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 153 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
The NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick following his 2016 national anthem protests
“The NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick after this.”
Rosenthal: The IPL is structurally superior to the NFL
“To me, this is not a controversial statement. The IPL is better set up structurally than the NFL. It is the Most perfect sports league that exists.”
Rosenthal: Taylor Swift Enterprise Value Is $11B Using Disney's 20x Multiple
“Disney trades at 20 X free cash flow. Taylor is five hundred and fifty million in free cash flow. That's a eleven billion dollar enterprise value for Taylor.”
Rosenthal: Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie deserve all credit for Azure's vision
“I kind of think all of the credit for the vision for it and the championing it for the initial seven years within Microsoft goes to Steve and to Ray.”
The SR-71 Blackbird Was Effectively a Decoy for Space Satellites
“This is heretical to say, because it's so beloved, but I think the Blackbird was a decoy. We were getting everything we needed from space. We just didn't want anybody to know about it.”
Nintendo's intellectual property rivals Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm combined
“Nintendo is like Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm combined. I mean, they have some of the very best IP in the entire world. They've got three franchises that can stand toe to toe with anything at Disney in Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon.”
Ferrari Is Arguably the Only Legitimate Luxury Brand Founded Post-1950
“I think you could maybe even argue they are the only legitimate luxury brand established in the second half of the 20th century.”
The 2011 Google Brain 'Cat Paper' Drove Hundreds of Billions in Revenue
“I think it's not that much of a leap to say that the cat paper led to probably hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue generated by Google and Facebook and ByteDance over the next decade.”
Google's DeepMind Buy Directly Spawned Modern AI Labs
“This company and this purchase of it by Google was the butterfly flapping its wings equivalent moment that directly leads to OpenAI, ChatGPT, Anthropic, and basically everything.”
Google Chrome Kept the Web Alive as a Viable Application Platform
“I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Chrome kept the web alive. As a viable platform for applications.”
Google Is the Only Tech Giant to Extend Its Business Across Eras
“Nobody stretches a business model across technology eras. Nobody. And Google did it.”
Rosenthal: Google Has the Best Business Model in Corporate History
“It's the same beautiful ballet where every piece of the Google business model works together and reinforces the other pieces, and in concert it creates the best business model of all time.”
Cerner is probably one of Oracle's worst acquisitions of all time
“You know, maybe it's too early to tell, but I think this is probably one of Oracle's worst acquisitions of all time.”
Rosenthal: Epic may be the most durable software company in history
“I think this is maybe The most durable software company in history.”
Epic Systems has the highest switching costs of any software in history
“I mean, this is the biggest switching cost piece of software ever.”
Rosenthal: Epic's Judy Faulkner is history's most successful female founder
“Judy is almost certainly the most successful by any measure female founder in history. I think that is actually true. I looked up to try and see who else might even come close.”
Epic is likely the world's most valuable vertical software company alongside Bloomberg
“Epic has gotta be the most valuable vertical market software company in the entire world. What else could possibly be up there? And so I started racking my brain. I was like, Bloomberg was the only one I could come up with that could. Plausibly maybe be as val…”
Rosenthal: IPL Originated as Lalit Modi's Revenge Play Against Rupert Murdoch
“And thus begins a 10 to 15 year journey that is not just the ultimate revenge play by Lalit on Rupert, but accidentally along the way starts the biggest sports entrepreneurial story phenomenon that has ever existed.”
Rolex is likely worth over $100 billion in enterprise value before assets
“There's no way that this business is worth 40. I don't know if it's worth 200, but it's worth a hundred plus. Zero doubt in my mind.”
TSMC has the strongest economic moat of any company in the world
“Other than that, I don't know that there is a stronger moat that any company has in the entire world than TSMC.”
Sean Parker Is Entirely Responsible for Mark Zuckerberg's Founder Control
“Mark having full control over the company as we are going to see time and time and time again as we go through the story here makes all the difference in the world, and that is 100% because of Sean Parker.”
Meta Enjoys Guaranteed Profitable ROI on AI Hardware via Ad Optimization
“It's one of the fundamental advantages that Facebook has today relative to all other AI companies is that they are guaranteed profitable ROI on all of their AI spend. All of their research, all their infrastructure, all their GPUs, they have highly, highly pro…”
The Microsoft-IBM PC partnership was tech history's most important deal
“I think you can make a very strong argument, the single most important deal ever done in the history of technology.”
Rosenthal: Studying non-tech giants is more valuable than tech case studies
“Is that those stories and studying the LVMHs, the Costcos, the Nikes of the world, if anything, that's like even more important than studying the great technology companies for building a great technology company.”
Nvidia's $7 billion acquisition of Mellanox is one of tech's best ever
“They made one of the best acquisitions of all time back in 2020, and nobody had any idea. They bought a quirky little networking company out of Israel called Mellanox.”
Nvidia's Q2 FY24 release was one of history's greatest corporate earnings reports
“I think this was one of, if not the most incredible earnings release by any scaled public company ever. Seriously, no matter what happens going forward, last week was a historic moment.”
Nvidia is the only viable platform for training GPT-class frontier AI models
“If you want to train GPT or a GPT class model, there's one option. You're doing it on NVIDIA. There's one option.”
Lockheed Missiles and Space Had a Bigger Impact Than Skunk Works
“What LMSC, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, did, I honestly think, like, it is bigger impact to the country, to the world, and certainly on business to Lockheed and to Silicon Valley than Skunk Works.”
Rosenthal: Walmart was the first applied technology company in America
“I still think that they were the first applied technology company in America.”
Rosenthal: Apple has been a terrible steward of the podcasting industry
“Apple has been such a terrible steward of this industry.”
Rosenthal: Companies Stayed Private for Opacity and Profit, Not Sarbox
“Sarbanes actually raised the cost and complexity of being a public company. No doubt. I think, though, probably not as much as the stay private longer proponents were saying. And this might be related to what you're saying. I suspect, again, to the incentives …”
Blocking Broadcom's Qualcomm Takeover Was a Massive National Security Win
“This is one of the huge wins of the Trump administration you know, for like America was keeping Qualcomm an independent American company. Like whether it was Qualcomm calling in a favor or just what, like, I think we can all look back in 2022 and be like, this…”
Suing Travis Kalanick did not directly harm Benchmark's investment business
“I think pretty unambiguously at this point, both in my opinion and just looking at what's happened in the intervening, god, it's been five years since then, the answer to that, like, does this meaningfully negatively impact benchmark is no. Directly, no.”
Rosenthal: Google effectively killed eBay through superior search
“Honestly, I mean, I think this is drawing too broad of a brush, but I think Google killed eBay, right? You know, the best way to search eBay is Google. It's not eBay.”
Walmart, not Amazon, was the primary cause of Sears and Kmart's collapse
“And I thought like, oh, well, duh, Amazon killed them all. No, Walmart killed them. There's no way that Kmart or God forbid Sears at that point could compete against Walmart.”
Walmart's relentless pricing pressure was a major contributor to offshoring US manufacturing
“Ultimately that leads to a couple of things that led to offshoring of American manufacturing. Walmart was a huge contributor.”
Rosenthal: Ken Langone is basically the greatest investment banker ever
“He is basically the GOAT investment banker.”
Rosenthal: Specialized logistics insulated Home Depot from Amazon's retail dominance
“Amazon's eating everybody's lunch except Home Depot's because this is a highly Specialized, again, specialty retail, logistics and fulfillment chain, and Home Depot's built it out.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 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.”
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…”