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 20 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
Boxed guaranteed employees will not lose jobs solely due to automation
“What we committed for everyone here is that you weren't going to lose your job solely because of automation. You will have to be retrained. You will have to learn how to operate, how to service the state of the art machines and work alongside of them.”
Huang: Office Coffee Accounts Act Like Highly Sticky Annuities
“Office coffee is like a knife fight of an industry. Everyone wants to sell coffee to offices, because they become like annuities. Like, you know, once you're in there, everyone's happy. The fastest way for team members to burn down the office is to say we're o…”
Huang: Founders harm companies by packing boxes instead of leading
“For every moment you are there packing a box, you're actually doing the company a disservice because you've graduated past that. You now have hundreds of people in your charge, and you need to do the things that they can't do themselves and that they, that you…”
Huang: Offhand comments from CEOs inadvertently trigger massive organizational pivots
“Sometimes as a co-founder, or as a CEO, as a leader, Sometimes by just saying a few things, the entire organization tries to pivot around kind of what you just said, and so realizing that, listen, like, I'm just trying to help the team, and sometimes by helpin…”
Boxed's newest fulfillment centers are 100% automated using proprietary in-house robotics
“Our newest fulfillment centers are a hundred percent automated by our own hardware these days.”
Traditional warehouse club 10-10-2 economic models fail in modern e-commerce
“The traditional model of how warehouse clubs work doesn't really work online because it never really I contemplated the variable cost being the main cost driver. So traditionally it's called the 10, 10, two model. So 10% cost, you get your 10% margin on your g…”
CPG supply chains and bonus structures actively prevent sales to startup retailers
“When you're starting out in this industry, you have to understand that it's run by behemoths feeding other behemoths. And so the supply chain, the, how they're bonused, they're not incentivized to really sell each's to people. It's just doesn't move the needle…”
Limiting SKU assortment prevents customer decision paralysis and concentrates wholesale buying power
“We tried to curtail SKU's assortment because it made for an easier and smoother shopping experience. And so you didn't have this kind of paralysis by analysis. And so people would come through the app and hunt and pack and just build this, suddenly build a bas…”
Huang: Adding handwritten customer notes to shipments is worth the cost
“With engineered standards and automated facilities, we know down to the second how much it actually costs us to write a handwritten note, but it's worth it. It's worth it to differentiate and to have that one-on-one connection with the customer.”
Huang: Boxed had ~$20M cash left before selling software to BlackRock
“We still had, what, almost twenty million dollars cash left in the bank, but collectively we decided the best kind of path forward was boxed, was to sell our software business. So BlackRock ended up buying that and owning that.”
Over 80% of Boxed customers repurchase private-label Prince & Spring items
“Over half of our repeat customers have a Princeton Spring item in their cart, and if you buy a Princeton Spring item, over 80% will buy another one in their ensuing shop.”
Boxed averages $5,000 to $10,000 per semester for employee college tuition
“Between five to 10,000 dollars is the average amount. For a semester.”
Half of Boxed's seed funding came from investors writing blind checks
“Half of our seed investment were kind of What I call blind checks.”
Boxed founders negotiated the purchase of boxed.com domain for $35,000
“And so we emailed him and said, well, buy this domain. Would you want to sell it? And he's like, I forgot it was like 200 grand. And we're like, we'll give you 30. And he's like, no way. And we said, come on, you sat on it for so many years. We'll write you a …”
Huang: $500 emergency fund is Boxed's most used employee benefit
“The most used program at Box are, For example, our 500 dollar emergency fund.”
E-commerce grocery shipping costs necessitate multi-item baskets to achieve profitability
“The more items you buy from Box or any e-commerce company, the more effectively you can price the items, because all those different, different items in that box, quote unquote, share that shipping cost, which is the biggest cost in e-commerce. And so, if you …”
Huang has zero involvement with the resurrected Boxed brand
“I have nothing to do with the box that has been resurrected today.”
Huang: Early Boxed Recorded Zero Orders for Two Consecutive Days
“One of the folks that quit his six-figure paying job to join the dream and sit in my garage called and said, dude, I refreshed the page over and over. It's not broken. We got zero orders today. This dropped down to zero two days in a row.”