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 629 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
Bill Ackman: Pershing Square Is Permanently Done With Public Short Selling
“In the life's too short kind of point of view, you know, we're done with public short selling. It's just not our thing anymore.”
Schwarzman: Blackstone helps underperformers find jobs rather than direct termination
“You never terminate somebody because it's not fair. In other words, they're there because you asked them to be. And so the mistake is yours, right?”
Basecamp bans shared calendars, forcing direct negotiation for colleagues' time
“We don't have, for example, we don't have shared calendars at base camp, so I can't see anyone else's schedule and they can't see mine. So I can't take their time and they can't take mine. If they want some of mine or I want some of theirs, we have to ask each…”
Fried: Basecamp operates without any product roadmap beyond eight weeks
“So we don't have a roadmap. So we don't have a, I don't know what we're going to do. Actually, I have no idea what we're going to do eight weeks from now. I just don't know.”
Fried: Basecamp expects eventual responses rather than immediate communication
“And so like at our company, at Basecamp, we try to think, you know, the expectation is of eventual response, not of immediate response. And if someone doesn't get back to you quickly, it's because they're working. They're doing something more important than wh…”
Collison: John and I own an SF house and hope its value declines
“I'm a landowner in San Francisco. John and I own a house together, and I hope its value declines”
Naval Ravikant evaluates 10,000 startups to find five ultimate winners to back.
“I would rather, my system is, I want to see 10,000 companies, and I want to pick 500 that have a shot of being huge, and then I want the option to double down on the five winners. I don't want to just look at a hundred companies and pick 10 that I think are wi…”
Dixon: a16z funds operating teams with management fees rather than partner salaries
“The traditional structure is basically that VC funds charge fees and then most of those fees go to the partner salaries. We don't, instead we put our fees towards these operating teams. So for our competitors to copy us, they'd have to kind of dramatically cha…”
Baszucki: Roblox uses AI for user age verification and open-sourced voice filter
“We're now using AI to check the age of every single person on our platform. We've open sourced our voice safety filter.”
Jacobs: Board members can contact any employee anytime without supervision
“Any board member can reach out to any person in the company anytime they want and ask them anything they want. And there's no supervision or people have to accompany them or none of that.”
Jacobs's companies run budgeting and plan tracking every single day
“We don't do budgeting once in a while. We do budgeting every day. Every single day where we've got our numbers, that our plan is our plan, and where are we tracking versus the plan?”
Kaz Nejatian sent an operational blueprint designed to make unaligned employees quit
“I sent my team, I have a blueprint that I sent to the entire company, because my job was to create strong, repelling forces. I.e., I wanted everyone who didn't like how I was going to run the company to quit.”
Nejatian: Opendoor makes primary profits from mortgage, insurance, and escrow
“We make our money in two ways. First, we make money in each transaction, relatively thin margins of each transaction. But we make our real money from the first derivative of the business, which is a mortgage, Insurance, title and escrow, all the things that go…”
Kaz Nejatian: Opendoor enforces rule that named individuals, not teams, decide things
“I have a rule at Open Door that people decide things, not teams. So whenever someone says legal decide X, I'm like, who? Legal doesn't get to decide thing. Like, was the name of the person.”
Pincus: Zynga never spent a dollar of venture capital raised
“And eventually, Fred Wilson Fun to me, but terrible terms, like, fifteen million pre, and, but I love Fred, and he negotiated a hard deal, because he could, but, and the funniest thing is, I never used the dollar I raised the whole time at Zynga.”
Weinberg: Ignore smooth-running parts of company and focus solely on burning bottlenecks
“Like if there is a part of the company that is running super well and there are no bottlenecks, I ignore it entirely, like absolutely entirely. And I try to only focus on the things that are like burning. And I try to focus on like the number one thing that's …”
Brockman: OpenAI Uses Same Prediction Technology for Unsupervised and RL Stages
“Fundamentally the technology that we use to train during unsupervised stage and during the reinforcing stage, they're exactly the same. You are just predicting, but you've changed the structure of the data.”
Brockman: Sutskever leaving was the only time I considered quitting OpenAI
“And honestly, just one of the hardest moments for me at OpenAI was when Ilya left. And it was maybe the only moment in OpenAI's history where I felt like I didn't want to do it anymore.”
Brockman: OpenAI Has Committed to Ensuring Data Centers Do Not Raise Electricity Prices
“And you think about things like data centers, that those are something where there's clearly been a lot of concern about questions like, do they drive up electricity prices? And we have a commitment to ensure that they do not.”
Liemandt: Alpha Spends $10,000 per Student on AI Compute
“This is actually the most expensive part of our AI, and one of our limitations right now is we burn a lot of AI. 10,000 bucks a kid right now, and we'll get it down to Less than a thousand, and then a hundred, we're driving it down”
Tenev: Robinhood is taking Robinhood Ventures public
“And with Rob, with Robinhood Ventures, we're taking that fun public, so we're doing another IPO, and I joked that yeah, it's kind of like that, the IPO process, I remember being painful, and I didn't like it, but I don't really exactly remember why, and now I …”
Tenev: Robinhood Avoids Routine 1-on-1s in Favor of On-Demand Meetings
“I don't like having a lot of one-on-ones and some people are big one-on-one fans, but over time I've You know, my one on ones are basically on demand when you need something critical or some important decision needs to be made.”
Tenev: Robinhood funds 3% card cashback via brokerage cross-sell flywheel
“So in order to get the three percent cash back, you actually have to deposit the funds into your brokerage account. And so we've created this flywheel through Robinhood Gold where by using the credit card, you also use the brokerage product... If someone uses …”
Tangen: Norway's sovereign fund increases productivity 20% using AI
“We see in our firm we are increasing productivity probably by 20% just by utilizing it more, and we're just stuffing it in wherever we can, and it's making a huge impact.”
Tangen: AI will not replace human investors at Norway wealth fund
“I not in our place. But clearly in some places, right, you have fully automated you know, investment models in a lot of places.”
Tangen: Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund Employs Sports Psychologists for Risk
“So here we use a sports psychologist.”
Morgan Housel Refuses to Own International Index Funds
“No, I don't own any international funds. Part of that is I don't think you necessarily need to, because even among U.S.-based companies, I mean, they're doing half their revenue or more overseas, and so you get international exposure”
Taylor: Sierra charges customers for AI outcomes, not per-seat software licenses
“Our pricing model is really unique and comes from first principles thinking rather than having our customers pay a license for the privilege of using our platform. We only charge our customers for the outcomes meaning if the AI agent they've built for their cu…”
Nooyi: PepsiCo tracked 400 high-potential employees as 'corporate assets' for succession
“I think there's about three or 400 that were corporate assets, and one watched them all the time, because these are people who in 15 years could be CEO.”
Act III secures ROFRs on follow-on rounds and has never declined one.
“And so when we invest in a company, we're going to put an investment in it. And then we're going to agree take a right of first refusal. And all follow on rounds of capital at a pre-agree to multiple. So we're all in alignment. It's an easy thing. And the trut…”
Petersen stepped down as CEO believing Dave Clark was a better operator
“I thought, I think Dave's going to be better at the job than I am. That was genuinely true. That's why I did it. It wasn't because I was burnt out or something. I just thought he would be better for the company. I thought we needed to mature and be better at o…”
Finkelstein: Shopify leaders must re-qualify for their roles every year
“On our team that whatever, whatever the thing you're responsible for, you are going to try to be the very, very best in the world at that particular thing. Product design, sales, storytelling, finance, legal, whatever that might be. That's the commitment. And …”
Nooyi: PepsiCo tied executive bonuses to internal stretch goals, not Street guidance
“We always had internally stretch goals, and we promised the street something more reasonable. That way, we never got paid if we didn't make the stretch goals, the bonus. We never paid out bonuses without the stretch goals.”
Nooyi: PepsiCo shielded operating staff from activist investor distractions
“When we had our second activist investor in the stock, it was a crisis for the company because nobody likes to have an activist in the stock. I did a town hall, and I told everybody, I said, look, I'll give you regular updates on the activist. You'll see it on…”
Hastings reveals reference-check purpose only after starting conversation
“And then I'll reach out you know, and try to get a conversation going. And then only after there's a little conversation going, reveal that I'm calling as a reference.”
Hastings: Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters Proved Me Wrong on Live Sports
“Well on Christmas we had two NFL games, so I would say it is part of that. It's one of the things that Greg and Ted have done because I was always very skeptical not of course of the viewing, but that there could be a good long-term proposition there, and they…”
Hastings: Netflix focused on inclusion over DEI for commercial interest
“But I would say in general for us, we always focused on inclusion. We never called it DEI. For us is we want everyone who's a Netflix employee to be able to contribute at their highest ability. Cause that's in our commercial interest.”
Tan: YC passed on ADHD medication telehealth startup over ethical concerns
“There are lots of examples of, you know, maybe five or six years ago, there was a rash of telehealth companies that are focused on, for instance ADHD meds, and I distinctly remember one of our partners Gustav Alströmer, I, he met that team, and he said, you kn…”
Garry Tan: Screen time, Minecraft, and Roblox foster agency in children
“I'm actually personally pretty pro screens, and pro Minecraft and Roblox, and, you know, giving children, like, this sort of playground where they can exercise their own agency.”
Garry Tan: I didn't vote for Trump but I support the administration
“Even though I didn't vote for Trump, I am a 110%, you know, down for making America truly awesome.”
Taylor: Sierra charges strictly for outcomes rather than software license fees
“Rather than having our customers pay a license for the privilege of using our platform, we only charge our customers for the outcomes.
meaning if the AI agent they've built for their customers solves the problem, there's like a, usually a pre-negotiated rate…”
Poilievre outlines day-one plan to pause tariffs and renegotiate CUSMA
“On day one, what I would propose to the president is let's put the tariffs on ice. Let's sit down and renegotiate the Kuzma in a very quick turnaround. And in the meantime, let's be tariff free.”
Poilievre: Canadian passport will restore historical heroes and end statue removals
“That's going to be part of my goal is to, you know, we're going to put all our heroes back in the passport, for example no more tearing down statues. I think we should build new statues.”
Wolfe: TikTok is the only digital tool restricted for his children
“The only tool that I restrict them from is TikTok. But otherwise, and that's for a variety of bad influence and Chinese Communist Party but otherwise, I want them learning how to use every tool as they would every appliance in a kitchen”
Wolfe: Lux Capital requires full-time in-office presence Monday through Friday
“Everybody is here Monday through Friday now. You know, at first it was Monday through Thursday, take Friday. Now I'm like, look, if you need to leave, you go family first. It's a principle here. Never miss a concert, a recital, a science fair, but we need to b…”
Wolfe: Investing drive is motivated by public status and getting credit
“I want to be right. I want to make money. I want the credit for it, but it really is about like the status because otherwise you would just do these things in private and totally in quiet.”