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 836 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
The Empire Strikes Back generated over $100M in profits for George Lucas
“The Empire Strikes Back opened in May of 1980 in a 126 theaters and broke attendance records in a 125 of them. No other studio opened a single movie against it. The movie was gonna have to make fifty-seven million just for Lucas to break even, and to build Sky…”
A Vanderbilt mercenary sabotaged William Walker's supply steamer with gunpowder-filled firewood
“That gunpowder-filled firewood had been planted at the riverbank depot weeks before the disaster. It was planted there by a mercenary in the employment of Cornelius Vanderbilt.”
Richard Rainwater Turned the Bass Family's $50 Million Into $5 Billion
“And so the podcast I'm telling you about talks about how Richard, I think turned fifty million of the fastest money into five billion.”
1920s Depletion Forecasts Dramatically Underestimated Future US Oil Production
“In the 19 twenties or 19 teens, when this report is issued, it's like, Hey, we've already, we're estimating that you guys have already tapped 40% of America's petroleum reserves. We're already producing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, right? They can't…”
Senra: Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar combined
“Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar combined.”
Brad Jacobs completed 500 acquisitions and raised $30 billion in outside capital
“My teams and I have completed approximately 500 acquisitions. In total, these ventures have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and raised about thirty billion dollars in outside capital.”
XPO Logistics was the seventh best-performing Fortune 500 stock last decade
“XPO was the seventh best performing stock in the Fortune 500 of the last decade.”
Brad Jacobs generated a $4B profit on an unprecedented stock buyback
“A couple of years later, those two billion dollars of shares we brought back, we bought back, ended up being worth six billion dollars, giving them a profit on that one transaction of four billion dollars.”
Red Bull Allowed Product Rumors to Spread and Made a Webpage for Them
“The company let the gossip travel unchecked and even set up a page devoted to the rumors on its website.”
Mateschitz bought an Austrian gossip magazine specifically to keep himself out
“And there's a society magazine. So like, you know, I don't, I guess we'd call it like kind of like a tabloid or like a gossip magazine in the States, but he actually buys it. He buys this magazine just so he will not appear in it.”
Red Bull achieved breakeven in year three and stayed profitable ever since
“They get their breakeven point in year three, and they've been profitable every single year since then.”
Mateschitz categorically ruled out an IPO or sale of Red Bull
“One thing he's categorically ruled out again and again, exiting the company in the form of selling his shares. I hardly even allow this question. He said, we could have done it a dozen times already. Our view on this has not changed. We neither have the desire…”
Christian Dior Spent Zero Money on Publicity for His Debut Launch
“It is widely and quite erroneously believed that when the house of Christian Dior was launched, enormous sums were spent on publicity. On the contrary, not a single penny was allotted to it.”
Elon Musk Used Larry Page to Relocate a Recruit's Wife to LA
“To solve this problem, Musk had called his friend Larry Page, the co-founder of Google. The engineer sat in stunned silence for a moment, but then he replied, given all that, he would come to work at SpaceX.”
Les Schwab Promoted All 250 Managers Internally From Tire-Changing Roles
“In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management job by working up.”
Les Schwab rejected acquisition offers from Warren Buffett, Michelin, and KKR
“He wind up turning down Buffett earlier in his career. He winds up turning down Michelin tire. They wanted to buy the company and turns out KKR tried to buy the company as well.”
Elon Musk personally interviewed SpaceX's first 3,000 employees
“He interviewed the first 3000 employees at SpaceX. That's how important it was.”
C.F. Braun fired employees who failed twice to explain 'why'
“His rule for all Braun company communications was called the five W's. You had to tell who, what was going to do what, where, when, and why. And if you wrote a letter in the Braun company telling somebody to do something and you didn't tell him why, you would …”
Oracle recruited college grads by asking if they were the smartest person they knew
“Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates. When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And if they said yes, they would hire them. If they said no, the…”
Capital Cities' $3.5B ABC Buyout Was History's Largest Non-Energy Deal
“So he buys ABC network for nearly 3.5 billion dollars with financing from his friend, Warren Buffett. The ABC deal was the largest non oil and gas transaction in business history to that point.”
Dan Burke Cut ABC's TV Oversight Staff From 60 To Eight
“Under Burke's oversight, the staff that oversaw ABC's TV station group dropped from 60 to eight people. The margin gap was closed in just two years. So in two years, they brought ABC's margins from 30% to over 50.”
Capital Cities Stock Returned 204x Under Tom Murphy's 29-Year Tenure
“Well, if you had invested a dollar with Tom Murphy as he became CEO in 1966, that dollar would have been worth 204 dollars by the time he sold the company to Disney.”
Capital Cities Generated 22.4% Returns Over 19 Years On $1.8B In Buybacks
“He spent over 1.8 billion On share buybacks. That investment alone generated a excellent return for shareholders. 22.4% over 19 years.”
Ted Turner lost $8 billion in 30 months after the AOL merger
“He's going to sell the company to Time Warner for eight billion dollars. And then a few years later, Time Warner is going to merge with AOL. Ted Turner stock goes up to a value of ten billion dollars, and then he winds up losing over the next 30 months, eight …”
Turner bought the Atlanta Braves for $10M with $1M down
“And so they're like, okay, we want a ten million dollars for the team. Could you imagine buying a professional sports team for ten million dollars, by the way? And so he, this is where he has to get creative. He's like, okay, I can give you a million dollars d…”
Turner found colorized classic films drew six times more television viewers
“I could run the black and white version of that movie. And then I can invest 200,000. Then now, now I have the color version and I'd run that exact same movie. One is a black and white. One is in color. The color one would get six times the amount of viewers.”
Vogue sells $100,000 annual club memberships purely for access to Anna Wintour
“Vogue actually sells something called the Vogue 100. It is a private club whose members pay a 100,000 dollars a year just for access to Anna.”
Anna Wintour routinely scrapped six-figure photo shoots to enforce ruthless quality standards
“Photo shoots could cost six figures, and Anna did not feel that she had to publish the result just because they were expensive. She killed entire shoots to drive home the understanding that editors and photographers who wanted to have their work in her magazin…”
Fewer Than 20 Musicians Built Billion-Dollar Businesses Exceeding Their Catalogs
“How many of them built businesses bigger than their music? You're talking to what, 10, 15, 20, the number's less than 20. And Buffett is one of them.”
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 …”
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.”
Senra: Microsoft offered $90 million to buy Pixar
“So they get an offer from, Microsoft's just one of these companies. Steve's like, hey, I want a hundred twenty million for Pixar. And, you know, he just made up the number, and Microsoft will give you ninety million.”
Steve Jobs Stayed Out of Story Decisions at Pixar
“At Apple, he had the reputation of being deeply involved in the most minute details of every product, but at Pixar, he didn't believe that his instincts were better than the people here, so he stayed out.”
Senra: Steve Jobs became a billionaire from Pixar, not Apple
“Steve Jobs was, this actually is the first thing that makes Steve Jobs a billionaire. He was a billionaire off of Pixar stock, not Apple stock.”
Senra: Disney acquisition made Steve Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder
“Steve Jobs was the single largest shareholder in Pixar. And after this deal, another interesting fact was that that made Steve Jobs the single largest individual shareholder in Disney.”
Balenciaga Was One of 60 Firms Allowed in Occupied Paris
“So he was able to reopen, ah, his fashion house in September, 1940. And he was just one of 60 firms that the Germans allowed to function.”
Mark Twain nearly died by suicide during extreme San Francisco poverty
“Several years after, he remembered one despairing night when I put the pistol to my head, but wasn't man enough to pull the trigger.”
Cameron Signed a $500M Deal with Fox Granting Greenlight Autonomy
“In the spring of 1992, Cameron signed an unusual five hundred million dollar multi-picture domestic distribution deal with Fox. They gave him power. To put any movie he wanted into production without Fox's approval up to a budget of seventy million dollars. An…”
Glock's largest commercial opportunity, entering the US, was a salesman's idea
“The biggest sales opportunity of Glock's entire career was somebody else's idea.”
Glock achieved 65% gross margins compared to rivals' 5 to 20%
“Glock's gross margins exceeded 65%. By comparison, Smith and Wesson and Beretta ranged five to 20% of profit.”
90% of police agencies testing free Glock samples ultimately bought them
“More than 1000 requests for free samples of law enforcement agencies in 1986 alone. Glock would send the guns for free, said, hey, if you want to keep them, just send us a check, and the check, the price would be heavily discounted because Glock knew that the …”
Glock pushed handgun manufacturing costs below $100 per unit at scale
“The deals worked financially because of the company's startlingly low manufacturing costs, which Glock was able to push down even further to less than a hundred dollars a unit as its production volume grew.”
By 1995, Glock sold 20,000 guns monthly, mostly to civilians
“The company sells more than 20,000 guns a month at an average cost of 600 dollars a piece. They've sold over 500,000 Glocks in North America alone. Four out of five Glocks produced in 1995 were purchased by civilians who paid much higher prices than police dep…”
Ogilvy: Sales performance differences between ad campaigns can reach 19 to 1
“The difference between one advertisement and another when measured in terms of sales can be as much as 19 to one.”
Senra: Sol Price borrowed the Price Club B2B model from Makro
“To shop at Macro, you had customers required to prove that they were owners of a business. You have to prove that you're owner of a business, then you can buy the membership. So that idea is like, oh, I come back. He's like, man, this is a really interesting c…”
Patagonia was first to teach clothing layering through its catalogs
“We became the first company to teach the outdoor community through essays in our catalog and our catalog, the concept of layering.”
At 40, Arnault declared his goal to build the largest luxury group
“Arnold said he wanted to make LVMH the biggest luxury goods group in the world.”
Munger turned a single Barron's idea into $400M with Li Lu
“I read Barron's magazine for 50 years. I only found, the entire time, I found one idea that I could act on. Only one. I made eighty million dollars on that idea, basically risk-free. Then I took that eighty million dollars and I gave it to Lee Lu and he turned…”