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 261 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Seibel: VCs urged startups to burn cash to drive their own markups
“What's unfortunate is that they had just gone through this two year cycle where investors were basically screaming at them to burn and raise because investors were getting markups and they were raising new funds”
Seibel: Investors hate acknowledging their incentives misalign with founders
“I think that in general investors are allergic when we tell founders that there might be situations where their incentives and the founders incentives are not aligned perfectly.”
Seibel: VCs tell YC partners not to advise founders against high burn
“They also always tell us like, hey, like we're funding your companies. Like you shouldn't be like, you know, like telling the founders not to have high burn.”
University Entrepreneurship Centers Accept Non-Technical Teams That VCs Would Reject
“Over the past two weeks, I've talked to a number of, kind of, directors of entrepreneur centers, and the constant thing that I'm surprised by is that they know these things that I'm talking about, but they still accept teams that don't abide by these rules. So…”
Seibel: Startups must use tactics that would get corporate employees fired
“And like, if you play the big company game, they will always beat you. You always have to be thinking about, what would you have gotten fired for at the big company? That should be your playbook at the startup.”
Seibel: VC skill is winning competitive deals, not theoretical thesis picking
“The skill is often getting the thing taking off to take your money versus someone else's money, not picking amongst things that haven't launched yet and having feces about why one's going to do better than the other.”
Seibel: Every Successful YC Story Began With Widely Dismissed Idea
“Well, I think that's what's so funny is because that's the, every successful YC story, that's the story in hindsight, right? It's like, everyone thought the idea sucked. It was off trend because it was off trend.”
Seibel: Building in Austin, Seattle, or New York is settling
“It's really easy to say, well, you know, I can be in the game in Austin. I can be in the game in Seattle. There are investors there. There are people there. I can be in the game in New York. And I wish that we were more honest that like, yeah, you can play bas…”
Conformist startup founders mistakenly treat investors as their customers
“You know, one of the things that we say sometimes at YC is that don't make the investor your customer. But a lot of these conformists who are getting into startups, that's what they do. Like they want an idea an investor is going to like, they want to act the …”
Seibel says 40% of the Summer 2022 batch applied with only ideas
“Literally, 40% of the last batch came in with just an idea. Most of them were working when they applied, were at work, working jobs when they applied.”
Seibel: YC Summer 2022 batch valuations held steady at $15M–$25M caps
“Prices are almost exactly the same as they were during the last batch when it was like VC heaven on earth and money was flowing like crazy. We saw. 15 to 25. Some companies raised at 30. Almost no change from the last batch.”
Seibel: Giving up massive equity early blocks later-stage funding
“And what they didn't tell that founder is that every subsequent investor would say to themselves, huh, this investor put in a relatively small amount of capital, bought so much of the company that the founders are going to get so diluted that they're not going…”
Seibel argues charging $50,000 for priced round legal fees is predatory
“It shouldn't cost 50,000 dollars to a price round. Like you're just ripping off founders, pure and simple ripping off founders.”
Seibel: VCs often fund repeat founders for internal firm politics
“What I've also seen for second time founders is that oftentimes for an investor, it's more of a catch. It like helps you build your reputation in your firm, or it helps you get the deal approved. And like, so oftentimes there's like internal political reasons …”
Seibel: Spending more money does not accelerate product-market fit
“Spending more money allows product market fit to happen faster.”
Seibel: VCs Offer to Invest After YC Admission Despite Earlier Rejections
“I think we see this in practice, too, because we will see founders who will pitch to investors, get no's, apply to YC, get into YC, and those same investors will say, now I want to invest in your company, and nothing has changed. No fundamental thing has chang…”
Seibel: Ignore investor rejection reasons until hearing them across 15 to 25 pitches
“When founders are fundraising, it's like the first thing, the first time they tell me there's a rejection and a why, I ignore it completely. If they've gotten like 15, 20, 25 rejections, I then ask, are the whys consistent? And only if then the whys are consis…”
Seibel: FAANG retention relies on unvested equity being 3x your savings
“If they can keep you spending your entire salary, and if they can keep the money that you haven't vested yet larger than the amount of money that you have in your savings by like two to three X, you never leave.”
Seibel: Big tech warehouses talent defensively to prevent competitor growth
“In many ways, this is a defensive tactic to warehouse talent. Out of the fear that maybe someone else can use you in a way that can hurt the company.”
Seibel: Microsoft Wins by Copying Startup Innovations Years Later
“A structural advantage with a product that's good enough can win. And man, it really helps when some startups specs the whole product for you. Right? Like Microsoft's move is to not innovate the good enough product. It's to copy it. Maybe five to 10 years late…”
Seibel: Twitch blocked video to force an ISP into free peering
“What we did is that after 10 minutes of people watching free, free live video, we just put up a big thing that blocked the video that said, your ISP is not doing a free peering relationship with us, so we can no longer serve you video. If you'd like to call to…”
Seibel: Domain-expert investors are often more pessimistic than generalists
“I think sometimes counterintuitively investors who know slightly less about your space can be a little bit more grasses greener, like, optimistic than folks who know more about your space.”
Seibel: Genius is often mistaken for discipline in startup execution
“Too often, genius is mistaken for discipline. It's just like, you know, a lot of people think, oh, this person out executed all their peers because they were smarter, and it's like, that assumes the peers were actually working on the thing they said they were …”
Seibel: Startups should almost always launch with a price, not for free
“So strangely, starting with a higher price or a price is almost always better than starting free. Almost always better.”
Seibel: Founders should ignore product feedback from investors and friends
“The kind of community of startup people and or investors usually don't have the problem that you're solving. So if you're using investors as a trigger for, am I solving the right problem? Or like, Do they find this useful? It's almost never the case. I'm almos…”
Seibel: Grade-A investors wire money fast and shut the hell up
“An A investor, grade A investor gives you money quickly, signs the paperwork quickly, shuts the hell up. That's an A investor. There are very, very few A plus investors in the world. There are very, very many less than A investors.”
Seibel: The most hyped YC Demo Day startups rarely perform best
“The most hyped investment on Demo Day is often not the best one. Very, very often. I think what's interesting is that the crowd on Demo Day is just not as smart as it appears”
Seibel: It is extremely rare for an investor to have truly big impact
“So I would say that it's extremely rare that an investor can have truly big impact.”
Seibel: YC believes a founder's ability to network simply does not matter
“I think investors believe that having the skill to network to an investor is an important characteristic of a good founder, and I think, ah, kind of YC's core position from the beginning is that it's not.”
Skip Non-Top-Five MBA Programs if Pursuing Tech Startups
“I could say that if you're not going to a top five school, You are not technical and you want to get into tech startups. It makes no sense to me why you wouldn't try to get a job in an early stage company in a startup city.”
Startups Do Not View an MBA as a Positive Credential
“People do not see the NBA as a startup. What is that called? It's not seen as like a positive resume item.”
Ivy League and Big Tech playbooks fail for startup founders
“The strategy that got them to this school, that got them the meta job, that got them the Ivy league degree. Is not going to be the strategy that actually gets them to be successful as a startup founder.”
Seibel: Many Founders Pitch Contrived Views That Sound Like Investors
“You start having conversation with the founder, and you'll actually feel like you're talking to an investor, to a VC. And you're like, but what about your passion? Like, what, what's your opinion? Like, what do you care about? And it's all kind of like, contri…”
Seibel: Over-Analyzing Markets and Comps Causes Early-Stage Investment Mistakes
“Well, and I think what's interesting is that when we try to be smarter, we make mistakes. When we try to be smart about markets, or when we try to be smart about comps, We make mistakes because, one, we haven't studied those markets closely, and two, because s…”
Big tech alumni fail by treating startups like consulting projects
“I also think that if you come from a big company, either in product or engineering, more often than not, you've never solved your own problem. Like you're working on other people's problems. And so I think that your instinct when you start a company is like al…”
Seibel: Reliable rockets will enable 45-minute commutes to Tokyo
“When rockets are reliable, you can go anywhere in the world in 45 minutes. Like, we could commute to Tokyo.”
Seibel: Major societal change agents were default optimists
“If you really care about those problems, you have to be optimistic to try to solve them. And like some of the people who are like the biggest social critics or the biggest revolutionaries or the biggest change agents in our society were default optimistic.”
Seibel: Using dev shops instead of technical co-founders ruins startups
“I couldn't find tech and co-founder, so I just moved to the next challenge. I hired some engineers, or I got a dev shop, and, like, nothing will keep me Well, hold me back. And what's so sad about that way of thinking about it is that like, one, the percentage…”
Seibel: Non-technical founders assessing engineers causes compounding team degradation
“And I think the even scarier thing about this is that, like, when you start with a team of business people assessing engineers, and they are naturally gonna start by hiring worse engineers, all of your future engineers are high negative effects.”
Seibel: Aspiring non-technical founders should work at a startup first
“Sometimes the number one thing to do if you're in this position is to not start the company right now. Is to go get a job at a startup. Is to go change the people you know. And What's so interesting is that, like, sometimes taking that step sideways is the eas…”
Seibel argues grinding 100-hour weeks in big tech is a bad deal.
“I would argue that if you're the Googler, you're getting a bad deal if you're doing, like, a hundred hour weeks and grinding, and, like, your boss or your boss's boss is getting, like, mega vacations and ten million dollar a year packages and, like, promotions…”
Seibel claims transparently brutal startup jobs are informed choices, not exploitation.
“When the team you're coming into is extremely upfront with you about how it's going to be, and it turns out that way and it's not good, it's not necessarily you're being exploited. Like you made that choice. You chose that.”
Seibel: Cultivating startup culture won't bring corporate tech offices
“Those politicians, what they're looking for is tech jobs. They're like, the, What they really need is a Google office. Like, they're not gonna get the Google office by having a startup culture, but their politicians didn't realize that.”
Seibel: Everyone who left the Bay Area during COVID returned
“You and I both saw a lot of people leave the Bay Area during COVID. All of them came back and they all said this.”
Seibel: Moving to the Bay Area is an easy startup multiplier
“Getting into the Bay Area is so relatively easy to all the other things you have to do to succeed. Choosing where to live is so relatively easy to all the other things you have to choose correctly. Why not pick up the easy wins? It's an easy percentage multipl…”
Seibel: Startups copied extreme strategies that Uber never actually practiced
“What's funny about maybe these Uber ones that are slightly different from the Facebook and Google ones is like, I don't think Uber even did these things.”
Seibel: Coders Are the Most Powerful People in Software Companies
“The people who code are the most powerful people inside of software.”
Seibel: Great startup employees are motivated, not discouraged, by severe bad news
“I've been often surprised at like sharing bad news. Like, oh, we only have two months of runway. Right. I would think would be demotivating, but for great startup employees, they're like, all right, how the fuck are we going to fix this? And then you can get j…”