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 8 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
Narang: Nearly all early Toast hardware was returned within 90 days
“I mean, I remember there was one time when we were shipping out hardware to restaurants, every piece of hardware, like close to, it felt like every piece of hardware that we shipped came back in 90 days, and we're still selling it because we're like, we need t…”
Endeca founder Steve Papa wrote Toast's entire $500K angel round
“I remember we did, like, eight or 10 VC meetings, and maybe we just were naive, and, like, everybody said no, and so one of the big yeses was the founder of Ndeca, right, who wrote the whole check. He wrote, like, a half a million dollar check, and At what pri…”
Narang: Early Toast refused to hire management to rely solely on founders
“So I had zero value for management early on. I just wanted to hire people that could sell, that could code, that could, and that's it. And I was like, I'll do all the management. Steve will do all the management. We don't need any other managers.”
Narang: Toast turned down Urban Outfitters' request to build retail software
“Like I remember one of our early customers was this I think it was Urban Outfitters. They had other restaurants in their retail stores. And they wanted us to do that. You're doing such a great job, do all our retail. And I'm glad we said no, right? And really …”
Narang: Toast requires its POS platform to remain central in all acquisitions
“That's the one rule that we've kind of stuck to, which is the central nervous system has to be toast.”
Narang: Toast started as a failed QR code app before pivoting
“So we started with these QR codes you see today at restaurants. That's before we had this platform, and it didn't go anywhere. We couldn't scale it, and so we pivoted”