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 268 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 5 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
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.”
Matze: Rezora kept $34K to $35K profit on $40K agency revenue
“I want to say we kept Straight profit. Around 34,000 dollars. 35,000 dollars.”
Apfelbaum: 100 clients paid for his done-for-you AI headshot service
“And we had a hundred people raise their hand and pay and say that they are interested in this”
Apfelbaum: $200 AI headshot service costs just $5 in VA labor
“The VA costs a total of five dollars to do it, and then we deliver it to them, and we have a very nice profit margin”
Apfelbaum: First course cost $275K to make, netted over $1M profit
“When I created my first course called the evergreen networking system, I spent 275,000 dollars to build a course. And that ended up netting me over a million dollars in profit.”
Apfelbaum: Ajax Union lost 75% of recurring revenue overnight during COVID
“So what happened was when COVID hit, We lost 75% of reoccurring revenue overnight.”
Apfelbaum: EVAI has 23,000 users in 40 countries
“We have 23,000 users in 40 countries around the world.”
Dream Stories has generated about 70,000 user characters since launch
“But we've had since we launched, we had about 70,000 characters created on the platform.”
Foster: Zapier integrates with 8,000 different tools
“And then you can have logic that encompasses any of the 8000 different tools we work with.”
Foster: Zapier raised a $1.2M seed round in 2012
“We did a seed round that was 1.2 million in 2012.”
Foster: Most automation agencies spin up around digital marketing
“Digital marketing agencies, they're like, this is the place where I've seen most automation agencies spin up because there is so much just low hanging fruit that can help any business be more, more successful.”