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 130 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Pujji: College pedigree matters and Wharton was his biggest career meal ticket
“I think, well, one is depending on your age, it does matter where you go to college. And that's like a fun one on Twitter that I always throw at people because people love saying it doesn't. And I can tell you that the biggest meal ticket of my life was going …”
Ellis: Gen Z trends like 'quiet quitting' harm career success
“I also don't think this like Gen Z movement, the quiet quitting, all that stuff. I don't think that's really setting people up for success at all.”
Matty Mo: Most artists produce decorative goods, not generation-defining cultural artifacts
“Some people think of art as like The most important cultural artifacts of a generation, and to be real, many artists are not making the most, most important cultural artifacts of a generation. They're making pretty things, and what are pretty things? Decoratio…”
Yanowitz: Negative CAC is probably the only way to build successful SaaS today
“This idea of like creating a negative CAC SaaS business is Probably the only way to build a successful SaaS business today in my mind.”
Ries: The ESG movement is a total failure due to flawed ratings
“The ESG movement has been a total failure. You know, from my perspective, because Philip Morris has great ESG scores.”
Smith: Founders outside Silicon Valley do not understand true startup intensity
“Most people feel like they understand what working at a startup is and what it's like to work in a tech company. But when, if they haven't been in one in Silicon Valley, they really don't know what it feels like. And they don't really know how to work that har…”
Smith: Founders cannot build a track record remotely
“You don't get a track record remotely and you, and by the way, track record can involve failures, but it has to involve smart failures and also network being in the same places as all these people it's being on podcasts.”
Phan: The US government should ban TikTok and force a sale
“I think they should ban and then force a sale.”
Isenberg: Ryan Holiday Is More Famous Than Marcus Aurelius or Seneca Today
“Ryan holiday is more famous than Marcus Aurelius and Seneca to most people today, because he's the one who's delivering the mess, the message. About stoicism in a way that people can understand nowadays via TikTok, via Twitter, via Instagram, via his books.”
Sahil Lavingia: Non-technical startup teams will always be defeated by engineers
“Like, I can build Gumroad in a weekend and I can outship basically any, it doesn't matter how awesome your team is, if it doesn't have engineers on it, I will beat them.
Right?
I would just, I will win.”
Lavingia: Most computer science degree holders do not know how to code
“Most people with TS degrees don't know how to code, you know.”
Lavingia: If you enjoy holidays, startup founding is probably not for you
“If you are on holiday and you're like, I love being on holiday. I'm sorry to say that, like, you know, doing a startup is probably not for you, right?”
Isenberg: Meta's heavily criticized metaverse investments will actually pay off long-term
“And I think that over the longterm, I actually think that a lot of these metaverse bets are going to play Play in the favor of meta.”
Tossell: Not everyone should learn to code
“I don't think anyone should learn or every, I don't think everyone should learn. Sorry, that's going to piss people off.”
David Perell: Modern education ignores 70 to 80 years of learning science
“None of the learning science that has come out in the last 70 to 80 years has actually been implemented.”
Isenberg: Hiring a Write of Passage grad beats Google or Stanford alumni
“When I interview someone that's graduated rite of passage, like to me, that's better than working at Google or graduating Stanford.”
Bloom: Buying rental properties is mostly vanity and underperforms REITs
“Personally, I think that most people that buy rental properties, maybe this is a hot take, it's like a vanity thing, where they want to be able to flex and say that they own rental properties. Because the vast majority of my friends that have done that, it is …”
Wilkinson: Raising from Sequoia brings intense pressure that ruins founders' lives
“Like Sequoia who are like the most intense MFers in the world just joined the board. They're going to hold a gun to that person's head and say, you need to grow your company, 300% a year. You need to spend as much money as possible to go there, and that CEO's …”
Bloom: Top Creators Generate More Value for Twitter Than Billionaire Shareholders
“I have contributed more value to Twitter and like probably more innovation to Twitter than some random billionaire that owns a hundred million dollars of Twitter stock, like just full stop. I understand the product probably better. I understand the puts and ta…”
Isenberg: On-chain resumes will enable hiring within 60 seconds
“I believe that in the future you'll have your resume on chain, and you'll be able to apply at a job, and then within 60 seconds get that job, because, you know, those people know that you are great at Uniswap, or you understand how to code in Rust, or Solidity…”
Wyatt: Gatekeeping gaming against blockchain technology is unjustified
“I just really hate the gatekeeping of the gaming category, because it offers so much to so many people, and I don't know, like, why any of us have any, like, any right to stand on and be like, this has no place in gaming when it is technology, right?”
Sanchez: Tech workers' voting records caused San Francisco's decline
“I know that if I looked up the voting record of you guys, most of the people in tech are the reason why it is where it is today.”
Sanchez: Allowing hacks is better than centralized blockchain rollbacks
“I'm not sure that I would want if what I want is decentralization and not having, you know Autocratic tendencies an individual to be able to do that either. And I know there's this critique already about Ethereum and I don't know if it delved from this origina…”
Demirors: The government system will inevitably collapse under its own weight
“It's gotten so large and so cumbersome, like, it will collapse under its own weight. It's inevitable.”
Demirors: Play-to-earn games like Axie just offer diminishing clicker yields
“This is actually my big issue with play to earn games. Like literally play to earn games. Like Axie doesn't need to have anything in the game. All they need is just a box that you click thousands of times and the box just gets smaller and smaller and yields go…”
Demirors: Every crypto protocol other than Bitcoin has centralized leadership
“Every other protocol has a central organizing entity. It has leaders, it has rulers, it has kings, it has monarchs, right? And they're all men. It has monarchs. Bitcoin is the only thing that doesn't have that structure, right?”
Demirors: Ethereum has been rolled back and is not truly immutable
“The Ethereum network has been rolled back. Ethereum's not immutable. These other chains are not immutable, right?”
Bloom: TikTok is de facto controlled by Chinese government
“TikTok, which is Chinese owned, and de facto controlled by the Chinese government, by the way, and owns the data of literally every single teenager in the United States.”
Bier: Meta has the world's best misinformation systems
“They have some of the best integrity systems, the best Spam the best misinformation detection systems out of any, probably any company in the world.”
Bier: Big tech companies exist for founder egos, not profit
“Companies exist for like big tech companies exist for the egos of the founders. And at the end of the day, he just wants to be liked. He just wants to build something that helps people.”
Bloom: Mobile internet gives Indian youth Ivy League-level opportunity access
“A kid on the streets in India that has access to his phone because of what Reliance Geo has done has a lot of the same opportunities today, and hopefully will continue to have even more as the kid who grew up in Greenwich and went to the Ivy League.”
Bloom: Consumers do not care about privacy enough to sacrifice functionality
“One of my like general hot takes is that people don't actually care that much about privacy or like the average person doesn't really care that much about privacy and won't be willing to actually pay for it with worse functionality.”
Isenberg: CEOs not spending 20-30% of their time in Discord will fail
“Like if you're a CEO and you're not spending 20 to 30% of your time in a discord server. You're not gonna make it.”
Howard Lindzon calls passive investing a myth because index funds rebalance
“There's no such thing as passive investing. Vanguard is a very active portfolio. Every month or quarter, they kick out poorly performing companies, so it's a quant fund. So people are really buying an active portfolio. It's just packaged as passive.”