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 22 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
Marc Lore refuses to interview candidates with lateral career moves
“Any kind of deviation to that, I don't, I just don't even, won't even interview. So a lateral move, out. Right. You know, move from a Google to Kmart. Sorry, Kmart, but out. Like, I just, I, anything, any little, like, tap that says not top five percent, and s…”
Marc Lore: Elite talent consistently makes step-function career moves
“Top five percenters, top 10 percentage of the elite people, when they move in step fashion. It'll be a bigger title, much bigger role, or a better company, and they'll get in that company, and they will be promoted multiple times, and then they'll leave, and t…”
Marc Lore rejects the 'trust but verify' management model
“A lot of people say, oh, trust, of course, trust, but verify. And I don't believe in the, but verify. I think you start out trusting people and until they prove otherwise. And it's very, Risky because you can get burned, but I've seen the power of the upside o…”
Marc Lore uses open compensation with identical pay per level
“That's why I have a open comp system where everybody knows what everybody else is making and everybody at the same level makes the same amount of money. So women, minorities, everybody makes the same. There's no like this idea that maybe it's not fair.”
Marc Lore: Startup acquisitions follow a barbell distribution
“You know, people tend to buy is the barbell strategy. They'll buy the aqua hire. You raise a million bucks and you bootstrapped it and you have like three good people and somebody will say like, oh, this is great. Like here's ten million... And then there's li…”
Marc Lore: Retail search engines will be obsolete in 20 years
“The idea of like search engine, 20 years from now is going to be laughably like the cassette tape. It's like, wait, so dad used to like go, you wanted to buy a toast and you typed in toaster in this like search engine and you had 10,000 responses and you had t…”
Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez launch venture fund VCP
“Alex and I A-Rod just started a venture fund called VCP, Vision Capital People. We believe that there's a really big hole in the market for people with big visionary ideas to get a big infusion of capital early, like when they have nothing, so they can go out …”
Marc Lore: Incremental fundraising traps startups on a fragile tightrope
“I think a lot of startups, it's a little bit of chicken and egg. How do you get the capital unless you have the team? You can't hire the team until you have the capital. But you don't get enough capital until you prove it, and so you get a million bucks, then …”
Marc Lore: The 'beer test' is the worst hiring mistake
“Early in my career and I first started, you know, I just want to feel like I want to have a beer with this person. And I realized how wrong that is. And people make that mistake today. And it leads to all kinds of unconscious bias and things like that. It's th…”
Marc Lore backed a stealth mobile kitchen startup that cooks in driveways
“Well, what if you cooked in a mobile kitchen if the restaurant basically came to you and it cooked in your driveway? Hot, much faster because the trucks are already on the road. And so they're likely just minutes away. And so I made a pretty big bet on that co…”
Marc Lore: Startups do not need to be hyper-inventive to succeed
“I've learned that it doesn't need to be something like niche or super inventive. It could be just find a really big town, like just say something like, okay, healthcare.”
Marc Lore: Deep industry expertise can hinder clean-slate invention
“Sometimes I, if you know too much about a space, it's hard to clean slate and invent because you kind of like get tied too closely into what people are doing. So I like the idea of just thinking about it through the lens of a consumer on what is, you know, thi…”
Marc Lore: AI fit analytics can save retailers billions on returns
“So the idea that you know my body dimensions and use artificial intelligence to know the inside dimensions of the garment to see exactly how it's going to lay in my body without having to try it on, to cut down return rates dramatically. There's billions of do…”
Marc Lore signs deal to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves
“Yeah, we actually, it went through, so we signed the agreement, so yeah. We're just going through the NBA approval process now and then hope to close, like, probably in like six weeks.”
Marc Lore: Micromanaging without domain experience gets leaders into trouble
“I think if you try and, you know, micromanage and make decisions when you don't have the experience, that's where you get in trouble.”
Marc Lore screens resumes upfront to focus interviews exclusively on core values
“When I interview someone, I know that they're a superstar on the resume, and so I can focus primarily on core values and their SPOTIC traits. So SPOTIC is an acronym I come up with for traits I look for in people I hire. Smart, passionate, Optimistic, tenaciou…”
Marc Lore seeded Archer Aviation with $5M before its $4B SPAC
“That's what we did. I put five in, we helped raise, you know, helped hire the engineering talent, helped them raise fifty million. And that was two years ago. And then they just raised a billion through the SPAC. And so now it's a 4000000003.7 billion market c…”
Marc Lore: Changing gambling laws enable a true sports stock market
“Now with the gambling laws changing thing, I think it's an opportunity to create a true sports stock market and do it right. Like where it really feels like you're buying and selling players like stock. By leveraging some of the changes in, in gambling laws.”
Marc Lore: Voice commerce fundamentally requires delivering one best answer
“And I think voice requires One best answer. Otherwise voice doesn't work. You can't give you a hundred things. It's voice.”
Marc Lore: Walmart's Jet Black made customers drop Amazon Prime
“Yeah, I mean, we had something called Jet Black when I was at Walmart, and we it was basically this for New York City primarily parents, and it was gangbusters. I mean, it was like, you know, people stopped using Amazon Prime. It was, they just dropped it. It'…”