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 174 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
Bankman-Fried: FTX's revenue is clean, clear, and completely transparent
“When you talk about, like, recurring revenue, like, there's sort of, like, doesn't exist a clearer example of that than, like, you know, I don't know, we have volume each day, and we charge a transaction fee on it, right? It's incredibly clean, right? People a…”
Google Is Only Company with Both Frontier Model and AI Silicon
“Somebody put it to me in research that if you don't have a foundational frontier model, Or you don't have an AI chip, you might just be a commodity in the AI market, and Google is the only company that has both.”
YouTube's Annual Revenue Will Likely Surpass All of Disney in 2025
“So YouTube is already bigger than Disney's media business, and this year will likely become bigger than Disney's entire business.”
Turning Off Meta Ads Actually Reduces User Engagement in Some Markets
“There are markets in the world today where I think Meta has run this test, where if you turn off ads, In the, you know, meta family of apps products, engagement in those products actually goes down, which is just, like, freaking wild.”
Gilbert: Microsoft is the only Big Tech giant without federal antitrust probe
“The only one that's not under active antitrust investigation today by the federal government.”
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was the first commercial software product ever sold
“This is the first time software has ever been sold. Other than the IBM accounting machinations to protect themselves from antitrust, which was just accounting, nobody had ever sold software before. This is the first time.”
Germany directed Novo to supply insulin across Nazi-occupied Europe
“They are now essentially the official Nazi-sanctioned insulin provider for all of Nazi-occupied Europe. So, the German government basically directs Novo To massively expand production and supply insulate, you know, not only to Germany, but to France, to Poland…”
Ferrari Refused Long-Term Battery Support for the Hybrid LaFerrari
“Ferrari has already said that the technology is old, all the plug-in stuff, we don't want to be any part of the LaFerrari.”
Gilbert: Gaming revenue historically surpassed Hollywood and TV including arcade coin drops
“I was shocked to learn that the gaming industry has always been larger than TV and Hollywood, if you include the total coin drop in arcades, and I always just thought this was this new phenomenon of like, wow, video games have become so much a part of the fabr…”
CAA packaged 350 films and treated traditional studios strictly as distributors
“Or any of the 350 films that we packaged, Tootsie, Rain Man, go down a forever list, you had a choice. You'd, you'd buy the package, or we'd sell it to somebody else, because we viewed the studios as distribution entities.”
Bankman-Fried: The largest crypto exchange bled $1M daily from broken risk engines
“The biggest exchange at the time was bleeding each day about a million dollars of customer assets to a risk engine that didn't work.”
Disney merchandise royalties surpassed film rental revenue by 1934
“It wasn't even by the late 19 thirties. It was 1934.”
Eric Schmidt Proposed Google Acquire Tesla for Self-Driving Tech
“There's what Eric Schmidt wanted, which is crazy. He proposed, oh, let's just go buy Tesla, and that'll be our starting place, and then we'll just put all of our self-driving equipment on all the cars.”
Ballmer: Microsoft was the first major company to replace options with RSUs
“And we transition then from stock options to stock awards. Which, if you notice, I think we were the first to make that as a major transition, but everybody's made the same transition.”
Rosenthal: Trackable foreign bets on IPL matches reach ~$750M per match
“The statistic is that just trackable bets placed through, Ben, like you said, foreign bookmakers in countries where gambling is legal,
On IPL matches, I believe, is something on the order of, like, seven hundred and fifty million dollars per match.”
Hershey rationed WWII chocolate to all wholesale customers except M&M Limited
“They limit their chocolate supply to all of their wholesale enterprise customers except for one. M&M Limited Partnership. Because of course, it's Bruce Murray's company.”
A 1938 500-kronor bank loan was IKEA's only outside capital
“And that, listeners, is the only capital that ever goes into Ikea. That is the only money that Ingvar would ever raise.”
Facebook Became Consistently Profitable Roughly 18 Months After Founding
“They lost money and not that much money for like a year and a half, and then from that point on, they were just profitable.”
Rosenthal: Facebook's Newsfeed was the invention of the web feed
“They didn't exist. This was the first one. This was the invention of the feed.”
Gilbert: Windows 8 touch interface was originally planned only for tablets
“What ended up happening was the original vision for the Windows eight touch thing that we're all talking about, these live tiles, that was supposed to only ship for tablets as it was originally dreamed up, and there was a version of Windows eight that did not …”
DOJ granted an antitrust clearance letter to form Visa's predecessor
“So, they actually get a letter from the DOJ saying, like, Hall Pass, you're good on this one.”
Palantir Sold Preloaded Laptops to Comply with Government Cost-Plus Contracts
“Someone told us as we were preparing and researching this episode that Palantir figured out that what they had to do was sell laptops to the government that came preloaded with their software so they could sell a physical thing that had a cost of goods sold as…”
Gilbert: Skilling Negotiated $20M Payout if Not Named Enron CEO by 2000
“He managed to convince Lay that He should get twenty million dollars in cash if he was not made CEO of Enron by the end of 2000.”
Friendster CEO Tim Koogle blocked Benchmark from investing in Facebook's Series A
“Specifically what happened was Benchmark had invested in Friendster, and so was conflicted out. Now you could argue that was an unavoidable mistake, you know, but like, boy does that hurt. And supposedly, I think it was Bob Kegel who was on the board of Friend…”
Nearly 100% of Benchmark portfolio companies successfully raise a Series B
“The thing that is not squishy at all is, it has to be close to a hundred percent of benchmark companies that raise a Series B.”
Gassner: Veeva Vault has 5x to 10x the potential of Veeva CRM
“The second one is a bit bigger but the second one has also quite a bit more potential. You know, maybe it's a five X or 10 X potential.”
Rosenthal: 89 Other Graphics Chip Startups Were Funded Soon After Nvidia
“Literally 89 other companies get funded within a couple months to go do the same thing.”
Ben Gilbert predicted in 2022 that Peloton would be acquired soon
“I think two years from now, I think the most likely thing is that it's acquired by someone”
Bankman-Fried: No crypto company had ever received an audit by early 2018
“Literally no crypto company has ever gotten audited before of any type. And we've been around for two months. Obviously we don't have an audit.”
Rosenthal: Disney and Pixar sold 65 million copies of Finding Nemo DVD
“Disney and Pixar would sell 65 million copies of the Finding Nemo DVD, all told, you know, across all, all timeframe.”
Gilbert: Every Disney box-office hit after 2016 harvested existing IP
“Everything I can think of that did big dollars after 2016 at the box office, and I picked 2016 because that's when Moana and Zootopia came out. Everything after that that was big box office for the company is harvesting existing IP.”
Rosenthal: No Ferrari model shares an automotive platform with other cars
“No Ferrari shares a platform with any other car.”
The LA Coliseum forced the Rams to racially integrate in 1946
“Moving the Rams to LA forces the league to integrate because the LA Coliseum, where the Rams want to play, is a publicly owned building, and it's controlled then as now
By the LA Coliseum Commission.
And when Reeves and the Rams come out to petition their case…”
Gilbert: NFL franchises are collectively worth around $140 billion
“It is this flywheel that makes the NFL teams collectively worth something like a hundred and forty billion dollars today.”
Gilbert: Pemberton introduced the word 'cola' to the American lexicon
“Which we should say is the first introduction of the word cola period in the American lexicon. Cola drinks were not a thing.”
Early gas station owners made more profit selling Coca-Cola than selling gasoline
“There's so much margin to go around being the retailer. Of soft drinks, especially at this time, that they were making more money on coke than gas.”
Rosenthal: 7-Eleven invented to-go coffee cups and self-serve soda fountains
“Two, they invented the to-go coffee cup. Ah. And also the self-serve soda fountain.”
Gilbert: Trader Joe's Growth Rate Kept Pace During the Internet Era
“They've grown just as fast in the internet era as the non-internet era.”
Google's $140B Earnings Trail Only Saudi Aramco Globally
“On the earnings side, they've generated a hundred and forty billion over the last 12 months, which is more profit than any other tech company, and the only company in the world with more earnings is Saudi Aramco.”
Google Is the Only Frontier AI Model Maker with Self-Sustaining Funding
“Google is the only model maker who has self-sustaining funding.”
Gilbert: Google traffic doubled to 14M daily searchers on Yahoo deal day one
“So traffic doubled to fourteen million searchers per day on day one of this deal.”
Rosenthal: Google was first tech company to use dual-class shares
“Google was the first tech company to do this.”
Rosenthal: No company has done a Dutch auction IPO since Google
“Dutch auction IPO. Not a great idea. Nobody has done it since.”
Gilbert: Many IPL Teams Spend Only 75% to 90% of the Salary Cap
“In most leagues, what's the salary cap is the same as asking, on my P&L, what is the expense line for players? Interestingly, in the IPL, they don't pay the full salary cap. Plenty of teams are running around there with 7580, 90% of salary cap.”
Rosenthal: India's smartphone install base grew from 30M to 800M
“Reliance Geo comes in, thirty million handsets when they launched in 2016. Fast forward six years to 2022, Eight hundred million install base of handsets.”