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 2,289 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
Kadakia: ClassPass Listed Fitness Studios Without Agreements to Prove Demand
“There were certain studios that we just put on the platform where we didn't have like full agreements with yet. Because we just wanted to test and, you know, we started sending them so much traffic that they would call us up and say, Hey, like, who are you guy…”
Pat Brown: Impossible Foods Will Not Risk Its Mission by Selling to Acquirers
“The mission is to eliminate the need for animals as a food technology, and by doing so, to save the planet from an environmental catastrophe. Nobody cares as much about it as I do and my colleagues do. And I don't want to put the mission at risk by putting it …”
Google licensing clash led directly to Yelp acquisition talks
“We started by licensing our content to them in a way that we thought was reasonable, and then over time, it became clear that they really wanted to compete with us directly and collect information. Reviews themselves. And so then they said to us, well, we're g…”
Steve Jobs called Stoppelman urging Yelp not to sell to Google
“You know, he said, don't sell to Google. We think you're a great company. We think what you're doing is really interesting. He didn't say, oh, well, Apple, you know, is interested in you, but he did say, is this about money? Because Apple has a lot of money, a…”
Howroyd Sent White Colleagues to Pitch Clients to Avoid Racial Bias
“I'll tell you candidly, and I'm not proud of it, there were times when I would gift my intelligence to other members of my team and have them go in and make a presentation or them make the pitch. So that the client wouldn't have to interact directly with me as…”
Zimmer proposes $500 monthly Lyft subscriptions to replace personal car ownership
“We want to offer you transportation as a service. Instead of spending 9000 dollars a year to own and operate your vehicle, we want to sell you, maybe it's a 500 dollars a month subscription plan. Similar to how you buy minutes, you'll buy a thousand miles. And…”
Jon Stein: I do not want to leave my children an inheritance
“They'll probably someday accuse me of wrongdoing for saying this, but I don't want them to have an inheritance. I don't want to set them up where they don't have to work, because I think work is part of happiness.”
McKelvey: WeWork is a hundred-year challenge, not built to be sold
“And Adam and I, like, we, when we talked about this, we're like, this is a hundred year challenge. It's not like, hey, we're building a company so we can sell it and move on. We're doing this because we think this is the most interesting and biggest challenge …”
Madden details illegal stock flipping arrangements with Stratton Oakmont
“And I told myself that it was a gray area, you know, the trading in these stocks and the flipping, they would sell me the stocks and I would sell them back to them.”
Madden admits he knew his Stratton Oakmont trades were illegal
“But I knew in my heart that it was illegal and it was wrong.”
Barre3 intentionally paused franchising to halt growth and hold steady
“In terms of growing bigger, I'm actually not focused on growing bigger anymore with the company. We've paused franchising for now. We're just holding. We're being still”
Hyman: Rent the Runway cut ties with an investor after harassment
“I proceeded to tell everyone else on my board, as well as some key executives who were working with me at Rent the Runway at the time, and the board was unbelievably supportive, and we decided that we were not going to do business anymore with this individual …”
Compaq stockpiled inventory instead of doing layoffs when IBM attacked
“We're going to keep building these things. We're going to store them and wait for the orders to come. If the orders never come, yeah, we're in deep trouble, but you know what? We're in deep trouble anyway if the orders don't come.”
Brian Scudamore fired his entire 11-person team at $500K in revenue
“Five years in, we were about a half a million in revenue, and I realized I wasn't having fun any longer. I was avoiding spending time with my employees, and I just, I had the wrong people, and I realized that one bad apple spoils a whole bunch, and I had nine …”
Founders faked a Village Voice lawsuit to justify rebranding as Vice
“We told the world that we were being sued by the Village Voice, and that's why we had to change the name to Vice.”
Clark: Offered to Buy Basic Brown Bear Before Launching Build-A-Bear
“And honestly, I did go there as a customer, because it was an open tour that you could, you know, and I called them after the tour and said, I'd be open to talk to you about buying your business, and they wanted an unbelievable amount of money for their little…”
Lütke intentionally slowed Shopify's growth in 2009 to keep it manageable
“At this point, I intentionally slowed down the growth of the company a little bit just because I needed it to be manageable for me.”
Smith: UGG's board outvoted him to approve Rush Limbaugh ad campaign
“You know, we'd spent years building up this image of casual comfort and fashion and everything, and so I really fought it, but I was outvoted at a board meeting.”
Huang: NVIDIA refuses to enter markets merely to take market share
“We don't want to dedicate our lives to go work on something that the worlds already have. I don't want our company working on things to capture share from somebody. They built a market. We want to take their share, and so let's go and fight to the bitter end, …”
Gregg Renfrew sold to private equity to remain CEO and pursue IPO
“And the reason that I chose to sell to a financial sponsor versus a strategic, because I had been Approached by a strategic two years prior, which is why... I felt like I wanted to be that next generation leader in beauty, and I wanted to take the company publ…”
Bank of America unexpectedly offered to sell Beautycounter back to Gregg Renfrew
“The debt on the business was syndicated. Led by Bank of America and G.P. Morgan Chase, and I can't remember the other banks that were involved because I didn't interact with them, but in a crazy act of, I would almost say of kindness, Bank of America approache…”
Steve Ells shut down both Kernel restaurants after less than a year
“So we closed down the two Kernel restaurants after less than a year spent a couple of months you know, retooling, and opened counter service”
Swad felt like a hypocrite scaling Wingstop because he was a vegetarian
“Keep in mind at this time, you know, I was feeling more and more like a hypocrite growing this company that sold nothing but chicken, not eating chicken myself, and knowing what the industry was like.”
Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP financed the business with debt until $10 million revenue
“I mean, we financed everything on our own up until ten million. I mean, we had loans and we had a lot of debt and we went, you know, really, I think around the one million mark is when we went to a bank and got financing to build out our plant.”
Krause: Scrub Daddy will only sell to major CPG or IPO
“Selling this to, like, XYZ private equity firm doesn't tick it for me, and I have no interest in that. This needs to go to the right home at some point, and that needs to be one of the largest companies in the world in the CPG space. That needs to be a Procter…”
Osher: Offered $10M to buy back Spinbrush; P&G leveraged for $75M
“I said, I would, but I'm not willing to pay much money. I'll give you ten million dollars for the whole thing, but I'll close next week. You know, everything else was, they were always waiting six months, you know, and then there would be due diligence. I said…”
Hastings: Netflix uses -10 to +10 executive polls for major decisions
“So the thing we instituted on big decisions
Is everybody publicly weighing in, you know, on a 10 to -10?
Is this a wise decision?
So that would affect, like, going into Europe, going into original content, pricing changes, so that everyone knows where everyone…”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs is working to expand into medical services
“And we're changing an industry and we won't stop just with pharmaceuticals. We'll, we're working to get into the medical side as well.”
Graves: Early Cane's Scaled on 15% Subordinated Debt to Protect Equity
“So what I had was angel investors that I would do a 15% interest rate, subordinated debt. Okay. It was a one pager and I personally endorse these. I mean, if I personally signed onto it, so they knew anything I had in the world, which is all just tied up the b…”
Brick-and-mortar stores represent 60% of Exploding Kittens' total sales
“Brick and mortar is still about 60% of our business.”
81 Collection Backed a Pet Cremation Business With 80% EBITDA Margins
“We just recently did an investment in pet cremation, and we were blown away. 80% EBITDA margins.”
Newmark rejected Microsoft banner ads because he did not need the money
“There were folks from Microsoft Microsoft sidewalk who wanted to put up banner ads, but I'm thinking banner ads are usually stupid. I don't need the money. I'm doing well enough. So I said no banner ads”
Chestnut: Mailchimp rejected venture capital due to uniform scare-tactic pitches
“You know, for the first two, I started to think about it, because I really believed their pitches, and then by the 10th one, I realized they were all saying the same thing, they were all using the same playbook and it was always a scare tactic, like, if you do…”
Mailchimp rejected venture investors because internal cash flow was sufficient
“We were totally self-funded. Investors still came, and, you know, they would say, you know, take our money, and we'd say, we can't, we don't know why we would need it. We, we're making plenty.”
Chestnut: Mailchimp has had acquisition offers, keeps an open mind on selling
“I've had offers. The thing is, I love what I do, and I don't know, I, it's one of those things I, you know, you never, you learn over time, after 20 years of running a business, you learn, never say never, right? I think I have an open mind about it, but I can…”
Crumbl closes all locations on Sundays to prioritize employee family time
“We want to be able to give bakers time off. We want them to be able to spend time with their friends and families. And this is just core to who we are. It's spending time with family. And if people want to worship on Sundays or they want to do other things on …”
Ulukaya offered his factory as collateral to secure supermarket shelf space
“I personally said, if it doesn't sell, I will give you the factory.”
VCs passed on Figma's Series B over InVision competitive concerns
“There were certain VCs that, you know, they take the meeting, but then they go at the end of the meeting, you know, look. Very impressed with what you've done, and, ah, great job, but I just cannot reconcile this with the work Envision's doing. Like, I, I'm so…”
Goba Sports Group refuses to abandon Chinese manufacturing despite US tariffs
“Look, I'm, you know, we've invested so heavily and their family, like, I'm not running away from China. It's not that easy. We've done too much.”
Branson: Virgin Is Looking at Challenging Eurostar Through Channel Tunnel
“So, you know, for instance, we're just looking at maybe taking on Eurostar through the channel tunnel.”
Zennström: Kazaa Survived Early On Through Controversial User-Tracking Ads
“Well, our business model was advertisement so we put in ads, we had banners, you know in, in Casa, in the software, and it was something, and that was something that was, like, controversial at the time, you know, because a lot, some of those things were also …”
Lore killed $30M in revenue and 450 trucks to pivot Wonder
“Telling the board 450 trucks on the road and thirty million in revenue. We're going to take that to zero. We're selling the trucks. We'll take revenue to zero.”
Bark Walked Away From an Active 2018 Fundraise to Sustain Itself
“We, I definitely freaked out my board and our investors but walked away from the fundraising round and said, forget it.”
Guy Raz: How I Built This rarely books founders under 30
“This is why we very rarely have guests on the show who are under 30, because not, not that they're not smart or interesting, even if they made hundreds of millions of dollars, it's just, You can't buy time. You can't buy, like, life experience, and so we often…”