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 29 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
TJ Parker: Amazon's 'earned trust' culture assumes the worst of people
“In hindsight, that is, like, literally the opposite culture, right? It's like, It's kind of assumed the worst until you're proven otherwise.”
TJ Parker: PillPack received termination notices from all major PBMs in 2015
“And through 2015 we got termination notices from all of the major PBMs, right, very obviously.”
TJ Parker: A decade in corporate pharmacy would have prevented founding PillPack
“If I had been working in pharmacy for a decade as an adult, there's no way I would have started a pill pack, because there were very specific reasons it shouldn't have worked, and I think that's where the naivety is really powerful.”
Parker: PillPack Sold to Amazon After Demanding a $1B Price Floor
“By the time I got to doing the deal with Amazon, like ultimately it was a phone call that was like, if you hit a billion, we're done. And they hit a billion and we were done”
Destin: Requiring Proven Unit Economics Would Have Killed Deliveroo and PillPack
“We would never have funded Deliveroo. We would never have funded PillPack. You know, in fact, Kareem probably would never have taken in any capital because you have to project yourself into sometimes a three or four year cycle before these unit economics reall…”
PillPack came within 48 hours of losing $100M in revenue
“And so, we were 48 hours from going from, like, I don't know what it was, a hundred million in revenue to zero. Like, zero.”
TJ Parker: PillPack raised $9M at $30M post with no structure
“I think the practical answer to your question is we raised like a nine on 30 post or something. With no structure.”
PillPack maintained a five-person executive meeting while generating hundreds of millions
“By the time we sold the company, you know, we've got a thousand people, we're doing a few hundred million in top line, the entirety of that meeting was me Yvonne, who was COO, CFO, legal HR, kind of all those functions, Elliot, who was product and tech, Jeff, …”
Zachary agreed to a $30 million PillPack check after four days
“On day one that I've met him by day four, I was shaking hands with him on a thirty million dollar check.”
Destin: PillPack Built Its Pharmacy Software With Just 50 Engineers
“I mean, PillPack is a company that got acquired by Amazon for a billion dollars. Guess how many engineers they have? 45. This is a tiny engineering team that built a pharmacy operating system, which, you know, the incumbents have supposedly spent half a billio…”
Frankel: Founders taking "human capital risk" is a key validation signal
“VCs have A huge portfolio and take financial risk all the time, but I always look at the folks who take human capital risk. It's what attracted me to pull back in the first place that Elliot Cohn, I knew had loads of options. He graduated well from MIT compute…”
PillPack Founder Invited Frankel to Occupy a Common Board Seat
“PillPack, which is a company I'm incredibly excited about that's raised two significant large follow-on, you know, funding rounds where where the founder asked me to take one of the common seats.”
Frankel: PillPack single-handedly returned Founder Collective's second fund
“PillPack returned fund two.”
Eyal: Entrée gained $15M-$20M on PillPack exit from $80M fund
“That fund was an eighty million dollar fund, and I think our Proceeds from the sale was 15 or twenty million dollars gain, something like that.”
Parker: Digital health startup Ro launched on PillPack's infrastructure
“Actually, Ro launched on our infrastructure.”
TJ Parker: Assuming the best in people eliminates 90% of conflict
“Almost all your best relationships in life are about assuming the best in someone, not assuming the worst, right? And so, if you start from that frame, like, you'll get rid of 90% of conflict by assuming that people are trying to figure it out and everyone's d…”
TJ Parker: PillPack grew from $10M to $70M run rate in 2015
“We get to the middle of 2015, we went from, I don't know, ten million dollar run rate to, like, a seventy million dollar run rate in, like, six months, nine months, like that”
TJ Parker: No e-commerce pharmacy players existed before PillPack
“There's all these big winners, and pharmacy, there's basically, there was no e-commerce player before PillPack. Like, that didn't exist, right?”
TJ Parker: PillPack raised capital exclusively from consumer tech investors
“We took money from exclusively consumer tech investors and We weren't out pitching healthcare investors.”
Parker: PillPack achieved ~$200M revenue run rate prior to Amazon acquisition
“One, like, we were now, like, a version of scale, right? Like, a couple hundred million in run rate or something like that.”
TJ Parker: Public pharmacy stocks fell 15% upon Amazon-PillPack acquisition announcement
“All of the companies that traded in pharmacy in the public markets dropped by, like, 15% in, like, three minutes.”
PillPack survived two existential crises that nearly shut it down
“Having gone through at least two completely existential experiences, where truly the company could have gone out of business very quickly.”
PillPack initially used robotic equipment from co-founder's father's pharmacy
“At the very beginning of PillPack, a very unknown fact is, we used the machinery and the robotic equipment, and it was pretty simple robotics, Out of his dad's pharmacy.”
TJ Parker: PillPack waited a year too long to hire executive operators
“We probably waited Nine months to a year longer than we should have to bring in a real operator.”
TJ Parker: Major PillPack decisions were made on six months of walks
“The bigger decisions that we made over the course of the business were a byproduct of going on two-hour walks three times a week for six months.”
PillPack's core product model originated from TJ Parker's father's B2B pharmacy
“My dad had started this totally new pharmacy that was sorting and packaging meds actually very similar to PillPack. But they were selling into nursing homes and assisted living facilities. It wasn't a consumer business.”
PillPack's physical design remains unchanged nearly a decade after launch
“The physical product today, which is now almost a decade later, is exactly the same as it was when we designed it the first time around.”
Stebbings: David Cohen's portfolio companies have created over $80B in value
“To date, David has backed hundreds of startups, including the likes of, check this out, Uber, SendGrid, Twilio, ClassPass, PillPack, and many more. In total, these investments have gone on to create more than eighty billion dollars in value”