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 8 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
Hoffman: Peter Thiel wanted to scrap PayPal's $10 referral incentive
“PayPal's co-founder, Peter Thiel, wanted to scrap the entire idea and break that early promise in order to keep costs down.”
Hoffman: PayPal merged with X.com because X.com copied its go-to-market strategy
“So for example, at PayPal, x.com was copying our go to market strategy. And I was like, well, it's more effective to merge with x.com than it is to compete with them.”
Hoffman: Early PayPal burned tens of millions of dollars per month
“Our burn rate was tens of millions of dollars each month.”
Hoffman passed on Stripe and Square due to PayPal 'curse of knowledge'
“You know, there are some great payments companies out there, Stripe, Square, et cetera, that I talked to very early and couldn't bring myself to kind of lean in to do, despite world-class great entrepreneurs, note to self, mistake, right? Because I was going, …”
Kagan: AppSumo launched with only $48 in total startup costs
“No, it cost me 48 dollars. I got, a guy named Muhammad who I still talk to this day, 15 years later he helped me put the PayPal button on the website. And it was 12 dollars for the domain, that's part of the 48 dollars. And then I used Gmail as my back-end.”
Hoffman: PayPal launched a 200-person Omaha support center within two months
“Within two months, a 200 person customer service department was up and running.”
Hoffman: Early PayPal had three support reps and neglected 10,000 monthly emails
“Back in PayPal's early days, we neglected customer complaints, even as users grew exponentially. And because we had a customer service department of three people, we quickly started going in the hole around 10,000 emails a month.”
Hoffman: Even Facebook and Airbnb faced existential 'valleys of the shadow'
“All startups go through a valley of the shadow. All of them, PayPal, LinkedIn, things that I've done personally, things that I've invested in, Facebook, Airbnb, all have valleys of the shadow where you're like, why did we think this was a good idea?”