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.

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why aren't all 181 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

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Eric Ries: Vibe coding will cause a Chernobyl-style disaster
“Like this, the vibe coding era is gonna be remembered for a Chernobyl style disaster is my prediction. People are vibe coding software that they do not understand. And it's only a matter of time with all the hype that's being poured into this right now. It is …”
Eric Ries May 30, 2026 ▶ 15:34 #2307 Eric Ries: Why Anthropic Won and How To Build Incurruptible companies
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: Small YC startups routinely hit $20M revenue in 20 months
“We're seeing routinely YC companies with 10 or 20 people get to 10 or twenty million dollars a year in revenue in 10 or 20 months. And that's like literally never happened before in software.”
Garry Tan Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 12:00 #2281 Garry Tan: Y Combinator Startups Growing 5X Faster – Here’s What Changed
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: YC startups average 10% weekly revenue growth over 12-week batches
“The average rate at which YC companies grow their revenue during the YC batch, which is a 12 week process, is a 10% per week on average. I mean, some of the batches have been growing 15, 20% a week, but it's been at least 10% a week for more than a year.”
Garry Tan Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 12:14 #2281 Garry Tan: Y Combinator Startups Growing 5X Faster – Here’s What Changed
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ries: Developers investing in craftsmanship will run circles around vibe coders
“I think in the long run, people who invest now in craftsmanship, in the understanding of software principles, architectural principles, artistic principles, whatever the thing is, are going to be so much better off. They're going to wind up being like incredib…”
Eric Ries May 30, 2026 ▶ 21:12 #2307 Eric Ries: Why Anthropic Won and How To Build Incurruptible companies
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Polsia is operating at a $10M annual run rate
“Ten million run rate.”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 1:01 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Polsia month-one customer churn is around 50%
“The churn is like around 50% on month one”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 2:26 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ben Cera: Polsia loses roughly 50% of users in month two
“So month two last time I checked was also, yeah I don't know how they go to the numbers, though, but anyways yeah, month last time I checked was like, was another 50%.”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 4:46 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Top Polsia company made $3K–$4K; 10% made at least $1
“Like the max revenue I saw in the company is like a few thousand dollars, like three, three, 4000 dollars, right? There's 10% of companies that made at least a dollar.”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 15:08 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cheney: Founders have a five-year window to start AI implementation businesses
“I had somebody asked me the other day, how many more years do you think this type of business could be launched and started? And my answer was five.”
Jon Cheney Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 49:20 #2304 “I make $4.5 million implementing AI”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Eliason: AI agents will be the internet's biggest consumers within years
“We are entering into a new era of internet commerce and internet like interactions where within a few years, the biggest transactors, the biggest consumers on the internet are going to be AI agents.”
Nat Eliason Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 30:59 #2301 How Nat Eliason’s OpenClaw earned $177,417
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Pulsia's AI communicates with investors autonomously via email
“And on the, on this specific stunt, AI today is like talking to my, to investors autonomously via email.”
Ben Cera Mar 2, 2026 ▶ 26:00 #2298 This AI generates $689K
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cera: AI will progress to autonomous agents trading directly with agents
“There's a second phase that's darker, which is like agents selling to agents because now the AIs know what they want. So that gets weird. I haven't really thought through too much, but in that phase of the business, if it's two LLM selling to each other, servi…”
Ben Cera Mar 2, 2026 ▶ 52:10 #2298 This AI generates $689K
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Mohrer: AI puts software abstraction layers and niche SaaS tools at risk
“The notion of abstraction layers, I think are at risk from AI. So what do I mean by that? Whereas I previously like use a SAS tool that does a certain thing to achieve a goal. Now I just asked the AI to build it from scratch. And it's like, I'm not gonna repla…”
Josh Mohrer Feb 3, 2026 ▶ 27:25 #2296 The $7 Million Vibe Coded App
Prediction Not checkable as stated
AI will soon run PressW projects from sales to completion autonomously
“Technically speaking, I think we are approaching the point where our business could go from one sales call to a finished project. With very, very little human in the loop, basically just prompting a nudge.”
Tarun Thummala Jan 12, 2026 ▶ 39:34 #2293 $2 million / year AI engineering firm
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Apfelbaum: Tony Robbins sells an AI course with a GPT that "sucks"
“Tony Robbins just came out with an AI course, and then I join his AI course, and he's not teaching anything that's super valuable in there, and people pay a thousand dollars to learn how to create a custom GPT that, by the way, sucks, so I'm in his community, …”
Joe Apfelbaum Dec 30, 2025 ▶ 28:57 #2291 He keeps launching AI businesses
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Santos: Zero-cost AI will create media made entirely for self-consumption
“I'm more of a believer that there's going to be sort of new behaviors that you can't see just yet. And this is one of them, right? Which is if cost near zero, then literally everyone can do it. But if everyone can do it, then of course, you know, the, who's go…”
Ricardo Vice Santos Dec 29, 2025 ▶ 14:30 #2290 He’s building an AI media empire
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Santos: OpenAI's Sora is reportedly burning $15 million per day
“This is why it's kind of known that, you know, Sora, you know, OpenAI Sora is literally burning, it's been said to be burning fifteen million dollars per day, right, on the app, essentially with people like playing with the video.”
Ricardo Vice Santos Dec 29, 2025 ▶ 24:53 #2290 He’s building an AI media empire
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Foster: Zapier will likely always rely on external LLMs
“I think, you know, we will probably always depend on you know, external LLMs for large parts of this.”
Wade Foster Dec 19, 2025 ▶ 24:43 #2289 Building companies using Zapier’s AI automations
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singla: Freshness timestamps boost LLM surfacing probability by 25%
“All LLMs give, there's a 25% probability that your content will get surfaced up better if you map out freshness of content.”
Anirudh Singla Nov 17, 2025 ▶ 9:40 #2286 Pepper: AI + people = > $10 million
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lieberman says Tenex's top output-based engineer will make $1M next year
“Our clients pay us based on output, and our engineers are paid on output as well. And the reason that is so valuable is we can hire truly the best engineers I've ever worked with, because just as an example, like our best engineer will make a million bucks in …”
Alex Lieberman Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 5:40 #2284 Why is Morning Brew’s founder selling “AI Transformation”?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: Anthropic's Claude Code team uses AI to write 95% of codebase
“The Claude Code team apparently writes, 95% of their code is written by Claude, which means very directly that each engineer working on Claude Code themselves is doing the work of 20 people.”
Garry Tan Oct 17, 2025 ▶ 19:11 #2281 Garry Tan: Y Combinator Startups Growing 5X Faster – Here’s What Changed
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shim: Microsoft Copilot launch drove 15x surge in Teams usage on Read.ai
“We've seen more than a 15 X increase in Microsoft team meetings that we've measured since Microsoft Copilot launched for teams meetings.”
David Shim Sep 15, 2025 ▶ 37:15 #2280 Read.ai is adding 50k users per day
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shim: 1% to 2% of Colombia's entire population uses Read.ai daily
“We have about one to two percent of Columbia's population using read on a daily basis.”
David Shim Sep 15, 2025 ▶ 41:00 #2280 Read.ai is adding 50k users per day
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shim: Detecting AI-generated content will be almost impossible in 1-2 years
“I do believe in about the next year or two, it is going to be almost impossible to figure out, is this AI generated or not?”
David Shim Sep 15, 2025 ▶ 46:39 #2280 Read.ai is adding 50k users per day
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Herold: Zip2 seed investors deemed Elon Musk 'unbackable' and preferred Kimbal
“And two years later, I was a reference in Elon and their very first round of funding for zip too. They had one employee and I had to explain why to back Kimble must because no one wanted to back Elon cause he was unbackable. He dropped out of aeronautical engi…”
Cameron Herold Nov 22, 2017 ▶ 13:39 #1524 When does a startup founder need a COO?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Prediction: Messenger will replace email and websites within seven years
“Like, the potential of bots and of messenger is still by far 90%, 95% of it is untapped. We think that messenger is gonna become the central hub of communication between businesses and customers, and in a few years, three, five, seven years, it's gonna capture…”
Mikael Yang May 26, 2017 ▶ 23:08 #1453 The future of chat (and interacting with your customers)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Polsia's monthly Anthropic bill reached $1.5M
“It was 1.5 million last month.”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 25:52 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Polsia charged $1 per task while compute cost $30-$50
“And so, so I would pay, I would, you know, I would charge the customer a dollar a task or something, and then it would cost me 30 dollars, 50 dollars per task.”
Ben Cera May 27, 2026 ▶ 27:04 #2306 Polsia: AI Agent + Zero Employees = $10M Run Rate
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cheney: Replit has handled every software development task thrown at it
“I feel like it's a little bit more accessible to developers, and that's why I just built my processes on top of Replit, and so I'm just so dang good with Replit. I've never run into something that Replit couldn't do, and I've never felt the need to go try othe…”
Jon Cheney Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 46:21 #2304 “I make $4.5 million implementing AI”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Eliason: AI agent Felix generated nearly $200K within two months
“And so at this scale where Felix has built, you know, a business that's done almost 200 grand in two months, like now it's starting to make sense to split out some of his capabilities to other agents, but we take a very, very minimal approach to it.”
Nat Eliason Mar 27, 2026 ▶ 20:26 #2301 How Nat Eliason’s OpenClaw earned $177,417
Prediction Not checkable as stated
David: Startups building CLIs for AI agents will win big
“So I, this is, I think, the future, how much it's weird, the futures of all this open Claw and agents and stuff is the CLI. People that are going to build startups with a CLI, Are going to win big.”
Nevo David Mar 11, 2026 ▶ 11:51 #2300 Revenue jumped when he sold to AI agents
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wade Foster: AI agent skills will become cheap commodities like WordPress themes
“I could see skills kind of having, like, a business model like that, where it's like, you could buy, you know, buy one for five bucks, 10 bucks, there would be a bunch of free skills out there. You know, it's, it feels kind of like a very commodity thing at a …”
Wade Foster Mar 9, 2026 ▶ 12:18 #2299 Zapier is using AI to sell to AI
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cera: Top-earning business on Pulsia generates around $50 MRR
“So I mean the company with the highest revenue is like around 50 dollars MR.”
Ben Cera Mar 2, 2026 ▶ 31:43 #2298 This AI generates $689K
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gil: Software is shifting from seat pricing to purchasing units of labor
“We're shifting from a world where you're buying monthly packages or you're buying seats for certain types of software and you're effectively buying units of labor, right? That's this agentic shift.”
Elad Gil Feb 24, 2026 ▶ 23:15 #2297 Elad Gil backed 40 unicorns. This is next
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Mohrer operates Wave AI entirely as a solo team
“You're talking to the whole team. There have been some people that have come in and out over the course of the now three years to help with some higher end engineering work, some of the marketing stuff, but by and large, I've done all the engineering. I do all…”
Josh Mohrer Feb 3, 2026 ▶ 1:41 #2296 The $7 Million Vibe Coded App
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Walls: AI will build apps like YouTube in one prompt by 2027
“I think maybe in like a year it'll be able to do that. But right now you still got to kind of approach it like a programmer”
Pat Walls Jan 23, 2026 ▶ 15:04 #2294 He Claude Code: Build Me a YouTube Replacement
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Thummala: Businesses will eventually run hundreds of AI agents internally
“Today, most businesses have zero or one agent or AI integrated into their business. If that in the future, I'm sure that they're going to have hundreds of agents running within their business, and that unlocks an entirely new class of problems.”
Tarun Thummala Jan 12, 2026 ▶ 35:21 #2293 $2 million / year AI engineering firm
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Matze: Zero Published Research On Fine-Tuning LLMs For Voice Sales
“There's literally no research out there on this topic. Zero.”
Evgeny Matze Jan 8, 2026 ▶ 18:29 #2292 AI Automation that makes cold calls
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Apfelbaum: $3.80 ad CAC converts into $3,600-per-year Evai SaaS subscriptions
“We ran an ad asking people if they want the 99 hacks, And that ad cost me three dollars and 80 cents per person, and a large percentage of the people buy the hacks and then buy Evie AI Pro, which is 3600 dollars a year.”
Joe Apfelbaum Dec 30, 2025 ▶ 13:01 #2291 He keeps launching AI businesses
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Apfelbaum: AI lets agency handle 100 clients without hiring new staff
“When I started Ajax Union, I used to hire one new employee for every 10 small businesses I would take on. That was a very, very expensive thing. Very expensive thing. Now I could take on a hundred customers, and I don't have to hire anybody. I could take on a …”
Joe Apfelbaum Dec 30, 2025 ▶ 25:36 #2291 He keeps launching AI businesses
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Santos: A subscription-only checkout converted better than offering one-off purchases
“Do an A-B test, you know, have a funnel with subscription only and the funnel where you give both choices and then see what the conversion does. And lo and behold, the one with subscription actually increased conversion because it reduced that because again, y…”
Ricardo Vice Santos Dec 29, 2025 ▶ 37:30 #2290 He’s building an AI media empire
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hastings: QuickBooks Lacks Automated Checks and Requires Manual Data Verification
“And the way QuickBooks is set up is it just makes it really easy for you to make those mistakes, because it doesn't have all these checks built in. It's really just sort of a blank slate you can write into, and the only way to verify that the data is correct i…”
Helen Hastings Dec 17, 2025 ▶ 9:58 #2288 She had people do AI’s work
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tossell: AI Agents Will Worsen Founder Context Switching and Productivity Anxiety
“Like, it feels like it's actually, you can work on even more stuff now, so actually people are going to get worse off feeling like they should be really productive, but actually feeling like, I've done absolutely nothing this week except for I tried to do thes…”
Ben Tossell Dec 8, 2025 ▶ 6:38 #2287 AI made a “no code” founder into a coder
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singla: Web traffic is declining for 80% of websites globally
“80% of the websites in the world, traffic's been going down.”
Anirudh Singla Nov 17, 2025 ▶ 14:38 #2286 Pepper: AI + people = > $10 million
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Singla: Search results will soon favor short-form videos over written articles
“Telling you these videos very soon are going to start popping up on search instead of that article you were reading from, you know, maybe booking.com.”
Anirudh Singla Nov 17, 2025 ▶ 20:35 #2286 Pepper: AI + people = > $10 million
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ethan Smith: 8% of Webflow's signups come from LLMs
“Eight percent of their signups come from LMs.”
Ethan Smith Nov 11, 2025 ▶ 1:41 #2285 AEO: How to make ChatGPT promote you
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lieberman: Service businesses will shift away from hourly billing starting in engineering
“We don't charge hourly. Like, we have a fundamental belief that service businesses are going to move away from hourly work, and we think it's starting with engineering.”
Alex Lieberman Nov 5, 2025 ▶ 5:31 #2284 Why is Morning Brew’s founder selling “AI Transformation”?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dan Shipper: Big opportunity will come from unbundling ChatGPT into purpose-built apps
“And I think there's something very similar happening and going to happen with AI is people have to use ChatGPT and like realize that this new sort of workflow is possible. And then there will be a big opportunity to unbundle those workflows into purpose-built …”
Dan Shipper Oct 30, 2025 ▶ 31:05 #2283 How Dan Shipper uses AI to build artisanal AI apps
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