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 48 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
Lieberman: An audience's greatest value for startups is hiring, not customer acquisition
“And I think the obvious benefit that companies get from partnering with a creator or someone who has audience is getting more customers. But I would actually argue that is like the least exciting thing about having an audience, When I think about the value tha…”
Lieberman: Early-stage founders are typically bad, demanding customers
“First, early stage founders are typically really bad customers. They're the most resource constrained. Oftentimes they're the most demanding. And if they don't have product market fit, you are making a bet on their business in order for them to stay a customer…”
Lieberman: 98% of writers on the internet are mediocre
“98% of writers are really bad, are really mediocre, and I would never trust them to create content for our business, for StoryArb, whether it's our website copy, our social copy, you know, articles we write, et cetera, and so then I shouldn't trust them with a…”
Lieberman: Future corporate branding relies on employee profiles over corporate accounts
“For large companies or just companies in general to build great brands in the future, it is not going to be by focusing attention on building the brand as in like the company. It is going to be by focusing attention on building up people who are representative…”
StoryArb hit $234K monthly revenue and $40K profit in March 2025
“Revenue was 234,000 dollars. We profited 40,000, which is a 17% margin, and our full-time team sits at 18 people. And again, this is as of March of twenty-twenty-five.”
Founders should secure paying customers before incorporating or pitching
“And then the third step in the process was to actually secure paying customers before doing anything else. No website, no customer pitch deck. At the time, I hadn't even incorporated the business. All I care about is proving that people are willing to pay for …”
StoryArb tested its incoming CEO via a one-month freelance contract
“We agreed to a month-long freelancing CEO contract. Basically, the plan was that for a month, Abby would run the business to get a feel for if she'd be excited running StoryArb and working with me, and it would give me clarity on if I think she was right for t…”
Lieberman: Agencies face strong incentives to move upmarket to enterprise clients
“I've generally found that every agency feels a general incentive to move up market, because as you move up market, your deal sizes with larger customers are bigger. Larger customers also generally have more budget and more resources. They're more responsive. T…”
The three reasons executive ghostwriting clients inevitably churn
“They would say that they learned a ton from us, they saw the value of building an audience online, but one of three things wasn't working for them. First, they didn't have the time to show up for interviews so that we could get content from them. Basically, th…”
Lieberman targets $5M revenue run rate for StoryArb by Q3 end
“So basically, to get to, my goal is by the end of Q-three, I want us to be at a five million dollar run rate.”
Lieberman: Cold LinkedIn DMs to event attendees yield a 50% response rate
“I found when I speak at an event, and then I go cold LinkedIn DM, everyone who attended that event after, the hit rate is significantly higher. It's like 50% response rate, and I get all those people on the call”
Lieberman: Targeting heads of marketing makes copywriting services a need-to-have
“By switching who our customer was from a founder to a head of marketing, we believe we could take our product from being a nice to have to a need to have.”
Lieberman: StoryArb's first ten hires must have future-founder potential
“When I think about having the right people, especially for, like, my first 10 employees, it is people who I could see being entrepreneurs one day, where they're using StoryArb as a launch pad for the next four or five years, where ultimately, I could see them …”
Lieberman: Founders view personal branding as a nice-to-have, hurting retention
“I believe that founders view executive, social, and personal brand as a nice to have, not a need to have.”
Lieberman hired StoryArb's CEO through a one-month contract-to-hire trial
“What I decided to do, and I don't think I've ever seen this done, but it just made sense to me, is we basically did a freelance to full-time arrangement, where Abby acted as the freelance or contracted CEO for StoryArb for a month, and I set the expectation up…”
Lieberman: Executive social media agencies struggle to retain clients past 12 months
“One of the biggest challenges with StoryArbor, or just I would say personal brand businesses in general, is retention. I think it is generally very hard to keep clients for a long time. When I say a long time, I'd say anything more than 12 months if you're sol…”
Startups should maintain evergreen job listings for their core competency roles
“Every company has its core competency, and for its core competency, it has one role that Is most important to deliver on that core competency. At Beehive, it's a full stack engineer. At Morning Brew, it is, it was a newsletter writer. Now it's, you know, write…”
Lieberman: Companies benefit from employee personal branding without mandatory company mentions
“I believe that training your employees in personal branding is a win-win because, first of all, employees don't have to talk about the company they work at. Just simply by them creating good content online and building an audience You will, your company will b…”
Lieberman: Early customer demand does not equal product-market fit
“Having a lot of demand for a business does not mean you have found product market fit. It simply means there are enough people interested in the problem you are trying to solve that they want to talk more with you about your business.”
Lieberman validated StoryArb by advertising ghostwriters on Twitter before recruiting any
“I posted on Twitter saying, if you're an executive that wants to build their brand on Twitter or LinkedIn, but doesn't have the time or the skill set, let me know because I know a great executive ghostwriter. And by the way, I didn't know a great executive gho…”
Lieberman: StoryArb launched and acquired paying clients without a website
“StoryArb, my agency, we don't have a website for it yet. We literally do not have a website. And my view is like, it just hasn't been mission critical because we've had enough demand from people where I can record a video of myself explaining this business. I …”
Lieberman: StoryArb can become a $10M per year ghostwriting agency
“I believe this agency can be a ten million dollar a year business, and here's the back of the envelope math. We charge clients 7000 dollars per month. To be on pace for ten million dollars, we need a 120 clients. I believe I can find a 120 people on planet ear…”
Lieberman: 100% of StoryArb leads currently come through his social media
“This coming quarter, two of my rocks include, one, closing 18 new clients for StoryArb, and two, developing and deploying an organic marketing strategy such that 25% of our leads don't come through my social media channels, given a hundred percent of our leads…”
Lieberman: StoryArb's One-Year Plan Targets $10M ARR and 120 Clients
“Just to give you an example, the one-year plan for StoryArb is having a ten million dollar annual run rate business with a 120 clients and average client retention of 24 months.”
Alex Lieberman details his personal startup studio of four active companies
“When you look at what I'm doing right now, which is I have this personal startup studio. I have four companies. I have Storyarb. I have Growth Pair. I have distro. I have 10 X. They're all totally different businesses, different business models required differ…”
StoryArb's internal LinkedIn campaign drove 650K impressions and 52% traffic growth
“In week one, we had 61 total posts from the story, our team. We had a total of 650,000 impressions on LinkedIn. We saw a 52% increase in site traffic week over week, and we saw 500 pricing page visits. To StoryArb's pricing page.”
Lieberman: StoryArb offers $5,000 top prize for internal LinkedIn competition
“The person with the most social impressions on LinkedIn after 10 weeks will win 5000 dollars. Second and third place will also get rewarded with a thousand dollars and 500 dollars respectively.”
Lieberman: StoryArb's Quarterly Offsite Is 7.5 Hours and Technology-Free
“Our quarterly offsite at StoryArb is seven and a half hours long. It is technology-free other than the one person who is airplaying to the conference room TV, and relevant documents are printed in advance for people to look at as we move through the agenda.”
Lieberman: StoryArb January offsite decisions drove seven figures in new revenue
“That decision made during the offsite in January and the ninety-day goals and to-dos that came out of it have literally led to seven figures in new revenue for the business.”
Lieberman announces Distro, an AI content tool to drive StoryArb leads
“For the last few months, I've been working with a technical partner who has the world's greatest name for a developer. His name is Dev. And Dev and I have been building Distro, which is the first AI content strategist. My goal with Distro has been to build the…”
Lieberman took zero profit on StoryArb's first five clients
“During this phase in the process, I also optimized for learning over profit, which is why for the first five Storyarb customers, I was making zero dollars, and I was just passing through all payments From customers to ghostwriters as I tried to learn as much a…”
Lieberman: StoryArb has 18 staff, $3M run rate, high profitability
“She has a full-time team of 18. The business is on a three million dollar run rate and accelerating. It is highly profitable.”
StoryArb clients consistently churned after four to six months
“Initial demand for our product was strong, but retention was horrible. After four to six months of working with a founder, they would send us an email saying, we need to talk.”
Lieberman: StoryArb is at $130K run rate, targeting $240K for Q2
“Just to give you a sense of the business right now, it's like a 130 K top line right now, and the goal is end of this quarter to be at 240 K top line.”
Lieberman received 20 DMs from founders willing to pay $5k-$10k monthly
“I ended up getting like, 20 DMs from founders, which was sick because then I was like, okay, I have customers, and clearly they're qualified because I indicated in the tweet that you'd have to pay five to 10,000 dollars.”
Lieberman took zero profit on StoryArb's first client to study workflow
“What I literally did is I asked the ghost writer, how much would you charge for five posts a week? And how much would you charge for that on a monthly basis? I think originally he said, 3000 dollars. I went back to my first customer. I said, it's gonna be 3000…”
Lieberman: StoryArb reached $1.2M-$1.3M run rate in first three months
“And we got ourselves to a place where the business Had gotten over a million dollars in annualized revenue. It got to basically like call it 1.2 or 1.3 million in annualized revenue within the first three months.”
Lieberman increased StoryArb pricing to $5,000 monthly, netting $2,000 per client
“I started bringing on more clients. And as I did that, I started charging those clients, 5000 dollars instead of 3000. So I would make 2000 dollars per month per client.”
Lieberman predicts StoryArb will reach a $5M revenue run rate by July
“For my business, StoryArb, it's getting to five million dollars in run rate by July first.”
Lieberman: StoryArb funded its first employee with a $7,000 upfront payment
“For StoryR, we never raised a dollar. We used our first client who paid us 7000 dollars up front to, we took the net income of that client to hire our first employee, and we just know that if we never get An investor dollar for story are, which we never plan t…”
Lieberman: StoryArb hit over $1.5M annualized revenue in six months
“Started that six months ago. We have over 1.5 million dollars in annualized revenue and plan to double this quarter.”
Lieberman: StoryArb Generates Approximately $1M in Annualized Revenue
“Story are, we have, you know, about a million dollars in annualized revenue, which is like 83,000 dollars a month in monthly revenue.”
Lieberman: StoryArb generated single-digit millions in inbound client interest
“There is, let's just call it single digit millions worth of interest in people who want to be StoryArb clients.”
Lieberman sourced all StoryArb clients, staff, and its CEO via personal socials
“Every single one of our customers for StoryArb thus far have come through my Twitter and LinkedIn, but on top of that, I found the CEO of Story Arb through my Twitter and LinkedIn. Found our first employee through it. Found all of our ghost writers through it.”
Lieberman: Aiming to establish channel partnerships across all his startups
“And so what I'm aiming to do with all of my businesses now, whether it's Storyarb, whether it's Tenex, whether it's Growth Pair, is to set up channel partnerships.”
StoryArb pivoted from founder ghostwriting to B2B marketing content
“We had to go from focusing on executive social for founders to creating a, what I call, connected content motion that included playbooks, editorial newsletters, and socials Now for heads of marketing instead of founders of companies.”