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 581 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Rippling sues competitor Deel alleging a corporate espionage scheme
“Parker Conrad, the CEO of Rippling, the HR software platform, tweeted on March 17th that Rippling was suing its competitor deal for running a corporate espionage scheme and stealing trade secrets from Rippling for months.”
Rippling caught a Deel insider using a honeypot Slack channel
“Rippling's general counsel sent a legal letter to three Deal executives mentioning a fake Slack channel called D Defectors that had supposed reputationally damaging information about Deal. Prior to general counsel sending this letter, the channel did not exist…”
Lavingia: Gumroad generates $20M revenue and $8M-$9M profit with no full-time employees
“Twenty million in revenue. We have 35 people working like this. We do, you know, eight or nine million in net income. And yet still we have no full-time employees. Like I'm not interested in hiring a single full-time employee.”
Lieberman: Stripe avoids official layoffs by forcing managers into a rating system
“Stripe, they're not doing layoffs. It's not called layoffs. It's what's known as backdoor layoffs, where basically they're requiring their managers to do a rating system of they're, they have to answer a question, would you hire this direct report if you knew …”
Khosla partner Nikunj Kothari calls seedstrapping limits extremely short-sighted
“He basically said businesses that should be venture backed will always have an incentive to raise more and grow faster. He said, my hot take is that all of these amount raised and team size proclamations are extremely short sighted.”
Lieberman: Elizabeth Holmes went to prison for defrauding investors, not patients
“Yes, claims about health care solutions warrant scrutiny beyond whether or not rich investors get their money back, but Holmes wasn't convicted for defrauding patients. She's going to prison because she ripped off George Shultz, not because her bogus blood tes…”
Siroker: Rewind raised Series A at $350M valuation with $700K ARR
“We raised it a three hundred fifty million dollar valuation with 700 K and ARR.”
Airbnb Only Takes on Projects Brian Chesky Can Personally Focus On
“Brian now operates in an extremely hands-on way, where he is involved in every single project in the company, and the company only does as much as Brian can personally focus on.”
Airbnb Boasts Higher Free Cash Flow Margins Than Apple or Google
“I didn't have an exact reference point for is that a lot or a little, but he basically shared that on a percentage basis, Airbnb is more efficient than Apple or Google when it comes to how much cash they actually generate for how much revenue they do as a busi…”
Mochari: I've Never Lost An Outcome Bet Against Fear-Driven Founders
“And then I've made those bets hundreds of times. I have yet to lose and it's nothing magical. It's just that Again, their brain isn't working as well. So now they realize, oh, when I'm in fear, my prediction skills aren't as good.”
Pujji: Most nine-figure e-commerce tech businesses do not rely on Shopify
“The biggest thing that, you know, industry or market wise was, dude, there's a bunch of nine figure e-com tech businesses. None of which, like with the exception of Klaviyo and maybe Attentive have anything to do with Shopify.”
Ankur Jain: Airlines and hotels make their money from loyalty programs, not core operations
“Airlines and hotels, I know you did a show on this, make all their money on the loyalty program and their credit card programs, not on being an airline and hotel... Delta, United, and American only exist because they make money on loyalty programs.”
Jain: Major airline market caps are lower than standalone loyalty programs
“When you combine the card business and the loyalty business with their airline business is worth less because the airline business loses so much money that the overall company Is worth less than the actual loyalty program in bank business.”
Medeiros: Viral bullet-slice Short drove record views but record low conversions
“That video was also kind of a negative video, and that always shocks people, because what ended up happening is we got record views that month, sure, for that year, but also we got record low conversions, because that video was too low intent. It's like severe…”
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…”
Scudamore: Fired entire 11-person team at 1-800-GOT-JUNK over culture
“It was the day I fired my entire team. Now, literally, I didn't preserve one. There were 11 people in the company. I always say that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch, and I think I had nine out of 11 that were bad apples. Now, not bad human beings, but jus…”
Sanchez: Reese Witherspoon's net worth is an order of magnitude higher than Brad Pitt's
“Reese Witherspoon is worth more than Brad Pitt at an order of magnitude.”
Amoruso: Index Ventures built Nasty Gal's pitch deck for $50M investment
“When Index invested fifty million dollars, they literally made a deck. I had never made a presentation, and they were like, we want to invest so much in this company. They propped me up in the boardroom in front of all their partners and just said, like, speak…”
Mailchimp Founders Split $11.7B in Intuit Deal While Employees Received $500M
“Ben Chestnut and Dan Curzius each owned 50% of Mailchimp. In 2008, Mark Armstrong, the other co-founder, was bought out of the business. Three hundred million dollars was given to employees as bonuses for the deal, and two hundred million dollars worth of rest…”
Hustle Fund partners advocate for seedstrapping software startups
“You have Eric Bond and Elizabeth Yin from Hustle Fund who are bullish on seed strapping. Eric said founders raise a little at the beginning, they get started, and then bootstrap the rest of the way to get big results. That was followed by Elizabeth saying seed…”
Deel reached $800M ARR and profitability at a $12B valuation
“The business grew from a hundred million dollars in ARR in twenty-twenty-two to eight hundred million in twenty-twenty-four and hit profitability with its most recent valuation hitting twelve billion dollars after raising around Anchored by General Catalyst.”
Pieter Levels' AI flying game reached $67k MRR in three weeks
“Peter Levels, a well-known internet entrepreneur on Twitter, launched an AI-coded flying game that has gotten to 67,000 dollars in monthly revenue in just three weeks.”
Cursor reached $100M ARR in under a year at a $10B valuation
“Levels went from idea to MVP in 30 minutes simply by prompting Cursor, which is an AI coding assistant that got to a hundred million dollars in annual revenue in less than a year and just raised at a ten billion dollar valuation.”
Kagan: Only 3 to 4 out of 100+ podcast appearances moved the needle
“I would say I did a hundred plus podcast The reality, even though it was good to practice on all of them, only three, I would say three or four really moved the needle.”
Hampton generated $1M in the bank before launching a website or posting
“Hampton had a million dollars in the bank account before I even shared it online. We didn't even have a website.”
Wilkinson Spent 2-3x Flow's Monthly Revenue From Personal Funds
“I was consistently spending two to three times our monthly revenue and losing money, and not venture capital out of my personal bank account.”
Why No Successful Consumer Social Network Launched Since 2019
“There is a reason why basically no successful consumer social network has been created in the last five years, and the biggest social networks, Meta, Snapchat, etc., just continue to accrue value and power.”
Lieberman: Superfan referrals drove Morning Brew to 4.5 million subscribers
“We have four and a half million subscribers, but if you were to ask me what has been the number one growth driver for Morning Brew, I wouldn't say it's our paid marketing that we did on Facebook. I wouldn't say that it's cross promotions with other newsletters…”
Nagpal: Founders can rent home to business 14 days tax-free
“Another crazy one is you can actually rent your house to your business for up to 14 days a year and pay no taxes on the income. It has to be legit. It has to be for like a meeting, an offsite or something, but literally, you know, income from one hand into the…”
Lieberman: Founders Regret Not Selling Sooner, Never Selling Too Soon
“What I can tell you anecdotally is that I have talked to a lot of founders who regret not selling sooner, and I have never talked to a founder that regrets selling too soon.”
Siroker: Rewind's public pitch deck got over 1,000 investment offers
“We got well over you know, we got millions of views over a thousand offers to invest, many from really great investors, and I spent the next week in meetings with folks.”
Siroker: Rewind received 20 funding offers at $1B valuation or higher
“We had 20 offers at a billion dollars or more but 20 out of a thousand is pretty small.”
Kleiner Perkins does not actually run its venture fund on OKRs
“When John Dorris didn't share, like, they don't run their venture fund on OKRs. Like if OKRs are so good, why isn't Kleiner Perkins running OKRs?”
Lieberman: Microsoft Learned of Altman's Ouster One Minute Before Announcement
“To cause the board to make this move, a move that Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor, found out about one minute before the press release and ended up losing fifty billion dollars in market cap from as their stock continued to trade.”
Lieberman: Scaling Morning Brew to 300 employees in 18 months forced layoffs
“I remember when I would tell people that Morning Brew post-acquisition, we scaled from 50 employees in October of twenty-twenty to 300 employees in a year and a half. People were like, oh my god, that is the most amazing thing, and then when I give them the pu…”
Siroker: Early Google promoted engineers for technical sophistication over customer solutions
“When I was there early on, a lot of people valued. You got promoted by the sophistication of your technology, not by the problem it actually solves for a customer.”
The average Kajabi creator makes about $40,000 per year
“Like average creator makes about 40,000 dollars a year because we take that commerce part of it dead seriously and making sure that we're getting the right kind of people on the platform.”
Lieberman: US Mental Health Funding Is at Record Highs While Outcomes Worsen
“We've had more mental health startups created than ever before, more venture funding for the space than ever before, yet mental health in the United States has never been this bad.”
FDA Approved 3 COVID Tests vs Germany's 96, Keeping Prices High
“In Germany, there are 96 approved COVID tests. So if you want to, in Germany, get tests for COVID, there are 96 different products you can buy. Therefore, the average cost of a COVID test in Germany is like one to two dollars. In the US, there are only three a…”
Lieberman: Comcast Lobbied for Years to Block Free Public Wi-Fi in Philadelphia
“Another example is Comcast, who basically has lobbied for years to have citywide Wi-Fi blocked in Philadelphia. So there can't just be general public free citywide Wi-Fi, because of course that would hurt Comcast business.”
Special ed teachers face America's highest burnout rate due to government paperwork
“Special ed teachers have the highest burnout rate of any job in America, and they have such a high burnout rate because there is so much government mandated paperwork that has to be filled out for every single student that you have.”
Most of the world's richest people built wealth through acquisitions
“Most of the richest people in the world Are there through acquisitions? Some version of buying and selling small companies or private equity deals.”
Andrew Huberman podcast ads scaled Momentous Protein to $30 million annually
“They ended up having Andrew Huberman promote Momentous Protein on the podcast as an ad read, and for those of you that don't know Andrew Huberman, he has one of the largest podcasts in the world where he focuses on talking about Science and health and things w…”
SpaceX's 99 percent launch cost reduction enables Varda's space manufacturing model
“What they're doing is only possible because the cost of launches of things into space has come down by 99% since 1970.
This business was not possible two years ago or 20 years ago, and it's only become possible because Elon Musk and SpaceX have brought down t…”
Lieberman: Only four of Y Combinator's top 100 companies had solo founders
“And then Gary Tan, who's now the CEO of Y Combinator, he said of the top 100 YC funded companies, only four Were solo founders, and those founders were able to create their own MVP on their own.”
Former Clearbit CEO Alex McCaw lost two companies to 50/50 equity splits
“Alex McCaw, who is the former CEO of Clearbit, he's a serial entrepreneur, he's one of Matt's clients, he wrote that the idea of not splitting equity Fifty-fifty is key, and he went on to say two of his previous companies were destroyed by a fifty-fifty split.”
Electric aircraft remove thousands of parts and improve safety over helicopters
“When you moved electric, you were basically removing thousands of parts that are not necessary in a helicopter. You're changing the dynamics, like, the aerodynamic dynamics of the rotors and the blades that Change, like, the acoustic signature significantly. Y…”