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 319 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
Jesse Pujji launches a growth marketing due diligence business for PE firms
“We're starting that for growth marketing because every week, every month without fail, maybe more, I get a call or an email from a friend.”
Lieberman: The Plunge Needs 400 Weekly Reservations for $300K Kickstarter Goal
“The plunge is going live on Kickstarter in June. I know how many reservations we need in order to have, to raise 300,000 dollars on Kickstarter. It's like, basically, we need, ah, 400 reservations a week. Right now, for context, we're at 45.”
Lieberman: Post-exit motivation shifted from making money to personal learning
“At the highest level when we built Morning Brew, my motivation was, let's call it, 60% money, 40% love for the game. Now I would say it is pretty, there's still money drive there. Like I think for me to say that I wasn't motivated by money would just be false …”
Jain: Bilt spent six months negotiating the wrong angle with Wells Fargo
“We spent so much time in the first six months talking about a credit card program with them, which was, like, totally the wrong conversation.”
Money anxiety is higher post-sale than starting Morning Brew
“I actually have more anxiety today than I did before building Morning Brew or selling the business. Like I would say Money anxiety today, on average, is like a six out of 10, seven out of 10, and before, like, when I was just starting Morning Brew, it was prob…”
Lieberman: Fear of Being a 'One-Trick Pony' Drives Money Hoarding
“After leaving the CEO role of Morning Brew, I kind of had this Ongoing obsessive thought of, am I a one trick pony? How much did I contribute to the business's success? I don't know if I'll be able to replicate my success again. And so, while I think I've come…”
Lieberman: Morning Brew founders lacked skills to allocate millions in cash flow
“It was the fact that we were bootstrap founders, and as we were starting to cash flow millions of dollars in the business, we didn't have the skill of how to allocate all of that money because we had never dealt with that much money in our lives.”
Lieberman plans to incubate and self-fund businesses over next 10 years
“My dream over the next 10 years is to incubate many businesses, self-fund those businesses, find CEOs to run those businesses, a lot like what my co-host Jesse is doing with GatewayX.”
Medeiros: Mini Katana is eighth business attempt and first success
“This is actually my eighth try at business, and it's, like, the only successful one”
Lieberman spent $20,000 developing backyard game The Plunge
“So I've spent 20,000 dollars on the game so far. 12,000 of that is R&D. 8000 is an agency that's helping with me with my Kickstarter launch.”
Pujji spent $500 to $1,000 in ad tests to validate 'Unbloat' name
“In my case, what we did was we looked a little bit at nominal email signup, but what we were actually doing was testing for brands. And that was like, let's call it a brand name. This let's, you know, and that was our way of figuring out. ... So we had before …”
Pujji: Ampush shifted from sharing revenue to EBITDA after Red Ventures deal
“In Ampush, we were focused on revenue growth for the first five years, and man, everyone knew our revenue every day. I knew it. It was in channels. It was talked about, and then when Red Ventures invested, they were like, guys, screw revenue. We don't care abo…”
Pujji: Kahani team rated its product-market fit a six out of 10
“You, know, we internally had our off site for Connie, and I think everyone on average said we thought we were six out of 10 on product market fit.”
Pujji: Unbloat Took a Year of Iteration to Find Core Demographic
“When we launched Unbloat a year ago, we thought, you know, we'd heard lots of versions of it. We started selling it and we didn't, we know we, by the way, we interviewed 50 different women, all these things. Like it wasn't, and then we launched it. We thought …”
Pujji: Committed $250,000 to Launch Supplement Brand Unbloat
“We realistically committed about a quarter million dollars to, all in.”
Pujji: First Venture Puforia Generates $10k–$15k Monthly on Autopilot
“The first company we started, Puforia, true story, we still sell a hundred SKUs every, every month. Like the thing is just making like 10, 15,000 dollars a month. I don't know how people are getting to it. Like, does someone run that business? No, it's just, i…”
Pujji: Ampush management and CEO rolled over significant equity in Tinuiti sale
“Especially our management team and our CEO got a lot of equity. We got a little bit which was by design, but so we're riding a little bit with them in terms of what's, what's going to happen.”
Pujji: Ampush co-founders seeded the business with $33,000 each
“The three of us each decided to put 33,000 dollars in, which we had made kind of working on our Wall Street jobs. We were 25, 26.”
Pujji: Co-founder contributed two-thirds of his Carlyle salary to fund Ampush
“Chris had a Commitment to Carlisle. He was a private equity and he had nine more months left on his contract and he didn't want to burn the bridge and leave early. But we all agreed that basically we would treat ourselves as one entity and he would give up two…”
Pujji: Ampush traded pricing for multi-year client deals before selling
“We spent a lot of time in the beginning of 22, as an example, getting all of our most important customers into really long-term agreements.
Right.
So I'm like, these are going to be ironclad multi-year agreements.
And we may even gave up on price and certai…”
Pujji took a 15% payout discount to let his CEO pick buyers
“I think I said, 15%. I'll accept a 15% discount on mine in exchange for you choosing the right partner for you.”
Pujji Prioritized Cash at Close Over Earn-Outs in Ampush Sale
“The number one thing for me was cash at close for me and my family. You know, I wasn't running the business anymore. I don't control a lot of what's going to happen if there's an earn out or anything else like that.”
Swanson: Thumbtack Indexed Tens of Millions of Pros by Web-Crawling Billions of Pages
“And from these billions of pages, we crawled, we created an index of tens of millions of service pros websites who were looking for active work. And then we created a mechanism to reach out to them programmatically and get them to sign up for Thumbtack.”
Lieberman: Anxiety and OCD Hindered Me Before Stepping Down at Morning Brew
“By the time that I transitioned out of the CEO role at Morning Brew in April of 20, 21, very honestly, I was working less hard on the business. I would say part of it was because I was dealing with my own things in life, anxiety, OCD, but also part of it was I…”
Lieberman: I Felt Like a Failure Stepping Down From Morning Brew
“Like I said before, I felt like a huge failure after moving out of the CEO role for Morning Brew. I had this story of what it meant to be a great CEO. You have an idea, you create a product, you prove that the product has value in the world, you scale that pro…”
Lieberman: Validating New Game 'The Plunge' Via Social-Driven Pre-Orders
“My goal is to launch this business for pre-orders in the next few weeks, and use short-form social content of people playing the game, put it on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and any other short-form platform to drive demand for the product. If I hit enough pre-o…”
Lieberman: Landed unit cost for The Plunge from China is $68
“As of right now, cost, if I wanted to get it to Jesse Poogee's house from China, so the whole process to get it to you is 68 dollars.”
Lieberman: Spent $12,000 developing The Plunge, with $11,500 on R&D
“I've spent 12,000 dollars on this game so far, and 11,500 was on R&D, and the remaining 500 was on, like, materials, like, stuff I got for the game from Home Depot”
Amoruso bought the NastyGal.com domain anonymously for $8,000
“So I contacted them anonymously and I bought it for 8000 dollars.”
Amoruso: Runs $400K–$500K in Annual Ad Spend on Delta Amex Cards
“I use the Delta Reserve. It's like Amex Delta Reserve credit card. It's like this purple card. I have one for Amaru's own co, which is one business. I have one for business class. And then I use one personally. I have three of these purple cards and we run all…”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK generates about $600 million in annual revenue
“So, one 800 got junk, the first baby in the family, so to speak, is about six hundred million in revenue.”
Scudamore uses his 2,000 parked junk trucks as guerrilla marketing billboards
“We park our trucks, all 2000 of them in high profile visible intersections for people to see.”
Sanchez bought her first business, a Phoenix laundromat, for $100,000
“The first technically boring business I bought was a laundromat. That was a laundromat that we bought for a 100,000 bucks, give or take... Phoenix, Arizona. So did about 67, 68,000 dollars in profit.”
Sanchez: Lost $50K personal check and wrote off multi-million dollar fund deals
“Like, you know, I've written a check for 50,000 dollars and lost that completely. We had multi-million dollar deals that we had to write off completely when I was at the fund, thankfully.”
Sanchez: Media business operates with fewer than 10 employees
“Well, inside the boring businesses a lot you know, hundreds, hundreds inside of the media company, very few, you know, less than 10.”
Pujji: Growth Assistant Generated Millions in Revenue From Twitter Leads
“I've like with growth assistant, we've grown into millions in revenue from leveraging Twitter for leads.”
Amoruso: My businesses have laid off roughly 300 employees over time
“I think over time, I've probably, my businesses have laid off 300 people.”
Amoruso held $9K in personal savings while Nasty Gal had $900K
“In my personal bank account there's 9000 dollars, and in the business bank account there's 900,000 dollars.”
Amoruso: Invested in Liquid Death at an $8.5M valuation
“I'm a proud investor. I was in their round where they were valued at like eight and a half million dollars or something in 20.”
Lieberman trades free marketing advice for deal flow at top VCs
“I've become close through Twitter with a lot of top tier partners at Andreessen and at tribe and at these different companies. And I basically say, look, I don't know jack shit about SAS. I don't know jack shit about B to B SAS. I don't know jack shit about sp…”
Lieberman: 20% of creators drive 80% of Morning Brew revenue
“Even at Morning Brew, 80% of revenue being driven by 20% of our creators.”
Lieberman discloses an angel investment in MrBeast's brand Feastables
“You know, I invested in Feastables, which is Mr. Beast's chocolate brand.”
Alex Lieberman is actively seeking to acquire his first mini golf course
“We are in the Thick right now of finding our first course to buy.”
Codie Sanchez negotiated unoffered pro rata rights in PostPilot angel investment
“So I invested in this company called post pilot, which is like these little, you know, you get in the mail postcards basically like, Hey free gym membership class. Or like you had something left in your basket. And I basically, they didn't, they weren't offeri…”
Money with Katie generated $10K to $20K monthly by mid-2021
“What really made me feel like, ok, money with Katie could actually eclipse the career growth that I've seen and be a more viable source of income was probably about halfway through twenty-twenty-one when I started to consistently bring in 10,015 1020 thousand …”
Katie Gatti monetized via sponsorships, a wealth planner, courses, and affiliates
“So my primary revenue streams were sponsor income, So I had reached out to a few different companies that financial companies that I used and really liked and basically harassed them into either giving me affiliate deals or to paying for content directly and t…”
Kan: Startup failures and setbacks turned drinking into an escape mechanism
“Started my first startup and I continued like drinking and it became, you know, it was also like a crutch. Like it wasn't just Okay. I'm going to like go party. It was like, I feel upset about something, right? Like there's something that's not going my way in…”