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 12 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
Most successful people are just harnessed anxiety disorders
“I like to say like most successful people are just an anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.”
Living in Victoria protects Wilkinson from mimetic status competition
“The people that I'm surrounded with are mostly people who have chosen to live in Victoria because of the lifestyle. Or are completely disconnected from business. And so while I've got a wonderful network of amazing people like you and people in New York and LA…”
Founders should hire imperfect candidates quickly rather than delaying execution
“God, you should have just hired the wrong person first, and then you can learn, you know, you can let them go if it's not a fit, but just get moving. So many people they try and use that saying that carpenters use measure twice, cut once, but they just end up …”
High-dopamine stimulation destroys baseline pleasure and causes misery
“If you eat chocolate cake once a month, it's really pleasurable. If you eat chocolate cake once a week, it's pretty good. If you eat it daily, it's okay. But then your brain starts demanding it hourly. And if you do that, it's just miserable. And I think we al…”
Mimetic desire drives wealthy people to envy instead of appreciation
“And I think that's mimetic desire at its worst. It's envy, and it's driving people to not appreciate what they have, no matter how much they have.”
Entrepreneurs possess an inherent drive to achieve unnecessarily
“I find every entrepreneur has that inherent drive where they have to achieve, and even when it's not really necessary to achieve.”
Holding company founders stay involved from an addiction to being needed
“The way that I've structured my business is that I am ultimately just making decisions around capital allocation, and there's not that many to make a year, and so I should be able, technically, I should be able to remove myself from a lot of that stuff, but I …”
Later-stage CEOs should have previously run a business double the size
“So what I look for in a later stage company profile is I say, I want to hire someone who's really kind of done this before in a similar or adjacent industry. And they've run a business that's at least double the size.”
Wilkinson uses babysitting and cruise ship tests to evaluate prospective CEOs
“The heuristic that my business partner Chris and I use is, would I let this person babysit my kids, right? Or would I be okay if I got stuck on a cruise ship talking to this person for like three days, right?”
Publicly announcing new projects creates social accountability that drives execution
“So it's those kind of, I think a lot of those kind of hacks of like not letting ideas die on the vine, forcing it to become real creating social shame if I don't actually execute on it. And again, that's a double-edged sword as well because you get into consis…”