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 21 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
Norton: Heinz's ketchup dominance will eventually be broken by future entrepreneurs
“My official on the record statement is that it just hasn't been sufficiently challenged yet. So I await the next generation of ketchup entrepreneurs to fulfill the mission that we could not fully fulfill.”
Norton: There had been no innovation in ketchup in 70 years
“There had been no innovation in ketchup in 70 years, and every other category of culture and of food had change, and so really it was, we saw this open space as an invitation to create something.”
Norton: Previous Heinz rivals failed by copying its packaging and positioning
“But every other ketchup out there would copy Heinz, the market leader, on the packaging, the materials, the brand positioning. It looked like a copycat, right? It was Heinz, but less so.”
Scott Norton Forged a Skadden Arps Legal Letter for Campus PR
“We used fake letterhead for the law firm Skadden Arps, and we wrote a letter to the Brown Daily Herald, the campus newspaper, accusing them of stealing Sir Kensington's recipe as a way to get the newspaper's attention”
Norton: Once you give equity to someone, you cannot take it away
“Once you give someone something, you cannot take it away. The experience of having it being taken away is a very difficult emotional experience at that point.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's created the first successful flavored grocery mayonnaises
“And because mayonnaise carries flavors so well, all of a sudden, we were making a sriracha mayo, and we were making a chipotle mayo, and so we really created, in Whole Foods and in grocery stores, the first successful flavored mayonnaises.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's ketchup sold better when matching category conventions
“The Closer that we got to category convention and ketchup, the more it would sell.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's spent zero dollars on Facebook ads from $8.5M raise
“Unlike so many of our peers, you know, Facebook didn't see a cent from that eight million dollar raise.”
Scott Norton: French Fry Pop-Up Delivered Sir Kensington's Best Marketing ROI
“Which was still definitely the best marketing money alongside the demo funds that we've ever spent.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's set seed valuation at $2.5 million
“We were going to raise at one million a valuation, and then I met with someone who said you should raise at ten million, and I said ten million seems crazy, and so Mark and I agreed on two and a half.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's Sharpied out kosher logos on first Williams-Sonoma run
“So we sat there with a Sharpie and we put a dot over every single kosher logo on every single label for that first run that we had for William Snow.”
Norton: Premium condiments increase grocery profits but squeeze restaurant margins
“The fundamental difference of the business of a retailer and a restaurant is that for a retailer, when they buy a product, if it's more expensive, then that actually means that there's more profit for them when they sell it. The opposite is really true with a …”
Norton: Mayonnaise quickly grew to 60% of Sir Kensington's sales
“And we did that and launching the mayonnaise transformed our business nearly overnight. Now, 50% of our sales are mayonnaise. Now, 60% of our sales are mayonnaise.”
Scott Norton: Ad Agency Mother New York Took Discounted Equity for Services
“With a really fantastic award-winning ad agency called Mother New York, where they would invest and they would get shares in the company, but they would get a discount because they would deliver for us also an advertising campaign.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's conducted employee terminations at an off-site restaurant
“We had this restaurant that was two blocks from our office that we would fire people at. So we wouldn't fire people in the office. We'd fire people at this restaurant.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's board would have advised against Unilever meeting
“Our board would have told us not to take the meeting.”
Norton: Unilever's 400-person sales force tripled Sir Kensington's business post-acquisition
“We went from having a retail sales team of four people to Unilever's sales team of 400 people spread across these 50 states, and so together with the team and with Unilever's fantastic team, the size of Sir Kensington's tripled.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's rejected founder-led naming to build an immersive world
“We were totally sure we were not going to call it Scott and Mark's ketchup. Like, to us, that was totally boring. We wanted to come up with something that was so radically interesting and different, and was a world that people could inhabit.”
Norton: Sir Kensington's founders initially thought physical products weren't viable startups
“We never thought this would be a viable business because Everybody starting companies around us, if they were starting companies, it was like Facebook and social networks, right? Like we didn't think that a physical products business was like a viable startup …”