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 10 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
Valade: Some Sunrise investors wanted to reject Microsoft's $100M offer
“Yeah, so this, so some of them thought that we should go for more, but I also think investors who really respect entrepreneurs, And, ah, and I think those investor that we worked with respect the entrepreneur decision at the end of the day.”
Valade: Sunrise sold to Microsoft because the team couldn't monetize it
“I think we didn't know exactly how we could take it from a great product to a great business. I think we've done a good job building a great product. We didn't really know how we could make money. Or turn it into, and turn this into a successful business. And …”
Valade: Product teams must invent features users don't request
“We can think about building and stuff that, that people Don't even expect in their calendar. So on that type of things, we don't really expect them to come back to us and say, you know, I wish I could do X, Y, and Z, because no one even thinks that's even poss…”
Valade: Smartwatches are the most critical platform for calendar apps
“Watch is probably the device that, you know, you associate the most with time, right? The watch is like device where you will look and see what time is it. And so we thought about this as like, oh, this is really interesting because it's probably the device th…”
Valade raised Sunrise's seed round with a live product, no deck
“So the funny, so I didn't do any business plan for that. I just say, we have a product out there. Try the product. It speaks for itself. So I was really almost kind of like arrogant about the fact that I didn't want to do slides. I was like, you know, we just …”
Pierre Valade: Startup CEOs carry unique pressure as ultimate decision-makers
“When you're the CEO of the company, you're the guy who's making the last decision, right? Like, no one can just everyone can blame you for everything, and you can't blame anyone, right?”
Valade: Mobile and smartwatch features must be evaluated in real-life contexts
“Especially when you're building mobile apps or watch apps, you can't look at them on the TV in the room and decide if it makes sense or not. You have to, you live with the feature for a few days before you realize that, you know, when I'm going out of the subw…”
Valade: Microsoft Paid the Acquisition Price Sunrise Asked For
“You just, you know, for us, you know, we knew that we had a price, and we got the price we wanted, and the vision were aligned, and we liked the people we met there, so, you know, we said, okay, you know, we should do it.”
Valade: Traditional calendar software provides minimal value to users
“This thing is just not great. I mean, you can just put stuff in your calendar, but it doesn't give you that much value out of it.”
Sunrise founders left Foursquare and U.S. due to visa restrictions
“We quit Foursquare end of 2012, and we had to go back to Europe because we didn't have any visa at that time to stay in the U.S. Because we were just, we quit our job, so we had to go back in Europe in the winter of 2012, and then we launched Sunrise February …”