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 33 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
Huang: Founders Should Take Dilution Because Startup Outcomes Are Binary
“I think it's okay to take outside capital. Because most businesses, the end result and the quote unquote end result for the founder, most businesses are quite binary. Like, meaning that this is going to be really big, like we're going to see Surfing Cow and Se…”
Huang: Remote work accelerates burnout by eliminating casual post-meeting relationship repair
“The lesson that I learned was really that if you think about kind of everyone as being a battery, by being completely remote, I think you discharge the battery at a very, at a much faster rate. For most folks at our very core, We're social human beings. Like, …”
Boxed guaranteed employees will not lose jobs solely due to automation
“What we committed for everyone here is that you weren't going to lose your job solely because of automation. You will have to be retrained. You will have to learn how to operate, how to service the state of the art machines and work alongside of them.”
Huang: Office Coffee Accounts Act Like Highly Sticky Annuities
“Office coffee is like a knife fight of an industry. Everyone wants to sell coffee to offices, because they become like annuities. Like, you know, once you're in there, everyone's happy. The fastest way for team members to burn down the office is to say we're o…”
Huang: Founders harm companies by packing boxes instead of leading
“For every moment you are there packing a box, you're actually doing the company a disservice because you've graduated past that. You now have hundreds of people in your charge, and you need to do the things that they can't do themselves and that they, that you…”
Huang: Offhand comments from CEOs inadvertently trigger massive organizational pivots
“Sometimes as a co-founder, or as a CEO, as a leader, Sometimes by just saying a few things, the entire organization tries to pivot around kind of what you just said, and so realizing that, listen, like, I'm just trying to help the team, and sometimes by helpin…”
Founders focus on company runway but often ignore personal financial runway
“And also, I think the key was that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about is your personal runway. And so you talk, you know, everyone talks about their company runway, how much money they're going to raise, et cetera. But the early days, you're probably not…”
CPG supply chains and bonus structures actively prevent sales to startup retailers
“When you're starting out in this industry, you have to understand that it's run by behemoths feeding other behemoths. And so the supply chain, the, how they're bonused, they're not incentivized to really sell each's to people. It's just doesn't move the needle…”
Traditional warehouse club 10-10-2 economic models fail in modern e-commerce
“The traditional model of how warehouse clubs work doesn't really work online because it never really I contemplated the variable cost being the main cost driver. So traditionally it's called the 10, 10, two model. So 10% cost, you get your 10% margin on your g…”
Huang: Adding handwritten customer notes to shipments is worth the cost
“With engineered standards and automated facilities, we know down to the second how much it actually costs us to write a handwritten note, but it's worth it. It's worth it to differentiate and to have that one-on-one connection with the customer.”
Limiting SKU assortment prevents customer decision paralysis and concentrates wholesale buying power
“We tried to curtail SKU's assortment because it made for an easier and smoother shopping experience. And so you didn't have this kind of paralysis by analysis. And so people would come through the app and hunt and pack and just build this, suddenly build a bas…”
Boxed's newest fulfillment centers are 100% automated using proprietary in-house robotics
“Our newest fulfillment centers are a hundred percent automated by our own hardware these days.”
Huang: Boxed had ~$20M cash left before selling software to BlackRock
“We still had, what, almost twenty million dollars cash left in the bank, but collectively we decided the best kind of path forward was boxed, was to sell our software business. So BlackRock ended up buying that and owning that.”
Chieh Huang: Outplacement costs thousands and is mostly limited to executives
“What we found is outplacement is, you know, cost several thousand dollars, and unless you're a certain level of executive, you generally don't get it.”
Huang: Successful founders are big risk-takers, not unattainable geniuses
“And I felt like it was big risk takers and But I didn't feel like anyone was really like a bonafide genius, you know, of like, oh man, that's something no human can do.”
Astro Ape's mobile game Office Heroes launched with three daily active users
“Only three people registered as daily active users, and so someone's parents are lying to us, so it was not a pretty sight in the beginning”
Zynga acquired Astro Ape for double-digit millions in cash and stock
“Yeah, it wasn't deep into eight figures, but it was definitely double digit millions, a mix of cash and stock.”
Mobile commerce represents a vastly bigger opportunity than gaming virtual currency
“People are gonna use these phones to buy things in the future, and that is way bigger of an opportunity than just virtual currency.”
Half of Boxed's seed funding came from investors writing blind checks
“Half of our seed investment were kind of What I call blind checks.”
Boxed founders negotiated the purchase of boxed.com domain for $35,000
“And so we emailed him and said, well, buy this domain. Would you want to sell it? And he's like, I forgot it was like 200 grand. And we're like, we'll give you 30. And he's like, no way. And we said, come on, you sat on it for so many years. We'll write you a …”
Over 80% of Boxed customers repurchase private-label Prince & Spring items
“Over half of our repeat customers have a Princeton Spring item in their cart, and if you buy a Princeton Spring item, over 80% will buy another one in their ensuing shop.”
E-commerce grocery shipping costs necessitate multi-item baskets to achieve profitability
“The more items you buy from Box or any e-commerce company, the more effectively you can price the items, because all those different, different items in that box, quote unquote, share that shipping cost, which is the biggest cost in e-commerce. And so, if you …”
Boxed averages $5,000 to $10,000 per semester for employee college tuition
“Between five to 10,000 dollars is the average amount. For a semester.”
Huang: $500 emergency fund is Boxed's most used employee benefit
“The most used program at Box are, For example, our 500 dollar emergency fund.”
Huang has zero involvement with the resurrected Boxed brand
“I have nothing to do with the box that has been resurrected today.”
Huang: Surfing Cow founder made $200,000 in skincare products at home
“You've cooked 200 grand worth of beef tallow sun products in your own kitchen.”
Huang: Early Boxed Recorded Zero Orders for Two Consecutive Days
“One of the folks that quit his six-figure paying job to join the dream and sit in my garage called and said, dude, I refreshed the page over and over. It's not broken. We got zero orders today. This dropped down to zero two days in a row.”
Law firm Proskauer rented Madison Square Garden for 2007 summer associates
“I mean, they've rented, I remember they've rented Madison Square Garden for us to play pickup basketball as a, as an event.”
Astro Ape Studios co-founders launched mobile gaming company with $13,000 each
“So I think they put in each, like, I think the buy-in, if I remember right, was about 13 grand.”
Astro Ape's initial plan was to release one game and retire
“The idea was to build one game, release it, become millionaires, and then retire.”
Social games dominated Facebook but were rare on Apple's App Store
“They evaluated the game, probably liked the story of us just being a few country bumpkins in Jersey in a, in an attic trying to build for this new platform they were launching, and liked the fact that we were building a social game, which was wildly popular on…”