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 48 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Dash: AI startups must rediscover product-market fit every six months
“Every six months you're rediscovering product market fit, whether you're a startup or you're a large company.”
Dash: OpenAI and Anthropic will stop hosting model launch parties by 2028
“Do we think in three years, OpenAI and Anthropic are going to keep doing launch parties for each model? No, at that point, it's just going to be a product release, right? And you're not going to see behind the scenes which model is it five, is it 15, is it 25,…”
Dash: Ambient AI medical scribing accuracy is approaching 100%
“Now a doctor says, hey, Siddharth, would you mind if I record this conversation? Those conversations now have an accuracy rate that's getting close to a hundred percent.”
Dash: Vertical AI will create $10B ARR companies in 10-15 years
“I'm pretty sure we're going to see five to ten billion dollar ARR companies in healthcare, education, defense, and retail. In the next 10 to 15 years that are not going to be head-on competing with the same companies that are competing code generation.”
Dash: OpenAI and Anthropic could go public tomorrow based on financials
“They're almost quasi public companies. They could go public tomorrow based on the financials that we're seeing.”
Dash: AI is moving too fast and a market correction is near
“What is inevitable though, if you look at that six year period between the Netscape IPO and the downturn, and you say everything's happening at twice the speed, we're probably pretty close to being due for an AI correction.”
Dash: Most Gen 1.0 AI startups will not reach $10B valuations
“I am pretty convinced that a lot of the gen one dot O companies won't get there. They won't become the ten billion dollar plus outcomes.”
Dash: 2025 VC cohort will see overinflated entry valuations like 2021
“The 2021 cohort, The entry prices for every venture campus, almost by definition, was overinflated, right? I think the twenty-twenty-five cohort's gonna have some of that too, because you're seeing a lot of the early markups ratchet up people's enthusiasm, the…”
Dash: India will not produce a $1T venture-backed company by 2030
“I am personally hopeful that in my lifetime I'll see a trillion dollar market cap Indian company founded in India and supported by Indian venture capitalists, but that's not going to happen in the next 10 years.”
Dash: Perplexity's early engagement rivaled Discord and Snap
“What I do remember though is we hadn't seen that kind of daily active usage and organic engagement since we had looked at Discord or at Snap.”
Dash: Current US public equity markets are not overvalued
“And right now, do you believe the current public markets are overvalued in the US? Somesh Dash: I do not, no.”
Dash: Jyoti Bansal is the Steve Jobs of infrastructure software
“Probably in some ways almost like the Andy Bechtelschein or Steve Jobs equivalent in, like, infrastructure software and what he's done with three companies in the last decade.”
Dash: Proliferation of venture capital firms will not degrade overall returns
“I know a lot of people are like, there's so many venture firms. This is horrible. Returns are going to go away. I'm actually, I think it's the opposite. I think the markets are efficient enough where everybody's got a specialization and a niche, and you get th…”
Dash: Commercial real estate is largely wasteful and hybrid work will persist post-COVID
“I think we're all realizing that commercial real estate is predominantly a big waste of money. I think we're all learning that there are hybrid work modes that we will all move into even post COVID that are just better.”
Dash predicts India will produce enduring public tech companies from COVID era
“I actually predict there will be in India in particular not just more unicorns form. Cause I think the concept of a unicorn is a little bit myopic. It is a private market mark, private company valuation that a investor puts. To me, the sign of true ecosystem s…”
Dash: Indian media tears down entrepreneurial success stories instead of celebrating them
“I do think one of the problems is the media and the ecosystem hasn't done a good enough job of promoting those role models and kind of putting them into curriculum K through 12 and really celebrating those successes versus taking them down at the first opportu…”
Dash: IVP passed on Zoom by underestimating cloud and overestimating Cisco
“What we got wrong on that one is we underestimated the sheer size Of the transition going on with sort of cloud communications. And we also probably overestimated the ability of the incumbents, namely Cisco and others to beat the startups.”
Dash: Next-gen Alexa or Google Voice will probably be built in India
“And so I think audio is another platform where the next generation of Alexa, Google voice will probably be created in India. And there's going to be a lot of innovation happening, both enterprise and consumer in the voice space in the next 10 years.”
Dash: Recent tensions will spur US-India strategic dialogue
“I'm very bullish, though, that this is going to cause the right strategic dialogue to happen, you know, between India and the United States in the coming months.”
Dash: US defense sector seeks startup alternatives to Russian supply
“The defense sector, which you and I were just talking about, is extremely focused on finding the right primes and startups to actually become a second source to Russia.”
Dash: IVP passed on DoorDash in 2017 over negative margins
“The reason we missed it was, and I take responsibility, when we looked at it, I think it was, ah, the summer of 20 17 or 18, At that time, they were launching in cities, and the economics were not great. There were negative gross margins. There were not too ma…”
Dash: DoorDash expanded delivery TAM past early $20B estimates
“In a category that most people, when I looked at it, most people said the TAM for restaurant delivery is twenty billion max, right? They were all wrong. He expanded the category. He expanded the use cases. He changed user behavior.”
Dash: IVP co-led CrowdStrike investment at a $3B valuation
“We didn't think when we backed CrowdStrike, you know, our entry price was three billion in the big round that we did. We co-led that round.”
Dash: IVP invested in Abridge at $3M ARR in January 2024
“A bridge was January, 20, 24. It's funny how much has happened. I still remember certain things. I believe when we invested the company was only at three million of ARR.”
Dash: M&A and PE will drive startup liquidity over IPOs
“I think what we're going to see more of is acquisitions by private equity firms and other startups, mergers, and of course, strategics being a form of liquidity versus just the IPO.”
Dash: IVP operates as an equal-vote partnership with no managing partner
“There is no CEO of IVP. There's no kind of managing partner. There's no super management company. It's a very simple structure, which is in every fund, the partners, one partner, one vote, it's what a true partnership means, right? Even if you're young and sta…”
Dash: Over half of headcount at some IVP portfolio companies is in India
“And if you look at the headcount of some of our companies, more than half are actually in India, right? And it's not back office. It's a lot of the innovation, the founders, they live in India.”
Dash: Datadog, CrowdStrike, and Rubrik can reach $1B in ARR
“Many times we do get involved in companies where they not only reach a hundred, but they have a path to a billion of revenue or ARR, as we've seen with Netflix, and we think that potential exists with, Datadog and CrowdStrike and many other companies that are …”
Dash: Rise of remote work will disproportionately benefit Indian tech talent
“The reality is there's going to be a global workforce of skilled you know, tech workers, and I think it really stands to benefit the Indian startup ecosystem because India is one of the best labor forces when it comes to deep steam training, engineering, and b…”
Dash: Faith-based, community-oriented subscription services will expand in US and India
“I do fundamentally believe in both the Indian and US ecosystems that there's going to be more faith-based, community-oriented subscription services that supplement a lot of the ad-based models or commerce-based models That we saw the last 10 to 15 years.”
Dash: Perplexity had 20 employees when IVP first met founder
“I believe the company was about 20 employees. They had just launched early versions of the Perplexity product. It was still in beta, and it was still pretty small”
Dash: Perplexity will be preloaded on Airtel phones in India
“I mean, I encourage everybody, actually, I know in India, they've made an announcement on Airtel, like they're going to be preloaded on a lot of the Airtel subscribers phones,”
Dash: IVP led Perplexity's Series B at a $500M valuation
“I believe it was in the fall of 2023, we led the series B round. It was around the price, as you said. I haven't done the exact dilution math, but somewhere around there.”
Dash: IVP invested in Twitter, Snap, and Discord under $1B valuations
“We were Series B investors in Twitter and Snapchat a little bit later in Discord, but all of which we did well below a billion dollars in venture price.”
Dash: IVP and Elad Gil co-led an Abridge round
“We just co-led a bridge together, you know, about a, about nine months ago at one of the rounds there.”
Dash: IVP typically invests two years after first meeting a founder
“We typically invest about two years after we meet a founder or get to know them.”
Dash: Three IVP portfolio companies entered the S&P 500 in 14 months
“We had three companies in the last 14 months enter the S&P 500. CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Coinbase.”
Dash: IVP diligences 200 startups annually and invests in 12 to 14
“See for us, I think what we look at about a thousand a year. We seriously diligence and do work on 200, and we only as a firm do 12 to 14, each of us individual partners is one to two, right?”
Dash: IVP avoided early OpenAI due to its capped-profit structure
“The original structure of OpenAI was such that I think it would have been difficult for us given the cap on the profits as well as the nonprofit structure.”
Dash: Perplexity is IVP's core bet in consumer AI
“We are investors in perplexity and obviously like for that's been our bet in that space and consumer.”
Dash: IVP deploys roughly $500 million of capital annually
“We deploy about call it half a billion a year.”
Dash: Hello Heart is approaching $100M ARR after 2021 investment
“When we invested, they were at ten million of ARR. They're on the cusp of breaking through a hundred”
Dash: IVP strictly deploys funds over three years despite market hype
“Every Monday they said, I know there's a temptation to want to put more money in, but we told our LPs we have to invest over a three year time horizon. We're on that time horizon. We don't want to go faster. So we've been pretty judicious with how we do that.”
Dash: IVP was among the founding investors in Netflix
“IVP was an early investor in Excite, Ask Jeeves, and one of our most, I'd say, important investments in the last 40 years was being the founding investors in Netflix.”
Dash: IVP and Benchmark co-led Twitter's Series B at $200M valuation
“I think perspective led us to leading the Series B of Twitter in February of 2009. The world seemed, the financial markets seemed like they were going to end, and valuations were plummeting, and in that, we and Benchmark Capital co-led around in Twitter at aro…”
Dash: 20 IVP companies saw COVID tailwinds while 6 to 12 faced headwinds
“Our portfolio is about 85 or so active investments, and within that we see probably about 20 of our companies that have seen marked tailwinds, accelerations that we didn't expect, we didn't predict, We see about half a dozen to a dozen that have seen tougher t…”