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 11 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
Kalin: VC Fred Wilson fired me as Etsy CEO without giving a reason
“And went to their office and met him, and he told me that I was fired, but he didn't tell me why. And he just said, we have to do this.”
Kalin: Etsy secured its first $50,000 investment check from Spencer Aey
“Went back the next day, picked up a check, Etsy's first money in for 50,000 dollars, and walked by Stern and was like, you know, I did it.”
Kalin: Etsy generated $1 million in sales in its first year
“In the first year of business, we did a million dollars in sales, and that seemed like quite a lot, and this was all being driven by the more organic traffic of the early web, you know, being written up on blogs like Boing Boing.”
Kalin: Etsy approached profitability and faced little pressure during the 2008 recession
“So there really wasn't much of any financial pressure on the business building it through the recession. And it was approaching profitability at this point.”
Kalin: I held under 5% of Etsy at the time of its IPO
“I didn't have a huge amount, you know, and the company went public. I didn't even make the threshold of shareholders with over five percent that you have to disclose.”
Kalin: My Etsy shares were locked up for one year post-IPO
“And then once NC went public, my shares were locked up for a year anyways, while the share price was falling.”
Kalin: Undercut a $1,600 quote by half for first web development job
“I, again, jokingly, just kind of said, I'll do it for half. And he goes, okay, great. And he kind of shoes me out of his office. And I leave his office holding this piece of paper that was someone else's proposal to make a website for this restaurant. And was …”
Kalin: Built reputation rebuilding the Get Crafty website in 2003
“So I made that first website, and because this is I don't know, 2003, I got known as, oh, this guy can make a website, and the wife of one of my NYU professors, Jean Rayla, was running a website called Get Crafty, and she needed that website rebuilt.”
Kalin: PayPal was early Etsy's exclusive payment method
“Our exclusive method of payment was PayPal, and so if PayPal worked in that location, then we were able to just
Ride those rails.”
Kalin: Hand-crocheted penis cozies were an unexpected early hit on Etsy
“There was one class of items that took off that I didn't even know was something that existed, and that is penis cozies, and they are hand crocheted cozies for male genitalia, and generally the community was totally supportive of that, and I thought it was A r…”