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 9 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
Ramadan: Instacart Retail Ads Deliver 2x–3x Higher ROI Than Meta Ads
“When you get into those stores, really focusing on services like Instacart, I've seen that have a much higher, I'm talking like
Two to three times higher ROI than spending on Meta.”
John Collison: Payments has shifted from tactical vendor decision to product strategy
“For internet businesses, payments is actually part of the strategy that matters. It's part of the product experience. And so basically, I think this used to be a fairly tactical vendor decision for the business, where it was just something that needs to be tak…”
Mehta: Competing with Amazon required partnering with retailers rather than underpricing them
“I realized in order to sort of really compete with them, I would have to do something that's meaningfully different, and it couldn't be something that was just, it was like cheaper or anything like that, because Amazon has gobs and gobs of money, so it wasn't …”
Collison: Payments shifted from tactical decisions to strategic product advantages
“For internet businesses, payments is actually part of the strategy that matters. It's part of the product experience. And so basically, I think this used to be a fairly tactical vendor decision for the business, where it was just something that needs to be tak…”
Mehta: Grocery delivery customers love receiving phone calls about out-of-stock substitutions
“Initially we tried with not calling the customers, and we said, hey, customers will probably find this pretty intrusive, but then we realized that, no, actually, customers love it when, you know, when our shoppers call the customers, because they feel so speci…”
Mehta: Instacart got into Y Combinator after sending Garry Tan beer
“I opened the app, I ordered a six pack of beer, and I addressed it for the Y Combinator headquarters. And half an hour later, I get a call from Gary Tan, and he's like, what is this? And I was like, oh, this is Instacart. And I guess the beer must have been pr…”
Mehta: Instacart launched its first catalog by scraping Safeway.com
“The first version of the app, I found that there was this website called Safeway.com and there was just a grocery store and I saw that they had all their inventory available online. And so I just scraped it and I was like, great. I have all the items that I am…”
Mehta: Instacart has around 3,000 employees and over 12,000 contractors
“We have around 3000 employees at Instacart, and we have over 12,000 contractors.”
Mehta: Early Instacart shoppers used gift cards to buy customer groceries
“In the early days of Instacart, one of the ways that shoppers would check out at the grocery store when they would, they had bought the groceries for someone else is by using gift cards. So, you know, you would have to trust them.”