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
Rhodes: Unsold inventory risk is the primary barrier for retail buyers
“The trade show solved like a really fundamental problem for retailers, which is when they are placing an order for a product, they need to know that it's going to sell. If it doesn't sell, they could go out of business. And so there's all this anxiety that's w…”
Rhodes: Keep conducting executive reference checks until you find negative feedback
“And then using references to round that out, and to make sure that, and doing a lot of references, like, for really senior roles, five, six, seven references, one of the pieces of advice I've gotten is keep digging until you find something bad, and then are th…”
Max Rhodes: Interviewing candidates on childhood yields less value than recent work
“But I think the value of that time is a little less than the value of more recent professional experiences.”
Rhodes: Etsy and Bonagora failed at wholesale by ignoring retailer demand
“Moving that online, people had tried it. Like Etsy tried this. There was this other website called Bonagora a while back that tried it. Everyone who tried it Would get a bunch of brands signed up, but then they couldn't get the retailers to order.”
Rhodes: Faire launched with free returns and net 60 terms
“And so we realized in that moment, that was the core problem that we had to solve. And that's how we ended up launching fair with free returns, net 60 payment terms, basically like try before you buy.”
Faire requires annual CEO and pod-level written strategy docs
“Every year I write a strategy doc for the whole company. Every product pod writes its own strategy doc that kind of ladders up to the broader strategy doc.”
Writing prevents sloppy thinking and forces strategic rigor
“Forces you to really think through your ideas and to connect your ideas together. You can't hide sloppy thinking. And so it forces rigor, and I also think it creates clarity.”
Max Rhodes: In reference checks, 7/10 is poor and 9/10 is stellar
“And that one to 10, I also think is really revealing because you get calibrated on like, most people will say somewhere between seven and 10, and if you do six or seven references, you can create a composite score that like, if the person's consistently gettin…”
Rhodes: Early-stage startups should prioritize speed over financial forecasting
“When you're an early stage startup, speed is so important. And there's so many unknowns that you can easily waste time trying to predict what's going to happen. And a lot of times the best way to figure out what's going to happen is just to do it.”
Faire's strategy drafting process grew from three weeks to three months
“Our first year, it maybe took me like two or three weeks to write it. Now it's, you know, a three month process.”
Early Faire hiring mistakes stemmed from falling in love with candidates
“The big mistake that I used to make is I would fall in love with candidates. I still have this problem. But I get enamored with candidates. All of a sudden, I move into confirmation bias mode. I totally ignore any sort of red flags, just focus on all the posit…”
Max Rhodes: Frame candidate weakness checks around interview self-disclosures
“I say, this person mentioned this was one of their weaknesses in the interview. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And I pick out the weakness that I'm most worried about that might be the most likely to be a deal breaker. You know, when they say th…”