The Ledger
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1.25 Billion Annual Notarizations Represent a Multi-Billion Dollar Market Opportunity
“There are 1.25 billion notarizations every year, and you can be a multi-billion dollar business just serving this market.”
Kate Noel: Employers cannot legally ask candidates for their past compensation
“So you can ask what their salary requirements are. You Your package. That, that is not allowed. Listen to your HR person. Do not ask that. But what you can say, what are the salary requirements based on your understanding of this role and what we're looking fo…”
Mailchimp's $12B Intuit sale is the largest private bootstrapped acquisition ever
“MailChimp was acquired, and it was the largest private bootstrap business acquisition ever in history. MailChimp sold for twelve billion dollars to Intuit”
Mailchimp's initial email app was built using code from an e-greeting card
“Ultimately, what happened was Ben Chestnut and Dan Curzius took the code from an e-greeting card idea that they had just built for fun on the side, and they ended up using that to spin up a simple email app.”
Mailchimp was the first-ever advertiser on the hit podcast Serial
“Well, MailChimp was early on that train, and they were the first advertiser with Serial.”
Lieberman: Costco maintains 91% annual member retention in US and Canada
“91% of its members in the U.S. And Canada stay Costco customers each year.”
Lieberman: Costco requires three criteria before launching a Kirkland product
“There have always been three things that leadership looks to in order to decide if they should go private label with it. One, is it a product that can be as good or better than the leading national brand? Two, is it a product that can be sold for at least a 15…”
Costco carries just 3,700 SKUs compared to Walmart's 100,000
“Costco did a hundred and forty eight billion dollars in revenue in 2019. And if you're lucky enough to be a brand on their shelves, you are one of 3700 SKUs, or product offerings, Versus in something like a Walmart, you are one of 100,000 SKUs.”
Membership fees allow Costco to sell its products near cost
“Because of Costco's ability to generate margin through its memberships, which makes up about three and a half billion dollars in revenue per year, The company can afford to sell basically all of its products, including Kirkland, close to cost, and undercut pre…”
Costco has 109.8M cardholders across 60.6M households
“Costco has 109.8 million cardholders across 60.6 million households.”
Allbirds raised $202 million total, peaking at a $1.7 billion valuation
“It raised two hundred two million dollars, most recently raising a hundred million dollar round from Franklin Templeton and other financial partners at a 1.7 billion dollar valuation.”
Paid digital customer acquisition costs have risen significantly in recent years
“There's also never been more pressure to launch new products as today because the cost to acquire customers through paid marketing, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Snapchat ads, Has risen significantly over the last several years.”
Allbirds maintained a Net Promoter Score above 83, reaching 86
“And I think this speaks to why all birds has achieved an MPS net promoter score of 86, which is super high basically in any industry. The company has always been higher than 83”
Allbirds' multi-channel retail customers spend 1.5x more than single-channel shoppers
“Another stat here from Allbirds is that as of June 30th, multi-channel repeat customers, which represented 12% of all of Allbirds repeat customers, on average, spent approximately one and a half times more than any single channel repeat customer.”
Lieberman: 2021 crypto investment reached $17B, topping previous decade combined
“So, in 2021 alone, crypto investment is already at seventeen billion dollars, which is greater than the sum of 20 10, 20 11, all the way up to 20 20, all of the previous years.”
Lieberman: Digital artist Beeple sold an NFT for over $69M
“And so if you want to know what's happening in the world of NFTs, if you're interested in digital art or creating scarcity through Ethereum to make digital art valuable, you should check out Beeple, who sold an NFT for more than sixty-nine million dollars, and…”
Montreal exceeded its 1976 Olympic budget by 720%
“1976 games, Montreal overspent its original budget by 720%, and the city spent the next 30 years paying off debt from those games, a lot of which was paid by taxpayers.”
Only one city has ever walked away from hosting the Olympics
“There's actually been one city in the history of the Olympics that did walk away from the Olympics, but other than that, it's never been done.”
Olympic host cities are legally obligated to cover all cost overruns
“Also, unlike other projects, say, in construction, host cities are literally legally obligated to cover the cost of overruns. They don't have an option.”
Beijing and London Olympics lost tens of billions of dollars
“The 2008 Beijing games generated 3.6 billion dollars on forty billion in costs, and the 2012 summer games in London generated 5.2 billion in revenue with eighteen billion in costs.”
Finkelstein joined Shopify as its first non-engineer employee
“First I was the first non-engineer, but I think I was I was the first, in the first 20 people that joined.”
Lieberman: 20% of All US Currency Was Created in 2020
“For context, one in five US dollars was created in 2020. Just let that sink in for a second. 20% of all the currency In the United States economy today was created in the last year.”
Lieberman: George Raveling Owns Original MLK 'I Have a Dream' Speech Copy
“He actually was a security guard for MLK's I Have a Dream speech, and he has the original version of the speech”
Bob Iger read Matthew Ball's essays to inform his Disney strategy
“Bob Iger, the former CEO of Disney, he would read Matt Ball's stuff to think in a smarter way about Disney”
Every Salesforce employee publishes a V2MOM goal framework for colleagues to see
“V to mom has been adopted across Salesforce where every single employee in the company, all 50,000 people draft their own V to mom. And then they posted on the company's internal social network. For everyone to see.”
Salesforce reached $176M in revenue within five years
“The company scale from four co-founders in an apartment to one hundred and seventy six million dollars in revenue within five years.”
Salesforce stock gained 55% on its first day of trading
“It was in that fifth year that Salesforce went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the extremely fitting ticker of CRM. And on the first day of trading, the stock went up 55%.”
FinancialForce built a $140M revenue business entirely on Salesforce's AppExchange
“For example, there's a cloud accounting company. It's called financialforce.com. It does over one hundred and forty million dollars in annual revenue and was built on top of Salesforce app exchange. From day one.”
Pinduoduo reached $8.5B in 2020 revenue, taking 14% of China's e-commerce
“It has quickly become one of the largest e-commerce companies in China and the entire world, doing 8.5 billion dollars in revenue in 2020 and taking up 14% of the entire e-commerce market in China.”
Pinduoduo grew revenue 119x from $71M to $8.5B in six years
“The company has gone from seventy one million dollars of revenue in its first full year of business in 2016 To eight and a half billion dollars or 119 X in just six years of business.”
Duan Yongping brought Colin Huang to a $620K Warren Buffett charity lunch
“In 2006, one of Colin Wong's then mentors, Duanyang Ping, the founder of BBK Electronics, which is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and consumer electronics brand. He won an auctioned lunch with Warren Buffett for 620,000 dollars. Basically, every year, War…”
Pinduoduo grew to a $200B market cap in just six years
“How were they able to grow from zero to two hundred billion dollars In market cap in six years.”
Young tier 3 and 4 city consumers drive 60% of China's spending growth
“And also, according to research, spending by young consumers in these smaller cities in China is accounting for 60% of spending growth in the country.”
Super Follows marked Twitter's first non-ad-based product reveal
“The second product, and for me, the most intriguing, was something called Super Follow. This was Twitter's first official reveal of a non-ad-based offering that the company may roll out later this year. Super Follow will allow Twitter users to charge followers…”
Sahil Bloom Grew Twitter Following From 500 to 136K in 2020
“So in just 12 months, Sahil has gone from 500 Twitter followers. That was how many followers he had on January first of 20 20 to 136,000 Twitter followers on January first of 2021.”
Morning Brew's newsletter reached over two million readers by August 2020
“Like if that, that is that the hypothesis we can test it and then by accident get the show in front of two point, whatever million readers.”
Parker Conrad was ousted from Zenefits over compliance issues
“First, he was ousted from Zenefits for regulatory and compliance issues, which David Sachs then took over, and now he's dealing with competitors having spies infiltrate his company.”
Lieberman: Morning Brew built ambassador program to 200 college campuses
“I remember being super excited when we built out our ambassador program and expanding it to 200 different college campuses”
Lieberman stepped down as Morning Brew CEO months after sale
“The decision to step down as CEO of Morning Brew in April of 2021, which was about five and a half months after we sold the business in October of 2020.”
Lieberman: Seven of World's Ten Largest Companies Are Tech or Software
“Seven of the 10 largest companies in the world today are technology or software businesses,”
Lieberman: Webvan lost $800M and went bankrupt in 2001
“Webvan ended up losing eight hundred million dollars and went bankrupt in 2001.”
Dara Khosrowshahi's strategy: short-term impatience combined with long-term patience
“Dara from Uber has famously said that his approach to business and strategy is being short-term impatient and long-term patient, which is perfectly put.”
Lieberman: 'Reality distortion field' originated with Bud Tribble describing Steve Jobs
“First of all, the concept of reality distortion field dates back to the early Apple days. Bud Tribble, who was an engineering and design leader that worked on the original Macintosh, would describe Steve Jobs and his charisma as a reality distortion field that…”
Lieberman: Joining Los Angeles Country Club Requires a $250,000 Initiation Fee
“You want to join LA Country Club in California, you're paying 250,000 dollars just to set foot on their property, let alone all the annual dues you pay.”