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.

clear all ✕

why aren't all 13 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

Assertion Supported
Schwartz: Apple Refused Microsoft’s Offer to Replace Google with Bing for Free
“One is that Bing tried to give itself to Apple for free, and Apple said there was absolutely no price that they would take to use Bing search within Apple.”
Eli Schwartz Sep 19, 2024 ▶ 1:19:40 Rethinking SEO in the age of AI | Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author)
Assertion Supported
Truell: Most of the original GitHub Copilot team has left Microsoft
“The group of people that worked on the first version of Copilot have, by and large, gone on to do other things at other places.”
Michael Truell May 1, 2025 ▶ 45:57 The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell
Assertion Supported
Schillace: Google Docs won market share, but Microsoft kept the money
“In retrospect, they did fine. Like, we took a bunch of market share, but they kept all the money, basically. So, you know, we being Google, like, you know, so, like, they survived it. Like, you know, they survived. They did a good job surviving the challenge. …”
Sam Schillace Jan 11, 2024 ▶ 30:49 How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
Assertion Supported
Microsoft's overall experiment failure rate is 66%, reaching 85% at Bing
“So overall at Microsoft, About 66%, two-thirds of ideas fail, right? And don't think the 66 is accurate. Like, you know, it's about two-thirds. At Bing, which is a much more optimized domain after we've been optimizing it for a while, the failure rate was arou…”
Ronny Kohavi Jul 27, 2023 ▶ 13:36 The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon)
Assertion Supported
Levine: Microsoft invested in Waze due to lacking proprietary navigation maps
“Microsoft decided that, wait a minute, we don't have our own maps, so let's invest in Waze. So we ended up getting investment from someone that we did not expect.”
Uri Levine Feb 16, 2025 ▶ 23:50 A founder’s guide to crisis management | Uri Levine (Waze co-founder, serial entrepreneur)
Assertion Supported
Rachitsky: Major tech companies hire product managers, not product owners
“Google has no product owners as far as they know. Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, like no company you, you've heard of that's a tech company has a product owner. They have, or they're all product managers. They're all product managers.”
Lenny Rachitsky Nov 10, 2024 ▶ 1:02:45 Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SAFe and the product owner role | Melissa Perri
Assertion Supported
Bing wasted 100 person-years integrating social feeds before shutting it down
“We hooked into the Twitter Firehose feed, and we hooked into Facebook, and we spent a hundred person years on this idea, and it failed. You don't see it anymore. It existed for about a year and a half, and all the experiments were just negative to flat.”
Ronny Kohavi Jul 27, 2023 ▶ 23:02 The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon)
Assertion Supported
Schaffer: Microsoft and Netflix experimentation shows 80% to 90% of hypotheses fail
“Companies like Netflix and Microsoft, there's over and over again. 80 plus percent. Some companies say 90% of things fail.”
Laura Schaffer Mar 9, 2023 ▶ 34:52 Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)
Assertion Supported
Wiz's four co-founders have worked together for over 22 years
“Before, Wiz is actually their second company together. So before Wiz, they founded Adalom, which sold to Microsoft. That's how they all ended up in Microsoft in the first place. And even before that, they all worked together in the Israeli army. So they've kno…”
Raaz Herzberg Nov 17, 2024 ▶ 51:45 Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history | Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)
Assertion Supported
Rachitsky: Leading US tech and enterprise CEOs were born in India
“Today the CEOs of Microsoft, Alphabet, Adobe, which is a two hundred fifty billion dollar company, turns out, IBM, which is a hundred seventy billion dollar company, Palo Alto Networks, which is a hundred billion dollar company, even Starbucks, also a hundred …”
Lenny Rachitsky Mar 24, 2024 ▶ 11:07 Kunal Shah on winning in India, second-order thinking, the philosophy of startups, and more
Assertion Supported
Carr: Amazon Borrowed Bar Raiser Hiring Process from Microsoft
“So they created this bar raiser process, which by the way, they borrowed from Microsoft, which had a process called as appropriate.”
Bill Carr Nov 2, 2023 ▶ 1:16:22 Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working | Bill Carr (author of Working Backwards)
Assertion Supported
By 2019, Microsoft launched roughly 100 new experimental treatments daily
“At Microsoft, just to let you know, when I left in 2019, we were on a rate of about 20 to 25,000 experiments every year. So every working day, we were starting something like a hundred new treatments.”
Ronny Kohavi Jul 27, 2023 ▶ 20:02 The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon)
Assertion Supported
Bing allowed experimenters to define up to 10,000 metrics per scorecard
“At Bing, you could define 10,000 metrics that you wanted to be in your scorecard.”
Ronny Kohavi Jul 27, 2023 ▶ 1:10:55 The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon)
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