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 6,334 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 83 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
Ali: Bill Gurley yelled at founder over lost Andreessen Horowitz deal
“Friend of mine was raising money and got a term sheet from Andreessen Horowitz and Bill Gurley at Benchmark and went with the Andreessen Horowitz term sheet. And Bill Gurley was so mad that he called the founder up and like yelled at them for two hours. And se…”
Sam Parr: Elon Musk will face severe cancellation and Tesla will tank
“One, Elon Musk either dies or he or he gets canceled or he gets canceled in an incredibly like serious way. And Tesla stock completely tanks.”
Puri slams Chamath for profiting on SPACs while LPs lost money
“Chamath made money off of a bunch of his shitty SPACs because he's the promoter, and these funds manage billions of dollars, and they'll make hundreds of millions in fees along the way as a reward even if they lose their investors' money.”
Wilkinson: True value creation by Chamath Palihapitiya won't be clear for decades
“Chamath, we won't know if Chamath has actually built value for another 10 or 20 years. And frankly, like his, it's all very like secret. Cause I think a lot of his stuff is private. So we really have no clue how much money he has, how much money he made what's…”
Shaan Puri: Amouranth's business P&L is superior to MrBeast's
“If you just took the sort of like the face off the business, if I just showed you the PNL of both businesses, I think you would be like, well, I want her PNL, right? Because you're making almost as much money with way less expenses, with way less staff and ove…”
Rose predicts generative AI will make Fiverr completely non-existent
“Whether it be creative writing or I believe Fiverr as a company, it will just be non-existent. It's going to destroy the low end of the creative market initially and then work its way up the chain.”
Luckey: Private prison companies are incentivized to maximize nonviolent recidivism
“Those companies have a strong incentive to lobby for and perpetuate laws that
Incarcerate people for the longest period of time for the least serious crime.
In other words, they don't want murderers and terrorists.
They want nonviolent drug offenders who will …”
Luckey: The New York Times published a fabricated quote of mine
“The New York times posted a quote for me that I literally never said. And I told them like, Hey, you said that I said this, I never said that. They said, well, it's more or less what you said. We don't think the meeting is different.”
Luckey: The odds of a tactical nuclear weapon being used are high
“And so for that reason, I think this is a little contrarian and not everyone agrees, but I think that the odds of a tactical nuclear weapon are very high. It will not be used on the United States. It will not be used on a NATO ally. It'll probably be a tactica…”
Parr: Children born today will have more AI friends than humans
“Children born today are likely to have more AI friends than human friends. AI friends are going to be more reliable. I don't even know what that word, conciliatory. What's that mean? Agreeable and considerate. What does this mean? What does this mean for child…”
Enjeti: NIAID granted $600K to Peter Daszak in Anthony Fauci's final days
“Dr. Fauci on his waning days as the head of NIAID actually just granted a 600,000 dollar grant to the same individual for the same type of research, which possibly led to the escape of coronavirus from the Wuhan lab.”
Venture Capital Investing Is Totally Random and Functions Like Roulette
“I still think ventures totally random. I do it for fun off the side of my desk.”
Holiday: Peter Thiel's obsessive drive leads to poor political bets
“The problem is if you're the kind of person who it's like, I'm going to spend 10 years chasing down this media outlet when everyone is telling me not to do that. You're also the kind of person who can get sucked into other things that I think are going to pay …”
Holiday: Shopify will become the biggest company in the world
“This is why I think Shopify is gonna be, like, the biggest company in the world, because they, like, let people do that.”
Noah Kagan: Brex and Ramp are overvalued $10B branded credit card companies
“I think some of the stupidest companies that are big that I don't get is like Brex or Ramp. They're like credit card branded companies that are like ten billion dollars.”
Walling: Only 1% of Tech Companies Should Raise Venture Capital
“I think one percent of companies, one percent of tech companies need funding and the other 99% really shouldn't, shouldn't do it.”
Parr: Three years of focused work can build an eight-figure net worth
“If you're willing to dedicate three years, like you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your, like, for sure. Like it's easy. It's not easy, but it's simple.”
Puri: Crypto founders fail to deliver because they get rich upfront
“In Ripple, those guys became billionaires before banks ever used their product, which is like a really fucked up incentive, and which is why sometimes shit doesn't actually get built in crypto, because hey, I already got the millions. I could just run away. I …”
Tech salary inflation will reverse as remote hiring shifts overseas
“I think that this high salary inflation is not here to stay. I think what's happened is all these companies down in San Francisco are going, oh, crazy. We can hire cheap people in Canada, but they're not yet going, oh, hey, we can hire people in India and the …”
Puri: Chamath profited from poorly performing SPACs while retail investors suffered
“Chamath in reality had a bunch of really shitty SPACs where he made a bunch of money. And people who invested in his SPACs on the whole, like just got ripped to shreds this year.”
Puri: Lab-grown meat will make animal slaughter for food obsolete
“It's going to change because we're going to have a good substitute, which is lab grown meat. So people are going to be able to make, make the same steak you want without killing the animal. And then in that case, killing the animal is going to look absolutely …”
Sam Parr: Breaking Up Facebook and Google Would Make Their Founders Richer
“If Facebook and Instagram had to compete with each other it would actually make Zuckerberg richer. Same with YouTube and Google. If they had to compete, it would probably make them better. And thus the owners a little bit more rich.”
Helwani: Dana White tried to block my ESPN hiring before day one
“From the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN.”
Abraham: Zcash and Monero can be decrypted; Iron Fish is truly anonymous
“So you had, you know, coins like Zcash and Monero that were created, but it turns out Those actually can be decrypted and you can figure out where all of that went. So she's the first person that really figured out how to make truly anonymized crypto. And it's…”
Puri: Chamath Palihapitiya is an elite virtue signaler playing the everyman
“Which, by the way, is why it's so funny when people like Chamath, and I like Chamath, I think he's great, but I think he's a virtue signaler. Like, I think he loves to say the things that make him sound like the people's, you know, the people's champion.”
Puri: White people are the least racist group compared to immigrant elders
“In reality, nobody is more, white people are the least racist. Nobody is more racist than, like, you know, an Indian parent or a Chinese grandmother.”
Parr: Lambda School will likely go out of business by 2023
“I think my prediction if I had to bet money on it is that it won't work.”
Dan Held: Claims that Tether pumps Bitcoin's price are completely unfounded
“People hypothesize like Tether is being used to pump Bitcoin. I think that's completely unfounded. It was based on a University of Texas research report, which I don't even know if you could call it fucking research, but it was like a research report where the…”
Maples: Decentralized cloud societies will eventually function like future nation-states
“What I think happens at the limit is that all of these different cloud cultures are like their own societies.
And so right now the main, main organizing principle of society is the nation state, which is also an economies of scale centric model.
Right.
But if …”
Marc Lore refuses to interview candidates with lateral career moves
“Any kind of deviation to that, I don't, I just don't even, won't even interview. So a lateral move, out. Right. You know, move from a Google to Kmart. Sorry, Kmart, but out. Like, I just, I, anything, any little, like, tap that says not top five percent, and s…”
Puri: Business Content Creators Are Usually 'B Players' Teaching 'C Players'
“The most successful people, the true icons, you know, they're not creating a ton of content typically. And sometimes they do when they retire, sometimes it's part of their growth strategy, but for the most part, Elon Musk doesn't have a sub stack, right? He's …”
Puri: VCs Slamming Astrology Startups Are Hypocrites Unless They Condemn Religion
“If you're gonna say this about horoscopes, you better also say it about religion, otherwise I view you sort of as a hypocrite there.”
Srinivasan: Very few pre-internet institutions will survive the internet
“I think very few institutions that predated the internet will survive the internet in the fullness of time.”
Balaji: On-chain skill badges will destroy the college diploma
“Now, why that kind of thing is important is it totally destroys the concept of a college diploma. The reason being college diploma is a very, very coarse grained you know, kind of illustration of somebody's skills.”
Balaji: Craig Newmark neutralized hostile media coverage with journalism grants
“Craig Newmark effectively bought them off with the Newmark foundation stuff with a lot of grants for journalism”
Balaji: Cryptography will displace corporate media as the font of truth
“And that is actually a very powerful thing where we start to actually displace a corporate media corporation as the font of truth with cryptography instead.”
Balaji: Founding a startup in San Francisco is like choosing Java
“Somebody who's choosing San Francisco for a startup, I crinkle my eyebrows as, you know, I mentioned it before, before the pandemic, I said it was like choosing Java, you know, proven, but kind of sucks. And it's like, okay, you don't know new languages and, y…”
Balaji: Effective altruism misses that people feel guilt if they haven't built
“The effective altruism people miss one very important thing, which is that it is the production by people of goods that actually makes them feel that they deserve things.
Like if you haven't built, you feel guilt.”
Balaji: All finance will become crypto
“With CS and stats, by the way, you can understand finance, because it's crypto, or it'll all become crypto.”
Balaji: The FDA is the primary global bottleneck for medical innovation
“Basically the FDA is like the primary blocker of like medical innovation, not just in the US, but in the world.”
Balaji: The FDA cannot be abolished, but it can be exited via parallel systems
“I don't believe that one can abolish the FDA any more than one can abolish the Fed, but I do think you can exit the FDA like we exited the Fed.”
Puri: Multinational oil companies used local intermediaries to bypass bribery laws
“Those companies couldn't get their hands dirty. They could not risk Bribing foreign like politicians. So what they did was they let this guy bribe the fallout foreign politicians, get the rights, and then they would cut a commercial deal with him.”
Shaan Puri: Value-add angel investing is 'a load of shit'
“What I found is that like the whole kind of like value add side of investing is sort of a load of shit.”
Puri: Creator platforms like Patreon and Substack make for crappy businesses
“I don't like Patreon. I don't like Substack for the same reason. I think they are amazing products. They are good for the world, but they make for crappy businesses.”
Puri: Equity crowdfunding platforms host bottom-of-the-barrel startups
“Crowdfunding is the, you know, bottom of the barrel of companies. Like the best companies, the ones that are hot, that are growing, get picked up by professional investors. And the stuff that you end up seeing on crowdfunding sites, I don't think are the big b…”
Shaan Puri: Clubhouse will ultimately fail despite its massive hype
“I wrote a thread about Clubhouse, and the thread starts basically saying, you know, everybody seems to think that Clubhouse is the next big thing, and I think it's gonna fail, and here's how I think it's gonna go down.”
Saylor: Converting Corporate Cash to Bitcoin Turns Liabilities Into Assets
“So if you take a company with cash and you invest in Bitcoin, you have invested, you have converted a liability to an asset.”
Saylor: Companies should convert cash, debt, and equity into Bitcoin
“So the big idea here is you want to fix any company, sweep all the cash flows into Bitcoin, convert the treasury into Bitcoin. Borrow against your future cash flows in dollars. Convert that into Bitcoin. Finance all your fixed assets in dollars. Convert that i…”