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 1,295 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 10 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
Parr: Gen Z is the first generation since 1800 with declining IQ
“Starting in 2010, They noticed a decline, and this isn't just in America. It's in Norway. They noticed there's a bunch of different countries. I think 80 different countries have actually studied the same thing. This isn't just an American thing. But starting …”
Parr: Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia insisted to me that aliens are real
“Joe, look, You're worth, like, ten billion dollars. Like, if there's Illuminati, like, you are either in it, or you're friends with the people in it. Tell me one thing that, like, you guys talk about, and he looked at me, he goes, aliens are real.”
Parr: Traba explicitly promotes a 996 work culture
“And they basically, I think they explicitly said this on their website. We have a nine, nine, six culture, which means working nine AM to nine PM, six days a week.”
Parr: Sports betting apps assign account managers to encourage losing gamblers
“DraftKings or whatever? They have account managers. So if you become, I read about this one woman who was making like, a 150 grand a year, so whatever that puts her at in terms of class, but not like crazy wealthy, and she's, and she lost all of her money, and…”
Chief reached $100M revenue in five years by accepting all applicants
“They grew to a hundred million in revenue in four or five years. They let in 100% of the people who apply in the interview.”
Parr: Approachable young women drive the highest ad click-through rates
“It has to be an approachable young woman, and I have found that that gets the most clicks amongst all demographics”
Parr predicts there will eventually be more humanoid robots than humans
“I think this is so big that there's going to be more of these robots than there are humans.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Parr: Swedish twin study found 45% of investing behavior is genetic
“And the results that he found Was basically, and concluded, was that 45% of savings and investing patterns and behaviors was genetic, which I find to be astounding.”
Parr: Tech incumbents, not startups, will capture most AI value creation
“The vast majority of value creation is going to be by big companies just getting bigger. I just think that it's much easier for Salesforce to get more efficient and launch new features than it is a new company, or at least picking those new companies very hard…”
Sam Parr: The United States should institute mandatory military service
“I actually do think that America should have a mandatory I think Scott Galloway said this. I've agreed with this for a long time. We should have mandatory service for American military. I think that would be great.”
Parr: Startups outgrow brute-force execution at $3M revenue or $1M profit
“Honestly, it probably starts at three million in revenue where you're out of the brute force stage. And it depends on your business, but something like A million a year in profit, maybe. Where you're out of the brute force stage, and what happens next is actua…”
Sam Parr: OpenAI will be the biggest company on Earth within five years
“Because how is this company not going to take over the world and be the biggest company on earth?”
Sam Parr: OpenAI will combine Meta, Google, and the news media
“I just think that OpenAI is going to be, like, the combination of Facebook, Google, every news company ever, and then, like, five other companies combined into one.”
Parr: Surge AI did $1B in revenue with zero outside capital
“So this company is only five years old. And it's it was leaked that they did one billion dollars in revenue in the last 12 months. And this guy, Edwin Chen, he's only 37 years old, and he owns 100% of the company. They have not taken any outside funding.”
Sam Parr admits The Hustle could not grow organically if launched today
“I don't think it would succeed. I think that it would, I would not succeed. I got to like 300,000 subscribers organically in like two years. Like it was so easy looking back on it. That would never happen again. It's, there's too much noise.”
Media companies that attempt to sell software to their audiences will fail
“That strategy that they and many other people who are, or I don't even know if they did do it, but whoever wants to try and do that, it will almost always fail.
Because in order to make a business like this work,
Where you sell stuff to your audience.
You almo…”
James Altucher publicly claimed his premium newsletter generates $120M in annual revenue
“He said he made a hundred, he said it on stage.
He said a hundred and twenty million dollars a year in revenue.”
Parr: Consumer recycling is '100% bullshit' and should be abandoned
“Recycling is 100% bullshit. It should be reduce, reuse, get rid of the recycle.”
Parr: Middle America moms are a more profitable influencer demographic than Gen Z
“Middle America moms, who's their following, so much more profitable, profitable than like comedy, like doing comedy bits for like millennials or Gen Z, you know what I mean?”
Parr: Moving to another city solely for tax savings is foolish
“Moving for taxes, when someone tells me they do that, I think they're stupid. I think that's a really, that's a foolish thing to do. Do you agree or disagree? There's a lot of people that do that. I think it's foolish. Sorry, they're not stupid. I think that d…”
Parr: Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald Trump in the Oval Office
“Elon Musk, 100% outshined Donald there. That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there and Elon standing up, sort of behind him, like he was gonna come and put his arm, like his hands on his shoulders.”
Parr: Musk lacks grace and maturity when slashing federal jobs
“And for Elon, I'm like, do what you gotta do, but can you not be so smug about it and like have some like fucking grace when you're like doing some of these things, even if those things are good, and I agree with them, I just wish that like the maturity level …”
Parr: Elon Musk will become a trillionaire within 3-5 years
“A person worth one trillion dollars, which is what Elon will be in three or four or five years.”
Parr: Hate, rage, and guilt are highly useful emotions for success
“I actually think that hate is If you have in your heart, it can be really useful. Like revenge and rage is like a very useful feeling. So is Shane. People will be like, why are you guilting someone into like doing this or that? I'm like, well, guilt is a wonde…”
Parr: Taylor Swift would not write hits if in a successful relationship
“Taylor Swift wouldn't write hits if she had a successful, wonderful relationship.”
Parr: Harvard's operating margin is -40% without its endowment distributions
“He says, the operating margin would be a -40% without distributions from its endowment.”
Sam Parr: Blue Zones longevity claims are driven by age fraud
“The commonality between the five blue zones is that they have a huge amount of like age fraud.”
Sam Parr: Forcing customers to jump through hoops builds cult brands
“Making your customer jump through hoops in order to acquire the good. It makes it so much more valuable. The problem is, is that's really hard to pull off. But if you can pull it off, you have the will and discipline in order to, like, take this risk. It's pre…”
James Patterson has solely written only 20% of his credited books.
“He actually has only written about 20%, like solely written 20% of the books that his name is, is credited with as writing.”
Sam Parr actually trusts Meta with user data and privacy
“I kind of trust them for some reason. I definitely trust them.”
Sam Parr: Newsletters are overhyped treadmills and vastly more competitive now
“I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now. Most people don't realize it is a treadmill. It is very challenging to create new content, just like this podcast. It's hard. This is a hard job. I like it because I think I'm good at it, or I'm decent…”
Sam Parr: 90% of Web3 and NFTs are 'total bullshit' and scams
“I think that 90% of the rest of the stuff is a complete scam. I think NFTs are, for the most part, total bullshit. I think Web Three, for the most part, is total bullshit. And I think that the people who entered into that space oftentimes are horrible entrepre…”
Parr: OpenAI will crush startups building on its API
“I'm nervous about people building businesses right now on top of open AI because I'm like, they're just going to crush everyone and just do it themselves.”
Sam Parr seeded the Trends community by giving influencers free early access.
“A lot of times, particularly in trends, my one of the first communities that I built, I would seed it by having 10, 20, 30 people who I knew were impressive. And I just said, you don't have to pay anything, but you're joining this community. Also on this date,…”
Parr: Vice inflated ad reach by aggregating third-party clickbait sites
“What they did was they did, ah, they partnered with omgfacts.com, distractified.com, and all these other clickbait websites, and they would roll that up, and so they would call them part of the vice network, and so they would tell people, ah, you know, like In…”
Parr: Dave Portnoy's Barstool Sports antics will look pathetic as he ages
“I've always said about this about Barstool Sports. I'm like, dude, Dave Portnoy is getting older. Like, some of these antics are kind of not going to be cool anymore. They're more so like pathetic.”
Parr: Admit Yogi founder should reject VC and bootstrap to an exit
“I think if I'm in your position, I wouldn't raise money. And I think that by the time you're 30 years old, you can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars because you own a business that makes 30 or forty million bucks that potentially you could sell for a hu…”
Parr: Native Deodorant Copied Its Brand Identity From an SF Cafe
“He, 100%, Stole the entire branding, the name, everything from this company. I don't know if stealing is the right word, but kinda.”
Sam Parr says tech workers earning over $100,000 cannot claim solidarity
“Don't say solidarity. Don't say comrade. If you make over a 100,000 dollars a year, you don't get solidarity.”
Parr: Andrew Tate's Discord community brings in over $100M in revenue
“It's, like, tens of thousands of members. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. Like, a million members. Oh, wow. Like, we're talking nine figures in revenue, and CoffeeZilla, like, did it. He's like, look, here's all the members. If you multiply that by 50, and then …”
Sam Parr: OpenAI will face government regulation in 2023
“The second thing is so open, I open AI. Something involving regulation is going to happen.”
Parr: Web3 is a circular economy that rarely beats Web 2.0 solutions
“My opinion on the web three is basically, it's a bunch of like, it's just this kind of circular economy of a bunch of people making, making products to serve an industry that has yet to like truly figure out, or I don't know what you call an industry, a moveme…”