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 48 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
Late Checkout rejected a $100M blank check venture funding offer
“This came to me a couple of years ago, we got offered A hundred million dollar blank check to build, to basically scale out late checkout and build, build out a bunch of new products faster, acquire faster, just take our model and just add steroids to it. And …”
Isenberg: Tech hiring freezes drive a boom for product agencies
“It is a good time. It's surprisingly good time to be an agency owner right now because a lot of companies are cutting staff or freezing hiring, but they still need new products and new, new businesses to go out there. So they look at companies like our late ch…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout rejected a $30M private equity investment offer
“Another big win is someone offered us and not just someone, someone I really, really respect and a top tier investor offered us. Thirty million dollars of private equity capital to scale out late checkout. We didn't take it, but it did feel quite good.”
Tabah: Burnout is driven by uninspiring work, not 60-hour weeks
“I think like burnout occurs when your batteries get drained and it doesn't mean you've worked 60 hour weeks. It doesn't mean you are like burning the candle at both ends. It probably means you're just doing things that don't get you fired up. And, or with peop…”
Isenberg: Instagram Broadcast channels fail because inboxes are overcrowded
“I've been playing with a few and it's, I can see the look on Jordan's face. It's not it. I don't love it. And the reason I don't love it is this for the reason that you brought up Theo, which is people are ready underwater when it comes to their inboxes. So ba…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout declined a $30M VC investment offer
“Last week we had an offer for about thirty million dollars to invest in. Lay check out our holding company and the. You know, one of the top institutional investors, VCs, someone I really respect... But the idea of like giving up control and just having, and m…”
Isenberg: Multipreneurship starts with content-market fit before building products
“I think the MVP of being a multipreneur is, can you create content in one niche that people resonate with? Like, can you, before you create product market fit, can you create content market fit in one topic? Then can you do it in two topics? And then can you b…”
Isenberg: Builders without massive graveyards of failed projects are doing it wrong
“I mean, if your graveyard isn't, you know, bigger than your house, then you're doing it.”
Taba: 'Nerds in Residence' drive better returns than traditional EIRs
“Again, a lot of other studios and innovation labs have entrepreneurs in residence and they hire an entrepreneur who's quote unquote created a company before. But to your point about us and the importance of resonating with the community and being authentic, we…”
Isenberg: Founders must track finances daily, weekly, and monthly to survive
“Daily is your pulse, weekly is your vitals, and monthly is your full physical. You need all three to stay alive.”
Isenberg: A followed holding company brand boosts hiring and acquisitions across products
“You know, if it's like tiny tiny, like Andrew Wilkinson, or late checkout, like us, like we end up building these private equity groups almost, that a holding company that people like to follow, it just helps all your products, both from a hiring perspective, …”
Isenberg: Thriving portfolio companies want strategic connections, not micromanagement
“When a company is doing well, they don't want me involved. Like they honestly, like, I don't have like the context that They might have. I shouldn't say they don't want me involved. They don't want me to, like, in the weeds. They want the strategic advice. The…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout closed a $2.2M Fortune 500 deal via podcast lead
“And we had a lead that came in, listened to the podcast, Fortune, 500 company. They wanted to work with LCA, and we sent them a 2.2 million dollar proposal. They said yes.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout builds landing pages capped at 280 characters
“It's a, it's basically how we build most of our websites, or pretty much all of ours, right, Jordan? It's like basically max amount of 280 characters on your website, like just keeping it very, very tight.”
Isenberg prioritizes Canadian hiring to leverage 35% currency discount
“We hired some exceptional Canadians in twenty-twenty-three and I want to do more of it. Obviously continue to still hire in the US, but only for select high impact roles because I'd love to save that 35% and put that into a premium domain or put that into mark…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout lost $3M+ in 2023 revenue by staying lean
“We basically had full utilization of our team the entire year, and we lost at least three million dollars of revenue. If we just would have not listened to this advice, we would have had three plus more million dollars in the bank.”
Isenberg: Tech hiring leverage shifted from employees to employers by 2023
“I think it's also, we've seen a shift in, in Three from prior years, for example, 20, 21, when we were just trying to fight to retain as much of our talents as possible. Not just us, but all, you know, startups in general, large tech companies and it's moves n…”
Late Checkout builds unconventional software designs to retain users against incumbent copying
“What I encourage people to do, and a lot of the software we build actually at late checkout is this like the bit out there stuff, because we think that that's the stuff that's gonna linger in people's brains and create lasting impressions. And even if a large …”
Isenberg: Late Checkout averages one million dollars per enterprise agency client
“Average client size for late checkout, our innovation agency. So that's the agency that partners with like Dropbox and companies, big, big, big companies and helps them do product zero to one. And the average size is a million dollars a deal.”
Isenberg: Elite tech talent availability surged dramatically in 2023
“So right now there's tons of talent that's coming online and I had two, two or three interviews today of candidates that one year ago, two years ago, we would have never had the opportunity to speak to these people. Yet now they're like knocking on our door.”
Isenberg: Building an innovation agency is a cheat code for networking
“Basically building an agent, an innovation agency is kind of a cheat code to meet the most interesting people in the world.”
Isenberg: Majority of Late Checkout Product Managers Are Designers
“One of the things we do is our product managers, the majority of them are designers.”
Taba: Late Checkout runs 20- to 90-day trial periods before hiring
“We've developed this system where people can come in and experience the late checkout universe and we can experience them. In this very mutually kind of understood way where we do this quote unquote fit check, and that could last. 20 days. It could last two mo…”
Taba: Venture studio projects fail to ship without a dedicated operator
“You have to hire an operator, i.e. If you're serious about it, you need someone to kind of lead. If there's no owner, nothing will get shipped.”
Isenberg: Dispatch lowers design costs using non-US talent and AI tools
“The reason we're able to do it for so cheap, even though it's like high end design is We use international IE non-US designers and AI enhanced productivity. And we just sort of also we have tons of UI kits that we've created. So it's really just leveraging a l…”
Isenberg: Hiring niche community leaders provides an unfair product advantage
“One way to get a unfair advantage is by hiring some of these community leaders or just like nerds.”
MacLean: Communities serve acquisition, retention, product support, or user-generated content
“Usually when you have communities around a product, they're serving one of three, four specific purposes. So they're for acquisition. Your community exists to bring you more customers internally at least. They're for retention. Your community exists because yo…”
Isenberg: Leaders should set slightly uncomfortable deadlines to drive focus
“Set more deadlines that just make people feel a little bit uncomfortable is kind of where you want to be with people. Not too uncomfortable that they're mentally stressed out, but not like, hey, like, just get it to me when you're ready when you think it's rig…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout rejected a Twitter buyout, dodging Elon Musk's layoffs
“Twitter, Twitter offered to buy us in, in, in, and, you know, we thought about it in, and I'm happy we didn't because we probably would have gotten fired by Elon cause he fired a lot of people.”
Isenberg: His Agency Artificially Caps Intake to One New Client Per Month
“One of the constraints that we put on our agency business, for example, is we only accept one new client per month. And we started doing that, you know, a year ago because we realized like we had a lot of inbound for client work and we would just take client w…”
Sanchez: Buy unsexy community businesses to avoid inflated hype valuations
“Don't just look at the sexy community businesses because those people are going to over inflate the value. And you might be buying into a hype cycle. But I would say look at a lot of like the unsexy community. What about like the dentist, the accounting firm, …”
Isenberg predicts remote companies will replace offices with monthly or quarterly summits
“I think what you're going to see is a ton of like summits, like late checkout, we're a remote company. There's 50 team members. Like what, how do we do a summit every month, three months, whatever, in different cool places that we can come together and get fac…”
Isenberg: 13-Week Model Forced Portfolio Company to Cut $40,000 in 48 Hours
“One of my portfolio companies thought they had eight months of runway. In the investor update, it said eight months of runway. When we built the 13 week view, they had 11 weeks. So we had to cut 40,000 dollars a month in 48 hours. The company's still alive tod…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout enforces a three-tier spending approval threshold
“So here's what we use across late checkout companies. If it's under a thousand dollars, your manager approves it via Slack. Takes 30 seconds. Between a thousand dollars and 10,000 dollars, finance teams approves it, and you need to show which budget line it's …”
Isenberg: Late Checkout acquired 50% of BoringMarketing.com as first acquisition
“Another big win is we bought 50% of a business which became BoringMarketing.com, which is basically an AI enhanced SEO business, so it's some tools that help companies get organic search, and that was our first real acquisition.”
Isenberg says Late Checkout is actively acquiring community-based businesses
“So if you're selling your agency, your marketplace, your email newsletter, your vertical SaaS, your social network, get in touch with me. We're buying community-based businesses.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout and all portfolio businesses were profitable in 2023
“The other big win was we produced nice cash flow for late checkout which is our holding company. And we continue to grow several cash flowing businesses, which is awesome. So the hold co made money, all the individual businesses made money.”
Tabah: Building social apps requires balancing Format, Utility, and Niche
“One of the frameworks that we came up with Greg, In 2020, if you still use today and it's still fire is the fun framework for how to build a new social minded products and fun is format, utility, and niche. And I love that framework and it's still is burned in…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout is reducing incubation budget to acquire businesses
“Actually, I want to do less incubation, like reduce that budget, still do incubation, but reduce that budget and take that budget to actually just buy something that's working.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout often spends $250K on failed startup incubations
“We incubate stuff all the time that fails. So like, we'll often put 250 grand into something and try it and it fails.”
Isenberg: Epic Games was a Late Checkout client until recently
“Epic games up until very recently was a client of late checkout as well.”
Greg Isenberg reveals Late Checkout has a seven-figure Fortune 500 client contract
“Someone who listens to the pod, actually, he's a Fortune, 500 client exec out of Fortune, 100 maybe. And pays late checkout seven figures a year.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout completed first M&A and plans more
“We've done some M&A in the year we did our first M&A and we're going to be doing more of it in the year and beyond”
Taba: Isenberg's 'guerrilla CEO' style gets things done but disrupts workflows
“Sometimes you go, like, guerrilla CEO on us and just, like, go and have something executed on without really
Like waiting around or planning it, and that's just because I'm the operator, and so for me, structure helps give me calm and peace.
What it does do is…”
Isenberg: Late Checkout pitches clients using before-and-after examples
“In the calls, what we have is the sales team, the biz dev team. They're like, they basically go through before and afters. Like that's the pitch.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout spends $2,000 to $3,000 monthly on Notion
“We pay thousands of dollars a month for notion, like two, three, I don't know, thousand a month.”
Isenberg: Late Checkout operates as a holding company building distinct ventures
“Late checkout is a holding company, meaning we run, we're a company that builds companies. So we've got boring marketing. We've got, you probably need a robot. We've got the late checkout innovation agency dispatch with the design subscription, et cetera.”