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 19 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
Petersen: VC incentives create herd mentality and cross-firm collusion
“So therefore, the way to avoid getting fired in VC, again, this is not Founders Fund. This is what I like about them, that they're very different. But is it, the way to avoid getting fired is to be, well, to double check everything you do with other VCs. To ma…”
Petersen: Tech media unfairly targets startup founders instead of incumbent mega-corporations
“All reporters play a very important function of like holding the powerful accountable, but like founders, you're not that power, but we're kind of suffering through like, you know, we're up against some very powerful forces in the world. Like we feel like we'r…”
Petersen: Founders Fund compensation is tied to performance over high base salaries
“Founders one actually has a vendor compensation structure. It's almost all tied to the outcomes, the performance, but like a lot of VCs just make super huge. You'd be surprised how high the salaries are at a lot of the, at other VCs.”
Petersen: YC partners must embrace delusion because most founders fail
“The job of being a YC partner or leader of YC is just super hard. Just like a lot, most of those people are going to fail. So you have to kind of delude, delude yourself. If you really want to say only focus on what could happen, well, it's probably not what's…”
Petersen: High velocity execution beats hiding behind defensive moats
“Actually, you know, you don't really want to hide behind some walls, like the real ever, ever since The blitzkrieg in, like, 1940, 19 39, whatever, we learned that, like, high velocity attack is the way to win, not, like, sitting behind defensive walls.”
Petersen: Learning foreign languages in-country offers poor financial ROI due to AI
“I think learning a foreign language in that country is extremely, it's not a good ROI from like, you probably won't make any money off of this, especially now with chat GPT.”
Petersen: Studies claiming income plateaus happiness cannot be replicated
“I don't believe these studies that say like, oh, like, you know, you stop. ... Stop improving your life at a certain point. I'm certain that that can't be replicated. You know, most, most of these psychology studies turn out to be not, there's a replication cr…”
Petersen: Seed investors must focus solely on best-case upside
“I think Paul's got, his superpower is like not, he only sees what's possible and like how valuable or big could this thing be if everything works and he ignores every other outcome that's possible. And that is probably the right way to do seed investing, you k…”
Petersen: Public data businesses require distribution or network effects for defensibility
“I think that government data is a big opportunity. The government has tons of public records on all kinds of stuff and no real incentive to organize it in ways that are particularly useful. It makes it hard to build defensibility onto these businesses because …”
Petersen: Apply AI to Legacy Industries Rather Than Competing with AI Geniuses
“All these guys doing AI startups, like make sure, I think applying AI to some old school frozen industry is a great idea, but just going straight head in, head on against other AI geniuses is like a recipe. Like who wants to compete with people that smart? Lik…”
Petersen: Top classroom negotiators struggle in real-world repeated business games
“You can track the people who are the best negotiators in a classroom environment or not the most successful because they're very good at extracting too much in a one-off negotiation, but that's not how life works. In life, there's repeat games. Like you gotta …”
Ryan Petersen scored $10,000 in Uber credits via Google AdWords arbitrage.
“I got like 10,000 dollars in Uber credits by doing that.”
Petersen: Office phone booths cost $1K to make and sell for $3K
“I think we sold them for like three grand, but you can make a phone booth for a thousand bucks.”
Petersen: Import Genius Still Generates Millions in EBITDA
“Still am. Still am. It's still a good business.”
Petersen: Flexport founders ran bootstrapped companies for 10 years before VC
“We raised VC after 10 years of doing companies without.”
Petersen: Heavy usage of a terrible product proves strong underlying demand
“If the product's this bad and yet everybody wants to use it, there's like something here.”
Petersen: Office phone booth venture reached $50M in sales
“So we was doing like fifty million dollars in sales.”