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 298 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
Charles Hudson: EAPs are underutilized because employees fear HR retribution
“My impression is that EAPs have historically been underutilized because most people don't want to share the underlying issue they're dealing with HR out of fear of retribution or consequences”
Jillian Manus: Stigma is a feature, not a company
“That's not a company. That's a feature. Like, that company could put it into Slack.”
Jillian Manus: Stigma's $9 million pre-money valuation is very frothy
“I think that nine pre is very, very frothy.”
Hudson: Many bad accelerators prey on inexperienced founders
“No, I just have seen like a lot of accelerators that don't, they prey on founders who don't know better. They hear an accelerator and they think it's going to be of the quality of what Neil and others do, and like, it's Better to just call them bad than questi…”
Kamenetsky: Facebook ads have changed forever and won't get full spend
“Facebook has forever changed, and so we're never gonna go back in there full force.”
Medina: Grid fragmentation creates a massive moat for Tether's VPP software
“In the U S each grid has its own laws and its own regulations of how you operate and in Europe as well. So if you are a vehicle manufacturer, You would have to have software that knows where the vehicle is and changes the way you bid into the market and the wa…”
Downey: AI and ML are today's buzzwords, much like blockchain
“I think that Those are the buzzwords today that, like, blockchain was a year ago, and that big data was a year ago.”
Hudson calls the RealKey pitch the most frustrating he's ever heard
“This is like the most frustrating pitch I've ever had.”
Srinivasan: Spot On Can Coexist With Uber Like Chewy Did Amazon
“If we think about it, Chewy.com is in the world of Amazon. They're doing amazing. Rover is in the world of Airbnb. So if those guys can do it, then yeah, Spot On has a space in Uber and Lyft's world as well.”
Goldberg: Sene's fit technology cannot scale into a multi-hundred-million-dollar platform
“I don't think there's anything novel enough in the underlying fit technology To build the whole base of the company around that. And I don't think that will scale to be a multi hundred million dollar technology platform.”
Hyatt: A $600M total addressable market is too small to matter
“That's a small market. Fifty million a month in an, in a total market, I don't know, whatever, six hundred million a year. It's too small to matter.”
Nadel: Who's Your Landlord is a sponsorship business, not a SaaS company
“So you referred to your business as a SaaS business, but you're not a SaaS business. You're in the sponsorship business. You, you're generating a thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue from the SaaS business, but you've generated 200,000 dollars in two …”
Ezeugwu: Who's Your Landlord must retain both renter reviews and landlord SaaS
“I don't think you guys are inaccurate in saying one could be its own thing and the other could be its own thing. But I think the way we have real power in the real estate industry and become that big player talking about Is by keeping both.”
Nadel: Who's Your Landlord cannot build a SaaS business charging $1/unit
“He can also make a business, I believe, out of a SaaS company, but not charging a dollar a unit a month.”
Manus: Who's Your Landlord still lacks clarity on its core product
“I think that the business is yet to understand what it wants to be. I think that Ofo is trying to serve both sides here, and I don't feel that we understand the big product yet.”
Charles Hudson passes because the startup lacks software leverage for venture scale
“This is just a business where I struggle to see how technology can give you the kind of leverage I want.”
Trenda: Overture basically invented Google's business model
“Early in my career, that was a company called Overture. So we invented Google's business model basically.”
Trenda: Major platforms cannot solve toxicity due to open participation model
“This is antithetical to those platforms. On those platforms, and you even hear these CEOs when they talk about, like, Jack Dorsey talks about the power of Twitter, it's that every user can participate in every conversation. And so you can't solve a problem tha…”
Dufu: An Upfront $499 Fee Is the Only Way to Ensure Member Commitment
“So for the first year that you joined the crew, the four 99 is actually important, not just for our business purposes, but for the culture of the crew. So when the women meet one another, one of the things that they say is, I'm really happy that everyone paid …”
Mohnot: Exit Multiple for The Cru Is Probably Not Very High
“And that's what I worry about here is that the exit multiple on this business is probably not very high.”
Ryan Lee: Building supply-side nursery tech mirrors Uber and OpenTable
“I don't think it's that different from other consumer tech businesses that you think about. Like, if you think about even Uber, for example, right? They spit up 10 times the amount of technology and services and tools for the driver sides, right? Not just that…”
Charles Hudson says buyers want transparent procurement despite vendor resistance
“Because I think none of the vendors, I think most businesses like this, the vendors don't want to, the vendors don't want to sell this way, but the buyer totally wants to buy this way.”
Fox: Competitors Vertigo and Eavesdrop have flopped and floundered
“You know, there's Vertigo tried to do it. It flopped out. It's had, it's exchanged founders several times. There's another one called Eavesdrop. Eavesdrop's kind of floundered.”
Michael Hyatt: Boundless is not an investable business right now
“I guess my, when I step back and I look at this I don't think your business is actually that investable right now.”
Hyatt: Boundless is a service business, not a SaaS company
“And this is service business. This is not a SaaS company.”
Hudson: A $1M cap signals a founder has figured out nothing
“To me, a one million dollar cap is for someone who has nothing, who hasn't figured out anything. There's serious questions about the model.”
Hudson: The DC startup ecosystem is a 'show me' market
“DC is a very price insensitive show me market.”
Nadel: A $10M cap is way too high for $25K monthly revenue
“Based on my experience and all the companies that we look at and invest in, that's not market. That's just not competitive with the deals that we see. A company doing 25,000 a month in revenue, you know, everything else being equal, a ten million cap is just w…”
Phil Nadel: WeDo is just a task management app for college kids
“I just think it's a task management app for college kids, and that's all it is right now today.”
Hudson: Conviction on high valuation beats slashing price by 80%
“I mean, I would rather that they stand there and have conviction and reasons behind a thirty million dollar valuation than drop their drawers and go from thirty million to five million.”
Phil Nadel believes Samaritan operates too much like a non-profit to scale
“I don't mind investing in public benefit companies, but this just seems to be too much like a non-profit. I just, I, you know, I'm just having trouble with how this really scales to be a big company.”
Daniel Galati: Veteran career transition is a billion-dollar market opportunity
“I think it's actually a huge market. I think that if you play the numbers out, you can easily get to a billion dollar market opportunity here.”
Hyatt: Hearken Struggles Due to Market Decline and Churn, Not Mission
“I think fundamentally, you're in a declining market. You have too much churn. You have too much weightlifting to get these sales done. I'm just saying, I don't fundamentally think you're structured properly to hit the purpose that you're talking about.”
Mohnot: SkyHi's subscription model is structurally identical to MoviePass
“This is exactly like a gym membership, but it's movie pass.”
Nadel: First-Mover Advantage Is DogSpot's Only Moat
“I know, but that's the only mode she can have is first movement advantage.”
Hyatt: Smart Doghouse Market Can Support 100,000 Units
“But this market's big enough to have, honestly, a 100,000 of these things.”
Nadel: Prop bet fantasy formats are easily replicated by competitors
“I feel the opposite way from Charles in that I don't feel that the format is enough of a differentiator, and I don't think it's that difficult for another company to either replicate it or to pivot themselves.”
Downey: DraftKings or FanDuel could copy Thrive Fantasy in under a month
“My biggest takeaway was this feels like a feature that DraftKings or FanDuel can turn on in a month or less.”
Chapman: Industrial Organic is strictly idea-stage without logistics operations
“I think, honestly, your, the stage of your company is really idea stage. It's not just pre-revenue, but it's really idea stage, because you haven't built out any of the logistics part of the business yet. It's a whole, whole realm you haven't even touched on, …”
Downey: The market for VR training is already saturated
“The market for VR training is quite saturated right now.”
Nadel: Walmart Is the Wrong Channel for Building a High-End Coffee Brand
“You know, Walmart is mainstream America, that's not the brand you want to build for this. I think you want to go after that high-end coffee drinker, and Walmart's not the right channel.”
Debbie Wei Mullen: Consumers demand an omnichannel retail experience
“You know, people want an omnichannel experience. They want to be able to buy it online. They want to be able to buy it at the corner store. They want to be able to buy it on Amazon.”
Dixon rejects traditional VC to avoid annual fundraising and forced premature scaling
“The traditional VC model doesn't work for me personally.
I don't want to go back and have to raise more money every single year.
I don't want to have to be pushed to grow and scale when, you know, it may not be the time because sometimes it takes longer than y…”