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 12 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
Cramer: Sentry refused Uber's lucrative enterprise contract to avoid on-premise software
“Uber actually did pay for a year for a support contract. And it was a lot of money. It was a big, big contract for us. And we did, we chose to not renew it. And I'm like, I don't want to be in that business. I don't want to sell on-prem software. I don't want …”
Cramer: Open source commoditizes markets by gutting competitor monetization
“If we don't make money, nobody will make money in this industry because we will gut the whole thing. And that was the entire strategy of like, you know what? It's okay that Uber doesn't pass because Uber's not gonna pay anybody. And we've just removed that. An…”
Winters: A $100M public company cannot beat rivals with $4B in capital
“I just don't think there's a way that a public company that raised like a hundred million in IPO is going to outcompete. Companies that have raised four billion dollars each, I think, in Uber and DoorDash like to crush you.”
Winters: TAM is a misleading metric for early-stage marketplaces
“TAM is kind of a misleading metric for marketplaces, because in all the biggest marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb, it looked like there was no TAM.”
Winters: Startups nearly went bankrupt blindly copying Uber's expensive launcher playbook
“A bunch of people tried to copy Uber's launcher strategy, and then a bunch of people like almost went bankrupt doing it because it's really expensive and they weren't raising billions.
You didn't really understand what your playbook required.
You were just kin…”
Winters: Owning demand matters most in marketplaces, contrary to Uber's philosophy
“And famously, Uber, like, does not believe this. They believe supply is all that matters, and I fundamentally disagree. Supply is It's a lot of times the tool to get demand, but owning demand is what keeps the supply happy.”
Delivery apps charge restaurants 30% and consumers 20% on average per order
“It's not just 30% that these delivery apps take from the restaurant. It's also 20% on average that they're charging the consumer.”
Busque: TaskRabbit launched five years too early for the market
“If you look about, you know, look at TaskRabbit, we were too early. Like we should have waited five years, followed on Uber or something like that. Like we could have done that a totally different way, but definitely some timing, right time, right place, solvi…”
Operational changes at early Uber often had bigger impact than the app
“Uber was very much about, you can be a little bit more fast and loose, get stuff out there, learn. And to your point, ops was really important to the point where sometimes operational changes could have a drastically bigger impact on the business, on the user,…”
Casey Winters: Uber defeated Lyft by prioritizing low price over friendly branding
“Uber early on was all about legitimacy. These are licensed drivers. It's a black car, all this kind of stuff. And Lyft was like, oh yeah, it's like your neighbor and it's fun and it's friendly and it's safe. And then I think Uber was smart to say actually thei…”
Winters: Uber Eats improved driver acquisition efficiency by utilizing unqualified rideshare supply
“And it allowed them to use their supply that, that was signing up for Uber, but maybe didn't have a good enough car, or maybe the person was too young. So it allowed them to get some more efficiency on their supply acquisition as well.”