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 176 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
Merriken: Placing LÄRABAR in the candy aisle would have killed the product
“I remember we were getting into a major retailer, and at the time, I wasn't clear about where I saw Larabar, and they decided out of nowhere to put it near candy bars. That would have been the kiss of death for us in terms of going straight out of that store, …”
$20M More Capital Could Have Yielded a $1 Billion Viator Exit
“It would have been great if we'd held on to Viator for just a few more years, tossed another twenty million dollars into the bucket, and turned it into a billion dollar exit.”
Weprin: Graduate Hotels would have been a $2B portfolio without COVID
“I mean, there, you know, if there wasn't COVID, if there were, we wouldn't be having, we'd be talking about us selling the entire portfolio, you know, over a two billion dollar portfolio of real estate. That'd be the conversation, you know, and the brand, or m…”
Berkowitz: Focusing solely on cookie retail and delivery early on would have accelerated growth
“You know, I look back on the big mistakes I've made in the last 20 years. To me, that was like the biggest one. Because if we had set the course differently, and it just focused on retail with delivery together, the business that we have today it would have ac…”
Koch: I don't know if scaling to billions made me any happier
“I can't tell whether I would have been just as happy or happier had I had the intended outcome instead of the unexpected outcome.”
Ansel believes his innovative bakery business would not have succeeded in France
“Like, someone asked me once, would you have done this if you were in France? I said, I told them, probably not. Yeah. New York is a very open-minded city that would let you explore. So long you give them good food at fair price, and you respect your customers,…”
Sisson: Primal Kitchen would have failed if launched five years earlier
“I think if I'd started Primal Kitchen five years earlier, it would have failed, because five years earlier, there wasn't the awareness of healthy fats, of avocado oil being a beneficial oil, and seed oils being as bad for you as come to find out.”
Releasing the 2004 Sonos Prototype Would Have Killed the Company
“In retrospect, it wouldn't have made any difference, and we would have killed the company had we released The quality of product it was at that time.”
López: Wondery Might Not Have Succeeded if Launched in 2018
“My timing was, ah, really, really fortuitous in that if I tried to launch Wanderer, the exact same version of Wanderer in 2018, I don't know that it would have gotten to where it did.”
Preysman believes Everlane should have prioritized profit after hitting $100M revenue
“The decision I would have made now, and I think everybody's making even today, is that when we hit a hundred and we were profitable, that it was the time to transition from growing what we call the top line, which is the revenue, to growing the bottom line. So…”
Lamb: Traditional block ice shavers would have killed Kona Ice's scalability
“If I would have had to rely on, I think it's a swan that, that does the big block of vice that, like you're saying, a vice that forces it into an open razor blade that spins on an axis and shaves it off. It produces a very fluffy product. I don't think I would…”
Simkhai: Grindr would have sold to Manhunt for $200,000 at launch
“Had you offered me the 200,000 dollars that you had paid for this study of yours, I would have taken your offer.”
Simkhai: Grindr Should Have Actively Moderated Toxic User Behavior
“I think we should have had been more, a lot more involved and guiding of our users and letting them know that certain behaviors was just unacceptable.”
Tom Rinks: Core surfers would have trapped Sun Bum in niche shops
“I think if surfers would have made this brand, they would have had two cross surfboards and called it Woody's, and it'd still be in surf shops today, and that would, or maybe it wouldn't be.”
Kelly nearly lost her house and company after contract lab shutdown
“So we would have gone bankrupt. Bankrupt at that point. And all of our bank loans were personally guaranteeing guaranteed, like, by us. So, like, you know, including, like, our house.”
Premature scaling would have prevented Guayakí from developing core canned products
“How do we grown fast out of the gate? We wouldn't have figured out the bottle or the can. We wouldn't have had those products. We probably would be owned by someone already because it seems like the faster you grow, the faster you kind of hit that plateau.”
Major beverage distribution could have tripled Guayakí's size but risked brand dilution
“And had we done that, we probably would be two or three times bigger than we are now, but we also might be that size and getting canceled, you know, or we might be not involved.”
Elkabetz: Radar monitoring over ocean would make hurricane forecasts significantly more reliable
“I think it is pretty agreed upon the scientific community that if we had Good monitoring of hurricanes as they evolve all the way to hitting the mainland with radars, then the forecast accuracy, meaning the output of the models, would have been much more relia…”
Elkabetz: Tomorrow.io would have raised SPAC cash in 2021
“If we did it, you know, in 2021, we would probably be able to raise that money which is really why we wanted to go after it. The significant amount of cash would have enabled us to go after the full business plan, but the macro changed.”
Growing through corporate-owned stores would have forced Culver's to go public
“In order for us to grow that way, it would have been very slow, and eventually we would have probably had to go public to get more funds.”
Solivan: TaskRabbit would have abandoned direct booking without London pilot validation
“Thank God we launched that London product, because if we hadn't, we would have been completely overwhelmed by that vocal minority, and we could have pulled back. We could have completely decided not to move forward, just based on the feedback, because it was s…”
Levchin: eBay Should Have Won Payments Race Against PayPal With Billpoint
“And so it was kind of a race, which they should have absolutely won because they had a Product that was supposed to do what we did that they owned, that could be built in, that, you know, could be promoted much, much, much better than we could.”
Pitchfork gained mainstream attention precisely because of its hyperbolic editorial style
“If that had just been, you know, a pretty straight face, you know, if it had read like any other music journalism, I don't think people would have even really necessarily noticed us.”
Andy Dunn: Bonobos could be built on $20M-$30M in hindsight
“I can't go back in time and do this company on 20 to thirty million. Which is what I think it would take, knowing what I now know”
Citron: Continuing to build games would never have reached massive scale
“Like, I think we could have had a really good small to mid-sized business if we had focused on that game, but from the experience I had building Openfeint, I knew that, like, we, I had these powers that I could use to have positive impact on, like, tens or hun…”
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…”
Ballance: Merge Records could not have succeeded without Superchunk
“I think the success of both Superchunk and Merge, they're codependent. One fed the other. We couldn't have just started Merge by itself without Superchunk also. And be where we are now.”
Ballance: Merge Records would not have survived with two Mac McCaughans
“We fulfill different parts of what the business needs to succeed, and I suspect if you had two Macs running Merge, Merge wouldn't have Kept going.”
Armstrong: Coinbase Would Not Have Succeeded Without Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam
“I don't think Coinbase would have been successful if I hadn't found Fred, so I am eternally grateful to him on that.”
Einkorn wheat's thin margins wouldn't justify a launch financially
“If you looked at the margins on einkorn, they never would have happened unless I was crazy.”
Winthrop: Slate's viral hoodie article saved American Giant from failure
“Without that article, I don't think we'd be here. I think that, that changed the trajectory of the business.”
Perkins says knowing the startup hardships in advance would have been intimidating
“I think one of the wonderful things about this whole experience is that I didn't know a lot going into it, and I think that learning every single day as you go has actually been one of the most critical parts, because I think if I knew all of the lessons that …”
Smith nearly lost majority ownership to a family friend's $200k offer
“If we had done that deal, I wouldn't own the business today. It was very fortunate that it fell through.”
Hsieh: Maximizing short-term profit would have prevented Zappos from building its brand
“You know, if we were just around trying to say maximize the profit margins, then we never would have gone down that path. And yes, we would have made more money in the short term during those days, but then we wouldn't have built our brand and reputation and s…”
Anderson Regrets Not Fighting Corporate Management to Keep a Smaller Footprint
“And today I wish I had fought harder. And I had trusted my gut more, because I would have stayed to the smaller footprints, and I would have stayed to a smaller core menu.”
Trout: Health-Ade made the right choice taking early outside investors
“So I know if I was back in that position, I really still would have no choice. But to be honest, they helped us a lot in the beginning. They helped us build forecasts and get into the right distribution. And so, honestly, I think we did exactly right.”
Zimmer: If founding Lyft today, I would start with a subscription service
“I think if we were starting over today, I might start with Pink, which we talked about as the subscription, as a way to get people to interact with Lyft. To say, hey, there's a membership service, it's gonna be more affordable than owning a car, and we're gonn…”
Boyd: The Laundress would have lost brand control taking early VC money
“We probably could have done a lot more at a faster pace. Not probably. We definitely could have. But we wouldn't have the same amount of control. Our brand would most likely look very different today.”
Carmichael: American coffee was unprepared for an incoming French and Italian fine-dining boom
“We had a deep, deep belief that there would be this restaurant renaissance in America. There was going to be this huge inflow of French and Italian high-level cuisine, and that the coffee in America wasn't going to accommodate it.”
Morgan DeBaun: Blavity's 1 million users would raise $5M today, not $500K
“It took me a lot of no's to get 500,000 dollars for Blavity. And I had a million users at the time. If I went out today with that, I would raise five million because there's more venture funds focused on minorities and women of color.”
Siminoff: A big security company probably could have unseated Ring early on
“If one of the, if someone that big had come out with something much earlier, could they have unseated us? Probably.”
Andrés: WCK deploys to disasters before checking its bank balance
“If we ever look at the bank account of World Central Kitchen, before we went to Bahamas, or Puerto Rico, or North Carolina, or Florida, or Indonesia, and we base our response on the money we had in the bank, we wouldn't do one meal yet.”
Sweetgreen's original concept would have failed in New York or LA
“The sweet green of, that we started in D.C. Would not have been successful in New York or L.A.”
Neistat: Knowing the reality of startups would have scared me off entirely
“If I knew then what I know now about what it means to start a tech company, I wouldn't have Not only not done it, I would have run as far away from that idea as I possibly could have. It was not knowing, and this has been true my entire career, you know, my en…”
Early capital would have prevented Bauer from mastering ice cream craft
“Let's say we would have taken, you know, a whole bunch of money early and I don't think anybody would have given it to us anyway, but let's just say we could have done that. I wouldn't have had the time to work out these details and the things that I now know …”
Glitch might have survived if it had not bet on Flash
“And we had made a bet On Flash as a technology for delivering the game, which wasn't going to work on mobiles, and I think in the end that, that really was the nail in the coffin. If it hadn't been for that, I think it would have been worth trying a little bit…”