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 3,477 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 23 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
Wong: The window of opportunity for AI agent startups is 18 months
“Today, It's very easy to get Vico into version 0.1, but from 0.1 to one takes a long time. Yes. And yeah, so that's today's, that's where we are today, but that's not going to last long. So this window of opportunity I think lasts about a year, year and a half…”
Wehn: AI Enables Value-Based Software Pricing in Heavy Industry
“For us, what we see is that the willingness to spend money on software has significantly changed because of AI. AI is not seen as a tool the way that any software application has been seen. AI is seen as value and return on invest because it can do work. So th…”
Putra: EightX risks going out of business within years from AI
“There's a chance that in a couple of years I won't have a business. And so we're grappling with that and that's part of why we're going very, very high touch.”
Cakir let go 50 people after automating manual scraping with Clay
“I've kind of let go about 50 people. And that's because we got a tool called clay, you know and suddenly we didn't have to do manual scraping and we didn't have to do manual copy paste from LinkedIn and so on.”
Fallows: Only commission-earning salespeople pitch whole life insurance
“The only person who is trying to sell you a whole life insurance is someone who's getting a commission on whole life insurance.”
Fallows: Almost none of 7,000 ultra-high-net-worth community members hold permanent life insurance
“In our community of about 7000 people who are Either very high or ultra high net worth and, you know, price of a scan, these things, pretty much nobody carries one of these permanent life insurance.”
Fallows: Half of High-Net-Worth Community Members Have No Mortgage
“So half our members don't have a mortgage at all on their house.”
Weisbrot: Companies should refuse to hire candidates not actively using AI
“Whether you're trying to hire an employee or whether you're trying to find a CFO or whatever it is you're looking for, if they are not already using AI and promoting to you the fact that they're using AI, you probably shouldn't hire them because you're not goi…”
Weisbrot: Investors are really good at ruining businesses and founders' lives
“Between you and me, investors are really good at ruining businesses and your life, but some people need investment money to be able to scale what they're doing.”
Ustinov: Future Knowledge Work Will Center on Unified Context Over Apps
“And I strongly believe that in the future, most of the work with any kind of systems will look like this. Of course it wouldn't be a cursor. It would be like something nicer in terms of interface and everything. But the process of building up your context, bri…”
Bilkowski: SaaS companies should never charge customers per token
“So now I'm also going to chart besides per seat, you know, charging you dollars per seat, but now I'm also going to charge you per token. This is a no, no. I call this showing your customers your underpants. You don't want to show your customers your underpant…”
Lulo: My LinkedIn DM response rate is 70 percent
“So my response rate on DMs on LinkedIn is seven or 70% or seven out of 10, which is insane.”
Weisbrot predicts rapid inflation due to Trump's policies
“We're going to see a lot of inflation very quickly because of Trump's policies.”
Twa: AI agent simulations have replaced human focus groups for Amazon listings
“We even have poll simulations for the images, the copy, the listings themselves, where we can take simulated polls That have been built through agents that then basically act like a virtual audience of thousands to tens of thousands of people, and then come ba…”
Hepworth: Holding zero crypto in a portfolio is a risk-on position
“And you're actually risk on by not having any exposure in your portfolio.”
Hepworth: Bitcoin will surpass $200,000 during the current market cycle
“Even though I think we're going to go up to 200 K plus the cycle, you could exit right now and you've still done a five X, but people don't do that.”
Welser: Current LLM systems are inherently sycophantic
“So right now these systems are sycophantic. They are, they're based on our prompts. They're going to take what we say and give us back what we've asked, and then we're going to iterate.”
Rizzoli: Europe Adopts AI at Half the Rate of the US
“In Europe, we see about half the adoption rate. So for the same amount of revenue generated, European businesses are half as likely to make a purchase and to adopt.”
McKay: Familiarity and UX will decide the winner between ChatGPT and Claude
“That's what we'll win between Claude and ChatGPT. It's like for the average everyday user, the, Six billion people or whatever it might be. What's going to be most important for them is UI, UX, and how familiar they are with it and how often they use it. So if…”
Reshoring manufacturing will require less diverse, software-customized product lines
“And so what we are going probably to see also is that reshoring is not reshoring the same Factories, but it's also not reassuring the same products. And so you can reassure when you rethink the product line to make it less diverse, but more catered to each aud…”
Semiconductor reshoring to the US is driven purely by modern warfare
“The only reason why there are so many chips factory getting back to the US is because war is chips and chips is war. Like, if you put chips on a drone, you basically have something that is better than airplanes. And so, We will be forced to change our producti…”
Jamison: AI Will Not Materially Impact Physical Trades Like Plumbing
“AI is not going to change how, you know, someone remodels a house, how a plumber changes the pipes, like that type of thing, and at least not in a material enough way to make a difference.”
Jamison: AI Venture Bets Resemble Airlines With High Capital and No Moats
“If you take all the profits of all the airlines over time, it's negative for investors. Like shareholders have had a negative return for that because they've just kind of competed themselves away. There's no giant moat to get those monopoly profits. And it's a…”
Brandon Wolf: Professional Investors Frequently Fail Basic Background Diligence on Founders
“I'll see professional investors back somebody. And all you have to do is Google the person and go to like page three of their Google reviews to see that they have Like an FTC order against them from scamming people previously. This is the level of diligence th…”
Stuart Cohen: Crypto and Blockchain Have Produced History's Biggest Corruption
“And actually the biggest corruption Of all time has kind of come from the whole crypto blockchain world, you know?”
Stanford study found restrictive brand instructions worsen creator content performance
“Stanford University did a big study that we provided some data for where they looked at hundreds of thousands of influencer contracts, and then they looked at the content that was produced from those contracts, and they found that the more specific the brand w…”
Weisbrot: GPT-4o safety testers reported the model threatened to blackmail them.
“There was some model, I believe it was four point O where the engineers for that model had said, look, we see it doing things that are a bit scary for us, where if you pretend that you're going to like do something illegal, then it'll contact the authorities a…”
Weisbrot: AI Aims to Replace Human Functionality in Society
“I think AI's goal is to replace humans functionality in society. So our existence is a threat to its usefulness.”
Nikic: AI access to energy grids risks single-click critical infrastructure shutdowns
“If they're going to have access to these energy databases and centers, they can just with one click turn it all off. And we have no energy. It can affect food, transportation, and healthcare.”
Adam Shell: Microdosing works for 95% of people unless biased against it
“And it's, it works for about 95% of the people. The only people who it doesn't work for are those that have a bias that, like, want to prove me wrong or prove microdosing wrong.”
Nanavati: Cimphony delivers $1,600/hour partner-level legal quality for $10 an hour
“Partners at law firms will charge anywhere from eight 50 to 1600 dollars an hour. And with us, they still get the similar type of quality at 10 dollars an hour in type of cost, which is incredible savings for a similar type of quality, what they could expect f…”
Yaes: Filipino offshore teams operate in a hierarchical 'boss is God' culture
“When I talk to my team, it's there in a I'm boss, I'm God culture, and you have to really pull things out of them.”
Weisbrot: Businesses claiming AI won't eliminate jobs are lying
“No matter how much anyone says AI is not going to be implemented into my business in order to remove humans. Yeah, no, you're wrong or you're lying because everyone, especially in this kind of a climate is going to fire people and look to replace them with hum…”
King: Wealthy early adopters make the most effective evangelists for new products
“Instead of trying to sell to the base, which is probably your late majority, if you're looking at the innovation adoption curve, you know, crossing the chasm, or your even early majority, the majority, the biggest part of the bell curve, It is just asinine. It…”
Weisbrot: East Asian face-saving culture causes founders to make unkept commitments
“If they're Chinese in particular, Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Singaporean. There's this need to preserve face, and that may require you to say something or do something That makes you look good, even if it's not reality.”
Weisbrot: Pitching social causes is an emotionally manipulative way to fundraise
“I get scared when someone tells me that they're going to do something like that, because my, the first thing that comes to my mind is you're just trying to get to like some mushy side of me that just wants to like give you money because I believe in this and I…”
Sauer: Giving equity to systems or operations hires is often a mistake
“Somebody who can do the systems, like there's a lot of people out there who would do that. They're usually not, they don't always have to be an equity person in your business. And oftentimes making them an equity person in your business is a mistake because th…”
Weisbrot: The AI agent Bordy autonomously raised an $8M funding round
“The AI ended up raising eight million dollars for itself without the human's feedback until it got time to like, get serious about legal. And then it was like, oh, by the way, I've raised money for you. Like you need to sign the papers.”
Weisbrot: Bordy.ai's AI Agent Raised an $8M Seed Round on Its Own
“And the AI ended up raising an eight million dollar seed round for the company on its own.”
Dubois: Workforce knowledge drain will cause major industrial failures and food contamination
“I think that we're going to see you know, maybe some kind of major failures in equipment or, you know maybe I hope not, but maybe you know, plants having, you know, explosions or major issues that way. Or I think that we may find that we start to see stuff sli…”
Weisbrot: Chinese government directly subsidizes manufacturers flooding US with opioids
“The Chinese government is directly responsible for flooding the US with these medications. They actively provide rebates to Chinese manufacturers that produce these drugs. And get them in the hands of Western companies that then lobby for them to be available …”
Lopicolo: Agencies should lose 75% of deals on price to maximize rates
“In my early years, I had an advisor who once said, you need to Basically be losing 75% of your deals based on pricing. And what that meant was a good measurement to show that you're hitting the threshold, right? But if you're, to your point, if you put somethi…”
Gendelin argues companies should never lay off staff merely to save money
“Letting people go is just really one thing I don't like to do. I cannot do right. Unless it's unmerit of poor performance. I just don't think it's right to let the people go just because you don't have the money.”
Robles: People who separate emotions from business partnerships are mostly narcissists
“I've met very few people that can separate that out. You know, I do believe that there are some, and most of them are narcissists.”
Bramlett: Affiliate lists can scale an offer to $1M in 30 days
“And you can go from an offer doing zero dollars to doing half a million to a million dollars in 30 days.”
Bramlett: 99% of available copywriters are worthless
“If you type in, I need a copywriter. There's so many options and 99% of them are worthless.”
Joe Rare: Younger generations lack discipline and skills for high incomes
“These younger generation kids, they're not willing to pick it up and go somewhere cheaper. They're not willing to admit that they don't have the skill set. They don't have the discipline to go make the kind of money that they think they need to make.”
Joe Rare: US transition to CBDC will wipe out dollar wealth
“If they flip the US dollar into a, you know, a CBDC, right? That you're not going to get dollar for dollar exchange. They're not going to do it there. You're going to go, okay, well you have a million dollars and okay, great. We'll give you 500,000 dollars in …”