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 233 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
Cognition works with Goldman Sachs, Mercedes, and the US government
“We work with a lot of the big, biggest companies across the world, you know, we work with Goldman Sachs, we work with Mercedes, we work with, you know, a lot of areas of the U S government at this point and so on.”
Cognition ignores individual hobbyists to focus on production engineering teams
“And so, so we don't focus at all on like, you know, individual hobbyists who are just like trying to make a cool thing or something like that. We focus on like, Real teams who are building real products that they want people to use and getting output out of th…”
Cognition's entire team flew to Brazil to onboard its first enterprise customer
“Well, so NewBank, I mean, the first one, honestly, our entire team was the Ford deployed team. Like we all flew to Brazil.”
Devin dynamically routes tasks across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and internal models
“Devin, rather than being pegged to one model and saying, oh, we're only going to serve you GPT for this, or we're only going to serve you OPFIS for this, Devin can use any of the different models it has in its arsenal, which include all of these models from An…”
Stoute: Larry Page Was the First Investor in UnitedMasters
“Larry Page was the first guy that invested in United masses.”
Söderström: Spotify operates via a weekly 3-hour executive meeting of 14 SVPs
“We chose to say, we're not going to have our own leadership meetings. We have a single one with all of our SVPs. So we have a single meeting every Tuesday called the E-Team for three hours. With all the SVPs of all the internal functions, like, you know, marke…”
Söderström: Spotify is exploring expanding into fitness content
“And so when we look at something, you know, we're talking about fitness now, for example. Why? Because we think very few people regret doing a workout.”
Spotify implemented an anti-engagement option allowing users to turn off video
“So we made the decision. Sort of the anti-engagement decision to allow people, anyone, to turn off video if they want to, and just listen.”
Rubin: Deep Music Listening Provided a Psychedelic Experience Without Drugs
“In some ways, I think my relationship with music allowed me to never drink or take drugs because Listening to music for me is totally a psychedelic experience. I can feel the music, and I can be transported by the music.”
David Senra and Daniel Ek Are Cataloging Founder Archetypes
“Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify and I are working on this project to try to outline all the different founder archetypes. We might even like commission a book on this because it's so important.”
White: We Initially Hoped to Sell the Struggling UFC for $6M
“Well, I called him back and said, I think we can sell it six, seven, maybe eight million in that ballpark.”
Foroughi: AppLovin had no board of directors until 2018
“So back to the board point, and we did raise another round, there was more liquidity later, but back to the board point I didn't have a board in this business until 2018.”
Baszucki: Roblox leadership reviews 50-60 core deliverables every week
“We have probably 50 to 60 things that are core to hitting, you know, the objectives we have this quarter, next quarter, the rest of the year. It's almost like a hand curated list at the company level and group level. Of things that we think are emblematic as a…”
Baszucki: Roblox built proprietary game engine because it was core infrastructure
“Our game engine, for example, we said, we always imagined we need a multiplayer, three D immersive engine that does 10% of everything really well. Early on, it's like, you should use that game engine, you should use that game engine. We said, no, that's like a…”
Roblox will use player data to train AI game-testing NPCs
“The level of indirection is making amazing NPCs that look and behave and act like humans by training on that data for our users. So what we'd like to be able, is you're building your cool experience. You want 10,000 virtual testers. You want to describe how th…”
Spiegel: Snap is launching first consumer AR glasses later this year
“And then later this year, you know, we're launching the first consumer version, which will be a big step for us.”
Spiegel: Snap plans to incubate standalone apps using Snapchat's billion-user distribution
“Inside of Snapchat today, and in our design team, we're thinking a lot about what types of new apps and services, internet services... A separate app from Snapchat. But we can use Snapchat as a launch pad for these new services because it reaches almost a bill…”
Spiegel: Snap acquired calendar app Saturn
“There's an app called Saturn, which we acquired, which is a totally new way to think of calendaring.”
Spiegel: Early Snap investors allowed the founders to sell $10M in stock
“They allowed Bobby and I to both sell ten million bucks of stock very early on.”
Xu conducts DoorDash customer support every single day
“I still do customer support every day. I see them literally every single day.”
Xu: DoorDash aims to be the first call for any business issue
“Our goal over time is to be the first phone call for any business any business for any issue.”
Xu: Does not track DoorDash's daily stock price or market cap
“It's not something I get to control, and it's also not what is fulfilling or motivating to me. You know, what am I going to do on a daily basis knowing what the stock price is? Like, am I going to behave? No, I'm not. Going to behave any differently.”
Andreessen: I Have Never Used Psychedelics and Never Will
“It's gonna be clear. I'm not. I've never have. I'm never going to.”
Andreessen: Clark and Andreessen Almost Built an Online Network for Nintendo 64
“We actually went, he actually went back to Nintendo, and we almost Pulled the trigger on basically building what today you'd call like Xbox Live, or what is it called? It's a PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, like an online gaming service for the Nintendo. 64 …”
Armstrong committed $100M of personal capital to launch NewLimit
“Committed a hundred million of my own money to it to hope, to help it get off the ground, and it subsequently raised more money from others as well”
Armstrong: Coinbase built tools allowing any AI agent to hold stablecoins
“We built a couple of, ah, tools that allow any agent to get a stablecoin wallet inside of it.”
Fried: 37signals Product Teams Are Only One Programmer and One Designer
“Any team we have making something is usually two people, like two people working on a feature, one programmer, one designer.”
Fried: Basecamp Welcome Emails Provide Customers With His Direct Personal Email
“Whenever you sign up for Basecamp, the first thing you see is a letter from me with my email address and my signature and my email address, and I want my customers to email me. I don't want to hide from anybody. There's no AI. There's no assistant. There's no …”
Fried: 37signals Does Not Use Email Internally, Communicating Strictly via Basecamp
“I don't, we don't use email inside our company. We use Basecamp. But for the outside world, we use email.”
Fried: 37signals Distributes 10% of Profits Based on Employee Longevity, Not Title
“10% of our profits go to our employees every year and it's based on seniority or actually, that's the wrong, it's based on longevity, not seniority. It's kind of, you know, The two aren't the same thing, however long you've been here. So every, every, every mo…”
Fried: 37signals Explicitly Refuses to IPO, Raise VC, or Sell to PE
“We can go IPO. I don't want to. We could raise money. I don't want to. We could raise more money. I don't want to. We could sell to PE. I don't want to. Like we could quit. I don't want to. Like these are all options that we have and keep going for as long as …”
Fried: Basecamp Hard-Caps Its Maximum Subscription Price at Just $299 Monthly
“So with Basecamp, for example, nobody can pay us more than two 99 a month. Okay. It doesn't matter how many users you have. So you could be a big enterprise, and two nine a month is the most you can possibly. Our prices go way, way low, but that's the most we …”
Iovine: Helped Steve Jobs secure music licenses for Apple's iTunes
“I helped him get the licenses for iTunes.”
Iovine: Vivendi rejected my request for $100M to build artist-led businesses
“I asked Vivendi to give me a hundred million dollars to Interscope to start businesses with the artists inside Interscope. And in fairness to them, they didn't see that. They didn't want to do it.”
Lütke: I annually roleplay as a corporate raider turning around Shopify
“I love to take the view that, like, I'm a
corporate raider.
And Shopify went bankrupt, and I bought it on a fire sale, and I, I'm like marching in on day one here, and previous management was crazy, and we need to turn this place around, right?
Like, that's …”
Lütke: Shopify forbids employees from claiming 'ownership' over codebase sections
“It's like, we don't allow people to use word ownership over parts of a code base or so.
we only allow stewardship as a work like just as a proxy term, because sometimes you need to be able to talk about it.”
Mackey: Firing my father from the Whole Foods board was my hardest decision
“The most difficult thing I ever did was firing my dad from that board.”
Dyson: Operating on the knife edge of danger does not cause anxiety
“Risk has become a sort of thing I need to live with. I need to live on the knife edge all the time... I still feel that today, yes. And it doesn't make me unhappy, don't get me wrong, but I like living for the moment in danger, because you're onto something ne…”
Dyson spent £500 million on its cancelled electric car project
“Well, we spent about 750,000. A million. I keep working in pounds. Half a million. Half a billion pounds.”
James Dyson owns 100% of his multi-billion dollar company
“You own a hundred percent of Dyson.
Yes.”
Ovitz: CAA agents were required to watch every major Oscar-winning film
“I made our people watch every film in the history of the Academy Awards that won Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writer, and Best Movie.”
Jacobs suffered clinical depression after stepping down from United Rentals
“When I stepped down as CEO of United Rentals, had done it for about 10 years, and I wanted to do my next big thing. I wanted to do another startup from the beginning. You know, I was running a big company. I wanted to start it from scratch. And there was a per…”
Jacobs bans live PowerPoint presentations to focus meeting time on debate
“We don't do PowerPoints and go through all that nonsense where everyone tells each other how great they're doing. It's just the silliness that you see a lot in corporate America. We send all those decks out ahead of time. We have everybody read them, and then …”
Jacobs personally reads every company employee survey one by one
“I'm reading all the employee surveys from the whole company of, we asked him two questions. What's your single best idea to improve the company and rate your job satisfaction scale of one to 10? And sometimes we add a third one of what it will take to make it …”
Over 90% of his personal friends and neighbors invest in his companies
“And like, if you look at my neighbors and my friends, I don't know the exact number, but I would guess over 90% of them are invested in the company.”
Ek: I recommended Dara Khosrowshahi for the Uber CEO role
“The conversation started with us talking about Uber and I said, I recommended you to the job.”
Ek: Trying to imitate Jobs, Bezos, and Gates failed for me
“I certainly tried to mimic Steve Jobs. I certainly tried to mimic Bezos and Gates, and all of the great ones you know, the very charismatic ones, like Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and, you know, I've learned from all of them, and in a way I've tried to imitate…”