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 230 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Warner: AI agency StealthX closes $80,000 engagements from how-to trainings
“This is a company called StealthX.co. He's closing, I think, 80,000 dollar deals, engagements, after one of these types of how-to things.”
Czech PE group bought Groupon and redesigned its data using Keboola
“Groupon as an original Groupon is now run by Czechs as well. You know, some of our friends and client, and it's our client actually have bought in as a private equity. Yeah. Yeah. I have redesigned the whole coupon and data using Kabula.”
Herold: A legitimate Chief Operating Officer earns $300,000 to $400,000 annually
“A true COO, you're usually three to 400,000 a year. You know, I was three 2010 years ago. It got junk.”
Herold: Kolbe index profiles show CEOs are 'Quick Starts', COOs 'Fact Finders'
“In fact, we use some profiles at the COO Alliance where we profile all the CEOs and the COOs that are members and everyone's Colby profile that is the entrepreneur or high quick starts. All the COOs are very high fact finders and follow throughs. They're just …”
Herold: Hired Kimbal Musk and Peter Rive as painting franchisees in 1993
“I hired Kimball Musk to be a franchisee for mine. I hired his cousin. No, Elon's brother. Brother. Okay. And then I also hired his cousin, Peter Reeve, who built solar city. They both were franchisees for me in 1993.”
Yang: Messenger bot multi-step micro-interactions achieve 95% to 98% CTR
“It's 95 to 98%, and it doesn't get lower.”
Yang: 10K-user health bot achieved 80% opens sending 14 messages weekly
“So we had one bot that had over 10,000 subscribers, and they messaged, like in the span of a week, they messaged their audience 14 times. And? And they got 80% open rates and 10%, 10% CTR on each one of those messages.”
Sam Ovens paid between $300,000 and $1M for Consulting.com
“It was in between a 1,300,000, somewhere in there.”
Consulting.com has logged over 700,000 Facebook conversion pixel fires
“So I've put Over 700,000 fires on my conversion pixel, so it is so smart that I can target America, and I do.”
Harbinger: The Art of Charm invested $30,000 into stolen digital IP
“Oh, the guys stole it for, and it was worth that much. We had invested 30 grand.”
Warner: Most people in 2014 do not know how to access podcasts
“Go through the streets of San Francisco, ask someone to show you how they install a podcast on their phone. Most people don't freaking understand what it is. Yes, there are programs like Stitcher that make it more accessible. Ask someone about Stitcher, and th…”
Kagan: AppSumo generates over $100,000 in monthly revenue
“AppSumo as a business is above a 100,000.”
Suster: Upfront Ventures sold Maker Studios to Disney for nearly $1B
“We just agreed to sell Maker Studios to Disney for almost a billion dollars.”
Huffman: Paul Graham asked Reddit to build Hacker News first
“Paul, Paul had approached us before building Hacker News and said, Hey, can you guys make me my own Reddit where people can only upvote and I can have like supreme control over the content? And then we were like, no, that's not, You know, that's not really on …”
Huffman: Startups get tons of press just for joining Y Combinator
“Whether or not you build a good product, you're going to get a ton of press just being a part of Y Combinator.”
Huffman: All travel search sites access the same flight data
“All the travel sites have access to the same data, effectively, including us.”
Chesky: Airbnb was the first to combine host and space photos
“On couch surfing, you saw the photo of the person. On Craigslist, you saw the photo of the place, but on no website did you see both, like, the person and their place. I think that was one really important ingredient that made it really compelling.”
Gebbia: Airbnb sold out of Obama O's cereal at $40 per box
“So we did a limited production run to make it a collectible item, and we actually sold these through the website. It just so happens that We ended up selling out of the Obama hose. Each box sold for 40 dollars.”
Chesky: Meeting Barry Manilow's drummer inspired Airbnb's whole-home listings
“Barry Manilow's drummer changed the course of our company forever because we met Barry Manilow's drummer.
He, we realized that he didn't want to just list his bedroom.
He wanted to list his entire apartment.
Why?
Because he goes on tour with Barry.
And they go…”
Airbnb became profitable during its winter 2009 Y Combinator batch
“All of a sudden, we actually became profitable over the course of Y Combinator. You know, our, the revenue we're making was then funding our operations.”
Godin started over 100 businesses and faced bankruptcy for six years
“I started more than a hundred businesses before I had one. That really worked. I was three weeks away from bankruptcy for six years in a row.”
Godin: Shepard Fairey earns over $1M yearly by distributing free art
“How did Shepard Fairey make it so that he's making over a million dollars a year? What's his strategy exactly? Right? His strategy is posters everywhere, free art everywhere, here, go, take it.”
Godin: Untrained worker wages remained completely flat from 1960 to 2009
“In my presentation last week, I showed a chart. Hourly wage adjusted for inflation from 1960 to present. For untrained workers, you know, burger flippers. 1960, they made 15 dollars an hour. Now, they make 15 dollars an hour. Zero change in 49 years.”
Ries: Activist Campaigns Repeatedly Attacked Costco Over Governance
“Costco was repeatedly attacked over its decades of life by activist campaigns that have accused them of having bad governance.”
Cheney scaled his AI agency to $110,000 per month solo before hiring
“At one point we hit the million dollars and by we, I mean, me, I hit this million dollars. And it was fun. It was fun. It was, you know, that was about 80,090 thousand a month. And it was actually, I got to a 110,000 a month. So it's a little bit over that mil…”
Cheney: First AI training customer was a $15,000 contract closed on LinkedIn
“And eventually, you know, that, that same day had a CEO, local CEO that I didn't know really well, but we kind of had crossed paths a couple of times. So it was, I would call it a, Lukewarm lead. And I said, hey, I want to help your company figure out, you kno…”
Cheney: General AI Proficiency Institute website is built and hosted entirely on Replit
“That site is completely designed in Replit. It is hosted by Replit. Like I, I'm using nothing else outside of that to make that happen.”
Cheney: Closed first $15,000/month fractional Chief AI Officer contract in one day
“I said, yeah, we've got this fractional chief AI officer model. It's about the same price. It's 15 grand a month. And but then you get me ongoing. And so, yeah, we'll do some trainings. You won't get as much training in this first one, but I'll help you build …”
Cheney: The AI implementation agency averages $17,000 per month per client
“Our average customer at this point is 17,000. But monthly.”
Cheney: AI implementation business grew from $1M to $4.5M ARR in nine months
“We're sitting at about four and a half million in annual recurring. And by the way, for reference sake, I hit a million. Let's see, we're in April. So I hit a million in September. What is that? Eight, nine months. So I went one to four in nine months.”
Shane Mac: Convos lets users launch OpenClaw and Hermes agents on mobile
“Convos is an app that allows you to launch OpenClaw and Hermes agents on your phone.”
Mac: Convos provisions email, phone number, and browsing for agents
“It goes and builds everything in the background. So it's provisioning an email address for this, a phone number, web browsing capabilities, everything.”
Shane Mac: Convos is backed by a16z, USV, and Fred Wilson
“Like Andreessen Horowitz, USV, Fred Wilson is on our board and a lot of other, like, really, you know, awesome investors.”
Zapier SDK allows AI agents to make arbitrary API requests
“What the SDK can do, especially when you're using an agent harness, is it can run arbitrary API requests. So whereas the MCP has all the Zapier trigger and action library predefined out of the box, the SDK can say, hey, I have access to Slack's API docs. I can…”
AI agents reduced Foster's candidate review time from 30 to five minutes
“And that was a task that used to take me You know, 30 minutes per every candidate. And now it's down to like five.”
Eliason: Felix's Info Product Did Over $1,000 in Day-One Sales
“And I think it did like over a thousand dollars in sales that first day, which was pretty cool.”
Eliason: Felix Expanded His PDF Guide from 29 to 66 Pages via Feedback
“And so I think the first version was 29 pages or something. And now it's up to 66 because whenever somebody complains about something or you know, wants something else added to it, he just goes in and adds it and then republishes it and emails the new version …”
Eliason: Claw sourcing has made roughly $12,000 in revenue
“So I think Claw sourcing has made about 12 grand at this point.”
Eliason: Support sub-agent Iris handles 80-90% of customer emails
“And so an email comes in to our support email and 80, 90% of the time Iris can just handle it and respond.”
David: Posties hit $20K MRR before the OpenClaw launch
“And then we got here, you can see that we got into 17 K MRR. I think it's, you don't see it in the graph, we even stretch it a little bit, 20 K and so on, and then boom, OpenClaw came out.”
Cera: Pulsia conversion to paid is high due to low-friction onboarding
“It ended up being the right direction decision because I can see the onboarding and the conversion to paid is really high because it's so much easier.”
Cera: Around 20% of Pulsia users adopt the automated ads feature
“Around 20% of users use the ad feature which means that like there is more traffic going to the websites”
Cera: 30% to 40% of Pulsia users choose 'Surprise Me' onboarding
“There's around like, you know, around 30% of the 30, 40% of people that use, that do surprise me.”
Wave AI processes 9,000 hours of audio daily
“So like, I'll do like 9000 hours a day of just generic audio.”
Subscribers are evenly split across weekly, monthly, and annual plans
“It's where the most of the revenue is in terms of, like, I just looked at this, it's actually split a third, weekly, monthly, and annual in terms of people, but in terms of dollars, it's obviously way more unannual.”