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 160 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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.”
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…”
Adcock: Independent Board Members Make Terrible Decisions Because They Lack Equity
“So you have like all these folks that have like no stock and no skin in the game coming in, trying to be impartial that are making the worst decisions I've ever seen. Like, it's just a fundamental issue with public companies. I fundamentally believe independen…”
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…”
Rabois: Meta, Google, and Apple cannot accurately assess undiscovered talent
“So you've got to go find people who haven't yet proven what they can do that these large organizations think meta, Think Google, think Apple, think Amazon, think Microsoft, or even these days open AI. They don't know how to assess these people.”
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: 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…”
Slack is a synchronous communication tool masquerading as asynchronous
“Slack is a, it's a synchronous tool that masquerades as an async tool. And so, you end up getting into these multi-hour conversations with your thumbs, where you're, like, waiting for five minutes for them to get back to you, and you're just staring at your ph…”
Siroker: Rewind's 20-person team ships faster than Optimizely's 400
“We're a team of 20 at Rewind, and we're more productive. We ship faster than we ever did when I had a team of 400 at my last company.”
Mochari: Company-Operating Software Will Surpass Salesforce's $200B Valuation
“And of course, if that works, that should clearly be a hundred billion dollar company. You know, if Salesforce is a two hundred billion dollar company and it runs the sales team, An entity that runs the entire company should be worth more.”
Medeiros: VCs who claim they invest in dropouts are lying
“There's VCs out there. They're like, yeah, we invest in dropouts. They don't actually invest in dropouts. They're all lying.”
Swanson: Active founders have the best deal flow and feed VCs
“Active founders have the best deal flow. That's actually where VCs get most of their deal flow and they have the most fresh and relevant operating experience.”
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: 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.”
Amoruso: HR is where complaints die and payroll needs no specialist
“I think HR is where complaints, I think HR is where complaints go to die. I think anybody can administer benefits and payroll. I think learning and development is important, and I think all of the benefits that we're talking about can be run by someone much mo…”
Pujji: Startups Building on OpenAI Risk Fast Commoditization
“I think a lot of these companies the risk getting commoditized because the real tech, the real deep tech is GPT threes. It's open AIs. And if you're building on top of that, everyone's going to have the same functionality at some point. And so like, I don't kn…”
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: Content software companies almost completely ignore ideation
“Lots of content software companies do a lot of work in kind of the creation, refinement, distribution, and insights part of the journey. Almost no one focuses on ideation.”
Sadeghi: 23andMe Offers Superficial Traits Despite Massive Advances in Genetics
“There's all this research, there's all these insights, there's all this innovation, right? But we're stuck with Do you like chocolate or not from 23 and me? Like, what's going on here, right?”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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 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.”
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: 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.”
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: Founding a venture-backed unicorn is not the likeliest path to wealth
“By the way, being an owner does not mean you need to be a venture-backed unicorn founder. Actually, if you were to ask me, what is the likeliest path to be rich? I wouldn't advocate for that path.”
Lieberman: Independent creators are shifting back to corporate partnerships and help
“I think we're seeing this big move back from a lot of people going independent to partnering in some way either with big companies or bringing on operational help, and I think it makes total sense.”
Founders should respect venture capitalists they raise money from rather than complain
“Like I always thought it's weird. Like founders are like, oh, like raising money for VCs. Like I hate VCs. It's like, if you're raising money, like you should respect them. Like they're smart, you know, like if you don't like find better ones, like they're goo…”
Lieberman: Almost all tech startups overhired and spent wastefully during COVID
“During COVID, roughly all tech startups lost their way on spending. Capital was flowing freely, and teams often rapidly and dramatically overhired, boosted expenses on things non-crucial for the business, and spent wastefully.”
Vohra: Marc Andreessen's PMF definition is a lagging indicator
“I think Marc's definition of And perhaps definition is the wrong word. It's sort of an observational awareness. You know it when you have it is great, but it is a lagging indicator.”
Vohra: The Sean Ellis metric predicts success far better than NPS
“It predicts success way better than net promoter score, and it's not only the best way to measure products market fit, like I said, we used it to develop our very own products market fit engine.”
Lieberman: Raising venture capital does not equate to entrepreneurial ambition
“Raising venture does not equate to ambition, and I think that's just like a false story.”
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: 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.”
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.”
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: 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.”
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: 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.”
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…”