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 5,121 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 43 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
Ohanian: 90% of gamers will only play games that pay them
“In five years, no one, 90% of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time.”
Schiffman: Y Combinator Is Evil and Has Ruined Startups
“I also think that Y Combinator is, is evil and has ruined startups. I think it's turned it into this absolute slop.”
Lacy: Chairman Me failed due to women's internalized misogyny
“Do you know why that company failed? Because every day I had to do battle with women's internalized misogyny. And it was like, I was falling into a pit wrestling with Gandalf. Like it was, I couldn't do it. And that was ultimately why the company failed becaus…”
Sharma: The Honest Company's website manager should be fired
“Whoever runs the honest company site, like they should be fired and unemployable in my opinion.”
Lavingia: People do not enjoy making art without money or fame
“They won't be poets, because AI will show people that that's all kind of a BS thing that we just did at a period of time, and, like, people actually don't like making art and poems if there is no monetary or fame attached to it.”
Calacanis: VCs paid high legal fees specifically to dump tokens
“You set up these structures, you paid all this legal money because you knew you were going to dump. You knew you were going to clear these positions and you knew it was going to be lucrative. That's why you went through the expense instead of just raising mone…”
Bloom: Terra Luna faces a real risk of a downward market spiral
“There's this swap mechanism where, If suddenly that yield starts to drop or if they're not able to maintain it, if people start selling rather than buying Luna, and if you have a bunch of people swapping It does create this market spiral, right? Like there is …”
Friedberg: Cellular agriculture will replace all animal agriculture this century
“There's a lot of engineering stuff we got to get over to make it work at scale, which there's about a 150 companies doing today, but they're going to succeed. And as a result, we're going to be able to replace all of animal agriculture this century.”
Isenberg: Top Marketing Engineers Will Make Millions of Dollars Annually
“Why in the original I said I think that there's going to be people make A million dollars doing this. And I actually think that's conservative. I think there will be versions of that, of the best marketing engineers making millions of dollars a year is because…”
Schneider: Facebook Is the Best B2B Advertising Channel Currently Available
“Facebook has turned into the best B to B ads channel. And that exists right now.”
Carson: Engineers coding locally are cavemen shipping 10x less code
“So I think if you are working locally, I honestly think you are a caveman. Like, I think you're, you are holding yourself back, and you are shipping 10 X less than you could be, and it is not smart. No matter if you think the cool people work locally and all t…”
Carson: The AI agent era requires working more, not less
“And in in order to survive in this new world, you're going to work a lot more, not a lot less.”
Carson warns against building workflows on frontier models to avoid lock-in
“Like, if you are, if your whole engineering you know, motion is happening inside of clock code or inside of codex, What are you doing? Like, because they are not incentivized to make it reasonable for you long term, right? They're going to lock you into their …”
Carson: AI agents will write, review, and ship 100% of code
“You will be using a software factory. Like, and what I mean is, the agents are going to be writing a hundred percent of your code, reviewing a hundred percent of your code, shipping a hundred percent of your code. Like, that's where we're going.”
Dan Shipper: 'SaaS-pocalypse' is dumb; 99% will prefer maintained software
“I think the SaaS-pocalypse is so dumb because Hey, yeah, I'm like vibe coding this inbox app, but 99% of the world is going to want to use something that's maintained by someone else. Yes, you can one shot everything, but the I think the hard rare thing is mov…”
Shipper: Founders no longer need technical co-founders because everyone can code
“And I think that's a new and interesting divide where before we were like, I need a technical co-founder and that's not really it anymore because everyone can code. I think it's about your set of sensitivities and desire to make something new and go fast versu…”
Wilkinson: Employees are unreliable and fail to understand founder vision
“You know, if I was using employees they're unreliable. They don't see my vision. They don't understand every aspect of design.”
Wilkinson: Basic businesses will be fully run by AI in 3-6 months
“And I think that we're probably three to six months out from being able to just can businesses off to AI to run at least basic businesses like this.”
Gaskill: People will stop using SaaS apps directly in favor of AI operating systems
“I think that everyone's gonna have, like, an AI operating system they work in, and everyone will just have personal agents and agents to manage each department of their company, and people won't actually use these apps anymore.”
Thompson admits to using fake reviews to launch landing pages
“Yes, I'm going to put fake reviews on here to start, and then I will replace them as I get real ones, I promise.”
Carson: Ralph AI loop functions as an entire engineering team overnight
“This loop is basically an entire engineering team while you sleep. It's unbelievable. And this just wasn't possible for Opus four or five. I think with Opus four or five, this is absolutely The real deal.”
Isenberg: AI Apps Owning Workflows and Network Effects Will Be Highly Valuable
“I think that you're discounting the opportunity that there is to actually create these, as you call it, flash in the pan apps to actually get data, to actually own the workflow, to actually create network effects. And I think that that those companies Provided…”
Isenberg: Top AI wrappers will survive OpenAI updates within 18 months
“There's, of course, going to be a bunch of startups that get hit by OpenAI and the foundational models in 12 to 18 months, but I think that, you know, the great AI wrappers are going to build valuable companies.”
Isenberg: Current LLMs will beat human beings on 95% of tasks
“Maybe this is obvious, but artificial intelligence is smarter than human beings. We're at a stage where human beings versus the current LLNs are gonna lose on 95% of tasks.”
Solo founders can build $50K MRR businesses using AI tools like Cursor
“I do believe that we live in a world that it's completely possible to use things like cursor to use some of these tools to develop something that you can make 50,000 dollars a month for.”
Huber: AI will enrich business owners, not AI companies
“AI will definitely over time make the business owners more money, not necessarily the AI companies.”
Wilkinson: ChatGPT will eliminate software middlemen by building tools on demand
“For all tools basically all middlemen businesses are gone. And I believe fundamentally that we are all going to go to the search bar and the new search bar is ChatGPT and you're going to query it and ChatGPT will just build whatever you need or it'll hook into…”
Isenberg: Y Combinator is a YouTube channel, not a startup accelerator
“My other quick rabbit hole that I'll just seed people with is that YC is a YouTube channel, not a startup accelerator.”
Schneider: Capital is a commodity, VC differentiation requires cult personalities
“Capital is basically a commodity at this point. So the only differentiation is going to be like you being, you know, a cult leader personality.”
Finn: A computer science degree is the most useless degree today
“I have a computer science degree, which is probably the most useless degree you can possibly get at this point in time.”
Al-Abdullah: 'People first' advice is wrong; prioritize automation over headcount
“Oftentimes, I got a lot of advice when I was, you know, running seven, absolutely about 7,000,010 million. They're like, it's people first. It's people first. You got to think about people. And what I ended up realizing is like, that's actually bull. It's not …”
Al-Abdullah: Founders should hire executives inside their own zone of genius
“I think that oftentimes the quote is hire great people and get out of their way. I think that's a terrible idea. I actually think it's much better to hire people actually in your zone of genius.”
Cole: Writers who do not learn AI orchestration will lose jobs
“Either you get on board with that and you become an orchestrator and editor in chief, or you don't have a job anymore.”
Schiffman: Consumer mindshare is the only true business moat
“I think that the only real moat is consumer mindshare or just, you know, mindshare as a concept of, you know, when people think of a certain category or
Topic, you know, their mind immediately goes to just one project or one company, right?”
Schiffmann: Seed VCs Care About Founder Storytelling, Not the Product
“I think to raise venture capital, the more you talk about your products and what you're working on, I actually think the harder it really is. Because I don't think any seed or lower investor gives the fuck about what you're working on. I think it's almost enti…”
Schiffmann: Founders Should Cultivate Self-Confidence Over YC Advice
“Personal confidence is what most founders should be working towards rather than like YC advice, because if you are confident enough in yourself, and again, you need to act like, I think the thing is that you still need to actually have good ideas and you need …”
Yadegari: AI health apps must use fear-mongering marketing to drive downloads
“But I think that the primary lever to drive downloads to something like this would have to be paid ads or influencer marketing, where we could get into it more later, but it would play on the emotions of a little bit of fear mongering on the idea that they mig…”
Coogan: Startup will demo an armed humanoid robot within six months
“I was predicting that within the next six months, I think that there will be a startup that will take one of these humanoid robots Even if it's tele-operated, give it an AR-fifteen, like a machine gun or a rifle, and just do a demo of like what this would look…”
Rush: Starting with SaaS as a first product is the worst idea
“Starting with SAS is is it, is the worst idea because you will fail almost a hundred percent and then you'll probably feel bad about that and never start again and go back to your job.”
Postma predicts a one-person autonomous AI marketing agency could reach $1B revenue
“You could go into this and just basically build a marketing agency that scales to probably a billion dollar in revenue without having a single human sitting there. Just probably just one guy, which is managing all the terminal commands and checking if everythi…”
Grant: Software moats are dead and brand is the only remaining defense
“Moats are dead and brand is the only moat. It's like, we used to all talk about network effects and like, you know, build something like Twitter. But if you think about all the software tools you use right now, there's not really a network effect. There's not …”
Matty Mo: Major art institutions primarily function as tax avoidance mechanisms
“Major institutions, because they're set up to sell a certain type of product to a certain type of person for a certain type of results. And that's mostly really expensive products as a store of value and sometimes a way to avoid paying taxes.”
Podcasters have zero money: B2C podcast tools are a terrible business
“Podcasters have zero money. They're the worst people to sell to. There's all these companies that are raising money right now for like podcasting apps, like all of these tools. And I just am laughing in the background. Cause there's just, I know this industry,…”
Hiring a Deloitte MBA at 20 employees will destroy startup agility
“I saw this happen so many times where they would like get to like, 20 employees and they're like, all right, it's time to hire like a Deloitte MBA. Right. And I'm like, yo, you're about to just like, Screw everything up. Cause the first thing they do is they t…”
Yanowitz: Crypto is the only real venture-investable vertical today
“I really think crypto is the only real venture investable vertical that is taking place right now.”
Ries: Google's core search engine business is on the brink of collapse
“Listen, Google's on the brink of collapse. You know, obviously they have many other lines of business. I'm sure it'll be fine. But like the search engine is extremely vulnerable now. And obviously with AI on the rise, like people are really worried about what'…”