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 23 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
Nick Sleep Sold Half His Amazon Stake at $1,500 in 2018
“By 2018, Amazon had risen so much that it accounted for more than 70% of Nick's net worth. Nick began to worry. Could Amazon's market value grow to three or four trillion dollars or were there limits even to Amazon's greatness? He wasn't sure. So after 13 year…”
Bezos: Amazon's Metrics Improved Rapidly While Its Stock Crashed to $6
“I watched the stock fall from 113 dollars to six, but I was also watching all of our internal business metrics, numbers of customers, profit per unit. Every single thing about the business was getting better and fast, even as the stock was dropping.”
Early AWS PR/FAQ Aimed to Give Dorm Students Amazon-Grade Infrastructure
“Working backwards documents for the early AWS products, the PRFAQ stated that we wanted the student in a dorm room to have access to the same world-class computing infrastructure as any Amazon software engineer.”
Bezos Conceptualized the Amazon Echo in 2004 as the 'Amazon Puck'
“Jeff wrote his own narrative about a device. He called the Amazon puck when I'm about to, this is crazy. When I'm about to read to you, he wrote in 2004. He is going to describe the Amazon echo, which is going to sell hundreds of millions of these things. The …”
Amazon's early book inventory would have spanned six football fields
“So if Amazon at this time when they're just selling books was able, if it was, if you could contain all their inventory in one store, it would be over six football fields large.”
Amazon's 1997 internet partners like AOL and Netscape have all vanished
“These two partners include America Online, Yahoo, I guess Yahoo kind of exists still Apollo still owns it, but you get the point. Excite, Netscape, GeoCities, Alta Vista, At Home, and Prodigy, all gone.”
Bezos gave annotated Sam Walton autobiographies to early Amazon executives
“In fact, he would go around giving copies of Sam Walton's autobiography With his own highlights and annotations to early leaders in Amazon.”
Amazon has sold approximately 500 million Alexa and Echo devices
“Amazon, I think the last number I saw, Amazon sold something like five hundred million devices, Echo and Alexa powered devices so far.”
Amazon lost significant money investing in Pets.com and Living.com
“Our decision to invest in smaller e-commerce companies like living.com and pets.com Both of which shut down operations in the year, 2000 lost a significant amount of money for us.”
Ortega Holds a $20B Real Estate Portfolio Leased to Tech Giants
“He's actually one of the largest tech company landlords in the world. Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, All lease property from Ortega. In fact, his commercial real estate portfolio alone is worth around twenty billion dollars.”
In 2004, Amazon's market cap was $18B while eBay's was $77B
“In the end of 2004, the market cap of Amazon, when Nixleep is discovering this earned secret was nine, was eighteen billion dollars. Eighteen billion. The market cap in that same time for eBay was seventy seven billion.”
Amazon's 2008 holiday orders grew 16% while overall retail fell 10%
“On the busiest day in the run-up to Christmas this year in 2008, order volumes at Amazon were 16% higher than the previous year compared to the overall retail industry, which are down 10%.”
Nomad Aggressively Bought Amazon at $30 Per Share in 2005
“And so they start buying Amazon aggressively in 2005 around 30 dollars per share.”
Amazon Saved $20,000 Annually by Removing Vending Machine Light Bulbs
“Amazon went so far as to save 20,000 dollars a year by removing the light bulbs from the vending machines in its offices.”
Jeff Bezos still owns relentless.com and redirects it to Amazon
“In fact, to this day, you might already know this, but Jeff Bezos owns the domain relentless.com. If you go in your browser and you type relentless.com, it will forward to Amazon for a brief moment. He's He loved the word so much he was thinking about naming A…”
The Amazon Kindle Launched at $399 in 2007 and Sold Out Instantly
“The Kindle goes on sale for the first time All the way in November of 2007. It retails for 399 dollars and would hold 200 books. It's sold out in less than six hours.”
Physical Media Generated Over 70% of Amazon's Revenue in 2003
“At this time, I think 77% of Amazon, 70 or 77%, somewhere around there, of Amazon's revenue came from, like, physical books, books, CDs, music, that kind of thing, right?”
Amazon Mandates Bi-Annual Customer Support Duty for Corporate Staff
“Amazon has a program called Customer Connection, which is mandatory for corporate employees. Every two years, the corporate employee is required to become a customer service agent for a few days. They have to listen in on calls, watch email and chat interactio…”
The Kindle Was Amazon's First Product Created Using the PR/FAQ
“And so the Kindle is going to be the first product in which they used and they created using this press release approach.”
Jeff Bezos required Amazon product proposals to be written as press releases
“Every time a new feature or a product was proposed, Jeff Bezos decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence.”
Bezos appended his 1997 shareholder letter to annual updates for 23 years
“And he tells you that because he appends it, the 1997 shareholder letter, To every single shareholder letter he's going to write over the next 23 years.”
Relentless.com still redirects to Amazon because Jeff Bezos owns the domain
“He toyed around with the idea of naming Amazon relentless. He was going to, instead of amazon.com, it was going to be relentless.com. In fact, to this day, when you type in relentless.com, it forwards, he still owns that domain, it forwards to amazon.com.”