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 10 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
English: Early Expedia was 'seizure-inducing' and cluttered with excessive animation
“To me, Expedia was epileptic, seizure-inducing. I mean, it was really terrible. There was so much animation and graphics and so much stuff going on the website.”
Early Kayak scraped airline websites without permission to build its inventory
“So originally Kayak had no revenue. And also we were scraping these websites without their permission. It's one of these things sort of ask for forgiveness, not permission.”
Kayak reached $300M in revenue with just 200 employees at its IPO
“When we took it public in 2012, we only had 200 employees, which is pretty small for a public company, and we had three hundred million in revenue. So it was one and a half million per employee.”
Kayak used Orbitz as a stalking horse to secure direct airline deals
“And we use Orbitz as a stalking horse to get all the airlines to pay us directly, so we could send people directly to the airline sites.”
Over half of Kayak's 200 employees became millionaires at the 2012 IPO
“We had 200 employees. Over half of them became millionaires that day.”
Kayak initially lost 80 cents per transaction on paid user acquisition
“In the early years of Kayak, it cost us about a dollar on average to buy someone to come to our website from us spending money on Google AdWords or other websites. We made on average 20 cents per user, so we were losing 80 cents a transaction in large numbers.”
Kayak launched with $5M from General Catalyst and $2M from its founders
“General Catalyst put in five million, Steve put in a million, I put in a million, and then we started Kayak, and the middle thing we did, immediate thing we did was start recruiting.”
Hafner agreed to a 50-50 Kayak equity split on the spot
“He said, what would it take to have you join me as co-founder? I said, at a minimum, fifty-fifty. Just kind of joking. And he put his hand across the table, and he said, done.”