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 7 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
Swanson: Thumbtack Generated 25% of Craigslist's Service Postings Before Being Banned
“And this scaled up to a point where it was like a quarter of all Craigslist service volume, all these auto posts from Thumbtack pros. And then, you know, not surprisingly, we got a cease and desist that told us we should stop this and we'd been banned from Cra…”
Swanson increased his free testosterone by 10% by eliminating household phthalates
“I measured free testosterone before and after, and it was 10% higher.”
Swanson: Google Capital Gave Thumbtack $100M Term Sheet in Five Days
“Google capital came to us and said, we're interested in investing. We weren't fundraising and we said, okay, we'll talk to you. And five days later, they gave us a term sheet for a hundred million dollars.”
Swanson: Thumbtack search traffic fell to zero after Google de-indexed it
“And I went to, you know, Google analytics and our traffic had not fallen by 10 or 20%, but a hundred, zero. And we were de-indexed. We were completely removed from Google.”
Swanson: Philippine hire beat American applicants on English proofreading quality and price
“This woman in the Philippines named Mikan beat the Americans and everyone else, not just on price, but on quality. She was a better English proofreader than Americans.”
Swanson: Only 1-2% of venture capital comes from active founders
“Last year there was about five hundred billion dollars invested in venture capital, one or two percent of that came from active founders. Most of it came from institutional VCs”
Swanson: Thumbtack proofreader Mikan grew to manage over 1,000 people in the Philippines
“And so she went from individual contributor to a manager of five and 10 proofreaders to then eventually a general manager of a team of a few hundred To eventually the head of our team in the Philippines managing over a thousand people.”