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 32 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
Rabois: Opendoor should cut headcount from 1,400 to 200–300 max
“There's 1400 employees. There should be like more like 200 or 300 max”
Rabois: Every successful startup is a cult with a non-consensus worldview
“Every successful company is a cult. And what a cult really means is you have a view about the world that's different than other normal people. And you're right to be successful. Like a cult doesn't have to be right, but the startup is a cult. That's right. And…”
Rabois: Homebuyers should replace real estate agents with ChatGPT
“Instead of using a real estate agent, there's no reason they can't use ChatGPT or an equivalent product.”
Rabois: Exceptional talent means top 0.1% in one trait or rare combinations
“There's only, there's two formulations. One is you are in the top call one to 10 basis points on some specific trait. And that can, they can be very different. You can be the smartest person I've ever met. You can be the most tenacious person, persistent best …”
Adding employees without project leaders decreases productivity and increases frustration
“It's because you don't have any more barrels, you're just stacking ammunition behind the same number of barrels, so you're not going to get any more done, and you're just going to frustrate people.”
Bain and eBay management concluded Google posed no threat to commerce
“I remember sitting in a management meeting at eBay after we got acquired and right after we got acquired and they hired some consulting firms, Bain actually, to analyze the threat posed by Google to commerce. And their conclusion as a management team and with …”
Rabois: A company's CEO determines 99% of its success or failure
“99% of everything that matters is the CEO. The most important lesson for me over the last 25 years is if you have the right CEO, things that people believe to be impossible, Or very possible, sometimes probable. If you have the wrong CEO, almost nothing else m…”
Rabois: Opendoor's SG&A has been bloated and out of control since 2015
“And then the company at a kind of tactical level just has too much of a bloated GNA. It's always had too much of a GNA that was Way out of control since 2015.”
Rabois: He and Eric Wu could have easily bought out Opendoor
“It would have been easy to buy out the company ourselves and just own the whole thing if we'd paid attention a month earlier which probably would have been a better thing to do, truthfully.”
Rabois: Homeowners build community value while renters extract it
“Owners build value, and renters generally subtract and extract.”
Rabois: Talent identification must be done in person, limiting scalability
“I've found that you need to do it in person, which really reduces the scalability of it.”
Rabois: Max Levchin is one of five elite technologist-strategists globally
“Max Levchin is a first rate technologist and a first rate business strategist. There's less than five of those people in the world.”
Rabois: Rippling was the only scaled Bay Area tech company fully in-office
“In the Bay Area, it lagged for a long time. For a while, including, I'd say, almost until 18 months ago, The only scaled modern company that I think was in office basically all the time was Rippling.”
Rabois claims successful people ate a lot of ketchup as kids
“Well, I still believe that ketchup's really good for you when you're a kid. Yeah. People who are successful eating a lot of ketchup when they're young.”
Rabois: Having high energy is a choice and a teachable skill
“I think it's actually something you can teach yourself. Like it's an acquired taste. I think many things in life are that way. They're path dependent. You just decide to have energy.”
Rabois: I do not believe in ever taking days off for anything
“I basically don't believe in days off for anything.”
Rabois: Kaz Nejatian cut Shopify's G&A from 14% to 4%
“One of the things he did at Shopify when he got promoted to be COO was cut their GNA as a fraction of revenue from 14% to four percent, and I think they're on target next year to be at one percent.”
Rabois: Founders should never allow film crews to document company operations
“Every company that's ever done that hasn't, hasn't done so well. There's this old documentary, which is a great movie called startup.com. I do not recommend this to founders.”
Rabois: Real estate tech must break even at 4M annual US transactions
“You need to be able to be profitable or break even in a market when only four million Americans transact.”
Rabois: Opendoor will operate as an in-person company
“Well, I'll leave that to the CEO, but the company will be in person.”
Rabois: The new environment in D.C. is pro-business and pro-innovation
“The new environment in D.C. Is business friendly, innovation friendly, and pro-American.”
Rabois: Finding one exceptional person reveals talent in their closest five friends
“So if you find one node, a person who's in node, the five people that that person spends the most time with, there's probably some pretty other talented people in that group.”
Rabois: The most successful people aim to be unique, not the best
“You don't want to be the best in the world at what you do. You want to be the only one who does what you do. And so I think that's mostly people who are successful. They figure out how to frame themselves. So they're not just the best. They're the only.”
Rabois says he has started using ChatGPT to write a book
“I have started to play around with ChatGPT to write a book for me.”
Rabois billed 363 hours during his final month as a lawyer
“I billed, like, 363 hours my last month as a lawyer.”
Rabois: Network effect businesses are incredibly hard to ruin for a decade
“It's really hard to screw up a network effect business for usually at least a decade.”
Rabois hired Square employees from his soccer team who later founded Faire
“Hired two, at least two people off my soccer team that worked at Square. They started a company that's a very good company called Fair.”
Rabois quit an eight-can daily Diet Coke habit cold turkey
“Literally, I read the study, stop cold turkey the next day, have not had a Diet Coke in eight years. Wow. Literally not a single one. I used to have eight to 10 a day.”
Rabois reread Andy Grove's 'High Output Management' yearly for 18 years
“High output management by Andy Grove is the business favorite. I, for the first. 18 years I was in technology. I reread it every single year and always found in my highlights learning new things.”
Rabois: Opendoor Has Installed a New Leadership Team and CEO
“So the company, you know, has a new leadership team most importantly, a new CEO.”
Rabois: Eight of his last twelve startup investments are in New York
“Eight of my 12 lost eight of the last 12 investments are actually in New York.”
Rabois says Kelly McGonigal's 'The Upside of Stress' is his favorite book
“Favorite book is called The Upside of Stress. And is written by a professor at Stanford named Kelly McDougall. And it really crystallized. So talking about conventional contrarian ideas, I used to believe stress is good for you.”