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 560 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
Conrad: David Sacks' PR campaign drove Zenefits into the ground
“David really sort of He hired a sort of a comms person that he works with a lot, this guy named Lanny Davis, and they just focused on like attacking me, like over and over and over again for like six months, and it became this huge thing. And David, well, he w…”
Khosla: 90% of VCs add no value, 70% add negative value
“I think, 90% of investors add no value. In my assessment, 70% of investors add negative value to a company.”
Kortina: There is nothing morally wrong with doing heroin all day
“I don't want to go, like, sit around and do heroin all day. Like, I'm sure that would be, like, really fun, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But it would be very tough for me to, like, not feel bad about that, even though I don't think it's …”
Altman: Building AGI at OpenAI outweighs all past human innovation combined
“If this one thing works, like, if we do actually build AGI at OpenAI, that is more important than all of the innovation sum total in humanity so far. So, clearly not has all the innovation happened.”
Scholl: Boeing and Lockheed Martin have terrible corporate cultures
“And it has only kind of big companies, Boeing, Lockheed, et cetera, that are really terrible cultures.”
Scholl: The need for deep hardware experience is a lie by legacy companies
“This is one of these lies told by old people at big, dumb companies, and it's just not true. And by the way, all those people suck. So don't worry about it. Go build real things.”
Altman: Overreacting to AI safety risks creating a zero-agency surveillance dystopia
“One dystopia that I'm particularly nervous about 10 years from now is we overreact to AI safety, and so we say, look, everyone, you're gonna get a cure for cancer, you're gonna have material abundance, but you will have no freedom, you will have no agency, it …”
Chou: Software engineers are one of the worst customer segments
“I happen to think that software engineers are one of like the worst customers to sell to, and they can change tools on a whim. Something new comes out over here, they'll adopt it. So I see it as like almost this market that's always incredibly competitive, but…”
Ries: Founders prop up a value-destroying corporate governance system
“Founders either have to agree to or not this system. And so we actually are the ones propping it up. We're giving it the fresh meat it needs to survive because it's so value destroying.”
Graham: Non-Valley investors assume local startups are second-rate
“Investors outside Silicon Valley implicitly assume that any local startup is second rate.”
Garry Tan: Claude in Chrome MCP is among worst software ever used
“Claude in Chrome MCP is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. You know, every time it would try to do an action, it would think and think and think. There was crazy context bloat. Often it wouldn't even do anything, but it would take two to three…”
Hodak: Critics who call AI stochastic parrots do not understand AI
“The whole idea, like there's these things that are like stochastic parrots or glorified autocompletes, like these people just don't know what they're talking about.”
Tan: Artificial general intelligence is literally actually here
“So, you know, there's sort of this explosion in model capability. You know, we've been talking about this for several years, but then it feels like it's here. Like AGI is literally actually here.”
Tan: Harvey and Open Evidence are overcapitalized 'foie gras' startups
“I think they're like, there might be a case of two foie gras startups, like one being Harvey and the other one being open evidence, right?”
Skates: The hype around AI killing SaaS is way overblown
“This is why I think a lot of the hype in that, AI killing SAS is way overblown because particularly for a lot of business workflows, like very high guarantees on performance are fundamental to it. You know, if you put a record into your CRM, that stuff better …”
Skates: Google is the worst B2B company of all time
“I think that Google is the worst B to B company of all time, and there's an incredible opportunity to compete with them.”
Fisher: VCs Investing in AI Are Already Two Years Behind
“And I think even today, like you talked to a bunch of VCs and they're like, oh yeah, like I'm ahead of the curve. Like I'm investing in AI. I'm like, no, like you're two years behind already. Right. Like, tell me about what you think needs to happen in two yea…”
Field: AI romantic partners are 'actively poisonous' to society
“I think AI boyfriends and girlfriends, if developed and allowed to exist is a societal self-owned. I think it's like actively poisonous to society if this becomes the primary, a primary mode of relationship.”
Srinivas: Autonomous mobile AI agents can only be built inside web browsers
“And agents can only be built with a browser. I, I'm very, like, convinced about that vision, that if you want to have a mobile agent, That you can actually build and implement without being restricted by whatever OS rules that Apple or Google sets in terms of …”
Ng: Advising people not to learn to code is terrible career advice
“Over the last year, a bunch of people have advised others not to learn to code on the ground so AI will automate it. I think we'll look back on this as some of the worst career advice ever given, because as better tools make software engineering easier, more p…”
Ng: Employees across every job role should learn how to code
“I have a controversial opinion, which is, ah, I think it's time for everyone of every job role to learn to code, and in fact, on my team, you know, my CFO, my head of talent, my recruiters, my front desk person, all of them know how to code, and I actually see…”
Ng: AI existential risk claims are ridiculous hype used to aid fundraising
“This idea that AI is so powerful, we might accidentally lead to human extinction. That's just ridiculous, but it is a hype narrative that made certain businesses look more powerful, and it got Yeah, ramped up and actually help certain businesses fundraising go…”
Ng: Sensationalized AI danger hype is being weaponized against open-source software
“And I feel like this has been used as a weapon against open source software as well, right? Which is really unfortunate.”
Ng: California's SB 1047 would have harmed open-source AI without improving safety
“So I think typing up dangers, supposed false dangers of AI, in order to get regulators to pass laws, like the proposed SB-SB-Ten-Forty-Seven in California, which, thank goodness, we shut down, Would have put in place really burdensome regulatory requirements t…”
Garry Tan: Scammy founder programs produce future SBFs and Theranos fraudsters
“I worry that some of these programs are just literally trying to teach people to become more you know, SBFs and Theranos. And that's like, you know, that's a waste of time. Like, and you're going to go to jail.”
Tan: OpenAI o3 operates around 130 IQ, smarter than many past hires
“I think of O-three as basically about a 130 IQ, maybe O-three pro can be even smarter than that. When I really think about that, it's like, oh yeah, like a lot of the people who I've ever hired in my lifetime are like, yeah, O-three is smarter than that person…”
Chollet: AI field is obsessed with idea that scale alone yields AGI
“Our field became obsessed with the idea that general intelligence would spontaneously emerge by cramming more and more data into bigger and bigger models.”
Altman claims core scientific discovery in AI is mostly finished
“Figure out the remaining scientific stuff, which I don't think there's much left.”
Musk: Government efficiency work is a side quest compared to AI
“I did sort of feel a bit like, you know, when I was in D.C. Taking a lot of flack for, like, getting rid of waste and fraud, which was an interesting side quest as side quests go. But Got to get back to the main quest. Yeah, I gotta get back to the main quest …”
Microsoft messed up its AI search opportunity with Bing Chat
“Microsoft was never really good at consumer products for a long, long time. You can't suddenly change that. So they actually messed up the opportunity, in my opinion.”
No developer tool company is happy with a traditional marketing CMO
“To be honest, even at later stage, I don't know a single DevTool company that is happy with their CMO when they have a traditional marketing background.”
Lieb: Elon Musk's hardware taste does not translate to software
“Jeff Bezos once said that, like, taste is not transferable across domains, and to me, this is like a great example of that. I would say, Elon, like, if I drive a Tesla, I think it's the best car that I've ever sat in, but the taste and the decisions they made …”
Blomfield: Rebranding Twitter to X was total insanity
“I think when you get something short and catchy, and you have the verb, just like total insanity to change, especially for something as meaningless as X, right?”
Altman: Climate fixes, space colonies, and physics discoveries are not far off
“But I do think all of those things, and probably a lot more we can't even imagine, are maybe not that far away.”
Tan: AGI is effectively already here for most knowledge worker tasks
“Like you could make a strong case that AGI is basically already here. The majority of the tasks that, you know, 98% of knowledge workers do day-to-day it is now possible for a software engineer probably sitting in front of cursor, to write something that gets …”
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.”
Atherton: Founders cannot blame missing term sheets on gender or race
“Like, if you have a great product and great traction, then you have a hot deal, and like, any other kind of justification as to why you're not getting term sheet is, you can't really say that. Like, you either have product market fit and a hot deal, and that's…”
Doctorow: Big Tech's calls for regulation are bids for state monopoly
“And, you know, Facebook is positioning itself to become a state monopoly like the Bell system was, as is Google, as is Apple, right? All of these companies, they want to be, when they say, please regulate us, right? When they say, please make rules to tell us …”
Doctorow: Cambridge Analytica mobilized existing racists rather than converting normal people
“Cambridge Analytica's failure to exploit any of the things that you could actually get super rich from if you could control people's minds tells you that probably what they were doing was finding racists And convincing them that Trump was someone to vote for. …”
Best: Ad-supported podcast market is small compared to paid audio
“I think that the podcast market that can be supported by advertising is small and sad compared to the audio market that could be supported if we had an effective way to pay for it.”
Halligan: Outbound sales and cold calling are dead and actively harm brands
“I think outbound is largely just dead. I don't think cold calls work at all. In fact, I think they're negative.”
Khosla tells Sam Altman his biggest problem with Y Combinator startups
“By the way, this is my single biggest beef with YC. Not enough option pools. Right? Not enough option pools. Not enough focus on recruiting the right co-founders.”
Gil: Market is the singular determinant of startup success, not team
“The singular determinant of startup success is the market. And it's not the strength of the team. And so I think a lot of people talk about how great teams will always figure it out. And I've seen great team after great team in a terrible market just die becau…”
Ralston: Magic Leap raised $2.3B but seems to have almost nothing
“Magic Leap raised 2.3 billion dollars, and they seem to have almost nothing.”
McDonnell: Prizing engineering teams is coded bias for certain races and genders
“I think that prizing certain teams at companies, so it used to be sales teams, now it's engineering teams, is I think prizing certain teams is actually a coded way of prizing certain races and genders.”
Gil: Data moats do not exist in most industries
“There are very, very few companies that actually have data moats, and so I think that's often a red herring. I think maybe in genomics right now there may be interesting data moats to be formed, but in most industries data moats don't really exist.”
Buchheit: Vast majority of ICOs are scams and going to zero
“As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the ICOs are scams. Or just like, these are companies that, if they were trying to raise from the people in the room, here, maybe they'd be able to raise half a million dollars, but instead they go do an ICO, and they…”