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 39 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Clear's 2023 throughput issues stemmed from government policy, not volume
“Our customer experience degraded in 23 and part of 24, which caused throughput. Issues. It wasn't because of volume. It was because of some policy decisions that were put in place that impeded the customer experience.”
Becker: TSA mandated physical escorting and heavy ID rechecks for Clear
“They put in some physical escorting policies so that a clear employee who verified you had a stand with you, which created all sorts of challenges. All of your team members are standing in line. Also, they wanted to recheck At a extremely high level identity d…”
Becker: Biometrics are just a feature; the real product is the experience
“Biometrics are a feature, not a product. The product is the experience.”
Clear CEO: Very little stands in the way of universal facial recognition
“I don't think a lot. I don't think there's a lot. I mean look at your iPhone or your Google phone, Samsung, right? First touch ID started, I think in. Or something of that nature. And then face ID. So, I don't think there's a lot in between that. I think it ma…”
Becker: Companies Misdiagnose Identity Problems as Fraud or Compliance Issues
“So I think that the basic secret to clear is that identity is foundational across so many industries, and people don't think of identity as the problem. They think of fraud or compliance or frictionless experience, right, or whipping out cards or insider risk.”
Seidman Becker: Identity is contextual across different settings and permission levels
“Identity is completely contextual. I'm always Karen, but when I check in at the doctor's office, I'm Karen with UnitedHealth, with an ex copay, with a medical record, that by the way, I should own, and have access to, and be able to share anywhere I want.”
Becker acquired Clear out of bankruptcy for $6 million cash
“We bid six million dollars in cash, which I think was a little lower than the existing bid, but it was a hundred percent cash that night given to them. And, ah, we won.”
US airport traffic will hit 4 million daily passengers by 2030
“Our numbers are by twenty-thirty you're going to have four million, another million people a day.”
Delaying a business meeting by three weeks wastes 6% of a year
“One of my sayings is that every week is two percent of a year. So when someone's like, let's meet on that in three weeks. I'm like, we're going to wait six percent of the year to have that conversation. That's insane.”
Becker: Stock market investing trains executives to decide with incomplete information
“I think working in the stock market makes you more decisive. You're never going to have perfect information. So you got to put together the mosaic. You have to understand your thesis. You have to see how that is, you know, weighing relative to your thesis. And…”
Clear burned $53 million over 6.5 years before turning cash-flow positive
“And we turned cash flow positive six and a half years in and we had burned through fifty three million dollars of cash to get there.”
Clear repurchased all its $31 IPO stock at lower prices
“We've bought back let's see, we were, I think we peaked at a hundred and fifty-five million shares, and we're at a 133 and change, so we've bought back a lot of stock. All the stock that we went public with at 31, we bought back at a lower price, if you want t…”
Clear Partners with LA Clippers for Biometric Age Verification
“We're partnered with the Clippers, where you can use your face for age verification to buy a beer.”
Seidman Becker: Clear hires non-bureaucratic candidates who have overcome adversity
“I'm attracted to people who have humble beginnings, who have overcome adversity, who don't fear failure, who want to be a team player, who are straight shooter and non bureaucratic.”
Seidman Becker: World Cup Is a Forcing Function for US Travel Innovation
“I think the World Cup is a real forcing function for our country, and it's only one year away. I think, you know, it was in Doha last time and in the Middle East, I think the opportunity to bring it to the cities in the US, major cities in the US, LA, New York…”
Becker invested in Apple, Amazon, and Priceline in 2002
“And in 2002, we started Ariance capital, which stood for art and science, which is my view of investing. It's highly quantitative and highly qualitative art and science. And so we had the good fortune, although every day didn't necessarily feel that way, of in…”
Becker: American Express delivers superior customer experience because it is vertically integrated
“Certainly American Express, I think is some of the best experiences when you lose your credit card or I had fraud on mine yesterday, you send a new one, the bills go right through because they're vertically integrated. It's a better customer experience.”
Becker: Clear connects identity platform members to partners like LinkedIn and Home Depot
“And I would argue it's a little bit open in that we are, right, connecting for our partners and bringing that member to a partner, whether it be Home Depot, whether it be LinkedIn, whether it be a hospital, either for the workforce or the patient.”
Seidman Becker: Consumer biometrics expanded abroad before the US
“It was used in the early 2000 in Brazil for voting, for Asia, for financial services. So the consumerization of biometrics was happening outside the US, whereas I had only seen it in the defense area in the US.”
Original Clear reached 16 airports and 190k customers before collapse
“He got into 16 airports. Ah, I think he raised about a hundred million dollars of capital and then had some debt on top of that. And, ah, was building this concept of a trusted traveler program, a registered traveler program, with biometrics on a smart card. S…”
Seidman Becker: 80% of US air traffic concentrates in 60 to 80 airports
“80% of the traffic goes through sort of the top 60, 80 airports in the U.S.”
Seidman Becker: Clear invested in Landline to bypass airport front doors
“So for instance, we invested in a company called Landline. Which is replacing regional jets with buses and able to go to the back of the airport as opposed to the front door.”
Becker: Clear's face-first NV technology verifies identity five times faster
“We are face first with our NVs, which makes it, you know, five times faster to verify”
75% of Clear's 190,000 pre-bankruptcy members opted back in post-acquisition
“We bought a 190,000 members, biographic and biometric data. They had to opt back in. To clear. Yes. They had to come back to clear, and we would give them whatever months they had left. I think in aggregate about 75% of them did come back.”
Becker: Clear's predecessor didn't own its software, requiring full rebuild
“Because we didn't buy software. They didn't own their own technology. So we had a rebuild, and we wanted to rebuild the software from the ground up.”
Becker: Restaurateur Danny Meyer invested in Clear
“Danny Meyer, one of my great heroes, and he became an investor in Clear, and that was awesome.”
Becker took no salary for her first five years running Clear
“I did not take a salary for the first five years and, you know, got paid in stock and to me that was a privilege.”
Clear pitched Silicon Valley in 2012 and 2015 but raised zero
“Went to Silicon Valley. I came back with zero in 2012 and zero in 2015.”
Becker: Clear serves as an official enrollment partner for TSA PreCheck
“And now we actually sell PreCheck. Our view was great. You want to start other kinds of trusted traveler programs. We're a great enrollment mechanism. This is exactly what we do. And for the past year, we have been enrolling people in PreCheck, and it's a grea…”
Becker has not bought individual stocks since closing her hedge fund
“And truth be told, I have not bought a single stock since, ah, we ended Ariance because if I can't like focus and do it, I'm not doing it. And I own a lot of clear stock and, you know, have investments in other places, but I'm focused here.”
Clear cut executive salaries to zero and launched Health Pass during COVID-19
“We took our salaries to zero and we created a leave of absent plan for our ambassadors so that when it really happened on March 12th, ah, we were prepared and pivoted to creating health pass and connecting people to their test information and ultimately their …”
Clear Introduces Real ID-Compliant E-Passport Reading Capability
“We have this new capability to, ah, read your passport and the e-chip. And so that's both Real ID compliant”
Becker: Consumer inertia is a company's biggest competitor
“I would say the same thing for genetic testing that your biggest competitor is inertia. Getting people to do anything. Like again, the test was free. All you have to do is spit. Like, not hard. So hard. Save your life. Save your kids life. Really frickin hard.…”
Becker bought Apple at $14 when it held $9 per share cash
“So I thought Apple when we bought it for 14 dollars with I think nine dollars a share of cash on the balance sheet was a value stock. And the street thought they could earn 60 cents, and I thought they could earn a dollar, and then from there, here's where we …”
Becker expects Clear to reach 100 million members within 10 years
“I think that we should have triple digits
Members on the platform using it for various use cases.”