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 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
98% of middle schools will require locked phone pouches within 10 years
“My guess is in 10 years, 98% of middle schools are requiring people to put their phone in a pouch and lock it during the day.”
Robinson: Great software products should not require venture capital funding
“If you have a great product, you really shouldn't need venture capital unless it's a really capital heavy Business”
Robinson: Jolie hit $50M run rate in 36 months with 3 employees
“Those guys got the showerhead business, Jolie, to fifty million run rate in 36 months with three people. They just hired their fourth full-time employee.”
Robinson: Jolie generates $19M ARR on replacement filters with 95% margins
“They send a 99 dollar filter every year to people who buy the shower head that does not get canceled as 93% gross churn. Nineteen million ARR with like 95% margin of filters, right?”
Robinson: Brands should pay 1,000 micro-influencers over one $500K celebrity post
“Those people are way overpaid. They haven't really helped the brands at all. And the way to think about it is if you were going to pay rather than paying 500,000 dollars for one post, you should pay 500 dollars for a thousand posts from small people, right?”
Robinson: The ideal startup marries 'Rework' profitability with YC growth focus
“I think the perfect combination is, is like rework fundamentals, but Y Combinator orientation towards growth. If you can think about product market fit and growth from the Y Combinator lens, which I really don't think rework emphasizes that much.”
Robinson: Huge opportunity exists to innovate beyond basic Yondr phone pouches
“There's a huge opportunity to like identify an elegant feature set around this pouch that probably is not that much more expensive than just what they're doing right now. That just makes it work a lot better. Like, oh, it charges your phone while it's in there…”
Robinson: Never prototype hardware before customer conversations show clear demand
“I would not build anything until I could say X, Y, Z and I would get like a literal eyes light up asking me where they could buy it. And then I would start prototyping something physical. I would do an enormous amount of, cause man, it's like prototyping is ex…”
Robinson: A single phone-locking device is only 80% adequate across different verticals
“What I do know is that one dumb device is not the best. It's not the best for all of those different applications. It's like, 80% there for all of them. It's not a hundred percent for any of them. It might be a hundred percent for one of them, which is where t…”
Adam Robinson: Copying directly fails, but cross-pollinating proven concepts works
“If you copy people, you'll get like one percent of what they're doing. That's my deep belief. It takes people a long time to learn that. It took me a long time to learn that. It took me years to learn that like copying. I don't know why it took me that long. I…”