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 469 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
Altman shifts daily focus to acquiring compute rather than internal allocation
“You know, my real answer is I've entirely changed my focus of how I spend my days to just go get more compute rather than have to make the computer allocation decisions.”
Cuban opposes equity crowdfunding due to a lack of liquidity
“I've been anti not sweat equity crowdfunding, right? Crowd equity programs against it because there's no liquidity.”
Whaley: MSCHF built initial audience by Venmoing users one cent each
“Our first audience portal was Venmo. We had a huge audience on Venmo and we like had this huge phone bank like a Chinese phone click farm. And we, every time we had a new project, we would Venmo our audience a penny and they would get that notification because…”
Whaley: MSCHF avoided crypto because it didn't feel permanent
“Unlike the whole, like, crypto craziness of the last couple years we didn't get into that because we didn't feel like it was here to stay yet.”
Whaley: MSCHF originally alerted audiences to new projects via Venmo pennies
“Our first audience portal was Venmo. We had a huge audience on Venmo, and we, like, had this huge phone bank like a Chinese phone click farm, and we, every time we had a new project, we would Venmo our audience a penny, and they would get that notification, be…”
Cuban: Only a Trump third-term bid would make him run for president
“I mean, it's easy to say yes right now, but it's, that's the, probably the only thing that could make me really reconsider, because otherwise, I'm not, I don't want to do that shit. It's not my dream to be president.”
Thompson: Stratechery avoids interviewing VCs because they talk their book
“That's why I generally, as a rule, don't have VCs on to do the introductory interviews. Because it's kind of hard to get, like, a real take, because that, that, that is, you know, such a motivation.”
DiRico: Rainmaker advocates for increased federal regulation of cloud seeding
“And so that's why I am advocating for way more regulatory scrutiny from the federal government for cloud seeding and weather mod ops.”
Armstrong: I Voted Against Coinbase Launching USDC
“USDC, I will tell you, I actually voted no on USDC to like, which was a terrible, now it's like almost a billion dollars of revenue or something for us.”
Wischoff: Beyond OpenAI, Claude, and Perplexity, consumer AI lacks daily stickiness
“I don't know that I found anything even personally sticky enough that I'm like every day, like, you know, like messing around with it. And I, well, I guess it's not fair. Like obviously like open AI, like Claude and perplexity. But I think like on the everyday…”
Freeform's roadmap includes vertically integrating into finished manufacturing end products
“The vision for Freeform was always to be more than just a metal printing company.
You know, I think the concept, at least at the beginning in my head was let's dominate the enabling manufacturing technology.
Then let's, let's solve the, how do I go from the pr…”
Karol Hausman: Physical Intelligence is building a universal robot foundation model
“We want to build a model that can control any robot to do any task.”
Torenberg: a16z Role Combines Venture Investing and Media Networks
“Basically they had had a desire to, Go much bigger on, on, on, on content, like separate from me. And they kind of liked what I was up to at Terpeton with sort of this network approach and they crafted the right dual role. That's a mix of investing and a mix o…”
Torenberg: a16z plans to build an affiliate podcast network for top creators
“We want to, like, Do something like an affiliate network where we can partner with amazing shows, help them get distribution, help them make more money and kind of make it a no brainer for them to be part of this sort of broader podcast network that just sort …”
Srinivas: Perplexity will allow user thread publishing on Discover feed
“We have this thing called Discover and we're trying to increase the volume of content on Discover, and once we do that in an automatic way with curation to users interest. Like we're going to let some of the users pub try to like publish it to discover on thei…”
Srinivas: Perplexity submitted a bid to acquire TikTok US
“We, we've submitted our bid. We never expected to be the leading candidate or anything.”
Kilpatrick refuses to build AI products that require changing user behavior
“And this is maybe too like absolutist of like a product perspective, but like, I will not build a product that like we have to try to convince a consumer to change their behavior.”
Mendler: Northwood is building a shared ground network for the space economy
“We're building the ground network for the industrialized space economy. You know, we view it kind of as the third critical pillar of infrastructure for space where you need to get things into space on rockets. You need to have things to put into space, which a…”
Roberts: Indie.vc Models Investments So Startups Never Need Another Round
“Our companies are kind of the default we set is like, let's have that be the last round you need to raise. And then you can kind of be a lot more offensive as you build your company. So you don't necessarily need anybody else's permission to exist.”
Hudson: Honey spent over $100M on creator partnerships
“It also pulled in a bunch of creators who we'd spent over a hundred million dollars working with to promote honey.”
Kohli says international LPs drive AngelList's massive demand for stablecoin transfers
“So what's interesting about stable coins on AngelList is when the biggest use actually comes from the biggest pain from when LPs fund, and the biggest pain is when you're trying to move money internationally. And so we actually see a huge amount of demand from…”
Zachary Perret: Plaid built its own real-time data credit score tool
“And so we've built a series of tools, including our own credit score that looks at real time data and brings it into the model.”
Love: Lightspeed values early defense R&D and SBIR revenue at zero
“Nine times out of 10, you get this really small, like cyber revenue.
Like I don't have a system yet.
I got to develop the thing.
I got to go get someone to pay me for some small, like two, three, four, five million dollar R and D money.
And as an investor in t…”
Power: Hadrian avoids Chinese machinery due to spyware concerns
“We don't buy for them because they got spyware all over this stuff.”
Schwartz: Whop avoided announcing its fundraise because customers do not care
“We didn't announce the fundraiser, I think, because, like, that our goal is not to raise money, and I think our customers don't really give a shit about how much money we raised, or anything like that, and I think it's more distracting than not, and, Even the …”
Rauch: Vercel is partnering with competitors to support Next.js offerings
“We're actually also partnering with companies that are even competitors over sell to help them manage Next.js better when they want to create an offering like that.”
Sadeghi: Nucleus Genomics is exploring an acquisition of 23andMe assets
“I think one thing this nucleus actively is looking into right now, considering whether it makes sense, you know, earlier, I'm sure you remember, you know, we explored the possibility of acquiring and we're looking into right now whether that would make sense t…”
Masad: Replit maintains over 100% net dollar retention on its consumer plan
“We actually have above hundred percent net dollar attention, even for our consumer plan, which is probably unheard of.”
Masad: Replit went 'founder mode', halved headcount to 65, and left SF
“Last year you know, I did the founder mode. I cut the team in half. Wow. Now, like, 65 people. I moved us out of the city. We're now in, in Foster City.”
Frank: Klarna or Affirm paid Ridge $50,000 for checkout integration
“All of those providers would pay you money to actually add it to the website. So I think it was either Klarna or a firm gave us 50,000 dollars to have it as an option on that.”
Banister backed Diamond Foundry for compute wafers, not just jewelry
“So I invested in diamond foundry early and the thesis behind that was when everybody thought that they were just going to make fancy diamonds that we wear for wedding rings. I thought, what is the secret here? The secret is that we're actually going to need co…”
Foody: Mercor hires Harvard Lampoon writers to train AI models on humor
“A lot of our customers at the frontier as you've seen in recent releases are starting to think a lot more about Humor and these exciting things. We have been hiring a bunch of people out of like the Harvard Lampoon and equivalent places that have these comedic…”
Lessin: Slow Ventures launches $65M vehicle investing in seed creators
“We just announced this sixty five million dollar vehicle, which is pretty groundbreaking, right? What we invest in is not C corps. We invest in seed creators.”
Will Manidis is a 'cash chad' who has never used credit cards
“I am a cash chad. I run my accounts net cash. I've never had leverage in my life. No credit cards, debit cards only, right?”
Maguire: Sequoia invested $800 million in X's take-private transaction
“Yes, eight hundred million dollars, guys, and no victory laps until it's exited in Liquid”
Glyman: Ramp repriced its valuation down from $8.1B to $5.8B
“In December, 20, 21, we valued ramp at 8.1 billion. Today we actually think it's going to be a way bigger company and the value is 5.8 billion. And we said, great, let's do it.”
Hays: Technology Brothers are launching a 'PMF or Die' startup accelerator
“We're working on a new show called PMF or die. We will lock a small founding team in a studio, AKA the cage with 25 K in funding and only enough food, caffeine, and nicotine to last for 90 days. The team will only be released if, when they achieve a million in…”
Hays: I Won't Angel Invest Without an Equal Engineering Co-Founder
“I won't invest in your company unless you have somebody who
Is, is equal to you.
That is as good as you at what you do at engineering and they're as bought into the mission.”
Hays: I joined irrational startup rounds over the past year for friends
“I've invested in multiple rounds over the last 12 months where I'm like, This price doesn't make any sense, but I want to be in the company because it's my friend.”
Coogan: I have spent weeks actively courting journalists to write hit pieces
“I've been courting hit pieces with journalists for the last couple of weeks, talking to them just freely, just on the record, just ripping quotes, just saying whatever.”
Coogan and Hays presented at Hereticon arguing that psychedelics are terrible
“And our, basically our pitch was like, no, psychedelics are terrible.”
Brockman: OpenAI views image, voice, and code as one unified package
“We really view images, we view voice, we view coding, all these capabilities as one package that are going to come together to create an AI that empowers you, that means you can create anything that you imagine, And I think it's going to be something that's ju…”
Vale Is an Autonomous Mining Customer of Travis Kalanick's Pronto
“Massive iron ore mine that we're operating in there. And you see, like we took, we were there for a couple of days cause we already have customers there. Sure. A customer is called valet. It's a massive mining company.”
Kalanick on Uber's Growth: 'We Didn't Acquire Shit, We Just Built'
“It's like not, I guess you were, it's different today, but in my world, we didn't acquire shit. We just built.”
Emergent Ventures AI Grants Target Younger and Weirder Talent
“With AI maniacs, I'm going younger and weirder, and I've also noticed Europe is doing pretty well on the AI maniacs metric.”
Hormozi uses windowless, soundproof workspaces to eliminate sensory stimulation
“Where I work, it's almost all, how do I eliminate every sense of distraction for me personally? And so it's like, I don't have windows. Some people like having windows. I don't think anything wrong with that for me. It's like, I need no stimulation because I'm…”