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 15 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
David Heath: Enduring brands grow slowly, unlike VC-backed Away and Warby
“The one consistent Thing that we found in those companies that was different than our peer set of, you know, the aways and the Warby's of the world is that they didn't grow by raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and trying to skyrocket the highe…”
Daymond John says Bombas is the most successful Shark Tank product
“Sometimes it's why Bomba Socks is the most successful product in Shark Tank history.”
Goldberg: Email marketing remains a hugely valuable retention channel for brands
“Email marketing is a huge part of our business to this day. I mean, people still check emails. People have been talking about email dying for 15 years, and it's still a hugely valuable channel, and I think it's got to be part of the mix. It's not the only thin…”
Heath: Bombas closed $1M seed and renegotiated Daymond John deal
“And we just closed our million dollars of seed funding and basically said, look, we don't need any more cash. So, you know, can we renegotiate the deal to provide you with some upside with no kind of cash investment? And the two of us Damon and Bombas came to …”
Heath: Bombas emailed 12,000 scraped Gmail contacts to launch crowdfunding campaign
“I found a way to download my entire Gmail contact database. And I don't mean like just the people that are like in my contacts. I mean, every single person that I'd ever emailed with ever in my Gmail, you can like find a way to do this in Gmail. And I remember…”
Bombas generated $1.2M in sales within two months of Shark Tank
“In the first 13 months before Shark Tank, we did about 900,000 dollars in sales pretty organically. And then in the two months following Shark Tank, we did 1.2 million. It sold out of every single item of product that we had leading into holiday.”
Top VCs including First Round and General Catalyst rejected Bombas
“I met with first round capital, general catalyst, Maveron, you know, all the names that we know today of backing up some of the biggest and best brands and companies. And Despite having connections or relationships with people, when I showed up with a deck tal…”
Bombas growth dropped from 50% to -12% in March 2020 before surging
“We watched our business go from like 50% year over year in growth in that January To a -12% year over year growth in March of that year. And I'm grateful that within a matter of weeks it had rebounded and we were back at like 30% plus year over year and then 4…”
David Heath had $18,000 in credit card debt at Bombas's launch
“I think by the time we launched on Indiegogo, I had about, I don't know, 12 to 18,000 dollars of credit card debt.”
Bombas never raised additional primary venture capital after early rounds
“We brought in a private equity partner, but we never raised any more primary capital.”
Goldberg: Bombas tested 137 iterations to perfect calf sock tension
“I mean, just for the calf sock tension level alone, it took us 137 tries.”
Bombas achieved profitability in its first year of operation
“We were profitable in year one in year two, we made a lot of capital investments in inventory mostly”
Heath: Bombas equity split was determined by capital and career risk
“I had kind of put most of the capital up front in terms of, you know, paying for the legal incorporation and some of these other things. I think the rest of it was kind of determined by, you know, who could take the risk to, you know, jump first.”
Goldberg: Bombas approached one million pairs donated in two years
“So, at about the two year mark, we started to look at each other and we'd say, yeah, we're about to hit a million pairs donated already.”
Bombas founders spent three months writing their Indiegogo campaign script
“It took Three months for us to write that and something today that would take, you know, three hours for a copywriter to do, but it was putting all of our ideas down on paper in the right way and getting our storytelling, you know, around this product that we …”