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 290 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 5 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
Jarvis: Serena Williams Does Not Care About Teaching MasterClass Courses
“I've photographed Serena. I know her. I know she doesn't love teaching. She doesn't care about it. She's a great tennis player. Obviously the best in the world, the history of the sport, but I know also that she, you know, if she could get offset as fast as po…”
Koppelman: Decentralized platforms will replace Uber, Airbnb, and eBay
“We assume that every platform that exists today, Uber, Airbnb, eBay, Will be replaced eventually by decentralized platforms and gnosis is a platform decentralized platform for prediction markets”
Mobilewalla tracked church attendance to segment evangelical voters in swing states
“So, so the definition we were given was, take a swing state like Florida, right? And there are like, whatever, 1400 evangelical churches. So to be an evangelical Christian, you need to have been observed in an evangelical church at least once a week for the pa…”
Kineshanko: Blockchain is how the world builds for the next decade
“This way of building stuff is going to be the way the world builds stuff for the next decade.”
Shamia: Five9, inContact, Genesys, Avaya operate in maintenance mode
“You know, five, nine in contact, Genesis, Avaya are the main competitors. Most of them are more maintenance mode than an innovation.”
Marlin: Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn has zero strategic fit
“I contrast that with Microsoft buying LinkedIn, and I should say that I love LinkedIn. I'm one of the first thousand users of LinkedIn. We use it extensively in my company. I think it's a great service, and yet I think it has zero strategic fit with Microsoft …”
Benson: Founders should vest the bulk of their equity upon exit
“The way I would suggest would be a better way to do it is take a small slice of it. Like the amount that you would give like an early VP or someone who's, who's, who's high up in the organization, but not, not a founder and give and invest that portion over fo…”
Real estate agent fees destroy over 50% of home equity
“If you use an agent to buy and sell a home, you actually destroy over 50% of your home equity and the fees that they charge.”
GoldenKey claims zero customer acquisition cost for supply and demand
“I, you know, customer acquisition costs on both supply and demand is zero.”
Zuchlinski avoids scaling profitable marketing channels to prevent hiring staff
“When we find a profitable channel, I don't add more money into there. Just cause I said, I don't actually like hiring people that keeps me happy, keeps our team small, reduces communication overhead and keeps our customers happy too”
Ghadimi: VIP Motoring guarantees massive resale profits on exotic cars within a year
“We allow people to come in and purchase, let's say, a car that we're buying for half a million. We'll let them purchase it for 700,000, and we'll guarantee that we'll resell it somewhere around 1.2 million in the next year or so.”
Ghadimi: VIP Motoring investors face zero risk to principal during market downturns
“We also have guarantees in place in case, let's say the market takes a tank. We can always back out and get out of certain deals so that the actual consumer is never actually impacted by this. So their principle is ultimately safe.”
Ghadimi: We paid a €70,000 bribe to divert a Ferrari 488 allocation
“One of the things we did is the car was heading to Germany. So we have to bribe someone upwards of 70,000 euros. Just to allow the car to change routes and ultimately tell the client that they weren't going to get a car because of the mistake in exchange getti…”
Latka confirms some Heyo investors lost money in the exit
“So it is a 100% true that there were investors that got back less money than what they put in.”
Latka predicts he will run for US President and win in 2036
“I plan to run for president and win in 2036.”
Latka predicts he will run a $100B hedge fund
“I will run the world's largest hedge fund with a hundred billion dollars in assets under management.”
Latka avoids romantic relationships because they give others leverage over him
“This is one of the reasons, by the way, I don't have a relationship. It becomes very, if I have a relationship, it becomes obviously clear what I care about, whoever I'm with, right? And if people then know how to cater to whoever I'm with, it's actually a wea…”
Michael Litt claims Box artificially lowers CAC by filing hosting under COGS
“Historically, actually, and this may be an interesting backtrack is, is Box, right? When they host someone's files for free, right? In my opinion, that's a customer acquisition cost because you're paying for that content, but you know, they file that away as a…”
Holiday in 2016: Trump's campaign tactics will make him a horrible president
“What's made Donald Trump a great campaigner will ultimately make him a horrible president, and maybe even make it impossible for him to actually become president, because he is not actually aware of why what he's doing is working, right?”
Rampton aims to monopolize payments and bankrupt rivals PayPal and Venmo
“You know, ultimately do want to monopolize it and put some of those guys out of business, obviously, or have them acquire us mainly put them out of business. We don't, our goal is not to be acquired.”
Rampton: Pixloo patent covered 360-degree photos and was widely infringed
“Yeah, so there was a technology, primarily we owned a patent. Or, I mean, that was probably our biggest asset was we owned a patent where if you take a camera and spin it 360 degrees. We own that patent. So pretty much. Yeah. Any photographer in the world has …”
Public liquid asset returns often match or beat venture capital
“There's all kinds of academic studies that the returns are that are very comparable to the private equity venture in many cases, even better.”
Urban: Projecting SaaS LTV via Churn Formulas Is Meaningless Nonsense
“When that number one divided by your churn projects like your L, it will project your LTV at like, oh, you're three and a half years or four years.
Meanwhile, every year your business changes, your contract values change your contract lengths change, your pro…”
Urban plans to raise venture capital without a pitch deck
“I'm going to raise money without a deck.
I don't give a shit about a deck.
It's like, here, you're, this is what we're doing right now.
You're going to want to work with us.
This is what we mean.
this is what we want to do going forward.
And people are …”
Walch: Podcasting has an ease-of-consumption problem, not a discoverability problem
“Because there isn't a discoverability issue in podcasting. What there is, is an ease of consumption issue. And what Marco did with his app, Overcast, he made it easy for people to consume the content they know they want to consume.”
Walch: Forcing podcast listeners onto proprietary apps for ads will fail
“Really, really, you're going to change how people want to consume it so that they can get more ads. Wow, what a stupid idea that is. So you think people out there are going to go, yes, I want to hear Geico ads. Please let me change how I listen. No, that's not…”
Spivack: AI is nowhere near replacing programmers, editors, or writers
“I do not think that AI is anywhere near replacing programmers, which I think are creative people, or editors, or writers.”
Puri: Blab's audience will be larger than any cable TV network
“And so what we're going to do is we're going to gather the biggest audience we can. And I believe that that will end up being bigger than Any cable TV network out there.”
Harbinger: 25k podcast listeners often out-earn 300k email subscribers
“But if you look at an audience of 300,000 in email, and you compare it to, say, a podcast audience of 25,000. You'll often find the podcaster making more, or generating more revenue than that email marketer.”
Anyone with $100,000 who wants a Tesla already owns one
“Anybody that has a 100,000 laying around that wants a Tesla already has one.”
Harris in Jan 2016: Donald Trump's brazenness will be his downfall
“And I think that, that we're all going to see that at the end, Donald Trump's brazenness is going to be his downfall.”
Latka: Teachable raising at $30M valuation is the 'stupidest thing'
“And he's right now negotiating an equity round with a pre-money valuation at thirty million dollars, which is like the stupidest. In my opinion, I told him this on the show. I said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
Garg: Legacy dental software incumbents lack technical talent to build fast
“They just can't move at the speed at which we can move. They don't have the technical skills or even the people to be able to build software the way we can.”
Hamdi: Y Combinator AI startups are often 'fugazi' ChatGPT wrappers
“I think AI right now has a lot of like Y Combinator kind of fugazi with a couple of people and, you know, a chat GPT wrapper.”
Levy: Construction companies are negligent if not using Document Crunch
“It's just candidly negligent to not be using our product if you're in the construction industry.”
6sense demanded a 3x price increase six months before contract expiration
“It's six months before the contract expires. They're like, we're gonna triple your price and hang up the phone.”
Omnisend CEO warns against buying cheap backlinks to avoid Google penalties
“Shall you buy backlinks? Yes. Shall you buy from the low authority website? Please don't do that because Google recognized it and then you can be penalized, yeah? So if there is something for cheap in the market, usually there is a trap.”
Buhrdorf: Founders should never hire a lawyer for company formation
“You know, when you do a formation, people come to me and say, hey, should I use a lawyer to do a formation? I say, absolutely not. Not only will they do it wrong because they don't do 1000 of thousands of these like we do, we make damn sure we do it right, hav…”
Martin: Remote workers are 35% to 40% more productive than in-office workers
“Remote workers are 35 to 40% more productive than their office workers.”
Martin: Prioritize Marketing Channels by SEO, Paid Ads, Then Email
“Do SEO, paid ads, and email in that order. If your CMO tells you to do anything different, they don't know what they're talking about.”
Zubarov: Customer success platform Totango is an old, clunky system
“Tatango is rather old system. You know, it's a bit clunky. You know, it's developed like Melbourne 10 years ago.”
Kagan: Market leader Sovren is horrible and fails at resume extraction
“Sovereign is horrible, and they are a market leader. And with horrible, I mean, they can't extract data, so they can't read non-Word or PDF resumes.”
Sanwal: Consensus-driven culture results in a 'shit brown culture'
“If you give everybody input into what the culture's gonna become, you're gonna have a shit brown culture. And so what you got to do is say, nope, this is our culture, and we're going to spike on these two colors, and that's it”
Sanwal: Do not hire candidates with a track record of startup failures
“When you see somebody who's taking a lot of L's, like, you know, hey, I was at a startup, it failed, my prior startup had this problem, and you look at their resume, and it's just like a string of losses, like, don't hire that person.”
Patel: Agency service churn is typically much lower than software churn
“Churn in our space is typically much lower than software churn.”
Berman: ZoomInfo rarely refreshes the specific data customers actually need
“Last time we used ZoomInfo, because we were ZoomInfo customers we had a very hard time finding up-to-date data, regardless of what they said, because they'll spend their ten million a month, and they'll update data that's completely different from anything tha…”