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 806 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 17 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
Walling: The future of SaaS is still SaaS, not AI agents
“The future of SaaS is not fewer companies. It's a higher bar, and SaaS doesn't need to become something else to survive it. It doesn't turn into agents. It doesn't dissolve into everybody's weekend side project. It stays what it is. The future of SaaS, I belie…”
Intercom Defines AI Support Resolutions Differently Than 98% of the Market
“The way Intercom, for instance, defines an AI resolution is not the way 98% of the market actually defines an AI resolution.”
Vollset predicts Anthropic will inevitably add advertisements to Claude
“Not only are they going to do it, but so is Claude. I guarantee it. You know, they might figure out something clever and do the thing, but like, there's no, there's just not a universe unless Claude get bought by Apple or something. That, that Claude aren't go…”
Walling: Google will see its biggest revenue drop ever due to AI
“So my sixth prediction is that Google will see its biggest ever drop in revenue Due to the transition from 10 blue links being the prominent way people search into AI ads, and I think Google's gonna have a bit of time that they're gonna need to figure it out”
Walling: Twitter will be acquired at a deep discount in 2024
“The second prediction I want to touch on is I predicted that Twitter changes hands in twenty-twenty-four, question mark? And I don't know about you, but does it feel like the writing's on the wall? That Twitter is gonna be snapped up by someone at a deep disco…”
Taber: Google Mandated Minimum Price Floors For Third-Party Developer Security Audits
“The other piece, when I was talking to the three different companies, one of them basically let slip that Google came to them and said, you are required to charge at least this much money. And apparently they get copies of the invoices, which to me seems like …”
Taber: Commercial office real estate will never recover
“I believe that commercial office space, real estate will never recover.”
Rob Walling predicts AI will kill 10% to 20% of SaaS apps.
“I've said on the show, I think it's 10 to 20% of SaaS apps are gonna, gonna eat it. Like, they're gonna have real trouble. And it's some specific Categories and things that AI can specifically just replace or people will build themselves or whatever.”
AI software suffers 20% to 40% monthly churn rates by underdelivering.
“And this is one reason we see AI software with these outrageous churn rates of 20 to 40% per month, because the promise is there, and then you dip your toe in, and it doesn't actually work.”
Walling: AI agents will increase API demand rather than kill SaaS
“So agents aren't going to kill SAS. They need SAS. They actually increase the demand for good APIs, whether it's CLIs, MCPs, however you want to look at it.”
Vollset: Public SaaS companies report zero AI disruption and no added churn
“Most of the like public SaaS companies are reporting, like, you know, they're coming like, we're not seeing any disruption whatsoever from AI, no additional churn, but in the public markets, the sky is falling.”
Hendrickson: Agentic AI will flood inboxes and render cold email completely useless
“Now that's all agentic. And so the amount of cold email that's going to come through, I think it's going to flood the inboxes and make it basically a useless channel in a lot of ways.”
Ries: Vibe coding will inevitably cause a massive mission-critical disaster
“It's only a matter of time before someone vibe codes their way into a massive mission critical disaster. When they deploy code they think they understand, but they don't.”
Ries: LTSE petition caused SEC to consider ending quarterly reporting
“In fact, if you've noticed, I don't know if you've noticed the headlines in recent months that the SEC is considering eliminating quarterly reporting for the first time in 40 years. That's our petition.”
Ries: Tobacco companies make about $6,000 in profit per customer death
“Data says that tobacco companies make about 6000 dollars per death.”
Walling: Only 4% of 210 TinySeed startups use social media marketing
“Of the 210 companies That Tiny Seed has invested in, it's like, I think it's just over four percent have any type of social media marketing or any type of audience. The other 96%, they just market, they do SEO, they do cold outbound, they do advertise, you kno…”
Walling: Under 5% of TinySeed's 210 SaaS companies built an audience
“Across TinySeeds, 210 companies, there were like four percent of those, maybe five, I think it was just under five percent, that had any type of audience Or have ever built any type of audience, and yet we have dozens of companies doing six, I mean, sorry, doi…”
Cohen: Studies show AI does not make software engineers 10x more productive
“Like in coding, it's not, right? Like all the studies in, in real engineering departments is not that AI makes them 10 times better. The only people who claim that are the people selling AI products, the users of it. You know, there might be individuals claimi…”
Bootstrapped Horizontal SaaS Will Face Massive Headwinds in 2026
“So my first prediction is that bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped horizontal SaaS will experience massive headwinds in twenty-twenty-six.”
The AI Venture Capital Bubble Will Not Burst in 2026
“Prediction number four is that the AI VC bubble will not burst in 2026. Massive investment will continue without a dramatic crash.”
Bernstein: Google engineers ignored Larry Page and Sergey Brin's unscaled review advice
“The founders, Larry and Sergey, who are some of the smartest people on the planet, they used to run the company by basically walking into a room, asking the team what they did, put it on a whiteboard, and then they would use their superior knowledge and intell…”
Walling: All no-code SaaS apps funded by TinySeed eventually require rewrites
“We've funded a handful, and I don't know the exact numbers, but it's five or less Of no code, code bases. No code apps, I guess I would call them, you know, that are built in air table, bubble, that kind of stuff. And all of them have been rewritten or will ne…”
Maggiulli: Blogging CPMs are 4x higher than YouTube and top other platforms
“If you look at like, you know, per thousand views, what gets paid the most, it's actually bloggers. It's not even close. It's like four X more than YouTube. It's more, it's much more than TikTok and much more than Twitter.”
Maggiulli: Kahneman-Killingsworth research showed $75k plateau applies to unhappiness, not happiness
“Kahneman got with Killingsworth. They went through all the data, and they basically found that the original paper was, the measure wasn't as precise, and so they were actually measuring unhappiness, and so above 75,000 dollars a year, you can't prevent unhappi…”
Coburn: 45% of US Workers Will Be Freelancers by 2027
“We're going to be up to 45% of the workers in this country are going to be freelancers by the year twenty-twenty-seven.”
Wagstaff: Porch's CEO threatened to build a free clone to crush Spectora
“We got a little scared because the CEO told us he would, he'd basically make a free version of what we did. He'd spin it up and, you know, crush us. And so it was more like, we're going to get squashed like, you know, the little cockroach we are at the time.”
Walling: TinySeed wins almost all deals despite competing funds offering higher valuations
“They will match or beat our offers, right? It's like, we make an offer and then they're like, well, obviously I'll give you a higher valuation because they have to. And yet we win almost all those deals.”
TinySeed data shows SaaS startups have low odds of breaking growth plateaus
“The moment you plateau, the odds of you getting past that plateau are actually quite low, at least from the analysis that I did.”
Lars Lofgren claims Google uses multi-channel brand presence for search rankings
“When Google is looking at things to rank and deciding who ranks for what, they do place a lot more emphasis in, okay, is this site, is this brand, is this entity, are they on social? Are they doing stuff in other channels? Is the traffic coming to this website…”
Scaled parasite SEO operations on major news sites generate hundreds of millions
“And they're making a ton of we're talking like tens of millions of dollars a month, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And when it's fully scaled and fully operational, these are just colossal amounts of money. There's a few companies that kind of special…”
Walling: Google organic SEO traffic will drop 15% to 25% in 2025
“So my fourth prediction for 2025 and the first new one is that search volume For Google organic SEO, and I'm talking about content-based keyword targeting, where you're cranking out an essay, an ultimate guide, a blog post, I think they will slide across the b…”
Rob Walling: 80% to 90% of plateauing SaaS companies never recover
“Most companies that I see that do hit a plateau, don't make it out. And I think the number of the graphs that I looked through, it was like, 80, between 80 and 90%. Once they plateaued, they just, they haven't yet made it out.”
Walling: Jason Fried admits luck and timing drove Basecamp's success
“They can do stuff like not market, like not sell, because they're in a luxurious position and good for them. You know, the luck and timing were one and two. Jason Fried told me that for their success. Unless I can replicate luck and timing, I can't. Then I nee…”
Walling: Under 5% of TinySeed's 170 Portfolio Startups Had an Audience
“Less than five percent of all tiny seed funded companies, which is like a 170 now less than five percent had any kind of audience when they started or even have any kind of audience today.”
Walling: Bolt's 97% plunge left option-borrowing employees in debt after Breslow's secondary
“Giving loans to their employees so that employees could buy stock options, and then Bolt lost 97% of its value, and so anyone who took out loans to buy their stock options now owes the company money, sometimes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.…”
Walling: Twitter (X) will change ownership in 2024
“I think that Twitter might change hands again in 20, 24. That is probably the ultimate prediction.”
Walling: 37signals' ONCE will not penetrate beyond a developer niche
“That once will not penetrate. It's my prediction. They will not penetrate past the handful of nerdy developers who basically want to manage their own servers.”
Walling: AI will not take developer jobs, but will augment software builders
“I don't believe AI is going to take a bunch of developer jobs. I think this is the rising tide that raises all the boats. Unless you're a real developer, and you don't, or you resist AI, or you don't want to use it becomes this tool of augmentation that I thin…”
Jeff Roberts: $500M acquirers routinely ignore a startup's missing global tax compliance
“I talked to a founder Who sold a business for between five hundred million and a billion dollars. So a big acquisition to a publicly traded company. They just disclosed during the acquisition that they had never paid global sales tax, and they didn't know how …”
Einar Vollset predicts AI will hit a trough in 18 months.
“It's probably overhyped at the moment. It usually tends to be, there'll be like a trough of sorrow in like, 18 months when everything is in the crapper. But I think like two, three years from now, we'll look back and we'll be like, oh yeah, this underlying tec…”
Asynchronous organizations operate with 50% thinner management than on-premise competitors
“One of the interesting, the most interesting factoids that I found in my research for this book on asynchronous organizations is I found that the managerial level inside of asynchronous organizations is 50% thinner than their on-premise counterparts.”
Vollset: Pre-launch YC companies raise at $12M to $20M pre-money
“Last I heard now, pre-product launch on demo day, it's like 12 to twenty million pre.”
Walling: Toptal founders extracted profits while early noteholders received no equity
“There's actually, isn't it, it's top towel, I believe, where they, Raise money on safe's convertible notes. They never raised another round. They haven't sold. And so all the investors don't technically own the equity and the founder can actually literally leg…”
Gal: CartHook processed $2 billion in volume without being PCI compliant
“At Cardhook, we built a business that processed two billion dollars, and we were never PCI compliant, because we didn't need to be.”
Walling: Clubhouse will fail because Twitter already has network effects
“My prediction is Clubhouse will be done. I know they have this amazing valuation right now, and I say amazing, what is it, billions of dollars, but it's just, for me, it's this typical Silicon Valley FOMO investor thing of everybody wants a piece of it now bec…”
Fishkin: Roughly 90% of venture-backed startup founders come from family wealth
“Like the whole idea behind venture capital is we are going to take a bunch of mostly already wealthy people because that's who starts venture backed startups, right? The overwhelming majority, I think something like 90% come from family wealth.”
TikTok organic reach will inevitably crash to near zero, mimicking Facebook
“And I think, unfortunately, a lot of these folks are going to find that the same thing that happened with Facebook seven years ago, six years ago, where that engagement rate falls from 11% to 0.09%, that will happen. That will happen to you.”
Taber predicts definitive proof of extraterrestrial life will be discovered
“My fifth and final prediction here is that we will discover definitive proof of extraterrestrial life. I don't know what exact form that's going to take, whether it's going to be Mars or some comment or, you know, an asteroid going by, but that's the predictio…”