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 22 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
Amazon could not build a successful social product due to commerce-first culture
“But no, I mean, it turns out Amazon could not have built a successful social product because they are wired for commerce. This is my impression. You know, they shared with us a bunch of thinking they had in the social space, and it was just clear that they, wh…”
Amazon refused Kindle integration without acquiring an equity stake in Goodreads
“And so we had this strong vision, and we met with Amazon, like I said, four or five times over the years, kind of talking about, would we do this? And they were always into it. The issue was, it required deep integration to pull off, and they weren't comfortab…”
Social networks work best when built around shared 'social objects'
“Social objects, objects that people like to talk about that therefore can be the basis for sharing on a social network. Photos are super strong for that. Articles, cooking, like anything that people could kind of experience together or separately, but like hav…”
Otis Chandler: Tinkering on a new project to fix algorithmic news feeds
“So I'm actually starting to tinker, for the last six months, I've been starting to tinker on a new project, which has been exciting. I don't have anything to announce, but it's in the space of trying to Address the problem that I think that the new, how people…”
Otis Chandler: Amazon promised to run Goodreads as an independent brand
“Amazon made it a little easy in that they told us they would want to run us as an independent subsidiary and an independent brand, just like they run Audible and IMDB and Zappos and now Twitch, and they have a long list of track record of doing this.”
Otis Chandler: Goodreads would not have flourished without the 2007 Kindle launch
“But if Kindle hadn't launched in 2007 and moved, you know, started the digital reading revolution, I don't think Goodreads would have flourished. Industry trends have to align. And if that hadn't happened, you know, my old CEO would have been right. It would h…”
Otis Chandler: Amazon Allowed Goodreads to Run Unprofitably and Triple Headcount
“Amazon wanted to invest in social, and I finally had permission to Go unprofitable. So we grew from 35 employees to over a hundred, I think in two or three years.”
Otis Chandler: 40,000 volunteer librarians made tens of thousands of daily edits
“And I think by the end of Goodreads, we had maybe 40,000 of them were making tens of thousands of edits a day, which is why Goodreads has one of the best catalogs out there.
In the world.”
Elizabeth Chandler: Goodreads' audience was 75% female
“I think we had a lot of statistics on, on our users in terms of just education, gender the site's 75% women.”
Otis Chandler: Goodreads was a top-100 US website when Amazon acquired it
“Yeah, but we owned most of a website that was one of the top hundred websites in the U.S. By traffic.”
Chandler: Random House booked an initial $10,000 ad campaign on Goodreads
“Someone at Random House, the very nice woman named Julie Sills pinged us and said, hey, I love your site. And you know, I'm at Random House. I'm in charge of marketing books. Is there any way we can work with you? And so she Set me up with the guy at Random Ho…”
Goodreads reached 100,000 registered users by 2007 without hiring any employees
“We got it up to a 100,000 users.
I think registered users by the end of 2007 with no other employees, no other help.
It just the two of us.”
Otis Chandler: Goodreads raised its first angel round without a pitch deck
“I went Talked to those people and showed them the product. I had no deck, and they all liked it and said yes, and so then after that, we were able to finally go and hire some employees.”
Chandler: Shelfari had three employees and $1M seed from Amazon
“And then literally two weeks before we were going to launch, we discovered Shelfari, which had two co-founders, three employees, and a million dollars in seed from Amazon.”
Chandler: Goodreads held most Series A capital when seeking Series B
“And I remember when we were looking at the Series B, we still had most of the Series A in the bank.”
Chandler: Goodreads sought $10M to $15M round before selling to Amazon
“I don't think that was ever disclosed, so Guy Raz has the exclusive. I think it was 10 or fifteen million, I actually don't remember, but one of those.”
Chandler capped his Goodreads salary at his highest-paid employee's rate
“I think for the first year of Goodreads, I had no salary. Then I had like maybe 30,000 a year. And then I just, once we had enough money where we were hiring some people, I just kept my salary at the top person's level. I never paid myself more than the top pe…”
Mashable coverage accelerated Goodreads' signup rate tenfold to 100 daily users
“Mashable wrote, wrote a story saying that we had just launched, and our growth went from 10 users a day to a hundred users a day.”
Chandler bought Goodreads.com for $5,000 after goodread.com was priced at $50,000
“And then I tried to go buy good read, singular, and it was like 50,000 dollars, and I was like, okay, forget that. And then I tried the plural, good reads, and it was not available. So I just bought goodreads with a z dot com for, you know, just to use while I…”
Goodreads' first growth wave came from blog-based book reviewers joining in droves
“But actually that the first growth wave really didn't come from that. It came from discovering that there was a huge community of book reviewers who were existing on kind of the blogging platforms of 2000, you know, six, seven. And what they were looking to do…”
Goodreads earned an 8% affiliate cut referring book buyers to Amazon
“So affiliate was, we get, you know, an eight percent cut of a book when we refer a customer to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or somewhere where they buy a book.”
Chandler: Goodreads endured month of 18-hour diligence days for Amazon
“There was definitely a month, which was probably the most stressful month of our lives, where we couldn't talk to anybody, we had to stop talking to all the VCs, we had to stop talking to anybody else, and all we did, probably 18 hours a day, was due diligence…”