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 173 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
Citadel hired Enron's entire quant team post-bankruptcy and made $30 billion
“Now, the great part of this story is I hired the entire leadership team of the quantitative research effort at Enron, all the people who actually knew how the place worked, and we've made thirty billion dollars in commodities since then.”
Jobs regularly noted Apple products end up in landfills while Pixar films endure
“He used to say regularly that as brilliant as Apple products were, eventually they all ended up in landfills. Pixar movies, on the other hand, would live on forever.”
Cameron Predicted Avatar Would Make Fox Executives 'All the Fucking Money'
“I said, I think this movie is going to make all the fucking money, and when it does, it's going to be too late for you to love the film.”
Munger predicts device-distracted multitaskers will achieve far less success than Buffett
“Look at this generation with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.”
Apple never ran a single A/B test on the original iPhone software
“At Apple, we never would have dreamed of doing that, and we never staged any AB test for any of the software on the iPhone.”
Graham: Technology will continuously widen individual productivity and wealth variance
“Technology is just going to lead to a more, an ever increasing variance in the amount of productivity that one person could have, and therefore an ever increasing variance in the amount of wealth that one person has and one person doesn't.”
Kobe Bryant: Studied referee handbook to exploit court blind spots
“I made a point of reading the referee's handbook. One of the rules I gleaned from that was that each referee has a designated slot where he's supposed to be on the floor. If the ball, for instance, is in place W, referees X, Y, and Z each have an area of the c…”
SpaceX runs separate risk profiles for Dragon, Falcon 9, and Starship
“The crucial distinction is between development and operations. SpaceX runs both, but with completely different risk profiles. So for the Dragon, it carries crew. It can never fail. So there's large margins of safety, there's exhaustive testing, there's conserv…”
Senra: Mateschitz rejected profit maximization as the primary corporate goal
“If someone says to him that the primary goal of a company is to maximize profit, he simply declares that to be incorrect. He thinks longer term and more broadly than his competitors.”
Ellison Avoids One-on-One Meetings to Ensure Shared Situational Awareness
“Ellison does not like doing one-on-ones with his direct reports. He prefers communicating as a group so everyone knows what's going on.”
Huang: Nvidia avoids periodic five-year plans in favor of continuous planning
“We don't do a periodic planning system. The reason for that is because the world is a living, breathing thing. We just plan continuously. There's no five-year plan.”
Opticians Charge Consumers 700% to 800% Markups on Prescription Lenses
“While opticians might sell frames for two or three times their wholesale price, it is the lenses where they make the most money, charging markups of 700 or 800% to their customers.”
Dell's take-private became the most successful private equity deal in history.
“That is really funny to me because this winds up, this take private of Dell winds up being the most successful private equity deal of all time.”
Dell adopted build-to-order due to capital constraints, not foresight
“We didn't start building to the customer's order because we saw some massive paradigm in the future. We started that way because we didn't have the capital to mass produce. It turned out to be a pretty lucky handicap.”
Dell's private placement was the sole financing survivor on Black Monday.
“Out of literally hundreds of financings that were in the process that black Monday, ours was a sole survivor.”
Munger considered John D. Rockefeller the greatest entrepreneur ever
“When I went to Charlie Munger's house and got, got to have dinner with him, he actually said that he thought Rockefeller was the greatest entrepreneur of all time.”
Jensen Huang Prioritizes Blunt, Concise Communication Over Feelings
“Jensen's communication style, blunt, concise, and direct. He says over and over again, he believes in direct, truthful, blunt communication. We're not worried about people's feelings. We're putting the work above everything else.”
Hetty Green was the world's largest individual financier during her lifetime
“You have to keep in mind, at a time when women weren't even allowed to vote, Hedy was the single biggest individual financier in the world.”
MrBeast Memo: Every Veteran Employee Has Made a $1M Mistake
“Every veteran here has cost me a million dollars at one point or another, and you can go ask them yourself if I ever held it over their heads.”
MrBeast Can Grow a New Channel to 10K Subscribers in One Month
“Because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube, I can show a brand new creator how to go from a hundred subscribers to 10,000 in a month. On their own, it would take them years to do it.”
MrBeast: 90 Seconds Extra Retention Yields 80 Million Extra Views
“If one is watched just a minute and a half longer on average, 90 seconds, 92nd difference at this scale gives you eighty million views.”
Sleep Concentrated Capital Into Three Stocks, Holding 70% in One
“Sleep, with characteristic indifference to conventional opinion, invested almost all of his fortune in just three stocks. At times, he and Zack had as much as 70% of their money in a single stock.”
Mateschitz actively rejected profit maximization as a company's primary goal
“If someone says to him that the primary goal of a company is to maximize profit, he simply declares that to be incorrect. He thinks longer term and more broadly than his competitors. I just don't believe everything I learned at business school. He has repeated…”
Jesus actively avoided being labeled a miracle worker or holy magician
“Jesus wanted to avoid at all costs being known as a miracle worker. He detested being thought of as a kind of holy magician, but sometimes publicity was unavoidable and it could be dangerous as well as irksome to a profoundly thoughtful man and speaker Who was…”
PayPal Prioritized Execution Speed Above Everything Except Its Recruiting Standards
“Obviously they move fast, but they prioritize speed over everything else except in one area, recruiting. Max Ludgen kept the bar for talent exceedingly high, even if that came at the expense of speedy staffing.”
All 250+ Les Schwab managers were promoted from entry-level tire changers
“In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside, nor have we ever hired an assistant manager directly to do that job. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires.”
Les Schwab retail store managers were paid more than corporate headquarters staff
“Our store managers make more than our office people.”
Earl Woods had two-year-old Tiger hitting golf balls two hours daily
“By the time Tiger was two years old, Earl made sure that he'd spent two hours a day hitting golf balls.”
Graham: Failing to understand wealth creation could trigger major social unrest
“If society doesn't catch up to understanding that wealth is not finite and something that should be growing over time, it could lead to a lot of, you know, social unrest and cultural issues.”
Senra: Only one of 1,900+ YC startups was killed by competitors
“YC has founded 1900 plus companies at the time. This is several years ago. One was killed by competitors.”
Singleton never exercised control despite holding controlling stakes in six companies
“We actually held enough shares in six of these corporations to effectively have control over them, but Henry never exercised that capability.”
Senra: Albert Lasker made the most money in advertising history
“Albert Lasker is the person that made the most money in advertising ever.”
Hopkins: Changing an ad's headline commonly multiplies returns five to ten times
“The identical ad run with various headlines differs tremendously in its returns. It's not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five to 10 times over.”
Honda's intense engineering focus repeatedly tanked sales before creating massive booms
“When Honda would concentrate on a goal, he would pay so much attention to it, and the company would concentrate on it so much that sales would fall off. Observers on the outside world would say that Honda was on the road to bankruptcy. When Honda then succeede…”
Bowerman was the first U.S. college coach to emphasize rest and recovery
“For example, he was the first college coach in America to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work.”
In 1965, running for exercise was virtually unheard of in America
“In fact, in 1965, running wasn't even a sport. To go out for a three-mile run was something weirdos did, presumably to burn off manic energy. Running for pleasure, running for exercise, running for endorphins, running to live better and longer, these things we…”
Building 40 identical Falcon 9s yearly unlocks automotive-style manufacturing learning curves
“Building 40 identical Falcon nines annually creates automotive style learning curves that are impossible in custom aerospace.”
Boeing invests upfront in engineering analysis, whereas SpaceX invests in prototypes
“Where Boeing invests upfront in analysis, SpaceX invest upfront in prototypes.”
Two listeners invested $750M in QXO after hearing David Senra's podcast
“There's two people in the audience that didn't know who Brad was when I covered his book the first time, heard the episode, decided to look into this Brad Jacobs character, and have since invested seven hundred and fifty million dollars into Brad's company.”
Senra: Koenigsegg, Dyson, and Musk integrate engineering with design
“Like he doesn't separate engineering design, which again, Dyson doesn't either. Elon doesn't either.”
Rockefeller maintained vast cash reserves to win bidding wars and survive downturns
“It is impossible to comprehend Rockefeller's breathtaking ascent without realizing that he always moved into battle backed by abundant cash. Whether writing out downturns or coasting on booms, he kept plentiful reserves and won many bidding contests simply bec…”
Public Fights with Bill Gates Greatly Enhanced Oracle's Brand
“This intentional fight that he picks against Bill Gates and Microsoft and how beneficial the positioning was. That he chose and how this message spread through the media and actually enhanced greatly enhanced not only his individual stature, but the stature of…”
Ellison Sacrificed Near-Term Profits to Eliminate Vulnerable Rival Sybase
“I wanted to knock out Sybase while they were technically behind and vulnerable, even if it meant sacrificing profits in the near term. If we were successful, the profits would be greater in the long run.”
Oracle Once Paid Salespeople More to Route Deals Through Partners
“The sales force convinced their boss that the best way to fix this was to pay more money to the sales force if the deal went through a partner than if the deal came directly to Oracle. For example, if you sold a million dollar deal directly, Oracle would get a…”
Senra: Jensen Huang mandates whiteboards as primary communication in meetings
“Jensen wants the whiteboard to be used as the primary form of communication in meetings.”
Jensen Huang spotted early machine learning signals in employee status emails
“One of the weak signals that he intercepted years ago was a wonky but exciting development in machine learning that kept popping up in the emails. Jensen decided that Nvidia needed to invest more in tools for accelerating workloads on its GPUs.”