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 1 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
Rabois: PayPal and Square had almost no financial services experts early on
“At PayPal, we had of the 254 employees we had in Mountain View when we went public to maybe three had any expertise in financial services at Square. If you included me, which is I'm certainly not a prototypical financial services guy of the first 300 employees…”
Public markets ultimately valued Square as a payments business at IPO
“And I think what we saw is that, folks, at the end of the day, everyone had their debates. People came to the table with different You know, ways of it analyzing the business and their different viewpoints. And I think what one is something that reflects what'…”
Jack Dorsey's dual CEO role likely reduced Square's forward valuation credit
“It may have been in the case of Square that kind of this dual CEO role for Jack Dorsey might've had some impact on, you know, to kind of the earlier point, just, you know, how much forward credit do we want to give to the company? And do we believe that, you k…”
Rampell: Square's customer acquisition cost for Square Capital is zero
“The cost of acquiring customers for their lending product is zero.”
Square's full ratchet forced double share issuance at its IPO
“When Square went public, they went public at eight dollars a share. Their last round of financing was at 16 dollars a share. And those 16 dollar investors had this full ratchet that we were talking about. So those 16 dollar shareholders basically got issued tw…”
Rampell: Durbin Amendment debit fee caps created financial tailwinds for Stripe and Square
“And if you actually look at some of the financial results of somebody like Stripe or Square, they have this great tailwind from the fact that debit interchange went down dramatically.”
Public investors lacked a unified valuation framework during Square's IPO
“There is no formula, and there was a wide range of understanding and a wide range of beliefs among investors on even how Square should be valued from valuation framework.”
Every private and public investor in Square made money despite valuation debates
“If you look back at the investors in every single round of private, as well as in the IPO, they all made money.”
Gardner: Cash App card exceeded expectations to become a top debit program
“And we thought like, ah, you know, I don't know if this is going to be a big product or not. And they didn't even think at the time it was going to be a big product. And then obviously that completely blew away all of our predictions in regards to how Cash App…”
Gokul Rajaram spent five hours with Square's CEO before interviewing
“I spent essentially five hours before I even agreed to interview at Square with our CEO, just getting to know him and understanding what his vision is for the company, what he cares about, what he doesn't, what his philosophy is, how he works, because you can …”
Square's IPO priced below its final private round and triggered investor ratchets
“You have an IPO that prices at a price that's below where the last private round. It also happened to have this, you know, feature that we've all talked about before, which is this concept of a ratchet, meaning, you know, in basic terms that the kind of invest…”