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 201 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
Mansoor: Prediction markets could become bigger than the stock market
“I think it could just look like the stock market, maybe even bigger.”
McCormick: Most fast-growing AI software startups will flatten and fail to IPO
“By choosing to, like, not play in this space, I'm definitely missing a trillion dollar company or two, but I think for the most part, like, I think there's gonna be, like, a lot of these types of things happening, or even, like, these types of curves, where th…”
McCormick: AI will become 'super SaaS' rather than godlike AGI
“I called it super sass in, in that like 20, 25 prediction. And I think it is like, I think it's really amazing and like in no way godlike. And it's just like, I feel like I'm being psyopped whenever people are like, oh my God, this is like, this is, this chang…”
El-Baba: AI-era startups will not need billions before going public
“No long gone are the days where you're going to have to raise Billions of dollars before you go public. 15 years down the road, you actually can follow the Viva capital efficiency story and build a really great company that can drive a really strong venture ou…”
Ritter: Almost no dollar price is too high to beat China
“The national security part, we should put in I, it's one person's opinion, but we need to make sure we win this race against against China in particular. And I, there almost no dollar price is wrong in that using that lens”
Lucy Guo: Passes Creators Conceal Earnings From Managers to Dodge 20% Cut
“We definitely have had an issue where creators didn't want to tell their managers or their agents how much they're earning on passes because they would have to pay 20% to them even though they weren't even involved in passes. Yeah, like, we have had creators t…”
Socher: AI search competitors fake citations and prioritize marketing over accuracy
“And when we do a lot of comparisons to the competition, usually the competition spends much more money on marketing and design and less on accuracy of the technology and accuracy of the answers and even the citations. A lot of folks just Fake their citations a…”
Socher: You.com invented RAG at web scale before the term existed
“We realized just like with rag where we had invented rag already, we're doing it at a web scale, but it wasn't yet a term.”
Genuine AGI safety concerns are 10 to 20 years away
“I think this is likely what we're doing with AI and AI safety and stuff like that, that we could foresee in 1020 years AGI, where there's actual safety issues, but we are so far from that today. That's, I think, actually getting close to the peak of inflated e…”
Sadeghi: Scientific research already links genetics directly to intelligence
“At the frontier of science, we do already have associations with genetics and intelligence, and we really believe in giving these insights to customers.”
Mark Suster argues Series A is VC's most overvalued funding round
“And so I think that a round is the single most overvalued round in venture capital.”
Asparouhov is skeptical of non-pharma microgravity manufacturing startups
“There have been a couple of companies come up, starting to try to tackle non-pharmaceutical product areas in, you know, microgravity manufacturing. And to me, I just find it quite confusing because they always phrase it as like, well, Varda is going to go to t…”
'Gundo bro' culture is off-putting to women and limits talent pools
“I find some of the, like, you know, sort of you know, gundo bros or gundo boys, you know, culture you know, a bit off-putting to, you know, people that are not of the male gender, and it's something that I've, you know, heard validated, you know, sort of acros…”
Asparouhov: Western Europe will resemble a second-world region in ten years
“Still you continue to extrapolate that trend for another 10 years. And like Western Europe is going to look like a second world country while Eastern Europe actually just sort of rises to the top.”
Weisburd: Money managers sell diversification to increase fees and importance
“Essentially, money managers sell diversification as a way to increase their own importance and also to increase fees, some would argue.”
Weisburd sells his positions when SoftBank invests in his portfolio companies
“As a general rule, when SoftBank would invest in one of my companies, I would sell my position or a lot of the position.”
Kolicich: Expect an AI crash and market retrenchment within two years
“I believe in two years where everyone's gonna say, oh, you know, we thought it would solve everything and it's all a very limited number of use cases. It's complete hype. And, you know, we'll probably see a bit of a crash and we'll see a retrenchment in AI.”
Kolicich: Open-source AI iteration speed will surpass closed source
“Cause you'll see the case of iteration at open source is going to eclipse close source.”
Lamm: Direct air carbon capture is a dumb climate solution
“So when we were solving these problems, if we are solving it in dumb ways, like, I think, you know, a lot of the air capture systems in other ways, the direct air caption carbon systems and others in a lot of other ways that we're trying to solve climate are d…”
Lamm: Academic research labs are underfunded, politicized, and dilapidated
“Go work back in academia where you're underfunded. It's all like massively politicized and it's massively competitive and your labs are like held up by pizza boxes, right?”
Friedberg: Wealth taxes will trigger capital flight and unrest without solving problems
“It'll cause people to flee and run around and get away and it'll cause more discontent, but it doesn't solve the policy problems.”
Friedberg predicts Ro Khanna will be HUD Secretary under President AOC
“I think he'll likely end up being secretary of housing and urban development. If AOC is elected president.”
Friedberg: The socialist movement operates like an emotionally viral cult
“The thing about the socialist movement is it's designed to be viral. It's designed to be eccentric. It's designed to be sensational. It's designed to be emotionally titillating. It's designed to have an enemy that incites emotion inside of you to drive you to …”
Pim de Witte: Most AI development is just glorified data science
“Most of AI is just glorified data science.”
Banister: Peter Thiel is exceptionally tolerant, open-minded, and widely misunderstood
“I've never met anyone more tolerant, more open-minded. He gets such a bad rep for a lot of things, but he's just probably one of the most poorly understood people.”
Pincus: Active CEOs Lecturing on Culture Signals a 'Fake CEO'
“When I hear people giving talks about culture, especially when they're currently a CEO, my fake CEO meter goes up, my alarm bells go off, because I'm like, okay, if you're out lecturing about culture to people, I kind of doubt that you're actually doing things…”
Singerman argues wealth taxes hurt the middle class more than billionaires
“This is going to impact the middle class way more than it's going to affect mobile billionaires.”
Singerman argues arts education is more important than math programs today
“Like, I would almost say that, like, having an awesome music department or an awesome art department is even more important than Having an awesome math program right now.”
Harrison: In practical terms, the US is not top dog militarily
“In practical terms, we are not the biggest dog at the party, and so we have to acknowledge that there's some strategic changes we have to make to stay relevant.”
Harrison: Pacifism Is a Privilege of the Protected
“Pacifism really is a privilege of the protected. Like, there is somebody else who is willing to do those things and build those capabilities to protect our right to say, I don't want to be involved in that, and that's fine.”
Socialism Is Fundamentally Corrupt While Competitive Capitalism Works Exceedingly Well
“Socialism sucks. It is terrible. The only people who Do well in redistribution of wealth are the ones doing redistribution. Like it's fundamentally corrupt and there's not enough bad things I can say about socialism. So I think capitalism works exceedingly wel…”
Cliffton: Most aviation and aerospace companies have really bad cultures
“When it comes to aviation, aerospace, there aren't that many companies to look up to, unfortunately. Like most of these companies are, have really bad cultures.”
Senra: Startups and VC are full of liars and sociopaths
“The game of startups and VC is just so dirty. There's so many liars and sociopaths and just very dangerous people that I've seen, you know, in the last decade, I do not like a lot of this behavior.”
Senra: Podcasting is an industry full of second-rate talent
“This is a market, an industry full of second rate talent. It started out as excessively low status”
Stephens: Pacifism requires a governing system with a monopoly on violence
“Pacifism as an idea is only possible inside of a governing system with a monopoly on violence. Like, you can't be a pacifist without a government monopoly on violence.”
Luckey: UAPs are likely relics from the distant past, not future
“So that's my bet is basically given that there's been a lot more time before now than now. Just probabilistically speaking, I think it's likely these things have been around for a very long time.”
Tusk: Tesla Valuation Is Built on Elon Musk Narrative, Not Fundamentals
“Tesla should not be worth a fraction of what it's worth today, if not for The narrative and the belief by investors that Elon, and he is a genius, but like that Elon will just figure things out that no one can predict, including Elon right now, and therefore t…”
Tusk: Trump undermines core economic pillars that venture capital relies on
“Trump has undermined every single one of those things. So I would argue everything that makes the American economy great, that venture capital totally relies upon at the end of the day, is being undermined significantly.”
Tusk: VCs who participate in political favor-trading will regret it
“From a long-term American standpoint, I actually think that we're gonna, VC as a sector, for those who participated in this, unless they just made so much money and only just care about how much money they have and nothing else, are gonna really regret it.”
Karp: Germany and Norway do not hire based on meritocracy
“In Europe, if, when we, I was involved in hiring at this institute I worked at, And one of the biggest problems was I was always like, of course we need to hire the best person. That's not the way it works in Germany or Norway. Like the best person doesn't get…”
Karp: Europeans doubt AI and hope American AI products fail
“Europe. They're still like, it doesn't work, but hopefully this will fail because it's all American products.”
Zach Dell: Energy Sector Has the Economy's Least Innovative Companies
“If you look at the energy industry, it is this kind of sad combination of the largest and least innovative companies in the economy. They're not engineering led. They're not tech focused. They're not R and D driven.”
Rabois: Homeowners build community value while renters extract it
“Owners build value, and renters generally subtract and extract.”
Cluely is the best early-stage startup at distribution worldwide
“But if the poor bet is that distribution is the most important thing, then obviously like we are the best distributing in the world right now at least in, in the early stage.”
Cluely remains invisible to screen share and undetectable to others
“We are the tool that lets you use AI without anybody else knowing. We're still invisible to screen share. We still have all our undetectability features”
Founders waste valuable time obsessing over burn rate and cost-cutting
“If you're a founder and you spend 10 hours thinking about burn and like cutting costs, that's 10 hours you didn't spend about making product and like making product decisions and making your product better and like growing your company.”
Serious founders should eliminate work-life balance and live at work
“You need to work where you live if you're serious about building the company. Like work-life balance should not be a thing that you think about. Your work should be your life and vice versa. And if that's the case, then the best way to realize this is by liter…”