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 169 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
Jordan: Fewer than five U.S. e-commerce companies hit $1B and stay profitable
“So, you know, one of the big secrets in e-commerce is virtually no companies get big and make money in the United States on e-commerce. I can name five e-commerce companies in the U.S. After two decades of investing and God knows how many tens of billions of d…”
Jordan: Merrill Lynch was not a top-tier tech bank in 2009
“All due respect to Merrill at the time, they were, you know, they were not the top of the pyramid in terms of tech bankers, so we, because we were the only IPO, we had every bank wanted to do it.”
Jordan: The best outcome for USPS is privatization by Amazon or UPS
“USPS is, you know, been having, you know, been running a massive loss for many, many, many years. I mean, for me, the best outcome is either one of two people buys it and basically privatizes it, UPS or Amazon.”
Google Drains Retail Profit Margins Through Dual-Funnel Advertising Spend
“A lot of people think Google massively overcharges. They're taking all the margin out of the product because of this. The marketers, brands are spending at the top. Retailers are spending at the bottom. Margins is disappearing into the coffers of these compani…”
Craigslist founders operate like communists rather than maximizing business value
“They're somewhere between social activists and communists and they have not run their business in a value-maximizing way.”
Jordan: Growth-challenged DTC brands are turning to offline retail
“All the companies that are getting challenged, growing, continuing to grow DTC sales are turning to offline retail in different forms. Every company I've worked with is trying to do that because incremental sales.”
Jordan: Sports team valuations rely entirely on vulnerable media broadcast dollars
“What's driven the constantly escalating value of the sports teams is almost exclusively these media dollars that have flown in. But media dollars typically follow eyeballs, and if eyeballs are declining rapidly, the media dollars disappear.”
Jeff Jordan: Blended CAC is a dangerous metric for startups
“I view blended CAC as a really dangerous number.”
Jeff Jordan: Top internet companies didn't rely on paid acquisition
“Most of the best businesses in the internet age of technology haven't spent a ton on paid acquisition.”
Jordan: Companies shouldn't IPO without four quarters of performance secured
“If you don't, for my perspective, you don't have the next four quarters in the bag, you know, Don't even think about it because it's so interesting. The long-term performance of the company in terms of value is so predicted by the first quarter performance.”
Jordan: Elite companies can execute an IPO in any market environment
“The best companies often open windows that were then previously closed. So the best companies can go out whenever they want. The good companies typically want to wait for, till the investors are feeling good. The mediocre and bad companies want to get out When…”
Jordan: CEOs should prioritize long-term IPO investors over maximizing price
“And I would do that again in a second. I'd advise management teams to do it like crazy because as a CEO managing a public company, you don't want people who are in and out on momentum, hot money, because you spend then all your time literally marketing to new …”
Jordan: Replace any CFO who cannot tell the company story
“But if your CFO can't tell the story, you need a new CFO.”
Jordan: Premier networks like Facebook and WhatsApp skip paid user acquisition
“A lot of the best networks that are platformed here aren't spending anything on, on acquisition. I mean, it's just, it's kind of an interesting thing in marketplace. Facebook, no. WhatsApp, no. Medium, no. You know, just OpenTable, no. Just, you know, just, th…”
Jordan: Portfolio companies cut spending without slowing top-line growth
“We've had a couple companies that Shifted in the current capital environments and the uncertainty there shifted from growth at all costs to, you know, kind of smart growth mode or whatever you want to call it. The amazing thing, the profitability improved dram…”
Jordan: Marketplace startups must demonstrate early monetization to prove value
“I think in a marketplace business, if there's money flowing through it, You should be able to demonstrate you can capture some of it early on, or, I mean, if not, I'm trying to figure out if you're actually adding value to both sides of the marketplace and the…”
Jordan: OpenTable achieved network effects only because its direct competitors folded
“Open table got raised enough money and spent it so slowly they were able to survive. The two direct competitors didn't open table ran unopposed for five years, which is the only reason they were able to get to their network effect.”
Jordan: Branded marketplaces are valued higher than white-label software
“So, and then branded marketplaces, we would value much more highly than white label, because white label becomes, you're selling a utility, you're selling software, and the marketplace standpoint, you're selling customers.”
Jordan: Unsolicited direct startup pitches are usually poor investments
“Be really careful, because when they, when the one deal comes to you, it's usually the shitty deal that couldn't get money elsewhere.”
Jeff Jordan: Buyers, not sellers, drive all value in multi-sided marketplaces
“In every marketplace I've managed, the seller paid the company, but the buyer, I believe, is where all the value is. Sellers, businesses, small businesses, aspiring small businesses, will typically go wherever they think consumers are in quantity.”
Jeff Jordan: Eastern European organized crime drove early eBay and PayPal fraud
“Most of the fraud on eBay and PayPal was organized crime, typically out of Eastern Europe. Where they had incredibly talented computer science professionals who lacked a lot of commercial opportunity.”
Jordan: Amazon will handle low-cost shipments, leaving high-cost deliveries to UPS
“I've got a thesis that they will soon be, I think they are already entering the shipping market cherry picking the best the, low, the lowest cost shipments they are starting to do themselves. Increasingly and just leave UPS with the higher cost shipments, whic…”
Vertical marketplaces outperform horizontal ones by optimizing for specific use cases
“Early in people marketplaces, you had the horizontals of TaskRabbit or Zarli, where you could ask people to do anything, and the paradox of choice and the lack of optimization against specific verticals, no one knew what to do with it, so they really didn't do…”
Massive Reach Will Not Sustain Broadcast TV Against Facebook and Snapchat
“Facebook and Snapchat increasingly are aggregating similar size audiences. So the concept of reach isn't going to be a sustainable differentiator over time.”
Craigslist growth halted as vertical marketplaces hollowed out its categories
“And Craigslist, which was one of the largest and fastest growing internet properties in the world, particularly in the US, Has now stopped growing, and it's basically, you know, essentially being hollowed out.”
Jordan: Legacy CPG giants have lost the ability to innovate
“The CBG companies, large ones have lost the ability to innovate.”
Jordan: a16z invested in Instacart viewing grocery stores as distributed warehouses
“We made the Instacart investment in the belief that the grocery stores are there. It's distributed. They have distributed little warehouses.”
Jordan: Physical retail buyers select products using instinct, not data
“I mean, it's hard to understate how blind most buyers at most physical retailers are right now. Yeah. They're just kind of, it's instinct.”
Jordan: Beanie Babies drove 7% of eBay's GMV at its IPO
“Beanie Babies were something like seven percent of all gross merchandise sales when eBay went public. In fact, that was not highlighted in the S-One.”
Jeff Jordan: Unanimous executive skepticism often indicates a great business idea
“That means it's a great idea.”
Jordan: OfferUp user engagement rivals social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat
“OfferUp has engagement that's similar to social sites like Instagram and Snap.”
Jeff Jordan: LTV-to-CAC ratios almost always degrade as startups scale
“That LTV to CAC ratio in our experience almost always degrades as over time with scale.”
Jordan: OpenTable spent zero dollars on consumer acquisition under his leadership
“OpenTable, when I was managing it, did not pay any money at all to acquire consumers.”
Jordan: Past investment mistakes stemmed from short-lived Facebook ad arbitrage
“When I made a couple investment mistakes where the paid acquisition looked really good, and actually what they were doing, or they're arbitraging something like Facebook's early mobile attempts, where the people who participate in Facebook mobile ads early Got…”
Jordan: Late-window IPOs consistently underperform in public markets
“And what happens when the window opens, the early people to go out typically perform very well as public company stocks. And then as more time goes by and you get towards the end of a window, the companies that then are going out kind of rushing, I got to get …”
Jordan: Pre-IPO CEOs should hold back tested growth initiatives for early quarters
“I usually counsel CEOs what, before they go out, have something in your back pocket. We had two or three initiatives that we tested at small scale that we knew were going to work and add to the business.”
Jordan: OpenTable's top three shareholders advised against giving quarterly guidance
“I called the three largest holders and I said, should I give guidance? All three said no.”
Jordan: 53% of all historic Facebook sign-ups were active daily in 2006
“53% of everyone who had ever signed up for the service was active the day before, and that, by the way, has only grown as, you know, the, their installed base age, it gets bigger in ages, that number's grown”
Jordan: Zuckerberg pre-populated Facebook by hacking Harvard house directories
“He hacked the directories in each of the houses, and so he pre-populated everyone on the Harvard campus into Facebook and then let people claim their identities, but you could then friend, it was populated when the first person showed up.”
Jordan: Restaurant marketplace network effects do not translate across cities
“By the way, that was city by city, so the fact that you had sufficient Restaurants in San Francisco meant nothing in Miami, so you started again in Miami, and in Tokyo, and in, you know, in Munich, and it's a slow roll-up.”
Jeff Jordan: Forcing website redirects was OpenTable's primary growth hack
“The other was we forced a redirect from the Morton's website to the OpenTable, Morton's page on OpenTable to create the brand awareness, and that forced off, that forced redirect, the fact that we Converted restaurant people searching on Google for Morton Chic…”
Jeff Jordan: Fashion and brands face dis-economies at high market saturation
“Once everyone's wearing Nikes, people stop wearing Nikes, so you're kind of I worked at Disney when it was a long time ago, it was very, very hot on the consumer product side, and, you know, we couldn't sell enough, and then five years later, you can't give it…”
Jordan: Market size should be ignored when evaluating great startups
“The last thing, one we kind of ignore, is market, because almost all of the really great new technology companies created their own market, or they started with a trivial idea and made it big.”
Jeff Jordan: Half of portfolio companies in top VC funds lose all capital
“It's about the best performing funds in the history of venture capital, about half the companies lost all the money.”
Jeff Jordan: Scaling startups move to Silicon Valley for executive talent
“A lot of them find as they, as they're growing, they scale out of their cities. So, you know, Chicago had Groupon, and, you know Foursquare had, it was in New York, and they can only hire so many engineers, particularly engineers, but also the senior executive…”
Jeff Jordan: Amazon and Yahoo's free auctions failed against eBay
“Amazon and Yahoo launch auction businesses early in eBay's life and they went for free. So every seller in the world said, I'll list, list my site there. It didn't work cause they hadn't, they couldn't get the buyers to show up there. So eBay, even though we w…”