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 108 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
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.”