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
Chapman: Starbucks brewed coffee is atrocious
“I think Starbucks coffee is atrocious. I think their brewed coffee is atrocious.”
Chapman: Market of health-conscious pet parents is too small
“I'm just concerned that the number of pet parents who are forward thinking enough about their pet's health is too small.”
Kesserwani claims banks cannot shut Cushion down without blocking their own customers
“The way we're updating the product such that the message comes from the user, this can't get shut down, because essentially, the banks would be blocking their own customers.”
Manus: Bandwagon provides little value to sports teams
“They like to control their tickets, they like to know what's going on, but I don't see this as a big value to the teams, to tell you the truth.”
Hughes: Ethereum lacks the speed required for digital ticket transactions
“The biggest challenge in that is that they are using Ethereum and other blockchains that don't have the speed that are able to keep up with the way that tickets are going to be transacted digitally.”
Diamond: Blockchain is a paradigm shift comparable to mobile and cloud
“But I think the blockchain is a paradigm shift. I mean, there is the mobile computing paradigm shift. There was the cloud computing paradigm shift. I think the blockchain is a new paradigm shift.”
Sorensen: Allergy-friendly competitor brands lack appealing branding and nutrition
“So there's the allergy friendly players that, you know, the branding, the product, the nutrition is not appealing.”
Hudson: B2B buyers will not care about Sorensen's personal founder story
“I don't think your greatest asset, which is you and your story, I don't think the B to B people care.”
Burton: Students are too addicted to phones to fake attendance
“Secondly, in terms of actually handing off your phone to someone else and then going to do something else, the likelihood of that actually happening is minimal. Out of the UK, they produced a study on nomophobia, which is an irrational fear of being without yo…”
Hyatt: Fletch is a feature rather than a standalone product
“I'm not that interested in your attendance platform because I think it's a feature, not a product, and it's got a hurdle because it's not only a feature, I've got to put in a piece of hardware, so I'm moderately interested, not that interested.”
Hyatt: Fletch should pivot to enterprise workforce attendance over education
“I don't like the education space and what you're doing. I would like you to be an enterprise product for businesses, for attendance, for workers, where there's real money transacting involved. I think that's the higher value usage, and I think you're going to …”
Kubik: Satellite companies ignore end consumers to focus on infrastructure
“All these companies are focused on the infrastructure and no one's thinking about the end consumer, the end customer that's actually gonna be using this.”
Dominguez: VR is in a nuclear winter and AR is very cold
“VR is in a nuclear winter and AR is in like a very cold.”
Hyatt: Playven's 10% take rate is probably not enough to scale
“The reason it's very very expensive, is that 10% gets eaten very quickly on customer acquisition cost, your marketing costs, you're getting in the players. So the 10% isn't probably enough to scale. You have to go through a lot of cash.”
Manus: Playven's revenue does not justify an $8M valuation
“No, you shouldn't have because your revenue and this does not, ah, represent an eight million dollar valuation.”
Diamond: Playven cannot successfully do both SaaS and a marketplace
“You're doing two things, and I don't think you can do both.”
Manus: Topias Soininen lacks capacity to build a cross-sport platform
“But also, I don't think he has the capacity to build out a platform for all sports across, right, all venues.”
Soininen: Sports court booking can reach venture scale like OpenTable
“I completely disagree with that. A great example of this is, is open table. They started off as a booking system and then they become this billionaire billion dollar platform for a marketplace for finding a restaurant. So I completely disagree with that.”
Hyatt: A Silicon Valley version of PartySlate would burn $20M to $40M
“Marketplaces take a lot of money, but I think it actually takes more money than she's raising. I think she was a valley company, and Charles, correct me if I'm wrong, you'd be 20, 30, forty million in, and you'd be pumping way more cash in, and trying to get t…”
Novak: VC Brad Feld agrees that Pinterest is not a PartySlate competitor
“I know I've had many talks with Brad Feld, who's a, you know, one of the leading VCs in the country, and he said to me over and over, Pinterest is not your competitor, and we agree a hundred percent.”
Nadel: Amazon's delivery network threatens Shipsi's business
“They're building their own delivery network, which has significantly bad implications for Shipsy in my view.”
Lee: Amazon's delivery news does not impact Shipsi's business
“It actually doesn't, I don't believe it impacts our business.”
Lee: Anyone trying to compete with Amazon is foolish
“We're not trying to compete with them by any means. You know, personally, I think anyone who does is foolish”
Jillian Manus: Utility Tokens Are the Path to Success for Most Companies
“I think utility tokens are dope. I think they are exactly where all companies should be, and I think tokenizing is going to be the path to success for a lot of companies”
Michael Hyatt: Average Consumers Won't Use Apps to Reserve High-End Wine
“What you're describing is a niche subset of the wine. You have to really be into wine to do what you're doing to, like, look at your phone, find an app, find a bottle. The average person's not going to do that. The average American consumer does not do that.”
Hedges: Mainstream beauty brands strip natural oils and add harmful fragrances
“That's what the beauty industry does. They'll take your argan oil, and they'll process it, take out any scent, And then throw in a fragrance. None of that is good for you.”
Sarabia: Addiction treatment relies on outdated, one-size-fits-all methods
“Right now, treatment tends to be a very one-size-fits-all approach. It's a very blanket approach in the treatment industry, and the science is a little bit old, and there hasn't really been much advancement in terms of the future of treatment.”
Nadel: $10M valuation cap is uncompetitive for $25K in 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…”
Kugel: Mobile tire competitors lack pricing knowledge and distributor connections
“So where we're different is a lot of them really don't buy tires at the right price because they don't know the cost of the distributors. And so I do, that was an advantage that I had coming into it. Plus I have a lot more connections than a typical tire shop …”
Hyatt: Tire Agent's valuation is likely no higher than its prior round
“Really, your valuation is probably not much more than what you just did, and really what you should be looking for is, is, is probably strategic investors that'll help you and make these introductions and what have you.”
Daniel Gulati: Tire Agent Fails the 10x Better VC Standard
“It's like the old venture capital rule. It's like you gotta be 10 times better, 10 times cheaper. And I just feel like your business doesn't meet that grade. I don't think it's so much better that the average customer will kind of migrate to you in droves.”
Michael Hyatt: Tire Agent works best as a cash-flow lifestyle business
“I think this is the most amazing lifestyle business. This guy understands how to work that New York market. He could get out a million bucks of free cash flow a year. He could pay all his investors. He could make three, 400 grand a year and be very happy.”
Manus: Xiao Wang checks every box for an early-stage founder
“If you take apart a founder, right, and you take apart a product at the very early stages he checks every single box. And then some.”
Hyatt: Boundless is a service business, not a SaaS company
“And this is service business. This is not a SaaS company.”
Gulati doubts retailers get over 1% of revenue from vending machines
“My hypothesis is there aren't a ton of retailers and brands that derive more than one percent of their revenue via this channel.”
Manus: unGlue's product can be replicated quickly by competitors
“See he, it took him, ah, two years to build this, but the fact is, is that he has a small team, and I think this can be replicated pretty fast.”
Gulati: Jiobit beaconing tech is more powerful in other verticals
“I would argue that your progressive beaconing technology is actually way more powerful in like, you know, any other vertical besides the one that you've chosen.”
Nadel: Lunar Wireless Phones Will Mostly Serve as Spare Drawer Phones
“What concerns me is, is usage, because I see this as a phone that people will buy, put it in the drawer, and keep it in case they need it for a spare phone. Not have to worry about paying for it each month, which is great, but have it if they need it.”
Kerner: Victoria's Secret's Hypersexualized Branding Fails Modern Women
“Yeah, we were trying to be, ah, polite, but yes it's completely hypersexualized, so antiquated, and, you know, the embellishments, the, you need a padded version, the uncomfortable experience that's not what's resonating with the modern, empowered woman.”
Gulati: Home try-on is an easily replicable tactic, not a moat
“Home try on is like a tactic, not a, it's a tactic that can be replicated, obviously.”
Fisher: Free home try-on is not easily replicable due to inventory complexity
“Actually free home try on is not easily replicable. The ability to operationally have enough inventory to buffer a free home try on logistical model is actually very complex.”
Gulati: Harper Wilde is not a 10x improvement over Target bras
“And so like, this seems like it's a little bit better for sure. But it's not, obviously, at least not to me, like, tenx better than the Target bra.”
Daniel Gulati: Skeptical of bra category due to past startup failures
“Like for us to make a brand bet, we really need to be excited about the category and between the many tombstones kind of that have that have existed as well as Just the consumer behavior. I'm just like not a hundred percent bought into the category.”
Smith: Sandbox Commerce Targets a $36 Billion Total Addressable Market
“So the total addressable addressable market, our addressable market is six, is thirty six billion dollars currently right now.”
Allen: Peloton and Fitness Apps Fail to Support the Customer Journey
“One of the things we see in the fitness market is that a lot of people are putting content out, which Peloton is doing in an outstanding way, but they're not supporting their customers in a journey.”
Manus: Millennials avoid physical possessions to invest in experiences
“One of the mentalities of millennials is that they don't want to have things, okay? They're trying to get rid of their things. So they're investing more in experiences. Everybody knows that it's not, right? So because one of the reasons is they travel around a…”