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 11 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
Spence: BlackBerry Storm ruined ten years of RIM's reputation in one weekend
“We basically took 10 years of building an amazing reputation for reliability, quality, And create experience and threw it out of the window over the course of a weekend when we first launched storm and a whole bunch of people had a really bad experience.”
Sonos is suing Google while actively maintaining product partnerships with them
“We're suing Google right now. But at the same time, we still work with them on YouTube Music Service, on Google Assistant, and some of these other areas”
Spence: Sonos rejected making $29 speakers to compete with Amazon and Google
“My experience from RIM led me to believe, no, that's exactly what we shouldn't do. We're not going to respond in that way. We're going to build on what we do, which is an open platform. And we're going to take the most useful part of those products, which is t…”
Spence: Diversity initiatives fail unless directly driven by the CEO
“I think the real issue is in those cases, they've often siloized it or given it as a responsibility to somebody else. When I think this is something that is about talent and about culture and something that the CEO really needs to own and drive.”
BlackBerry Messenger had 80M daily active users before WhatsApp gained traction
“BlackBerry Messenger at that point was eighty million daily active users. This is before WhatsApp had any traction, any other iMessage had much Attraction”
Spence: Authentic, vulnerable leadership yields greater results with less mental overhead
“And I've realized there is way more power as a leader in being vulnerable and just being who you are and leading in that way. And it comes with a lot less mental overhead too, in terms of being able to show up like just as yourself.”
Founder John MacFarlane left Sonos' board completely when Spence became CEO
“John McFarland stepped away completely. So unlike most founders and CEOs and large shareholders that maybe go onto the board or become executive chairman or something like that, John said, no, I've seen how this works and goes badly at many companies.”
Spence: Every tech company must partner with Big Tech platforms
“Every company in tech right now Has to be partnering with the big tech companies, right? Because there's lots of great services there that customers want.”
Sonos had around 200 employees and $200M revenue when Spence joined
“So at that point there were a couple of hundred people at Sonos doing a couple of hundred million in revenue.”
Spence: Hardware development requires two years and heavy upfront debate
“It's even harder in hardware because you really don't want that many hardware programs that are not going to work. Right. Because it's a two year journey. You've got to get a lot of the details sorted out upfront and a lot of debate has to happen at that point…”
Sonos delayed a key holiday product launch by two quarters over design
“Right when I came into Sotos, in fact, we made a decision, which I think speaks a lot to our culture, which was to push a product, which we really needed from a company perspective, needed out in kind of the holiday quarter. We pushed it out. I think two quart…”