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 41 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
Halligan: HubSpot would have failed if I only worked 40 hours weekly
“And if I said, oh man, I wish I'd just put in a 40 hours a week back then, I wouldn't be sitting on this podcast with you. We wouldn't have pulled it off. And I know that's not the popular answer. I'll probably get pilloried on Twitter for saying that. I think…”
McChrystal: With Al Qaeda's Background, I Might Have Reached Identical Conclusions
“Rather than hate the Al Qaeda operatives because they were bloodthirsty and they would do horrible things, you had to step back and say, if I'd had their life journey and their perspective, I might very well Have the exact same conclusions and activities as th…”
Nejatian: Opendoor would have died without roughly a dozen key workers
“Yeah, honestly, Opendoor would have died had it not been for maybe a dozen people.”
Brockman: GPT-4 met previous AGI criteria despite clearly not being AGI
“It clearly wasn't an AGI. It was lacking something, but just if you'd describe your criteria for AGI two months prior, it probably would have been compatible with what GPT-IV was”
Eastman: ChatGPT could do $150,000 of data science work in a weekend
“So I probably spent maybe a 150,000 dollars in hiring data scientists to clean and to produce dashboards for Beyond Tells. ChatGPT. I could have done it all in a weekend.”
Google would thrive even if all ad targeting and data collection vanished
“And if all targeting and data collection went away tomorrow, Google would still be in fantastic shape.”
Weinberg: Hiring senior executives early would have been a huge mistake
“I think I was told to hire senior executives very, very early on, and I refused, and then I refused too long. I refused, like, I'd say about six months too long, but if I would have taken the advice when it was given, I think it would have been a huge mistake.”
Housel: America's Non-Fascist Great Depression Recovery Was a Top 10% Tail Outcome
“The outcome that we, that actually happened was like a top 10% outcome. It easily could have, if not should have, turned out as it did in much of Europe, where after the Great Depression, the people's response was like, maybe we should give fascism a try. Mayb…”
Wozniak: HP would have botched the personal computer anyway
“I see now that HP would have done it wrong anyway”
Firestone realized his entire sales force was unnecessary during 1919's boom
“Harvey later realized they would have shown as startling an increase had we abolished our whole sales force, closed all our branches and dealers, and just sent out our tires and freight cars to be thrown off on sidings and taken away by clamoring buyers.”
Wolfe: Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had nukes
“If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, Putin wouldn't have invaded.”
James Clear Lost Roughly 3x Per Copy Traditionally Publishing 'Atomic Habits'
“I remember talking to James Clear and we were talking about how much he would have made had he gone the self-publishing route with Atomic Habits, and I did the math, and it was like, ah, it's about three X more per copy.”
Housel: Warren Buffett Would Be Unknown Had He Retired at Age 60
“If Buffett had retired at age 60 or 50, like a normal person would have in that situation, you would have never heard of him.”
Srinivasan: Lighter 2010s regulation would have yielded 1B sequenced genomes
“If everybody, if we had not held back personal genomics in the 2010, if we had not so heavily regulated it, We would have a billion people with personal GM, just like we have a billion people with, or hundreds of millions, at least with fitness trackers, right…”
Immelt: GE struggled to survive 2008 without Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke
“You know, everybody likes to dump on government, but, you know, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, they did a great job. You know, I'd say without that kind of sure-handed leadership we would have had a real challenge to kind of making it through.”
Ridley: Without modern communication tools, governments couldn't have imposed COVID lockdowns
“If we didn't have all these social contact tools, then maybe we'd never have locked down. You know, we just couldn't do it. In which case, of course, the epidemic would have been worse. But to some extent, as it were the existence of the video conferencing and…”
Ridley: Search engines and light bulbs were inevitable without their famous inventors
“You rerun the tape without Sergey Brin meeting Larry Page, without Thomas Edison, and you still get light bulbs, you still get search engines.”
Schwarzman: Blackstone would have been buried holding all EOP assets
“If we had held all of it, we probably would have been buried.”
Koskinas: Alexander the Great would have conquered Rome with 15 more years
“I think if he had another 10, 15 years of life the map of the world and world history would have been very different. Probably we will never had the Roman Empire. Because he would have conquered Rome. If you have the tactical and strategic genius of Alexander,…”
Koskinas: Preserved pre-1960s Athens would be as beautiful as Prague
“If we were wise and we have kept Athens as it was in the sixties, we would have been a city as beautiful as Prague, even more beautiful.”
Parrish: Standard Oil Could Not Have Grown Massive Without Flagler
“Ask anyone today who built Standard Oil, and people will say Rockefeller. They should say Rockefeller and Flagler. The company could not have grown nearly as large without both of them.”
Housel: Jeremy Grantham Would Be a Momentum Investor Without His Early Bear Market
“Everything we know about psychology is like early experiences leave scars. They stick around for a long time. So you can easily imagine an alternative history of where Jeremy Grantham started his career during a tech bubble and became a momentum investor, like…”
Cool: A Short-Term Horizon Would Have Damaged Pampered Chef Turnaround
“And I think that if my task was to go sell that business in three or four years, I don't know if I would have done all the same things. I probably would have made some shorter term decisions that ultimately probably would have created less value in the busines…”
Petersen: We could have become Shopify with our early e-commerce software
“Like if we'd have been smart, like Toby was, we had to sell subscriptions to our little platform and maybe could have been Shopify, but instead we just like bought motorcycles and sold them on eBay motors and Actually through live car auctions, our own website…”
Nooyi: PepsiCo Would Be Shrinking Without Reacquiring North American Bottlers
“Had we not bought the bottlers back at that time in North America, we'd still be fighting with the bottlers, and the pie would be shrinking. Because we're not serving the consumer, we're fighting each other.”
Early auto avoided setbacks precisely because bankers refused to issue debt
“It is a fortunate thing for the industry that it was not favored by the bankers, Harvey reflected, else it would have been financed by bond issues, and there have been several periods when these bond issues might have been foreclosed, which would have set back…”
Taylor: Google Maps Would Have Been Far Less Interactive Without Desktop Precursor
“And I think that by having the goalposts so far down the field, because they had just started with this Windows app, which was sort of a quirk of Lars and Jens, just like technical choices, we made much bolder technical bets than we would have otherwise. I thi…”
Investors who sat out the 1999 bubble missed Google and Salesforce
“And if you decided not to invest in that time, you would have missed out on Google, Salesforce, PayPal, Zappos, OpenTable. There are a lot of great companies that were still founded during that time, and Paying market prices for those investments would have be…”
Mackey would aggressively compete with Erewhon if still Whole Foods CEO
“I would love to be competing more aggressively with Erewhon if I was still the CEO.”
Holiday: Resolving Cuban Missile Crisis was impossible without stretching standoff to 13 days
“Think about the Cuban Missile Crisis. You know, he was able to string out a nuclear standoff over 13 days, but it was only by stretching it out, by using the time, by talking about it, by talking through it that he allows not just his own advisors to sort of s…”
Snead: Rams likely would not have won Super Bowl without Von Miller
“We probably do not win the Super Bowl. If we do not trade for Von Miller, not necessarily for the sacks or him harassing the QB.”
Ohno: A smarter, predictable racing strategy could have doubled my career results
“Your actual results could have been two X of what they ever were. Had you been a smarter, more predictable athlete?”
Ohno: Cutting off unproductive peers was necessary to make the Olympic team
“Had I not done that, I, we wouldn't even be having this conversation today, because I don't believe I would even have made that team.”
McLean: As an Enron employee, I probably would have been a believer
“And if I had ended up at Enron, would I have been a whistleblower, or would I have been a believer? And I like to think the former, but I suspect the truth is probably the latter”
Maples: A $250K seed check in Airbnb would be worth $1B
“Had I invested 250,000 dollars in Airbnb at the time, it'd now be worth a billion dollars.”
Maples: Cheap drones would not exist without iPhone and Android scale
“So you wouldn't have drones as cheap as they are if it wasn't for the iPhone and for Android. Because now you have cameras and sensors and chips that never would have been built just for drones, but now are mass producing to be harnessed by drones and by other…”
Stratechery would not have survived if launched five years earlier
“I could write the exact same things, the exact same sort of person I was, and I've come along 10 years earlier, or five years earlier, and would not be successful. Yeah, absolutely. I'd be writing for like, you know, some like, magazine or whatever, make, you …”
Sutherland: Video conferencing would have sold better framed as executive phone calls
“Now, if you'd made video conferencing the way that chief executives made phone calls, I think you could have sold it much, much more. You could have made it the, you know something aspirational rather than you know, a poor as that substitute for something bett…”
Segal: Post-exit founders should immediately secure an office to maintain routine
“First thing I would have done, I would have gotten a nice office. You know, I didn't have that. I stopped and I didn't have any, I had nowhere to go in the mornings, right? I went from having this big office with a hundred plus people who, you know, with my na…”