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 13 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
Cole: Founders who love the $0-20M stage should sell, not scale further
“I think it's really important that if you really love doing zero to 20, That you just do zero to 20, and when it gets to 20, you sell, and you give it to somebody else who really loves 20 to 50, and you go back to do zero to 20 again.”
Wisler: Enduring startup success comes from deliberate craft rather than speed
“Craftsmanship is not quick. And at the end of the day, the things that are going to succeed are not the thing you did the quickest. It's probably going to be the thing you took your time and did right.”
Wisler: Studios Shouldn't Hire External CEOs for Internal Ideas
“Because the reality is that a co-founder is never going to be as passionate about my idea as they are about their own. And I think that was one of the biggest learnings from Sproutbox is that it's really dangerous to start a company and then try to find somebo…”
Wisler: Studios Must Decouple Operating Revenue From Fund Capital
“If you get to the point where, Your studio staff depends on making an investment. In other words, I don't make an investment. There's no money to pay the team. That puts a really unnatural pressure on the general partners to make an investment, even if there i…”
Wisler: Built products lack value without a dedicated full-time founder
“If we build things, they have no value unless there's somebody really who's waking up every day focused on that thing.”
Wisler: Cheaper AI Development Costs Offset Rising Cost of Capital
“Particularly in software AI has just made the cost of the build much cheaper. And that offsets increases in the cost of capital, particularly in our model, because What we're investing is correlated so heavily to the initial product build. I think it's a real …”
Wisler: Paragraph Tests Fake Landing Pages for a Few Thousand Dollars Before Building
“Before we start building a product, we build a fake landing page for that product. We build a Google AdWords campaign and a LinkedIn campaign, and we'll spend a couple thousand dollars testing messages and see what messages in ad copy get people to click. And …”
Wisler: Paragraph Startups Can Reach Revenue Before Incurring Recurring Expenses
“With the way we operate, right, we use our own capital to get the product built, get it to market. And so literally our portfolios, companies have the option. They don't always take this route, but then they have the option to have zero expense before they hav…”
Wisler: Paragraph prefers launching startups with long-known founders
“And so we like to take a long time and start businesses with people that we've known for quite a while. And not that there won't be any other exceptions to that rule. Sometimes you can get to know someone pretty quickly and certainly referrals are important in…”
Paragraph launches $10M fund aiming to build 15 workspace SaaS startups
“Basically, we are a ten million dollar fund that is investing in B to B SaaS products that are in the future of workspace, and we are excited to build about 15 companies in the next five years, and so just lots of different things going on.”
Cole: Founders unwilling to commit 10 to 15 years should avoid startups
“And if you don't think you can do something, the same thing for 10 or 15 years, Do something else that will pay better and will not require so much grit.”
Wisler: Paragraph Recruits Co-Founders First Before Working on Ideas
“We'd like to say we're pre-idea now. We're recruiting co-founders first and then working on ideas.”
Wisler: App Download Latency Destroyed a Customer Service Startup's Value Prop
“We invested on the idea that we were going to build a mobile app, and we ended up throwing out that whole idea because it turned out That part of just waiting for an app to download and install at a moment of frustration destroyed the whole value proposition, …”