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 67 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
Rosenthal: 1992 Supreme Court ruling exempted out-of-state retailers from sales tax
“In 1992, the Supreme Court has ruled on a decision that retail companies do not have to collect sales tax in states where they don't have physical presence, like operations.”
Rosenthal: Amazon did $500K in revenue in its first six months
“So that first half year that the site is live to the public, they do half a million dollars in revenue in six months with the 200,000 dollars in friends and family funding.”
Rosenthal: Amazon grew revenue from $500K in 1995 to $15.7M in 1996
“Remember they did half a million in revenue for the half year of 1995 that they were live. They do 15.7 million in revenue in 1996.”
Rosenthal: Bezos Set Goal for Amazon Profitability by Q4 2001
“So he announces internal company goal that he announces to the whole company, part of the get our house in order mantra that they will be profitable by the fourth quarter of 2001.”
Rosenthal: Amazon 10xed revenue in 1997 to nearly $150M
“For the full year of 1997, they do just a hair under a 150 million dollars in revenue. So that's 10 X the year before.”
Rosenthal: Amazon capitalized initially with $200k from Bezos, Kaphan, and parents
“Jeff and Mackenzie had done great at D Shaw. So they put in 95,000 dollars to start. Shell himself puts in 5000 dollars. This takes me back to the Walmart episode and gosh, so smart of like having your employees Actually invest dollars in the business. Jeff's …”
Harry Potter's universal appeal broke early Amazon recommendation algorithms
“Harry Potter, by the way, broke a lot of Amazon's algorithms. I was listening to a couple interviews with early engineers who were saying like the, you may also like, or people who like this also like, basically everyone liked Harry Potter. And so they would h…”
Gilbert: Amazon held over $2B in balance-sheet debt around 2000
“I mean, at this point, they've got over two billion of debt on the balance sheet. I think it actually increased from 2000 to 2001 and 2001 to 2002.”
Bezos took nearly a year and 60 meetings to raise Amazon's first $1M
“Jeff ended up taking the better part of a year to raise one measly million dollars over 60 meetings ultimately from 22 different investors to sell 20% of the company in order to raise that first million.”
Gilbert: Amazon's market cap dropped from $1.9T peak to $1.0T
“Amazon was a 1.9 trillion dollar company, and today is a one trillion dollar company.”
Rosenthal: Amazon pitched running Walmart's website, but Walmart declined
“They even go pitch the idea to Walmart to do the same thing with Walmart. Walmart is they're like, Yeah. No, thanks guys. No, nice try.”
Rosenthal: Kleiner Perkins led Amazon's $8M Series A at $60M post-money
“Amazon ends up. Choosing Kleiner to lead their Series A, eight million dollars at a sixty million dollar post money valuation.”
Gilbert: $1,800 invested in Amazon's IPO grew to $2.6M by 2022
“If you bought a hundred shares for, call it, 1800 dollars of total investment, today you'd have 2.6 million dollars and you would have made 1500 X.”
Rosenthal: A9 search pushed Amazon to adopt a microservices architecture
“The other incredibly impactful thing that comes out of A-Nine and search and improving search on DM, Amazon.com website is that really is one of the catalysts that pushes the company to transition from a monolith software architecture to microservices, indepen…”
Gilbert: Walmart reached Washington in 1993, one year before Amazon was founded
“The first store opened in Washington in 1993 and Amazon was founded in 1994.”
US e-commerce retailers two through nine combined trail Amazon by 50%
“If you add up two through nine in e-commerce, and Walmart is second place to Amazon, it is still not equivalent to Amazon's total sales in a year. And in fact, I think it's something like two through nine added together are still 50% shy of Amazon's e-commerce…”
Gilbert: Amazon Tripled Revenue in 1999 to $1.8B
“I think they're about tripling revenue, which to be clear in 99 is like six hundred million to 1.8 billion.”