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 6,762 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 44 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
Don Valentine invested $2.6 million for massive Cisco equity and control
“He gave us 2.6 million dollars, and Len and I got about 30%, but remember, he was the chairman of the board of the company, and he got stock from that, and all of his friends got stock.”
Humm Packed the Dining Room With Friends for the NYT Critic
“So on nights that we thought he would come, we would invite a bunch of people, friends, regular guests. So the restaurant felt full when he came.”
Tenev: All market makers pay Robinhood the exact same order flow rate
“Well, I mean, I would first say they all pay the same rate. We work with the largest firms and you know, the stuff is all highly regulated.”
Tenev: Robinhood's March 2020 outage was caused by open-source DNS failure
“It was a DNS system failure, which was a failure by a system that we didn't even write ourselves, right? Open source software for some of that.”
Tenev: Robinhood faced 4x NSCC collateral hike on $700 million deposit
“Yeah, at the time we had seven hundred million on deposit at NSCC, so the request was a four X increase in our deposit requirement.”
Tenev: Customers had over $35 billion in gains by congressional hearing
“You know, the fact that Robinhood customers had At the time of the congressional hearing, 35 plus billion more in unrealized and realized gains, equities in crypto on top of money that they deposited.”
Hollender: My board fired me by phone on a Saturday and locked me out
“Done in a somewhat brutal fashion because not only was I let go, but I was let go over the telephone on a Saturday morning and told that I wasn't even allowed to go back into the office ever again.”
Jack Conte: 8chan launched on Patreon to crowdfund the site's initial development
“The thing that caused the debate was a website called eight Chan that launched on Patreon.
Guy Raz: Yeah.
Jack Conte: And they were using Patreon to fund the development of the site.”
Abuzeid: Removing Candidate Names and Photos Drops Interview Requests
“What we've tried, you know, removing names, even removing pictures the number of interview requests you receive drops.”
Butler: Black women launch businesses fastest in US but lack funding
“Black women are starting businesses faster than any other group of people in this country, but we're not getting funding, and also, because we're not getting funding, we can't really grow our ideas, so if we really wanna, like, reduce the wealth gap in this co…”
Famous Dave's Board Refused to Give the Founder a Seat in 2005
“Yes, that's one of the unfortunate things of publicly traded companies. They felt they didn't need me, you know.”
A Mavericks manager told their team Marshall would not last 90 days
“I had one situation where somebody actually told their whole team, don't respond to her. Don't do anything she's asking to be done because she won't be here in 90 days.”
Mark Constantine: Anita Roddick copied The Body Shop from a US store
“It was a totally different company that inspired Anita Roddick to copy it and do it in Brighton.”
The Body Shop went public without owning its own product formulas
“They went public. They were now a listed company, but they didn't own the product they were selling. I owned it.”
Jeremy Stoppelman says Yelp filters out 25% of submitted reviews on average
“Yelp has a mechanism where 25% on average of reviews are not shown on the businesses page, and we are by far the most aggressive of any review site out there.”
Ben Conniff: Right whale entanglements are not happening in Maine waters
“All the data and evidence shows that any issues with right whales are not, really not happening in Maine waters based on their migratory patterns and where their food is”
Most Skincare Brands Use Stock Formulas With 0.01% Active Ingredients, Tsai Claims
“You go to a contract manufacturer, they have stock formulas and stock packaging, you pick it, you put in 0.01% of a marketing level ingredient, you put your name on it, you pick a fragrance, and it's out the door. And that is how the vast majority of skincare …”
Skin bleaching products are the largest skincare category in Africa
“The biggest skincare product in Africa is skin bleaching products.”
Black women receive just 0.0006% of venture funding dollars in the US
“When you go and set up a business, 0.0006% of funding dollars goes to black women.”
White men average $2.2M to start businesses versus $42K for Black women
“Meanwhile, the average white male gets 2.2 million dollars to set up a business. The average amount of money given to a black woman is 42,000 dollars.”
Shake Shack was the first public company to return its PPP loan
“Within 36 hours of understanding the government had run out of money, the company and its board made the decision to return it, and it was the first of any public company to do so, and that actually began a cascade of, What I'm told is well, well north of two …”
Kevin Hart: Hollywood claimed Black-led comedies do not translate globally
“So I was told that comedy starring a African-American lead wouldn't transfer universal. They just don't. And within that conversation, after hearing it so many times, my fight became asking studios for the opportunity To be marketed internationally for an oppo…”
Von Ahn: Duolingo has 50x Rosetta Stone's users and 5x its revenue
“By now, I would say we probably have 50 times more users than they do. Our revenue is probably five X their revenue.”
Brown: Livestock emissions exceed all global transportation emissions combined
“I became aware of the greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock industry, which are huge. They're greater than all forms of power transportation combined.”
Pillsbury threatened independent distributors who carried Ben & Jerry's
“Pillsbury had bought Haagen-Dazs, so they owned them, and they went to independent ice cream distributors, who were distributing all sorts of different brands of ice creams, and you know, told them that if those distributors continued to deliver Ben & Jerry's,…”
A VC group demanded 70% equity for a $500,000 seed check
“It was it was 70%. They would own 70%, have every blocking right, every, every, every right to”
Stacy Brown: Partners demanded $1.3M within 30 days to be bought out
“And they said, here's our price, which was three times the amount that they had purchased four months earlier.
And not only is this is our price, but you have 30 days to get it to us.
How much were they asking for?
1.3.
1.3 million.”
Madden: Stratton Oakmont ran pump-and-dumps; Steve Madden was only real company
“Well, they were totally manipulated. The stocks, they went up, and it, you know, it was a pump, it was a classic pump and dump. And only Steve Madden was a real company.”
Private equity investors fired Moya-Jones from Aden + Anais in 2018
“Well plain and simple, I got fired from my own business, which was pretty heartbreaking. The investors and I just didn't see eye to eye and They didn't think that I was capable of continuing to run the business, and it just became extremely cantankerous and un…”
Wolfe Herd: I didn't invent Tinder, but marketing earned my co-founder title
“So Tinder was not my idea. I've never said it was my idea ever. I became a co-founder of Tinder via my marketing contributions and my early involvement in getting it launched and getting it out there.”
Zimmer offered $90 million to buy back K&G after his firing
“Because after I was fired, The first thing I tried to do was buy K&G from Men's... For ninety million dollars.”
Waters: Scratch-Cooked School Lunches Can Fit USDA Reimbursement Budgets
“I know that we can make school lunch that can even fit into the minuscule budget of the USDA reimbursement. If we know how to cook, and we do not buy fast food, if we buy the food from the people who are doing it right, and directly,”
Logic: Def Jam undershipped Under Pressure and refused to buy shelf space
“To say what Chris won't, they undershipped us. They didn't believe in us so much that they undershipped my album, and you had all these other huge artists with, you know, 400,000 plus CDs in stores, and I had fans going to Best Buys, having to Have the workers…”
Southwest claims Smithsonian credit for e-tickets, but Morris Air invented them
“They were, and have credit today in the Smithsonian as being the first Ticketless airline, but it was really our system that did it.”
Dunn: Bonobos' physical retail and wholesale channels ultimately funded e-commerce losses
“Our most profitable business became Nordstrom. And our second most profitable were our retail stores, and those two businesses' profits were funding losses from the e-commerce business, which is a wonderful paradox to the way that we conceived of the company.”
Kelleher: Southwest was the most heavily unionized carrier in the US
“We were the most heavily unionized carrier in the United States. Our low costs were not due to being a non-union carrier, since we were more unionized than our competitors were.”
Mackey: Animal rights activists' accusations against Whole Foods were fundamentally correct
“That the accusations that the animal rights people had made about what we were doing were fundamentally correct.”
Hyman: Wardrobing return rate was 70% at Neiman Marcus, 35% at Macy's
“The theft rate, so the rent the runway rate at Macy's is only 35%, whereas at Neiman Marcus it's 70%, proving once and for all rich people steal more than poor people.”
Stein: Betterment's Tax Management Saves Clients More Than Platform Fees
“We tax manage for you to save you more than you even pay us in fees. In taxes, we give you net positive returns on your investment with us”
Cisco founders threatened PR disaster post-IPO to recover full unvested equity
“We ended up getting it back, but only because it would have looked very bad for the stock six months after when both of the founders walk out, and you can't tar and feather the other one with, girls don't know how to play on a team.”
A Dallas finance firm backed a competitor after a failed buyout
“And then there was a Dallas-based company that tried to buy us, a finance company, that basically finally said, if you won't sell to us, we're just gonna knock you off with another makeup artist, which they did which is fine.”
McKelvey: WeWork Secured a $45M Valuation Commitment Before Signing Its First Lease
“And we had no building, we had no signed lease even, and we proposed a forty-five million dollar valuation. And that's pretty high for a business that is unproven, and so he said yes. You know, he said, okay, I want to be a third partner, and so I'll commit to…”
Madden: Steve Madden IPO was manipulated in Stratton Oakmont pump-and-dump
“Well, they were totally manipulated. The stocks, they went up, and it, you know, it was a pump, it was a classic pump and dump. And only Steve Madden was a real company.”
Lululemon's board ousted Wilson as chairman, deeming him a public liability
“The board took me off as chairman because they felt like I wasn't the right front man for the company anymore, and I was a liability to Lou Lemon.”
Shaich: Au Bon Pain was the first example of fast casual dining
“And for people who were working in white collar jobs increasingly in urban settings, this was the first example of what we later came to call fast casual. This was an attempt to do something that was better But in a quick service mode.”
Lake: 94% of VCs are men who lack passion for women's apparel
“94% of venture investors are men, and probably the majority of men don't feel passionate about dressing women.”
Dyson: Vacuum makers rejected bagless cyclone to protect paper bag profits
“And one or two of them said they actually rather like selling paper bags. It's like, you know, Gillette selling a razor blade. They can make a lot of money out of bags. So, essentially, they were curious, but didn't want to license it.”
Hoffman learned he was ousted from Socialnet's board via Series C paperwork
“Amongst the things they did is when we were raising the Series C round, the way that I learned that I was no longer going to be a board member was that the financing paperwork showed up, and that was just what was in the financing paperwork.”