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 20 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
Wilson: Data is only defensible if it is proprietary first-party data
“The only defensibility that you can get with data is defensibility around your own data. If you're getting data from somebody else, it's not defensible, because they can give it to somebody else as well.”
Wilson: Google search holds an almost insurmountable data advantage
“I would even argue that Google benefits from network effects and the data that they have that, in their search business, I think, almost an insurmountable advantage because of the data asset that they have. And the network effects around that.”
Wilson: Software alone lacks defensibility without proprietary data and networks
“Shows the problem of thinking that software is any kind of defensible advantage. I don't think it is. But if there was something about The data, ah, and the network around that software that made it so that it wouldn't be easy to leave the first company and go…”
Wilson: Startups should build platform services on data rather than sell raw data
“I don't think selling the data is the right thing to do. I think the right thing to do is to build services on your platform that take advantage of the data that let the people who might buy the data from you instead come and build businesses And transact on y…”
Wilson: Consumer internet startups should build simple products before data science
“In consumer internet, even if big data and machine learning is going to be the thing that ultimately locks in your value proposition for the long haul, I don't think you get into the market and get the scale position that allows you to access that data with da…”
Wilson: USV will not invest in porn, spying, or gambling
“I won't invest in porn. I won't invest in spying. I won't invest in gambling. Those would be three things I wouldn't do.”
Wilson: Bootstrapping marketplaces with institutional users instead of grassroots is a mistake
“When entrepreneurs come in and say, We're gonna bootstrap you know, one side of our market, the demand side or the supply side, by going to institutions or going, you know, kind of bypassing the little guy and going to large chunks of supply or demand. That al…”
Wilson in 2013: All mobile and micropayments should run on Bitcoin
“So that's what's interesting to me right now in payments and it's not like mobile payments or micropayments. Like, to my mind, all that should be running on, on bitcoin.”
Wilson: User value and team quality matter more than early business models
“I don't care about the business model because we can tweak the business model. We can get the business model right. What I care about are do you have users and are they getting value out of your product and how much value they're getting out of your product an…”
Wilson: Machine learning hit a major inflection point around 2013
“I think that machine learning is, has hit an inflection point in the past few years artificial intelligence, machine learning, whatever we want to call it To the point where, ah, we're starting to see, ah, these, ah, dreams that we've had for 30 plus years in …”
Fred Wilson: Successful healthcare startups will bypass hospitals and insurance companies
“And I think what will work for us in healthcare is to service the doctors and the patients and ignore the hospitals and the, Insurance companies and all the big honkin' bureaucratic institutions in healthcare.”
Wilson: USV invested $2.5M in Indeed before its $1.4B acquisition
“We put two and a half million dollars into the company. That's all the money that they ever needed and They sold for a 1,000,000,004, you know, so you know, that's as good as it gets, really, in the venture business.”
Wilson: 5M teachers and 70M students use Edmodo in the US
“So today, four years later, five million teachers, seventy million students are using it in the K through 12 system here in the United States.”
Wilson: Bloomberg's main retention driver is native messaging, not market data
“The most important data which is the, Transactional and conversational messaging that goes on inside the platform is created natively for the platform and stays inside the platform. And I think that's the glue that keeps everybody on Bloomberg.”
Wilson: USV avoids investing in 'pitchforks and shovels' big data infrastructure
“We are not investors in companies that are providing the pitchforks and shovels for the big data business.”
Wilson: Three core differences define Twitter versus Facebook
“I think the important ones are default public versus default private follower versus friending. One-way follow model versus a two-way following model. And open fire hose versus closed fire hose. I think those three things tell you everything you need to know a…”
Fred Wilson: LendingClub operates at one-third the cost of traditional lenders
“Lending Club can do that at Maybe a third of the cost of what a traditional lender can do it at.”
Wilson discloses USV's early investment in crypto exchange Coinbase
“We're invested in a company, Coinbase, that does that stuff, and they're great, and I love it”
Wilson: USV thesis targets developer platforms like Twilio and MongoDB
“We have started to have a thesis around platforms that developers build on top of. Twilio SIF Science Firebase, and MongoDB. So we do like to invest in platforms for developers.”
Wilson: USV studied education for three years before investing in Duolingo
“We looked at education for about three years before we made our first education investment, and then we quickly made about five or six. So we have Edmodo, Duolingo, Codecademy, Skillshare, Stack Exchange, if you want to call that education.”