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 18 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
Friedman: BillionToOne Went Public at Over $4 Billion Valuation
“Late last year, they took the company public at a valuation over four billion dollars.”
Friedman: Most genetic abnormalities previously required invasive amniocentesis for detection
“Before Billion to One, most genetic abnormalities could only be detected via amniocentesis, an invasive procedure that is only used in high-risk pregnancies.”
Friedman: Moltbook saw more content in two days than early Reddit
“Like I don't have the Reddit traffic stats, but my guess is like more content was posted on Maltbook in the first two days and was posted on Reddit in like the first two years or something.”
Friedman: Over 100 YC startups hiring forward deployed engineers
“I was looking earlier today, and if you look at the YC job board, there's over a hundred YC startups that are hiring for a job with the title for deployed engineer and up from basically zero, three years ago”
Friedman: Full OpenAI o1 Model Is a Huge Step Function Above o1-Preview
“Like the full O-one model, which is coming out any day now is a huge step function above even O-one preview, which is what enabled all these incredible results at the hackathon.”
Fintech and vertical SaaS have drastically higher unicorn hit rates than consumer
“Over the last 10 years, if you started a company that did, like, fintech infrastructure or vertical SaaS for enterprise, the probability that your company became a billion-dollar company was astonishingly high. Whereas if you started something in consumer hard…”
YC is the world's largest bio and hard-tech seed investor
“YC is actually the largest bio seed investor in the world and the largest hard tech seed investor in the world. This includes accelerators, seed funds, every kind of investor.”
Astranis built its first test telecommunications satellite for under $50,000
“It turns out actually that the cheapest telecommunication satellite that is useful costs like at least ten million dollars to build and launch. And so Astronus' hack was to start with a test satellite. The satellite in this photo was their first satellite. The…”
Friedman: YC Has Primarily Funded AI Companies Since ChatGPT
“For the last few years since ChatGPT, YC has been funding mainly AI companies”
Friedman: Parahelp powers customer support for Perplexity, Replit, and Bolt
“They're actually powering the customer support for Perplexity and Replit and Bolt and a bunch of other like top AI companies now.”
Friedman: Gemini API added thinking traces for debugging prompts
“Cause if you're just using Gemini via the API until recently, you did not get the thinking traces and like the thinking traces are like the critical debugging information to like, understand like What's wrong with your prompt? They just added it to the API. So…”
Solugen ships tanker trucks of hydrogen peroxide daily from Houston
“Today, they actually have this huge plant in Houston that ships out like tanker truck fulls of hydrogen peroxide like every day.”
Friedman: Close to 50% of YC Summer 23 Batch Used LLMs
“I think for summer of 23, it was close to 50% of the batch.”
Replit originally started as an interesting side project, not a business
“This is exactly how Replik got started. It was just something that Amjad found interesting. It wasn't supposed to be a startup originally.”
Jetpack Aviation pre-sold flying motorcycles online to prove customer demand
“A good example of this is a company called Jetpack Aviation from two batches ago, which is building the flying motorcycle in the picture. And what Jetpack Aviation did was they ran a pre-sale campaign, and they basically sold flying motorcycles to a bunch of p…”
It is illegal to conduct pre-sales for FDA-regulated medical products
“For example, if you're doing something medical that requires FDA approval, it's actually illegal to do pre-sales, so don't do that.”
Kyle Vogt built the original Cruise self-driving MVP in three months
“The original Cruise car Was built in less than three months during YC. Kyle basically just, like, was in a garage building this car and writing code for, like, three months solid, and by the end of YC he had an MVP that he could use to drive on the highway to …”