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 4,115 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 53 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
Mauboussin: High-Return Companies Should Maximize Investment Over Positive Free Cash Flow
“Some people think, oh, you want positive free cashflow. Well, the answer is not really. I mean, what you want is you, if you can invest at a high return, you want to invest as much as you humanly possibly can, right? That you have access to.”
Mauboussin: As Average Skill Increases, Luck Ultimately Dictates Outcomes
“The paradox of Gil says, and activities were both skill and luck contribute to outcomes, which is most stuff as skill increases, luck becomes more important.”
Rosenthal: Eisner and Wells were the greatest media management duo
“Arguably the greatest two-person management team in media company history, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.”
The Lion King musical is history's highest-grossing single entertainment product
“The Lion King musical has grossed over eleven billion dollars in total revenue in its run, which I think makes it the single highest grossing entertainment product in history, in any medium, film, music, TV, video games, other Broadway shows.”
Gilbert: Acquiring Capital Cities/ABC Cost Disney Its Strategic Clarity
“It was because it had ESPN, but it also cost the company It's strategic clarity. Disney never again would get to be just Disney. It's the flywheel business and the ESPN affiliate slash advertising cable business. And it's worth it because buying ESPN was this …”
Pixar's IPO made Steve Jobs a billionaire, creating more wealth than Apple
“Pixar closes its first day of trading, At a one and a half billion dollar market cap, this is how big a hit Toy Story was and how much it was in the public consciousness. This is how Steve Jobs becomes a billionaire... He didn't make anywhere near that kind of…”
Steve Jobs demanded 100% of Pixar film profits in renegotiation with Disney
“He proposes a deal to Eisner, and this is where the relationship becomes irreparable. Pixar should actually be getting a hundred percent of the profits, not 50%, and they're now prepared to fund the budget themselves, too. Disney would just get a 10% distribut…”
Disney secretly formed Circle 7 Animation to make Pixar sequels without Pixar
“Disney actually does start a new studio inside the company called Circle Seven Animation. That will be tasked with developing, right away, Toy Story III, Monsters, Inc. II, and Finding Nemo II.”
Top weekly Disney+ movies are consistently Pixar and Disney Animation
“We've heard that the vast majority of the top 15 movies viewed every week on Disney Plus are either Pixar or Disney Animation. Not live action, not Star Wars, not The Avengers. The stuff that kids watch over and over. And those Disney animation movies are all …”
Gilbert: Disney should have paid far less for Lucasfilm than Marvel
“Turns out they should have paid well less than whatever they were willing to pay for Marvel, too.
Because Star Wars just didn't turn out to have that much more exploitation ahead of it.”
ESPN's cash flow fully funded Disney's Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm acquisitions
“If you go line up those three acquisitions, which sound ludicrous on their price tags, especially when you didn't know how they were gonna pay off, Pixar at 7.4 billion, let's even include the cash in there, that's about two and a half years of cable's then pr…”
Rosenthal: Traditional media companies except Disney are serfs to Netflix and YouTube
“All of these traditional media companies, with the exception of Disney, have basically all become kind of surfs in the streaming kingdoms of the technology companies, of which Netflix and YouTube are actually the winners here.”
Rosenthal: Disney Retained Fox Assets Generated Nowhere Near $44B in Value
“And they probably don't get anywhere near forty four billion dollars worth of value out of the assets that they do get.”
Marvel's post-2021 theatrical film slate might actually have a negative return
“And if you do flash forward, the post 2021 movie slate might actually be negative on a theatrical return.”
Gilbert: Disney+ series diluted the Marvel Cinematic Universe's stakes
“This is even ignoring the Disney Plus shows, some of which were very cool, Loki and WandaVision, but the existence of them by trying to be bigger and broader and more expansive even than the movies make the original universe feel unimportant.”
Gilbert: Netflix's operating income matches Disney's total company operating income
“Netflix's operating income on streaming, their entire business is the same as Disney's entire company operating income.”
Parks and cruises now account for almost 60% of Disney's total profits
“Almost 60% of the profits of the entire company come from parks and cruises.”
Rosenthal: Major entertainment franchises are unkillable like luxury brands
“I think these franchises, whether it's core Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, are just like luxury brands. You cannot kill them. They will have uptimes and they will have downtimes, but they will always come back.”
Rosenthal: Disney's Best Streaming Strategy Is to Be Number Two
“Yeah, I think Disney's best bet here is to be a clear number two.”
Gilbert: Disney's historic profit eras were structural anomalies
“Disney's gonna be fine, and if managed very carefully, thrive. They're still gonna produce beloved characters and stories we all love, But the prosperity from the late nineties and the 2005 to 20 19 era, that was a complete anomaly due to how good all the stru…”
Film production is a mediocre business except for Disney
“The business of feature film production is a mediocre one, especially by the standards of what we study on this show here with Acquired, except for Disney.”
Disney invented the flywheel business model concept
“And they really did invent the entire concept of the flywheel business model that so many entrepreneurs are trying to copy.”
Disney's enterprise value traces back to losing the Oswald IP
“Really like Everything in Disney's history and all of the enterprise value that Disney has built that we will see all across the rest of this episode traces back to this moment.”
Kay Kamen was Disney's third most important historical business figure
“There is a real case to be made that besides Walt and Roy and I works too, but at least on the business side, besides Walt and Roy, Kay Kamen was the third most important person in the first, you know, half century of Disney.”
Disney merchandise royalties surpassed film rental revenue by 1934
“It wasn't even by the late 19 thirties. It was 1934.”
Walt Disney formed a private entity to build Disneyland after board rejection
“He is the Walt Disney who Has come up with a crazy new idea based on his obsessive hobby with model trains that the board of Disney Studios has basically rejected. And so he has gone full crackpot like Colonel Kurtz style and started his own separate company o…”
Retlaw received $121 million from Disney Productions for attractions and royalties
“Insanely, Wed Enterprises, which would later be Rett Law, got a total of seventy-five million dollars in checks from Walt Disney Productions for the Disneyland Railroad and for the monorail, between 1953 and 1981, and another forty six million for name royalti…”
The famous Disney flywheel sketch was drawn for the Wall Street Journal
“So the legend that's out there that everybody believes is that this was a napkin sketch that Walt himself drew. No, it was actually created Buy a Disney Studio artist as an illustration for this Wall Street Journal piece.”
Dying before building EPCOT metropolis likely protected Walt Disney's legacy
“It just doesn't make sense to me, and it may have protected his legacy that he didn't live another 10 or 20 years to see this through.”
Disney and Nintendo could only work together via an acquisition
“I kind of suspect the way that a relationship between Disney and Nintendo, the only way it could work would be if one of them buys the other.”
Disney and Nintendo are the only two true IP flywheel companies
“Which really just shows how the companies, they are the two flywheel companies. They are the two intellectual property flywheel companies out there.”
Vanguard and rival index funds own 24% of the US stock market
“Vanguard is the largest shareholder of most U.S. Corporations, and together with the other big index funds like BlackRock, State Street, and Fidelity, they own 24% of the entire U.S. Stock market.”
Rival index funds like BlackRock would not exist without Vanguard
“None of those other firms would be in this market or doing it in the same way if it weren't for Vanguard.”
Vanguard has saved retail investors $1 trillion in Wall Street fees
“Because of Vanguard's relentless cost-cutting and low fees, Vanguard has saved investors over five hundred billion dollars in fees and trading costs since its founding in 1975, and as a recent book The Bogle Effect argues, Vanguard's actions also forced the ha…”
Active investing is mathematically zero-sum before fees are subtracted
“If you take all the winners and all the losers and sum them up, And don't take out any fees. You come up with zero. Every positive winner on the side of a trade has a loser on the other side of the trade. And so in aggregate, all investors together are the mar…”
Fidelity offers a far better product and service experience than Vanguard
“Fidelity is just a better product and product experience than Vanguard. So during the pandemic especially, it exposed that Vanguard's customer service and technology is like jank. It is not good. And there were a lot of horror stories of trades not going throu…”
Vanguard has lacked meaningful scaled innovation for a decade
“There is this interesting question, which is that they haven't really had any new innovations in a while, call it a decade, that Have been really meaningful to the business and that they've continued to scale.”
84% of Vanguard funds have outperformed their peers over the past decade
“84% of Vanguard's funds have outperformed their peers over the last 10 years.”
Running a successful mutual fund is a commodity, not a differentiated product
“Jack had the insight that running a successful mutual fund is actually not a differentiated product. It is a commodity. What you are seeking is the highest possible long-term return on your capital. That is not like buying a unique piece of jewelry. It is like…”
Zero-fee broad market indexing reliably guarantees top-decile 40-year performance
“There's gonna be lots of funds that you can be in that will outperform in fits and starts, but if you wanna be the, in the upper decile, After 40 years, then it turns out owning the market with no fees is an almost surefire way to do it.”
Gilbert: Ferrari is the only ultra-luxury brand with mass cultural awareness
“So I would say Ferrari is the only ultra luxury brand that has reached mass cultural awareness.”
Alfredo Ferrari: A company is perfect when partners are odd and under three
“A company is perfect when the number of partners in it is odd and less than three.”
Rosenthal: Enzo Ferrari was Italy's Steve Jobs in every aspect
“Enzo was a natural born
Entrepreneur and marketer.
He really was Italy's Steve Jobs in every aspect.”
Rosenthal: Lamborghini Miura was a better car than Ferrari's contemporary offerings
“Lamborghini had just launched the Mira, the Lamborghini Mira at this point in time, which was a truly excellent car. Like, a better Ferrari than a Ferrari at the time.”
Montezemolo: Sustained racing losses erode Ferrari's luxury brand myth
“There is not a direct correlation between Ferrari victories on the track and the number of cars that you can sell, but If for many years you do not win, it means that you do not add wood to the fire of the myth. The myth of Ferrari is based on competition on c…”
Gilbert: Ferrari Combines Hermès Scarcity with Manchester United Global Fandom
“Ferrari is Hermes and Manchester United smashed together.”
Rosenthal: The Lamborghini Urus shares its platform with the VW Touareg
“The Lamborghini Urus, the Lamborghini SUV, that is the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne, which is the same platform as the Volkswagen Touareg. When you buy a Lamborghini Urus, you are buying a car that is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg.”