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
Cost Plus Drugs can switch robotics manufacturing lines in four hours
“We can change the drug we're making in a four hour period, you know, so we can make a one month or one year supply of something, then roll it over to another drug.”
Taylor: Company canceled $50M in orders to avoid post-COVID retail glut
“Kurt and his sales team got on the phone and spent four months canceling from our end, fifty million dollars worth of orders, knowing that those aren't real orders.”
Dubin: Dollar Shave Club captured 20% to 25% of men's non-disposable razors
“I won't know the exact market share numbers off the top of my head, but I think that, you know, as of now, there's about 20 to 25% of the men's non-disposable razor market that we have.”
Bernstein: Dermatologists advise against using Neosporin due to high allergy rates
“If you speak to any dermatologist, they're actually going to tell you that neosporin is the one thing they don't want you to use. It actually causes more harm than good, and there are more people allergic to it than we think about.”
Edible Arrangements owns the trademark 'edibles' and edibles.com
“Well, we own the trademark edibles and we own edibles.com.”
Zimmer: 3 percent of the US workforce had earned income on Lyft
“Yeah, there were, I think it was when I was leaving, like, three percent of the U.S. Workforce had, had earned on Lyft”
Faherty Brand boldly signed 40 new retail store leases during the pandemic
“And we signed over the course of 2020 and 21, 40 leases over the next For the, for stores that would open over the next three years.”
P&G Pursued Laundry Services Because Tide Reached 52% Market Share Cap
“They're at 52% market share of Tide, and they can't push that much further. And so they've always organically had this journey where if they can't provide the goods for laundry, can they just do your laundry?”
All But One Property Partner Refused P&G's Bounties to Drop PressBox
“And ultimately, all of our partners except for one said no thanks.”
Lakers' official soda Poppi cannot be sold in the team's arena
“We are the official soda of the Lakers, and we're not allowed to be sold in that stadium because of contracts.”
Mark Sokolowski: Cabbage leaf wraps outperform standard care for arthritis
“There's actual data that shows that cabbage leaf wraps are more effective than usual care for arthritis and for, even for, like, breast engorgement, any sort of inflammatory condition.”
Teamsters repeatedly threatened AriZona founders during early beer distribution days
“Yeah, we were threatened a lot, you know, we were threatened by the Teamsters about, you know, you can't do that, you know, that's not allowed, you know, because the Schaefer delivery guy, we were delivering Schaefer.”
Competing iced tea brands cut costs by using fake artificial flavorings
“The typical response in the flavor category was you know, you don't have to put a lot of tea in on a tea, you just put flavor, you can kind of Fake it up. And then I realized that what other guys are not doing is putting real ingredients in because, you know, …”
AriZona's can manufacturing cost is lower today than 33 years ago
“You know, our cost of making a can today is less than it cost us 33 years ago to make the same can.”
Amy Errett: Madison Reed removed eight ingredients no competitor has eliminated
“We talk about a better for you formula, and we are very factual about these eight things that we factually have taken out. That nobody else has taken out.”
Errett: The IPO window is non-existent for consumer companies
“If you look at the IPO window, it's non-existent for consumer companies.”
Eleven Madison Park's revenue dropped significantly after its plant-based pivot
“We definitely saw a dip in, in, in revenue because the audience we're catering to became a lot smaller.”
Eleven Madison Park's plant-based transition raised its labor costs by 20%
“Our labor costs went up by, like, 20%.”
Ahmed: LeBron James and Michael Phelps were initially paying WHOOP customers
“We had no relationship with him. We had no relationship at the time with Michael Phelps either, and many of these athletes, I mean, they were essentially just a buyer of the product.”
Ahmed: Amazon's Alexa Fund passed on investing after extensive product diligence
“Yeah, we spent a lot of time with them, and they included their product team in the diligence, and then they ultimately did not invest in Whoop, to our surprise.”
McLeod: Screen time replaced 70% of time spent with friends
“If you look at the loneliness epidemic, and you actually look over the last 20 years at the amount of time people spend on their screens, we've almost completely displaced in real life time spent with our friends with time spent looking at screens. About 70% o…”
Chobani hired refugees and provided translators to overcome manufacturing labor shortages
“I called the refugee center, and I said, what is the problem? And she said these are people who have a right to work, legally settled, and they don't speak the language, they don't have, you know, transportation, or people don't want to touch it because it's a…”
Ulukaya: Chobani Was One Night From Bankruptcy Before Lender Intervened
“One night before, before we filed, the banker called and said, Hamdi, we hear that you're going to do this. It's going to make us look so bad. I think they were also acting, acting really out of ordinary at that time, forcing me to do something. And he says, w…”
Microsoft threatened to drop Figma unless it started charging for its product
“One of their design leaders came to our office and spent some real time with me, and he I think was sussing out, like, is, are they serious or not? And at the end, he goes, you know, your tool is free. I said, I know, I, we gotta make some improvements, I thin…”
Glass rebar is twice as strong as steel and sold in Lowe's
“Yeah, rebar for buildings, for driveways, for, and it never rusts. It's twice as strong as steel, and it's one quarter the weight, and it's available in every Lowe's store in America.”
Competitor LitterMaid offered approximately $200,000 to buy the Litter-Robot patents
“One was from our, the competitor litter made. And if I recall, I think it was a number around 200,000 to buy the patents.”
Von Ahn: Duolingo captures 90% of mobile language app users
“If you take all people who are learning languages on mobile apps, 90% of them are using Duolingo.”
Guy Raz: Older Founders Have a Higher Rate of Startup Success
“There's a lot of evidence to show that late Sort of entrepreneurs who are older, not late, but older, have a much higher rate of success because they come to the table with a lot of experience”
Sweetgreen CEO: Infinite Kitchen requires 30% to 50% less store-level labor
“But on, on average, 30 to 50% less labor. At the store level. So you're running it with far, you know, far fewer people.”
Neman: Wingstop added sandwiches to lower costs by purchasing whole birds
“Wingstop didn't introduce sandwiches until like two years ago. And by the way, the reason they did it was not from a customer perspective. It was from a supply chain perspective because they realized that if they introduce sandwiches, now they can buy whole bi…”
Spiegel: Reggie Brown conceived the idea of disappearing photos
“I mean, he came up with the idea of sending disappearing photos and share that with me”
Spiegel: Lightspeed's Seed Note ROFR Discouraged Other Series A Leads
“The writer first refusal allowed Lightspeed to buy up to 50% of the next round and because of the way that a convertible note works, that meant that they would control that series of stock. So they would control the series A of stock, and that meant that other…”
Wang built a Linux-based smart TV prototype with apps in 1998
“I actually had a whole design lab. We laid out a board. We found a software company in Boston to do, to Linux-based software for us. I found the chip supplier. Put a CPU in the TV and connect it to the internet. And when you turn on that TV, first page was app…”
Wang: Sony and Panasonic avoided Costco to protect Best Buy and Circuit City
“People like Sony and Panasonic, and they don't want to deal with Costco. They give Costco the leftovers because it's, ah, they want to protect their existing dealership with Circuit City and Best Buy.”
Food Investors Now Demand $50M To $100M In Sales For Acquisitions
“You know, what I'm hearing from investors right now in the food space is they're waiting, they're really looking for brands to hit 50, really a hundred million dollars in sales. You know, a couple years ago, it was 20. If a brand hit twenty million dollars in …”
Zennström: Early 2000s European VCs Primarily Funded US Internet Copycats
“The model for European VCs at the time was to invest in a copycat of a U.S. Internet company, and use the language barrier as a moat. So you kind of was really smart to invest in say a German copycat of eBay because eBay would probably buy them or a Nordic ver…”
Zennström: Skype Was the Largest Post-Dot-Com Internet Acquisition Globally
“The largest Internet M&A before us was PayPal to eBay, right? One point by a billion. And So this was like two X. And then you had. This is amazing. YouTube. YouTube was also 1.6 billion or something like that. Yeah. Also the same year with Google. So this was…”
Hyman: Rent the Runway Pays Zero Upfront for Most Inventory
“Coming into 2025, the vast majority of the inventory that we have on our platform, we don't pay for anymore. And we don't pay up front. We just revenue share with our designer partners because they view Rent the Runway as a significant part of their marketing.”
SpotHero's sales now exceed all digital parking competitors combined
“Yeah, I would say, like, we are the largest. Like, we have 1600 parking companies that we partner with, and when you look at, you know, the sales that we're doing, usually it's greater than all the others combined.”
Nassif: Williams-Sonoma private-label deal financed Caldrea's entire existence
“And that was a significant revenue program for us. And it served as our financing for the rest of the, for the rest of the life of the company.”
Lululemon's sheer pant recall allowed Beyond Yoga to capture Equinox floor space
“I remember when they had the whole, you know, sheer pant debacle. I don't know if you remember that, but that was a moment, because at the time, I think we were the number two brand carried on. Equinox. But Lulu was, you know, the lion's share of the space. We…”
Ben Leventhal: Early online media prioritized publishing speed over accuracy
“The priority was pace and speed, and certainly that took precedence over, I would say, accuracy in some cases.”
Jack Conte: Two-thirds of Patreon payment volume goes to middle-class creators
“About two-thirds of our payments volume is not going to the, like, you know, super top-of-market creatorists, like the super rich and famous creators. It's going to what we call, I don't like the term, but, like, some people call it, like, the creative middle …”
The Container Store Achieved Sub-10% Turnover Versus Triple-Digit Industry Rates
“You know, later on Fortune Magazine's running around saying we're the best company to work for in America, but the way we measured that was by having single digit, less than 10% employee turnover in an industry that had triple digit turnover.”
Ainsworth: Marucci and Victus both surpassed Louisville Slugger in MLB usage
“As we surpassed Louisville Slugger, I think in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in 2018 is the number two bad and used by major league players, I should say.”
Tannen: Suppliers sold Chinese-grown cotton labeled as 'Egyptian cotton'
“I found that these Egyptian cotton sheets that they were selling me were woven in China. They just named a plant, a cotton plant in China, Egyptian cotton, so that they could call it that.”
Yvon Chouinard Was 'Ashamed' of His 1987 Chouinard Equipment Catalog
“And we gave him a copy, and he called myself and my marketing director, who really was my partner in the business. And we said, as he looked at the catalog, that he was really ashamed of it, that it represented everything that he stood against in what was goin…”