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
Shane Parrish Snuck Two Undetected AI Paragraphs Into His Bestselling Book
“So I put two paragraphs in Clear Thinking that are completely AI generated. My editor couldn't tell, and to date, no reader has correctly guessed the paragraphs that are completely generated by AI.”
Mackey: Love.Life will offer psychedelic therapy once legal in California
“When psychedelic therapy is legal in in California, like it is in Colorado and Oregon, we'll be doing that under therapeutic sessions.”
Bragg refuses to grant company equity to non-family employees
“Family companies are great to work for, and we're going to pay you well, and you're going to feel very comfortable here, but there's no equity available, and too complicated with the finance structures if you start giving it away, and then if they want out, an…”
Bragg generated the majority of his net worth after age 60
“Most of my real equity, the way you would measure it, Has come after 60.”
Erin Wade: Badmouthing a former employer in interviews is an immediate disqualifier
“Like, for me, if someone is going to speak negatively about a former employer, honestly, I mean, I talk about this in the book. I really think job interviewing is, like, so similar to dating in so many ways, and just, like, if you show up to a date and someone…”
Erin Wade: Job performance accounts for only 25% of Homeroom's hiring evaluation
“Many jobs, they're really only going to care about job performance. And so we're pretty clear that's really only about 25% of what we're evaluating on and so we're also going to ask a lot about our values and how we think that you might be able to live them an…”
Beshore: Risks early exploitation to test new business partners' trustworthiness
“One of my favorite things to do is, is be almost opened myself up to being taken advantage of early on in a relationship. So if they do, then you're like, okay, great.”
Beshore: Permanent Equity takes zero management fees or reimbursements
“We take no fees of any kind, no reimbursements of any kind. There's no cash that comes from either our LPs or the companies to us. Zero guaranteed revenue”
Housel: Paying off 3.2% mortgage was worst financial, best personal decision
“Like, our mortgage rate was 3.2% fixed for 30 years, and we paid it off. Which I say is, it's very true, is the worst financial decision we've ever made. But, it's the best money decision we've ever made.”
Jacobs: QXO targets one to two turns of EBITDA in debt
“In my new company that I'm forming, QXO, we're going to have, I think our target, a healthy target should be one to two turns of debt.”
Jacobs gives board directors unchaperoned access to all company employees
“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 structures executive equity to double-vest only at top-tier shareholder returns
“So that if our shareholder returns are less than 55% or so, I don't want it to vest. If it's 65%, it vests some. If it's 75%, it vests more. If it, if it's 85%, 90%, 95%, I want it to, I want them to make, I want it to double vest.”
Gayner Liquidated 20% of Markel's Equity Portfolio in Early 2020
“And as a consequence of that one, 18 that we put up, I did take about 20% of our equity portfolio chips off the table and sold some positions just because again, My number one job is to make sure we are always there to answer the bell for the next round of the…”
Parrish Admits to Regularly Violating Canadian COVID Lockdown Bubble Restrictions
“From somebody who, me, violated the law on a regular basis during this in Canada, because I had a bubble of people that was more than two households, and, you know, we had a teacher involved, and we had all these other things involved, and you know, I had neig…”
Rey Flemings: Even ultra-wealthy clients want to change systemic societal inequalities
“You know, I would tell you that even my wealthiest clients don't like it.
Right?
So they played by the rules of the game.
They succeeded, and they want to change it”
Slootman operates companies through influence and merit; org charts mean nothing
“Hierarchy or charge mean nothing to us. You know, we operate through influence. If you can convince people, great. And if you can't, well, then you just can't. It doesn't matter what your title is or what organization you come from or who your boss is. So it's…”
Robinson processes information and calculates solutions through physical sensations
“But I'm actually not, I'm in my body most of the time, and I process information in my body, even when I'm reading, even when I'm thinking, even when I'm calculating. I kind of feel my way to answers, and I'm able to reason, I mean that literally, reason with …”
Kornfield joined Wisdom Ventures to fund mindfulness and compassion startups
“I'm part of a new venture capital fund, which is sort of weird for a meditation teacher and former monk called Wisdom Ventures, and Wisdom Ventures With a group of very experienced meditators and several very experienced venture capitalists, and I thought, wel…”
Shopify canceled 60% of active internal projects in early 2022
“And I think we ended up Stopping to work on canceling or not yetting. 60% of the things we were working on which I think everyone was ready for because it was very obvious in first half of twenty-twenty-two that we are going into very different times, right?”
Shopify lets employees choose their own cash and equity compensation split
“These switch to a very simple system where everyone gets a number. This is what you make every year. And so everyone agrees what, like, the ground truth is of compensation. And then you can say, we want this in cache. Do you want this in store options?”
Mulally enforced zero tolerance for violating core operating processes
“Zero tolerance for violating that operating process, and zero tolerance for violating these expected behaviors, because we all can see in each other.”
Snead: The Rams partnered with the military to evaluate draft prospects' traits
“So we've actually partnered at times with the military with some of their tests in that, hey, there's an element to be able to measure someone's combative attitude. On the battlefield, but also be a useful citizen in public.”
Goldsmith: KKR once paid approximately $150,000 for a two-hour CEO coaching session
“By the way, I don't know exactly, but I got paid approximately 150,000 dollars for that two hour conversation.”
Sinclair: Tally Health Will Release a 10x Cheaper Biological Age Test
“My student, one of my students at Harvard Has developed a technology where we can measure this clock very cheaply for at least 10 times less than that. And we're about to release a product in this, sometime this year, that would be a cheek swab”
Chris Bosh: Leaving Toronto for Miami was about winning, not money
“That was the main thing. It was always about basketball. I tell people this all the time... It wasn't, you know, it wasn't about money. That was the thing that messed me up... It wasn't about notoriety. You know, it wasn't about the adoration from fans... I wa…”
Immelt: GE recruited Warren Buffett in 2008 for credibility, not cash
“I called Warren because he had done a similar deal with Goldman Sachs. Not so much that we needed his money, but we needed his seal of approval. And we added him to the raise and we were able to go out on Wednesday of that week and raise I think it was sixteen…”
Tavel: Unlike other firms, Benchmark GPs conduct executive talent calls directly
“I'm on, you know, seven boards right now, and I am on these talent calls every week for some of my companies where we're doing a search for a CRO as an example, and it will always be me and then the talent partners of the other firms as opposed to the partner …”
Zurbuchen: Replaced entire James Webb project leadership to reset culture
“I frankly, I, we had a team, I basically replaced in my reporting structure, everybody. And the simple reason for that is I wanted to basically create a before and after. I wanted to make sure that the after is one that we are together and we are one, we are l…”
Eyal: 'The Social Dilemma' interviewed me for three hours and cut everything
“So they interviewed me for three hours for this documentary.
So I sat down with the director for three hours.
We did this super long interview, and they completely cut me out of the film, and I don't really care.”
Automattic rejected a $500M valuation weeks before securing a $3B valuation
“We turn down an investor who wants to invest in the company at a maximum of five hundred million enterprise value, and like, a week or two later, someone invested a three billion dollar valuation.”
Lavingia: Gumroad raised a $2M bridge round at 4x liquidation preference
“We raised a small bridge round, two million dollars at four-act liquidation preference from Kleiner and Mark Cuban and some other folks”
Lavingia: Transactional, Unbundled Coworker Relationships Are Superior to Social Bonds
“I like people who are very kind of transactional, frankly. Like, I like people who are like, I'm here there, there's to do this job. This is what I came here to do. I'm really excited about speeding up the site. That's all I care about. And like, 99% of our co…”
Sivers would immediately give away $100M because wealth distracts from learning
“Like if you were to give me a hundred million dollars, I just give it right away because I just won't use it for anything. I just don't want it. All the things that I love the most in life, just learning, thinking, and creating, it doesn't take any money. And …”
Sivers left San Francisco because he hated everyone thinking like him
“I actually, I tried living in San Francisco for a little while. I had to leave after a few months. I hated it because everybody thinks like me. And so I'm happier living in a place like Singapore, where most people don't think like me.”
Pershing Square Executed Its Massive COVID-19 Portfolio Hedge in One Hour
“I mean, the, just most recently, our hedge that we put on to protect the portfolio, I guess, I wasn't specifically doing work on that investment at all, but I was thinking about the ramifications, for example, of the coronavirus, and then came to a conclusion …”
Maples: Floodgate avoids funding founders who have not quit their day jobs
“So, so for example, I don't react super well to we're all still working at our jobs and we can't wait to leave as soon as we get funded.
So I I'm like, look, if you're not passionate enough to leave your job and do this full time, why would I be passionate en…”
Pasricha: Traditional retirement is dangerous and I will never retire
“I don't believe people want to retire. I believe it's very dangerous. I believe you lose. A lot of the social connection, the stimulation of learning, and the story, which you could call an icky guy, and instead, you want to have purpose, and you want to be do…”
Kahneman: His belief in climate change stems from trusting authority figures
“That's how I believe in climate change, you know. I believe in the people who tell me there is climate change, and the people who don't believe in climate change, they believe in other people”
Kahneman: Decades of studying cognitive biases has not made him immune
“Yeah, certainly not much better, no.”
Howey negotiated a fixed-term rights reversion contract with Simon & Schuster
“One of the things we did, we set up like the book reverts on this date and we were able to say no to every other offer. And meanwhile, we're selling lots of copies and making lots of money and publishers are being left out. So eventually publishers are like, o…”
Gross: Apple chose privacy over beating Google to market in ML
“While I was at Apple, this was before the whole Cambridge Analytica Facebook debacle I noticed this very strong organizational tilt towards privacy, towards customer and user privacy. And I gotta tell you, I was in the room, I was a little bit of the devil her…”
Fried: Basecamp sets no quantitative goals or metrics for success
“We're different in that we don't have any goals or any metrics for success.”
Basecamp uses zero data to guide its product development
“We're not a data driven company in terms of product development.
we use data a lot for improving performance in terms of our infrastructure, making sure that we get back to customers in a reasonable amount of time, which is like currently about 10 minutes.
…”
Fried: Basecamp intends to stay as small as possible
“We're going to keep our business as small as possible. He wants to build the business, biggest business in the world.”
Jason Fried rejects growth targets and desires to 'change the world'
“So those are the expectations I have for myself, but I don't have expectations or run growth. I don't have personal goals. I don't want to be seen in a certain way. Like I don't need to be in the media. Like I don't have that kind of stuff. I also don't have a…”
Fried: Basecamp CEO limits himself to a single 13-inch laptop screen
“I don't have an external screen, so I have a 13 inch laptop, and that's my only screen, because I think screen real estate is actually, like, you don't want a lot of it. I think you want a little of it.”
Wolfe: Lux Capital seeks scientists possessing hidden technological secrets
“And then the final situation, which is where we spend most of our time, is the Schopenhauer dictum, which is talent can hit a target that nobody else can hit, and genius can hit a target that nobody else can see. And that goes back to the asymmetric informatio…”
Wolfe: Lux partners get one solo high-conviction override investment per fund
“If you have one partner that is dogmatically table-bounding, and everybody else has said, I don't see it, what we decided to do for the tribe is, Is everybody gets one of those. So if I'm the one that sees it. Shane Parrish: One per year, one per career. Josh …”