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 12 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
Stone's angel investment in Square yielded a 1,000x return
“Oh, that would probably be square because it's something like a thousand X return or something.”
Cash App hedged Square when over half its revenue was exposed
“Half of their entire business, actually arguably more, was directly linked to small businesses being affected, but then the way Hashapp came about and became such a great hedge on the rest of the business, it's just been fascinating to watch.”
Dasilva: Early POS rivals raised hundreds of millions on simple initial products
“They started to come out and even though they were very simple, they had hundreds of millions of dollars being funneled into them.”
Asparouhov: Square Spent Nothing on Marketing in Its First Five-Plus Years
“The company never basically had to spend on marketing for the first year, sort of five plus years of its life.”
Reses: Dorsey Locked Himself in Square's Office to Build Bitcoin Integration
“I remember in 2017, maybe, yeah, it was end of 20 16 when Jack wanted to put Bitcoin into Cash App. And he, ah, two engineers sat, ah, on the sixth floor of 14 55 market and wouldn't leave the office until they were able to build that product.”
Reses: Square Mobilized Entire Workforce as 24/7 PPP Loan Reviewers During COVID
“We developed PPP, this is at Square, in a crisis. And we ended up with a core team of people working on it, and then we literally got the entire company of Square to volunteer for us to be, you know, loan reviewers twenty-four-seven during that period of time,…”
Reses: Square was the only tech company to build a bank
“And so, you know, and we built a bank at Square. We were the only tech company to ever have built a bank, right?”
PayPal and Square surpassed Bank of America and Goldman Sachs in 2020
“Last year, you probably know this, but you know, you've heard some of these stats, like PayPal became more valuable than Bank of America and Square became more valuable than Goldman.”
Ascher: Jack Dorsey's Square Series A pitch listed 75 company risks
“I remember seeing Jack Dorsey's pitch for squares series a, and he literally started with like, these are 75 things that could kill this company in the short term.”
Rajaram: PayPal raised prices five times in three years early on
“And he told us that PayPal back in the day, raised prices five times. In three years, because there's such stickiness. They knew their customers really couldn't do anything.”
Square reduced merchant onboarding from weeks to instant approval for 93%
“Before Square, people sometimes forget, before Square in the United States to get access to the credit card infrastructure. You can apply, in quotes, for a merchant account And that would take three weeks. It would require a credit check and a manual investiga…”