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 65 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
Matt Williams: Most acquired founders leave within three years; he stayed twelve
“Very few founders ever kind of last longer than two or three years at most startups that get, then get acquired. I, you know, I think there's, there are very few, I happen to be one of the rare, you know, kind of rare ones that I was at Amazon for about 12 yea…”
LiveBid amassed $100M in inventory before acquisition interest from Amazon and eBay
“And in about a year we're able to amass close to a hundred million dollars in inventory that was, you know, being offered through auction through our website, which at the time was quite a bit, and we then had, had interest from eBay, Yahoo, and Amazon for acq…”
Big Four Tech Giants Generate $600B in Annual Operating Cash Flow
“You look at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta combined, I mean, they're doing six hundred billion of operating cash flow, just cash coming off the company every single year”
Alibaba Pitch Framed Company as eBay, Amazon, and PayPal of China
“The story was positioned very simply that, hey, it's the China consumer play, and they are the eBay plus Amazon plus PayPal of China.”
Cahn: Amazon Announced $50 Billion in New Data Centers
“Amazon in the last six months has announced fifty billion dollars of new data centers, right?”
Lerner: Amazon's original 1996 North Star metric was repeat purchases
“Amazon's North Star from 1996 was repeat purchases.”
Amazon Stock Trailed Back to $18 Offer Price for a Month Post-IPO
“On the first day, it pops up during the day to 23 and pops right back down to 18. And you could have bought all the Amazon you wanted at 18 for about the first month until they announced earnings.”
Williamson: SendGrid and GitLab required opportunity canvases and Amazon-style strategy docs
“There are two that we used at SendGrid and GitLab that I think were essential. One was a one pager called an opportunity canvas, which asked PMs to outline sort of the concept they wanted to build. And the other one, it's like a two to six pager. I think Kevin…”
Klarna restructured into eight-person cross-functional teams inspired by Netflix and Amazon
“At the end, around 16 and 17, I got a new management team in place. Niklas had left, and the marriage quarrel were gone. And so we were finally able to sit down seriously and talk through how do we think we create a culture and a setup that works. And we decid…”
Hartz: Microsoft and Amazon both IPO'd at $500M valuations
“If you look back at Microsoft in the 19 eighties or Amazon in the 19 nineties, one would maybe not recall that they went public at a five hundred million dollar valuation each”
Taussig: Amazon's days payable was 3-4x inventory in 1995-1998
“Their days payable was about three to four times their day's inventory from 1995 to 1998. About two times in 1999.”
Davis: Amazon is on track to claim over 40% of US e-commerce
“Amazon's market share of US e-commerce, for example, was a third two years ago. I think it was 36 or 37% last year, and it's on track to be over 40% this year.”
Hans Tung: US E-Commerce Penetration Lags China's 15% at Just 8-9%
“Amazon has about 40% market share in the US. And e-commerce penetration into offline retail as a percentage of offline retail in the US is only eight or nine percent. In China, the same ratio is about 15%.”
Gordon: Amazon AWS, Kindle, and Prime were shaped in key board meetings
“I remember the board meeting on Amazon where we first talked About what become Amazon Web Services, AWS. I remember the first time, I remember a series of meetings that led to the presentation of Kindle. I remember a series of meetings that led to the presenta…”
Quintini: Amazon employs psychologists alongside engineers on the Alexa team
“If you look at what Amazon is doing with Alexa, they have not only for females working on it, but they have also a psychologist working on it.”