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 176 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
Altman: AGI is an exception to capitalism and should be government-led
“Obviously I think capitalism is great. But I think AGI is sort of an exception to that. In a well-run society, I think even if we rewound the US, you know, 50 plus years, this would absolutely happen by the government.”
Cuban: Feuding with NBA referees cost the Mavericks the 2006 championship
“And it set me off with a lot of those guys and probably cost me a championship in 2006.”
Huang would 'absolutely not' start NVIDIA again if he knew the pain
“The question is, suppose I knew everything then that I now know how hard it is, and all of the pain and suffering and all the embarrassment and humiliation and all the setbacks, and you compress all of that. And you just told that thirty-year-old kid, listen t…”
Mason: Groupon could have rivaled tech giants without post-rejection execution mistakes
“And it could have, maybe it could have been, were it not for some execution mistakes that happened after we made that decision.”
Nick Green: VCs would have vetoed Thrive Market's early sustainability practices
“The other big benefit was that had we had VCs they didn't care about the mission. So their focus would be, how do you make the business model work? And I think they would have looked at that in a very short term way. The influencers cared only about the missio…”
Nike's Colin Kaepernick campaign would have failed if the brand wobbled
“So I think if you're going to take a stand like that, which I think was right for them, and right for their brand, and right for their values, it worked. If they had wobbled, it would have been a very different story.”
American Giant Could Produce a High-Quality 100% Domestic Cotton T-Shirt for $15
“I mean, I could produce a great quality, hundred percent cotton t-shirt that you would love. That would retail for 15 bucks or less.”
Mike Salguero believes ButcherBox would have failed if it raised venture capital
“If we had gone and raised money, we would not have a business right now, because if we had built a model that was like, oh, we're just going to, like, buy a bunch of customers and hope for the best, we would have, like, you know, it's a game of musical chairs,…”
Amazon could not build a successful social product due to commerce-first culture
“But no, I mean, it turns out Amazon could not have built a successful social product because they are wired for commerce. This is my impression. You know, they shared with us a bunch of thinking they had in the social space, and it was just clear that they, wh…”
Farquhar says raising Silicon Valley capital would have made Atlassian less disruptive
“I really think if we had grown up in Silicon Valley and had venture capital around us, that we would have built a very different company that wouldn't have been as disruptive as ours has been because we didn't have venture capital.”
Wales: VC funding would have killed Wikipedia's community governance model
“And in fact, one of the reasons that Wikipedia became a huge success, I would say, ironically, is the lack of funding. Because if I had had the money, if I'd gone to Silicon Valley and convinced somebody to give me millions of dollars to start this, then your …”
Discounting Tempur-Pedic pillows to $30 would have hurt sales
“I think if you sold it for 30, you'd sell less.”
Lack of venture capital forced Wikipedia to build community-driven governance
“One of the reasons that Wikipedia became a huge success, I would say, ironically, is the lack of funding. Because if I had had the money, if I'd gone to Silicon Valley and convinced somebody to give me millions of dollars to start this, then your natural insti…”
Canion says Compaq would never have sold to HP under his leadership
“The leaders of those companies maintained enough control to make sure that it never got into the hands of somebody that looked at it just purely from a financial standpoint. If I had been there, if I had been leading the company, we would never have sold. We w…”
Publicizing Oprah's endorsement early would have bankrupted UGG due to insufficient capital
“If we had announced that Oprah was wearing our shoes or boots, it would have killed the company when I owned the company, because I didn't have the capital to build the product to take on that demand.”
Peretti: BuzzFeed should not have done debt-laden SPAC deal to go public
“There's a million tactical things that if I had a time machine, I could, you know, like not, not do a SPAC acquisition where we take on a bunch of debt you know, before and go public without raising capital. That was, that I would tell my younger self not to d…”
Hastings: Netflix probably would have accepted any Blockbuster offer in 2000
“And I don't remember them actually making an offer or, but I think we probably would have taken any offer, but it was not, it didn't result in any deal transaction.”
Hetrick: TRX would not exist if it had accepted early Costco pilot
“In our case, you know, we had product problems that ended up coming out shortly after We passed this up. Had I not passed it up for that reason, there would have never been a T-Rex.”
Acton Smith: Not selling Mind Candy to Disney was probably a mistake
“When you're an entrepreneur, you do need to think of all the stakeholders and investors and employees. Not selling was probably a mistake in hindsight.”
Andy Dunn: Giving equity to celebrity influencers beats Instagram ads
“And if I could go back and do bonobos again, I wish I understood how much better it is to dilute your brand by giving the equity to someone like that than running Instagram ads.”
Jeni's Ice Cream Would Have Failed If Launched In Brooklyn
“It would be impossible to do what we do at Jenny's. All of our money would have been in, you know, rent, and paying people, and all the things that you have to do in Brooklyn that would be different from Columbus. And here we can put it all in the ice cream, a…”
López: Would not have reached Fox C-suite without accent coaching
“A thousand percent. I don't think I would have.”
Tom Rinks: We would have accepted a $200,000 settlement from Taco Bell
“If they would have offered us, they're gonna hate to hear this right now, but if they would have offered us 200,000, We'd have taken it.”
Domestic mask production capabilities cost $5 million to build, Armbrust says
“I'm pretty sure for like five million dollars, you could make the capability of making that many masks.”
An extended legal fight with Wix could have bankrupted Automattic
“When Wix did that, they had way more money than us. So a legal battle would have taken years, and even possibly bankrupted automatic, depending on how long it went.”
Lore: Jet.com's $50 annual membership model would have succeeded
“No, I still continue to think to this day that that would have worked well.”
Tsai Believes Tatcha Would Have Shut Down During Pandemic Without Unilever Acquisition
“If we were independent, I think there's a very good chance we'd be shutting down the company right now.”
Trussell: Tempur-Pedic would have sold fewer pillows at $30 than $90
“I think if you sold it for 30, you'd sell less.”
Hyman: Rent the Runway would not survive closing its fulfillment warehouses
“Like, to us, if you close down your warehouse, you're essentially, rent the runway wouldn't survive. And the work that we've been doing over the last 11 years to build the company would just disappear.”
Canion: Compaq would never have sold to HP if I led it
“If I had been there, if I had been leading the company, we would never have sold. We would have figured out a way to solve the problem.”
Trussell would have sold Tempur-Pedic to Sealy in early 2000s
“All those years back in the early, I mean, late nineties and early 2000, I was expecting to get a call from an industry player like Sealy. Guy Raz: To say, hey, we want to buy you out or something. Bobby Trussell: Yeah. And we would have said, Okay.”
Butterfield realized Glitch could never justify its $17.5M venture investment
“It was never going to become the kind of business that would justify 17 and a half million dollars of venture capital investment.”
Naficy: Male founders receive more VC credit for past entrepreneurial success
“I think that if I were a man, I would probably Have gotten a little bit more credit for what I'd previously delivered. I think the personal reputation effect of what had happened with E would have magnified.”
Johnson would have accepted 20 percent equity to secure Malone's capital
“What Malone didn't know at the time, if he had reversed the numbers and said, I'll be 80, and Bob, you'll be 20, I said, John, that's a deal.”
Ohanian: SOPA and PIPA would have effectively broken the internet
“Well-intentioned people, I think most of whom are well-intentioned in D.C., writing bills for technology they don't really understand without people around them who are themselves technologists often lead to things like SOPA and PIPA, and those were two bills …”
Cuban: If starting over, I would easily become a multimillionaire again
“Could I become a multi-millionaire, millionaire again? I have no doubt, because I would work hard enough, and I, and look, and I don't mean that to sound disrespectful. There's a lot of people who work really hard but in sales, you know, knowing what my sales …”
Lütke believes Shopify would have failed if founded two years later
“Like, this is not a kind of company that could have been started even two years later, right? It needed to be started right then, and it needed to be ready and good by the time the opportunity around the financial crisis came around.”
Steve Ells believes Chipotle might have grown larger with better work-life balance
“Maybe it could have been even bigger had I been more balanced.”
Krause: QVC-Only Sales Model Would Inevitably Hit Saturation and Fail
“It would have been a spike, and then a saturation point, and then they would, the minute that you had a bad show, you would have been kicked off.”
Hastings: Netflix launched too early in 1998 and should have waited
“In hindsight, we were too early. Okay. We should have waited a couple of years to launch.”
Hastings: Netflix would have moved slower on Qwikster if executives spoke up
“And if they had known that they would have spoken up more forcefully, and we probably would have taken a slower, more cautious approach.”
Chip Gaines: Raising private equity would have accelerated Magnolia but cost 50% equity
“Had we gotten tens of millions of dollars earlier than The downside would have been somebody would have owned 50% of our business. That would have been true. And we could have done that. The upside would have been, we would have been able to build this much mo…”
Humm admits he would have lacked courage for pivot knowing fallout
“If I would have known all the things that I know today, I don't think I would have had the courage To go down this path.”
Ulukaya would expand Chobani in slower stages if done over
“I would have been more prepared than I would have done in In stages, I wouldn't do it in as fast. I would be more cautious. I would put more, you know, team members in place and make some changes.”
Perry Chen: Future common sense might have stopped me founding Kickstarter
“The delusion that I had, and I think the delusion that we all have as entrepreneurs, if I cut through that delusion with some common sense from the future, to be honest, who knows if I would have gone through with it.”
Tew: Early capital constraints forced Calm to innovate sleep stories
“I think if we had raised tons of money very, very early, we may have not had the scrappiness to, say, do sleep stories. You know, we may have just kind of been drunk on, you know, expensive, unprofitable user acquisition. So I think we kind of got the foundati…”