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
Jacobs only hires 'raw capitalists' who are absolutely motivated by money
“I want my company, people who are absolutely motivated by money, who are raw capitalists, who are people who want to make money for themselves and their families, and that we can figure out a way that by being part of our company, they can help us make money f…”
Weinberg: Harvey abandoned a $700M acquisition after securing $500M equity
“The idea was basically we were gonna buy this company that ended up, it was 10 times bigger than us, people-wise and about the same, like, we were gonna, trying to buy the company For the same, a little bit higher valuation than we are valued at. We tried to b…”
Brockman: OpenAI hides chain of thought to preserve faithfulness and prevent distillation
“So there's two reasons. One is to think about distillation, but the second, in some ways more important, is that we had this insight when we first developed the reasoning paradigm that it gives us a interpretability mechanism we had not been anticipating, beca…”
Liemandt: Alpha Pays Middle Schoolers $1,000 for Top 1% Academic Performance
“So in our middle school, we'll pay any kid a thousand dollars to become top one percent.”
Poilievre: Canadian Government Will Cut Foreign Aid
“And, you know, I, I've said very clearly, I will be cutting foreign aid.”
Poilievre: Canada should eliminate the Temporary Foreign Worker Program entirely
“Stop bringing in temporary foreign workers. Get rid of that program altogether.”
Kahneman: Unconscious priming studies from 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' failed empirical replication
“Priming, and unconscious priming, and so, just hasn't held up in replication, and I believed it, and I wrote it as if it were true, because, you know, the evidence suggested it, and in fact, I thought that you had to accept it, because that was published evide…”
Poilievre: Conservative government will completely eliminate Canada's carbon tax
“So I will get rid of the entire tax for everyone and for real.”
Poilievre Plans to Cut Canada's Foreign Aid Budget
“I am going to cut back on foreign aid. I don't think that we should be sending seven or eight billion dollars out of our country at a time when we can't house our people or provide drinking water and First Nations reserves.”
Poilievre promises to repeal Bills C-69 and C-48 to speed project approvals
“And of course, we're going to get rid of the, you know, development law, C-sixty-nine and C-forty, Eight, so that we can rapidly approve massive natural resource projects, nuclear plants, data centers, the associated power stations to feed them electricity.”
Poilievre pledges to completely repeal the Bill C-11 internet censorship law
“I would repeal C-Eleven. That's the censorship law, which gives extraordinary powers to the CRTC to control what content Is seen to boost certain types of content that they deem to be Canadian in nature, although there's no real definition of that, and then di…”
Poilievre pledges three-strikes law barring parole for repeat violent offenders
“I will be repealing the catch-and-release law, C-seventy-five. I'll repeal house arrest for serious offenses. I'm going to be bringing in a three-strikes-your-out law. If you get convicted of three serious violent offenses, you will be permanently ineligible f…”
Pershing Square Bought $2.05 Billion in Equities While Unwinding COVID Hedge
“We'd invested two billion fifty million between March 12th and March 18th at 1230 in the stock market buying, you know, additions, adding to our portfolio, buying, repurchasing Starbucks. We had sold half the hedge for a 1,000,000,300, a little more than half …”
Jacobs structures executive equity to double-vest above the 85th percentile
“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.”
Nejatian mandated Opendoor return to office within one week or exit
“So Open Door had gone fully remote. So at nine a.m. That Monday, I told the entire company, hey, Open Door is going to be back in the office next Monday. If you don't plan to be in one of these offices, we appreciate your help, but you're no longer with us.”
Nejatian rewrote Opendoor's career page to explicitly deter uncommitted candidates
“So the first week in Open Door, I changed our career page. Our career page used to say something along the lines of, this is a happy place to work where we all care about each other, and by the way, here are all of our ERGs. Opendoor's career page now says, th…”
Nejatian: Opendoor built AI exoskeletons making employees three to four times faster
“We have built the AI exoskeleton around every human being at Opendoor, such that they can be three, four X more efficient than everyone else.”
Nejatian killed two profitable Opendoor business lines in his first four weeks
“In my first four weeks, I killed two entire business lines. Opendoor used to have, essentially, we provided general contractor services to other companies, which was, it was a profitable business for us, but it was not the mission of our company. Our job isn't…”
Pincus: I refuse to hold one-on-one meetings because they breed politics
“One lesson I learned that really, I hate management, so I don't do one-on-ones. My friend Bing told me that Jeff Bezos wouldn't ever do one-on-ones, because he created politics, and it was a huge waste of his time. I was like, I love that. No one-on-ones”
Tangen: Norway's Fund Voted Against Musk's Pay Package Over Alignment
“Well, the team thought it was too, too big and didn't have the right alignment.”
Morgan Housel Keeps 20% to 30% of His Net Worth in Cash
“It's probably 20 to 30%. Maybe it's high teens in that in that zone. And it's been like that over the course of big changes in my net worth. I've always added about like that.”
Stack: Dick's Sporting Goods finances all operations from earnings and carries no long-term debt
“I will always be a little paranoid and insist that we finance all we do from our own earnings. It seems to me that's the only way to control your own destiny. The banks can't take away your business if you don't owe them any money. So we carry no long-term deb…”
Petersen barred an external executive hire from making decisions for 90 days
“I've only hired one person, actually, from external in the last couple years, and I spent just, like, loads of time with him. And I told him he's not allowed to make any decisions for 90 days.”
Finkelstein: Shopify expects employees to test AI before hiring additional headcount
“The expectation is before you go and try to hire another person for your team, you ask yourself and you test whether or not some sort of AI tool can actually do it better for you. And if it can, that's what you should be doing.”
Hastings: Netflix eliminated expense policies because enforcement costs exceed waste
“And we got rid of all of that, and we just had to travel as you would on your own nickel. And you know, I'm sure there's, you know, occasionally some expense that gets done that shouldn't be, but compared to the cost of enforcement, it's tiny.”
Garry Tan: My AI existential risk 'p(doom)' score is 1%
“My PDOOM score is one percent. Like, I'm not totally, you know, unworried, right?”
Poilievre: Conservative plan offers zero capital gains tax for domestic reinvestment
“One idea that I think a lot of your listeners would find interesting is that I want to pass what I call the Canada first reinvestment tax cut, zero capital gains when you reinvest in Canada.”
Poilievre: Commits to 15% Income Tax Cut for Average Canadian Workers
“So I'm committing to lower income tax by 15% on the average worker and senior.”
Poilievre Plans Dollar-for-Dollar Rule Requiring Equivalent Spending Cuts
“I would bring in a hard dollar-for-dollar law that says any new dollar spending needs to be met with an equal dollar of savings.”
Poilievre commits to 25% federal regulation cut and two-for-one rule
“So our commitment is cut 25% and then bring in a two for one rule overseen by the auditor general, not by the government.”
Poilievre plans national energy corridor with pre-approved pipeline zones
“So I intend to get these shovel-ready zones to create a national energy corridor with pre-approval for pipelines.”
Poilievre: Federal Government Will Transfer Revenue Gains to Provinces Removing Trade Barriers
“I'm committed to sit down with the provinces and say, look, I'll make you a deal. We can calculate how much GDP boost we get every time you knock down a trade barrier. And that means more federal revenues. I will give you those revenues. So if, say, Saskatchew…”
Poilievre intends to introduce tax breaks for low-emission manufacturing
“So I want to bring in a tax break for companies that produce goods below emission levels, like a tax break for investment over at the aluminum, the Rio Tinto plant in Saguenay.”
Wolfe: Lux banned TikTok internally and helped push for its divestment
“TikTok, of course, a huge one, right? We banned it years ago, right when it had become TikTok from Musical.ly, in part because at the time, I seemed like a conspiratorial nut saying, I don't trust this with the Chinese Communist Party having control over this.…”
Karr: Orbis avoids investing in attention-seeking and high-lifestyle CEOs
“Generally not. I mean, it's a part of the mosaic of, you know, what will be the driver. I mean, it's an interesting thing with CEOs are like, what are the characteristics that allow one to be in that seat? And they're not always correlated with the skills that…”
Repeated disagreements with Amazon ultimately led to Mackey's retirement
“I had my share of disagreements with Amazon. I fought with them many times, and ultimately that led to me to retire.”
Johnson: Nearly half of my close associates exhibited bad or illegal behavior
“A very large number, like almost like 50%, have ended up doing something to me that is that is unambiguous bad behavior. In some cases, illegal behavior.”
Gupta: VCs sent wrong signals for years by inflating startup valuations
“Investors, you know all of us, we sent many of the wrong signals for a couple of years where people were rewarded. And so they could look at something of like, what are you talking about? My business keeps on getting valued higher and higher and higher.”
Shopify intentionally manages out employees who fail to take risks
“People actually are performance mashed out, euphemism to if they don't take risks. So it's actually for your career, a job fair is actually more risky to not aim high.”
Lütke: Job requisitions exist only as lures for great talent
“The only reason why we create roles and recs is because they are, like, lures to great people. The interview process is not a process of thinking, can you do this role? Can we slot you into this role? It is, will the job fair be better for you being here?”
Mulally maintained 13 direct reports to include every operational discipline
“I always have like maybe 12 or 13 people reporting to me, which a lot of people always wondered how I did that, but I had to have Every discipline need to be on that team, because if not, then if you have the haves and the have-nots on the leadership team, you…”
Andreessen: a16z Uses Single Trigger Puller Model Without Investment Committee Vetoes
“So our model is what we call single trigger puller. There's no vote. There's no investment committee. There's no override. There's no, like, I don't, you know, I formally sign off on all, you know, Ben and I formally sign off on all the investments, but like, …”
Immelt admits he helped cause GE's rock bottom during the 2008 crisis
“During the financial crisis, We were at rock bottom, and I helped cause that, and my board knew that, but my team was always with me.”
Tavel: Benchmark deliberately limits itself to five equal GPs and no delegation
“At Benchmark, our model of investing is that we have decided that we're not going to scale our business. You know, we haven't grown our fund size, and it's just five general partners right now, and it's a kind of this rare structure of an equal partnership. An…”
Greenblatt: Position sizes are determined by downside risk, not upside potential
“The biggest positions I've had are not my best ones. The ones that I think will go up five or 10 times. I'm really looking down, not up when I take a big position. So in other words, I will size the position larger if I don't think I can lose much money.”
Chamath: Imposter syndrome led to lying in early Social Capital days
“And then in the early parts of social capital, I actually think I reverted. And I was lying more again, because I was filled with a new level and a new kind of insecurity around, you know, I felt like an imposter in venture capital. I felt like, you know, I di…”
Ackman: Pershing Square held $71B notional CDS hedge committing $500M annually
“And we at the peak had seventy billion, actually seventy-one billion of notional insurance that cost about an average of 70 basis points per annum. So about five hundred million dollars. We committed to make five hundred million dollars a year in payments for …”
Bill Ackman Turned $27 Million in CDS Premiums Into $2.6 Billion
“We ended up spending twenty seven million on premium because we built a seventy billion dollar CDS position beginning in the third week of February, you probably had it completely on by the early, you know, first few days of March, and we started taking it off…”