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 19 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
Weiss: Retail-first beauty brands design for shelf space, not consumer needs
“Beauty brands build products and clients for the needs of, you know, Macy's and, you know, Sephora and Ulta and CVS, and those are shelf space needs and seasonality needs and margin needs and all of these different needs that have nothing to do with you as the…”
Weiss: Only 4% of Venture Capital Deals Went to Female CEOs
“Four percent of venture capital deals last year went to female CEOs. So four out of a hundred deals went to women.”
Emily Weiss: Beauty is not zero-sum because no single brand meets all needs
“Well, it's interesting because beauty is not that competitive in my mind because how many different brands are we all using every day? Like how many different lip products do I have in my purse right now? You don't want to know from like all, all different bra…”
Weiss: Beauty drives magazine ad revenue despite minimal editorial coverage
“Beauty is kind of like this, Ugly stepsister to fashion in, in magazines and in media. It's really funny because all of the ad revenue or most, a lot of it comes from beauty in these magazines. But if you think about it, like, if you're reading an issue of a f…”
Weiss: Everyday peers drive consumer influence more than celebrities
“Some of our most popular features, like, they're not celebrities, you know. Like, we're in this celebrity culture, and we hear how much, you know, influence, influencers have, and yet, like, If we all really take a moment to think about, like, who's the last p…”
Weiss: Women face a double bind between lazy and frivolous beauty standards
“It's so hard for women to be the right level of maintenance. If you're too low maintenance, then you're lazy. You know, there's this stigma of, like, the person who, like, isn't doing enough, and yet if you're wearing a lot of makeup or you're, like, look like…”
Weiss: 50% of Sephora Shoppers Use Their iPhones In-Store
“50% of people who go into a Sephora take out their iPhones.”
Weiss: High-coverage 50-shade foundations are almost impossible to sell online
“If we had, you know, A super high coverage foundation product, then that would require us to make, you know, 50 shades, or something, or 55 shades, or something like that, which would be almost, like, impossible to sell online.”
Weiss: Beauty brands sell to conglomerates primarily for retail distribution
“And typically when you sell to a larger conglomerate, it's because you need more distribution. Because the benefit of having, you know, being a L'Oreal or an Estee Lauder company or something like that is that they have the This vast network of retailers.”
Weiss: Work experience depends on your direct boss, not the company
“I think it's all about, it's kind of like anywhere, it all depends who your boss is. Like, it doesn't matter what company you're at, it's like, isn't there that, I just heard from someone that your personality is a result of the, like, three or five people who…”
Weiss: Into the Gloss launched for under $1,000
“Literally, I mean, I'm going to contradict myself, because I'm sure in another interview I've said, like, 900 or 700 or, like, eight 50, but... Under a thousand dollars. Yeah, because The website part was not expensive. Right. The money literally was just for …”
Weiss: Global Beauty Market Will Reach $750B in Six Years
“Beauty is a huge industry. It's a four hundred and fifty billion dollar global market. It's going to be seven hundred and fifty billion in six years.”
Weiss: Only 6% of venture capitalists are women
“Six percent of venture capitalists are women, and hopefully that will go up.”
Glossier hosts 1,000 top customers in a Slack channel exchanging 10k weekly messages
“We've put a thousand of our top customers in a Slack channel who exchange over 10,000 messages a week.”
Glossier hired early Instagram engineers to build its digital platform
“So, we actually just hired the person who built DMs and camera at Instagram, and then we also made another hire of the guy who was employee nine at Instagram who's an amazing product designer, digital product designer, because we're spending a lot of time thin…”
Emily Weiss: Ralph Lauren internship was pure luck, not grit
“I really believe in kind of grit, and I mean, I didn't make that up. That's Angela Duckworth and her book, Grit. A very good book, but that actually just was luck. I mean, that, there was nothing gritty about babysitting for your neighbor's kid and he happened…”