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 12 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
Chesky: Airbnb bookings rebounded from an 80% drop to 2019 levels
“So it dropped by about 80%, and I mean, you know, nobody knows if this is pent up demand or not, but no, we're around last year's levels.”
Paul Graham accepted Airbnb into YC for founder hustle, not the idea
“The reason we got in wasn't because of our idea. It was because through the breakfast cereal, we had proven to him that we had hustle, we had grit, we had the, if we could figure out how to sell breakfast cereal for 40 dollars a box, we could figure out how to…”
Leventhal: Airbnb agreed to both invest in Resy and partner commercially
“At some point in that conversation, we said, you know, we'd like this to be both an investment and a commercial partnership, and they agreed.”
Chesky: Airbnb customers canceled over $1B in bookings at pandemic start
“First thing is we had over, we had customers cancel over one billion dollars of reservations.”
Chesky: Airbnb raised $2B in emergency financing in 72 hours
“Then we quickly raised two billion dollars... Thankfully we had some great investors step up but we had to do that deal, and that was like over the course of 72 hours to like get that deal done.”
Chesky: Airbnb lost 80% of its business in eight weeks during COVID-19
“We spent 12 years building Airbnb, and then we lost 80% of business in eight weeks.”
Chesky: Airbnb slashed over $1B in planned marketing spend during COVID-19
“We cut over a billion dollars of planned marketing spend.”
Gebbia: Airbnb failed through four consecutive launches before finding product-market fit
“So, our next iteration for South by Southwest in 2008 was literally a conference website. After the dud of that launch we regrouped and listened to people's feedback, and then we launched again for the DNC, and that flopped, and then we launched a fourth time …”
Sequoia Capital proactively approached Airbnb to lead its funding round
“We had offers coming in from a variety of different groups, and the one that shocked us the most was Sequoia Capital, which was a pre, it is a preeminent Venture capital firm in Silicon Valley that we thought, well, maybe one day, like a year from now, we'll g…”
Over 100 million people have stayed in Airbnb homes worldwide
“So, I think the world is ready for our invention, given that there's been over a hundred million people that have stayed in homes all over the world.”
Chesky: Airbnb raised $20K-$30K selling novelty cereal boxes in 2008
“Yeah, like 20 or 30,000. It was yeah, something like that. Joe told the story. We had to raise collectible breakfast cereal. We were air, bed, and breakfast. So we said, well, let's do collectible breakfast cereal for the Democratic-Republican National Convent…”