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 1,177 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
Harris: The Venture Capital Model Is Effectively a Ponzi Scheme
“Because that VC model is, if you were, if you're being a little bit mean about it, you'd call it a Ponzi scheme. Because people have to lose.”
Zach Resnick believes Craig Wright is very likely Satoshi Nakamoto
“Most of our thesis and our focus on the reason we're really long BSV and not other blockchains comes from the technology of Bitcoin and is, doesn't have to do with Craig Wright, but yes, you are correct in that I do think that Craig Wright is very likely to be…”
Zach Resnick sees no compelling evidence that Craig Wright is a fraudster
“I personally haven't seen any compelling evidence of him doing kind of unethical things or being a fraudster the way that a lot of those arguments are painted in kind of the crypto media.”
Organ: Venture-backed software jobs are more important than serving food
“You know, the restaurant business is not actually one that is sustainable. That doesn't sustainably create lots of, you know, lots of, you know, high tech Innovative jobs. Whereas I think what I'm doing does. So I know that might sound selfish, but I don't thi…”
Latka claims 99 percent of people on Earth are totally useless
“I think 99% of people on earth, they're totally useless. They don't think much, and they rely on other people.”
Ley: SSRIs are very likely causing many mass shooting incidents
“And then the second thing is that it's very likely that SSRIs are actually causing a lot of these.”
Tim Draper Defended Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes as 'Terrific' in 2016
“Oh yeah, she's terrific.”
Danzy: European engineers offer better technical quality than equivalent-budget US engineers
“We have more stability and more, frankly, a better technical level with European engineers than what we could find in the US for the same budget.”
Garg: Henry Schein and Patterson lack software engineering capabilities
“These are owned by Henry Schein and Patterson. These are large supply companies. They don't have their technical skills or even the people to be able to build software the way we can.”
Kahlow: Customer support AI platforms operate as low-margin businesses
“They're solving the problem of, you know, solving support cases and tickets. That is a very low margin business, right? So, like, you can't have a million conversations and have it cost a lot because there's not a big upside to that.”
Singh: Software Has Been a Horrible Investment Category Since 2018
“Software has actually been a really horrible category to invest in for the last five, six, seven years.”
London: International hires work harder and are more appreciative than US workers
“A lot of people that we've hired from, ah, different countries are harder working and more appreciative of the job than the people in the U.S.”
Novoselsky: The Traditional SaaS Playbook Is Dead
“And one of the things that TLDR on all of my research, basically the SAS playbook as we know it is dead”
Robinson: Successful founders should take millions yearly instead of awaiting exits
“If you create a successful startup I believe that you should make millions of dollars every year, and not just be waiting for this maybe exit, or like maybe secondary, that maybe will happen, but maybe will not, probably will not.”
Bootstrapping Is Often a Better Path to IPO Than Venture Capital
“I think bootstrapping is actually, in many ways, a better way to get to be a public company.”
Maruthavanan: Product-market fit is a fraud mental model and not actionable
“Product market fit. It's not even a framework, it's just a phrase. Some people like to call it a mental model. And I think, you know, it is a fraud mental model. I have not found a single entrepreneur who could look at the definition of product market fit and …”
Yampolskiy: Startups under $10M ARR probably lack product-market fit
“Like, I mean, I think if you're under ten million in ARR, you actually probably did not reach your product market fit yet.”
Hauser: Citrix "way overpaid" when it acquired Grasshopper
“We built a great company, but someone way overpaid for it, Citrix.”
Harris: Benchmarking remote global pay to San Francisco rates is anti-competitive
“I think it is anti-competitive, frankly, to say to people in Romania and Morocco and South Africa, you have to compete with people working on the west coast who need to pay a whole lot of stuff in, in terms of rent the one bit of leverage you have, which is yo…”
Hyman: Google and IBM Watson lack data to match Sapia.ai
“It's something that IBM tried to do with Watson for a couple of decades, but couldn't because they didn't have the data. And even though Google has 10,000 PhDs working in NLP, they can't do it either because they don't have the data.”
Frazier calls engineering cushy and comfortable compared to grinding in sales
“Whereas the engineers are all, it's pretty cushy. You know, they get tasks, they get them done. I know they work hard, but it's a little bit just of a different environment to work in. Their environment's a lot more comfortable. Our salespeople are grinding.”
Britton: SaaS companies selling to other SaaS are a house of cards
“I think a big house of cards in SaaS right now is SaaS companies who have a customer base that is other SaaS companies.”
Lunawat defends having Adam Neumann on Rumor cap table
“Co-working as a concept was introduced and made global by WeWork. So to have, you know, those insights in terms of how to make a business go global, and how to scale something that fast, I think there are fewer people better positioned to that than the current…”
Gaither: 'Privileged' investor mindset made raising capital difficult
“This is a main reason why it's taken us a long time to get funding is because people have a privileged mindset of how the law works and how the law functions.”
Viktoroff: Many document automation competitors sell software that doesn't work
“We've got a lot of competitors in our space. They're selling a lot of stuff that doesn't work.”
Franceschetti: Mattress Companies Marketing Proprietary Foam Materials Are Running A Scam
“But again, foam, when you hear all these companies talking about foam and their latest release, it is a scam. And you can just go anywhere and buy it on your own.”
Caldbeck: Early fintech startups were marketing companies relying purely on FICO
“First I think an issue with a lot of the kind of FinTech one point O companies was there actually isn't any technology behind them. They're marketing companies. And so like how, without talking about any one company and specifically like how many of them would…”
Caldbeck claims VCs profit by convincing founders to sacrifice everything
“VCs in general, as a macro point tend to make money by convincing entrepreneurs to give up everything.”
Mattermark failed because it raised too much venture capital, says York
“The other reason why Metamark wasn't a successful company is because they fundraise too much.”
Salihefendić claims Basecamp is wrong about equity in bootstrapped startups
“I mean, honestly, like, I think I mean, I was kind of, like, against this, you know, like, the bootstrapping, especially, like, if you, like, hear the base camp guys, like, equity has no value and stuff like that, but it's kind of bullshit, because, like, equi…”
Gomez: Competitors like Contently and Skyword hyperscaled too early without efficiency
“I see these companies, the hyperscale too early, my personal take, and that comes with a cost. They didn't have the efficiency.”
Jackson: 2020 stock market is biggest bubble of lifetimes, sell equities
“The biggest bubble of lifetimes don't own any stocks.”
Founders cannot build a bootstrapped software company in Western Europe
“You cannot build a product company, especially a bootstrap company from London or anywhere from Europe.”
Central banks should distribute newly created money directly to individuals
“We can't be creating the money and giving it to banks. We have to create the money and give it to people.”
Wenger advocates taxing all income and capital gains at a flat rate
“Like you could have a flat tax rate. Every dollar is taxed the same way, by the way, independent where it comes from. I would tax every dollar. You get a dollar, whether it's from interest rate, capital gains, work, whatever, just you get a dollar, you pay tax…”
Volset: Sam Altman's $10B startup valuation rule makes no sense
“He wrote a piece and I think in January saying how to invest in a startup. And he said, you should never invest in any company that couldn't potentially be a ten billion dollar company. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Like there's a lot of companies…”
De Valk: Matt Mullenweg and Automattic cannot afford to acquire Yoast
“I don't think he can afford us, first of all.”
Booth: Further government debt is ineffective as system is past rescue
“It actually doesn't matter because we're already so far past the point of rescue that, that, that, that, that, that more and more debt is going to be ineffective.”
Booth: Governments Should Not Bail Out Companies, Let Them Fail
“Should you bail out these companies across the board? No, you shouldn't. You should let them all fail, and the people with cash will win.”
Booth: The Stock Market Is an Illusion Detached From Fundamentals
“The fed is the market, right? With the stock market is an illusion. Today it's completely detached from reality of fundamentals.”
Booth: WeWork's peak $45B valuation was essentially a Ponzi scheme
“WeWork looks like a really good business when it's valued at forty-five billion dollars, and everybody says, wow, this is great, because more It's a Ponzi scheme. More and more people racing in, and more and more people racing in, and then you take that away a…”
Booth: Bitcoin is the only logical peg for a new Bretton Woods
“I think it would be pegged to a digital, I think it would be pegged to Bitcoin. I think that's what, I think that's the most logical thing right now. And every government will say, no, peg it to my digital currency. But it doesn't, but whether it's a digital o…”
Pysh: The global economy is experiencing a fiat currency default
“So the argument is that we're seeing a default of fiat currency globally is the argument.”
Pysh: US and global debt have already reached unpayable levels
“You're already there. You're already there. It's just what does this all transition to is what it really comes down to.”
Pysh: Stocks will underperform gold and Bitcoin in purchasing power
“The stock market went straight up, but relative to gold, and in my opinion, relative to Bitcoin, those stocks are going to underperform.”
Pysh: Quantitative easing is effectively socialism for the rich
“Quantitative easing, it routes the middle class. It literally guts them, right? It polarizes the wealthy so that they get wealthier. It's effectively socialism for the rich. That's what quantitative easing is period.”
Pysh: Fed Used COVID-19 as Cover for Inevitable Quantitative Easing
“Leading into COVID, they were already expanding the balance sheet through the repo market, and it was only a matter of time before they were going to have to do QE. And so once the COVID hit. It was like, oh yeah, here we go here. It's QE because of COVID. It …”
Pysh: Breaking up Big Tech treats symptoms; unpegged fiat is the root cause
“Well, of course, what they're doing, all these arguments of people that are saying those types of things, they're getting a mop out to clean up the floor because the kitchen sink is flooding. But you have to stop the kitchen sink from running. It's locked in p…”