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 360 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
Google AdWords Is an Increasingly Finite Global Marketing Resource
“The number one place on the planet for marketing spend is Google AdWords, and make no mistake about it, this is an increasingly finite resource.”
Lieberman: Andreessen Horowitz Grew to World's Largest VC With $35B AUM
“And Andreessen Horowitz, the investment firm that Mark co-founded in 2009, grew to become the largest VC in the world with thirty five billion dollars in assets under management.”
ServiceNow reached $1B in revenue having raised only $6.5M in external funding
“ServiceNow was also bootstrapped with no more than 6.5 million dollars in external funding. Only the second cloud software company after Salesforce to hit a billion dollars in revenues, ServiceNow reached two billion dollars in revenue just two years later.”
Harley Finkelstein advocates that Shopify employees annually evaluate if they requalified
“It reminds me of what Harley Finkelstein has said at Shopify, which is the idea that every year, every employee should think about, did they re-qualify for their job at the company?”
Press coverage drove early growth for over 20% of top consumer startups
“Though often advised against, getting press right out of the gate is a very legitimate early growth strategy, responsible for the early growth of over 20% of the most successful consumer startups.”
Hinge spent its last $25,000 on a 2,500-person launch party
“He said, we took our last 25,000 dollars and we threw a 2500 person launch party in D.C. We set the date and we just worked backwards from that. We were just like, we've got to get everyone on at once. No one's gonna stick around if there's not a lot of people…”
Brian Chesky recently eliminated a poisonous organizational chart at Airbnb
“If you want to see what it looks like to recognize and also remove a poisonous org chart, I highly recommend you listen to the podcast interview between Lenny Rachitsky and Brian Chesky, who is the CEO of Airbnb, and he recently went through this exact exercis…”
Lieberman: MLK had a 63% disapproval rating at peak activism
“MLK was a radical reformer who had a 63% disapproval rating at the height of his activism.”
Lieberman: Microsoft got its break by selling IBM an unbuilt OS
“Microsoft, perhaps the most successful tech company in history, got its break when Bill Gates sold IBM an operating system he didn't have.”
Lieberman: Magic Leap Burned Billions for a Failed $2,300 Headset
“Florida augmented reality company Magic Leap has, no joke, burnt billions of dollars since 2010 with nothing other than a failed 2300 dollar headset to show for it.”
Lieberman: Theranos hired David Boies to shut down the WSJ reporting
“The firm also engaged Harvey Weinstein's attack dog attorney David Bois To try to shut down the story.”
Lieberman: Martin Shkreli was convicted of defrauding investors, not gouging
“He's in prison, but not for price gouging. He was convicted of defrauding investors.”
In 2008, Tim Cook sent Sabih Khan straight to China mid-meeting
“In 2008, he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production snafu in China. Tim said, this is bad. Someone ought to get over there. 30 minutes went by and the conversation moved to other topics. Suddenly, Tim looked back at Sabi and asked, why are you still here?…”
Airbnb lost 80% of its business in eight weeks during early 2020
“And we lost 80% of our business in eight weeks.”
Gumroad turned a $351,000 monthly deficit into net profit within one year
“For the listener, it was June, 2015, this is a few months before Gumroad layoffs, revenue was 89,000 dollars a month net profit was 351,000, -351,000 dollars. They're burning 351,000 dollars. Obviously this was at the point in the business where still venture …”
Lieberman: Gumroad to Distribute 60% Profit Share in 2024
“I was actually talking yesterday to Sahil from Gumroad, and this year they're gonna do 60% profit share With employees and shareholders.”
Fried: Basecamp was one of the first SaaS and freemium tools
“We were one of the first SAS, SAS tools, and also first freemium tools, actually, in fact.”
Siroker: NEA has 15-year fund lifecycles and buys at IPO
“NEA is known to have 15 year fund life cycles as opposed to the traditional 10. Very often they're buyers at the IPO. They're not sellers.”
Adcock: Roughly 50 Dual-Class Companies Went Public in Two Decades
“Roughly 50 companies went public last like two decades that had this.”
Nagpal: QSBS rollovers allow founders to reinvest proceeds tax-free into new startups
“You can do something that is called a QSBS rollover that actually lets you take the proceeds and invest it in another qualifying small company And then your clock resumes ticking. So let's say you sold the company after three years. You only then have to wait …”
Gagliardi: 2022-2023 Fed rate hikes were most aggressive since 1982
“You'd have to go back to 1982 to find a Fed moving this hard, this fast, hard line, no exception, and just hawkish all the way.”
Corcos: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang manages roughly 40 direct reports
“He has something like 40 direct reports, which is crazy, but he does it in such a way that it's not super burdensome, and the intent behind it, from what I understand, is that the closer you get to the ultimate decision maker, the faster decisions get made.”
Kajabi is profitable and has surpassed $100 million in ARR
“Like we are a business that are pretty healthy. So we're, you know, over a hundred million dollars an hour. We're profitable, but we're really strategic about the way we build the business.”
Kajabi's $550M funding is the creator economy's largest round by far
“I think it's probably I think it's the biggest round in the great economy by far.”
Lieberman: Toastmasters did over $30M in 2022 and is undermonetized
“Toastmasters is a nonprofit, but it was founded in 1924, has 270,000 members across 14,200 clubs. And 147 countries, and I believe it is severely under monetized, yet I saw that in 2022, it did over thirty million dollars in revenue.”
Timmer: 2023 Corporate Earnings Estimated to Drop 3%
“Now, overall earnings are declining very, very modestly. They're scheduled estimated to be down three percent this year, which isn't very much.”
Sitting next to underperformers cuts individual performance by 30%
“It was basically this research showing that if you sit next to top performers, they increase your performance by on average, 15% as evidenced by a big study across multiple Years and hundreds of employees. And if you sit next to an underperformer, they decreas…”
Deckers acquired Hoka for a reported $1M in 2012
“In 2012, the oversized sneaker brand Hoka was doing around three million dollars in revenue, and it was bought by Deckers, the owner of Ugg and Teva and a few other brands, and Deckers bought Hoka for a reported million dollars.”
Hoka reached $1.4B in annual sales, up from $153M in 2018
“This past year, Hoka did 1.4 billion dollars in sales. That is up from three million dollars in sales, as I mentioned, just 10 years ago, and a hundred fifty three million dollars in sales just five years ago.”
Lieberman Cites Stat Claiming Business Coaches Outnumber Business Owners
“I actually read a stat recently that there are now more business coaches than there are business owners, which is absurd.”
Lieberman: Liquid Death Reached $1B Valuation Primarily Through Marketing
“You know, it's become a billion dollar company basically from just being really good at marketing water. It's a, the most commoditized product in the world, yet they've been able to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of this water”
Walking a humanoid robot within one year has never been done
“So our one year anniversary is coming up for the business. We're going to try to walk the robot before that, which has never been done. That's basically one, like less than a year getting basically the whole team together, getting the vision for the company, l…”
Airbnb generated $3.5B in free cash flow across 5,300 employees in 2022
“And last year he said the business did 3.5 billion dollars in free cash flow across 5300 employees.”
Airbnb Divides Product Teams Into Marketers, Junior PMs, and Program Managers
“So the way that Airbnb organizes its product function is there's basically three roles within product at Airbnb. There are product marketers, and these are senior product managers, and they're responsible for Marketing of the products that Airbnb has, as well …”
Pujji: Hotels pay travel agents a 25% booking commission
“Hotels. Pay 25%. To this day. So if you get a hotel a booking, you as a travel agent, whether you're online, whether you're a physical person, get 25% of the booking”
Pujji: Microsoft Teams is roughly five times the size of Slack
“Apparently Teams is like five times the size of Slack now. Because Microsoft owns the enterprise”
Gatina: Religion and spirituality was the top podcast category in audience and creators
“I found out religion and spirituality was actually the number one category of all podcasts in terms of both audience size. So consumers and content creators.”
Gatina: Helinet provided aerial surveillance as a service to law enforcement
“We just kind of cracked the code at Helinet on being able to provide surveillance as a service. It's a different kind of SaaS business, but where you're basically doing aerial surveillance for law enforcement agencies or clients, right? So it could be DEA, FBI…”
Jain: Regulators Approved Using Rental History and Points for Mortgages
“We actually got the government, the regulators to work with us to allow your rental payment history To help you qualify for a mortgage and to use points for the first time ever is down payment assistance.”
Jain: Reporting rent payments boosts an average credit score by 60 points
“The average person can increase their credit score by 60 points just by reporting their rent payments, right?”
Jain: Bilt Partner Network Reaches 3 Million Apartments
“There are people who live in one of our three million apartments today, but there are a lot of people who don't. And if we, if for those people to have a solution, which is to use the built credit card, you can pay rent at any apartment building in the country…”
Lieberman: Nick Huber raised over 95% of self-storage capital via Twitter
“Nick has Attributed, I think, 95% plus of all of his investors in his self-storage business, which now I think it's valued around a hundred million dollars. The vast majority of his investors, he got through creating content on Twitter about his self-storage b…”
Athena founder Jonathan Swanson employs seven executive assistants
“He has seven executive assistants. He delegates So all of his activities in life out to these assistants from booking travel to wishing people happy birthday.”
Pujji: Apple requires leaders to know operational details three levels down
“Apple requires that you know the details of your organization three levels down. So if you're a VP and the reason they do that is just a very, like, this is part of just why it's important to be super buttoned up or know the answers or know, know your numbers …”
Rolex operates only one company-owned retail store in the world
“They make watches. They don't sell watches. There is one Rolex store in the world. Other than that, they have authorized dealers that sell these things.”
Lieberman: $1 Kickstarter backers convert 30-40x better than email leads
“They have found that someone who puts down a dollar is Is 30 to 40 times more likely to ultimately back the Kickstarter campaign than say someone who just puts in their email address”
Lieberman: Roughly $176B of SVB's $180B in Deposits Were Uninsured
“A hundred and eighty billion of deposits, something like a hundred and seventy six billion were uninsured because all, you know, the only thing that's insured is the 250 K.”
Lieberman: Fenty Beauty hit $550M revenue and $2.8B valuation in 2018
“And she did by 2018. So a year after it launched, It was doing five hundred fifty million dollars in revenue. Five hundred fifty million in revenue in 2018. And at that time, it was the valuation of Fenty was reported at 2.8 billion”