiest thing to do is for you to just throw time on a calendar instead of just doing the thing now.”
Lieberman: Brainstorming must be independent and asynchronous, not done in meetings
“Meetings are also not for initial brainstorms. Those should be done independently and then shared over docs or email, and then you can come together to make a joint decision around that brainstorm via a meeting.”
Lieberman: Running multiple startups simultaneously is suboptimal for most founders
“Doing what I am doing is likely not the optimal choice for most entrepreneurs.”
Lieberman advises founders to only raise venture capital if absolutely necessary
“The process of talking to angels has reiterated my feeling that you should only raise VC money if you absolutely have to, if you are optimizing for the freedom to pick your path as a business long-term.”
Lieberman says VCs prefer startup failure over moderate $200 million exits
“Because for them, they either want a billion dollar valuation, or they don't necessarily care. Like, they'd rather become a zero, versus us Be a two hundred million dollar company, it's life changing for the founders, but it doesn't do anything for the fund.”