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 1,266 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 17 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
Hudson: Most portfolio company buyers are unknown at investment time
“Most of the companies we've sold, with a few exceptions, the buyer was not anticipated or known at the time of the investment.”
Kinzie Lux: 8M equestrians ride solo 4 out of 5 times
“Eight million equestrians ride without a coach for four out of five weekly rides.”
Ride iQ pays coaches a flat $100 per recorded audio lesson
“We pay the coaches 100 dollars per lesson that they record. It could be a nine minute lesson or a 45 minute lesson. It doesn't matter to us.”
Jessa Lux: Seven Ride iQ members tattooed the company slogan on themselves
“Seven of our members have Ride IQ's slogan tattooed on their body.”
Hershberg: Golf participation is up nearly 20% from pre-pandemic levels
“So the growth in the game is nearly 20% from what it was prior to the pandemic.”
Hershberg: Amateur Golf Society closes roughly 85% of pitched courses
“Close rate is about 85% of the courses that I talk to.”
Hershberg: 2,500 members in 58 markets would yield $30M annual cash flow
“So if we look at every single AGA in the country, of which there are 58, if each one of those markets has an AGS tour in it with 2500 members. This business is cash flowing thirty million dollars a year.”
Jim Brown: Payout Rates for Cold Case Rewards Are Abysmal
“As I dug into it further though, the percentage of those rewards that are actually ever paid out Is abysmal. It's big carrots dangling and they're never paid out for some stipulation that happens.”
Oura's smart ring competitors failed by going direct-to-consumer, says Sanchez
“There were about 30 other companies that tried doing something similar, or as the only survivor, because all of them tried to go direct to consumer.”
Lotus has one signed customer and is otherwise pre-revenue
“We have one signed customer, actually they've even given us a 50% deposit, and so we have some booked revenue, but primarily we're pre-product, pre-revenue.”
Lotus hardware supply chain turnaround is 1.5 months
“Our supply chain right now timing is about a month and a half... To go from complete design on paper to end units in hand.”
Lotus projects 75% gross margins at 10,000 units
“At that price point, if we only built a thousand units, our gross margin is 64%. And if we build 10,000 units, which is actually what the state of New York wants, It's 75%”
Braima: Companies spend $2.2B annually on research in Africa
“Companies are spending an annual 2.2 billion dollars on research. In Africa.”
Braima: Africa Has Only Nine or Ten Tech Unicorns
“And there's only nine unicorns or 10 unicorns in Africa.”
The US has 60,000 jewelry retailers, but only 9,000 operate online
“Right now there are about 55 to 60,000 retailers just in the United States. So if I take that percentage of ones that are already online, that's about 9000 give or take brands.”
Online conversion rates for diamond center stones are an abysmal 0.4%
“Carter Cast, who's the founding CMO of Blue Nile, and he was telling me that, like, conversion rates on diamond center stones are .4%. Bounce rates are abysmal in jewelry.”
Gemist secures a record-breaking $650,000 syndicate investment on The Pitch
“So we got 300,000 from Neil. That's 250 K from Mark puts you at 550,000. You've got a 100,000 coming from the pitch fund. That puts you at 650,000 dollars, which is I think the biggest investment we've ever had on the show.”
HILOS supply chain network turns around on-demand footwear in 72 hours
“So the way that our supply chain works is we essentially have printing partners that maintain very shallow levels of inventories at assembly partners that are each around a certain product type. They're able to then Turn around things in 72 hours.”
HILOS 'George' shoe showed no wear after a 300-mile test
“We sent the George on a 300 mile joyride, and it came out without a scratch. And a big reason for that is because we're using far more advanced materials, and we're using a completely different structure of build.”
Stahl: Exclusive supplier deals give HILOS huge leverage over partner brands
“We own the language by which they make the product. We have exclusive supplier relationships and brands are incredibly dependent on that and dependent on us, which allows us have a huge amount of leverage in that relationship.”
Muccio: HILOS oversubscribed its funding round to raise $5M
“Elias oversubscribed on their round, raising a total of five million.”
Stahl: HILOS software cuts footwear product delivery from months to hours
“So the designer focuses on really new, interesting, creative textures and geometries, and our software is able to push them and empower them to think faster and broader and more creatively than before while delivering a product within minutes and hours instead…”
Besenval: Switching from graphite to lithium metal increases energy density 50%
“So when I say that we can increase range, that's because our electrolyte enables the use of lithium metal in the battery cell, so right now batteries use graphite. You switch to lithium metal, very easy to increase energy density by 50%.”
Sáles-Griffin: Zero founders have invoked Techstars' equity buyback guarantee with me
“If we don't do our job after those 13 weeks, you can buy back your equity. So like, that's the ultimate fail safe. So I have had precisely zero EBGs throughout my time as managing director. Zero.”
Kamenetsky: Modern Picnic generates 80-90% product margins and 60% gross margins
“So our product margins are excellent at over 80 to 90%. Gross margin goes down as still incredibly strong at around 60%, which will only continue to be strong as we grow in scale.”
Kamenetsky: Modern Picnic cut ad spend 80% while growing revenue
“But this year, we've scaled back our ad spend by 80% in an effort to preserve burn, extend our runway but we're still seeing top-line growth, which is crazy.”
Wildgrain reached monthly net profitability at the time of recording
“We are actually turning into profit this month.”
Dotcal booking pages convert 25% higher than Calendly in marketing
“We've run a lot of A-B tests with 10,000 pages at this point, and dot-cal conversions are about 25% higher than Calendly conversions for marketing purposes.”
Calendly raised under $500K before hitting a multi-billion dollar valuation
“And he literally only raised like half a million dollars or a little less than half a million dollars until the most recent raise. Which was in the billions of dollars valuation.”
Wheaton: $334 billion in clothing assets sit in US women's closets
“There's three hundred thirty four billion dollars in assets sitting in women's closets across the U.S.”
Manus: Le Tote and CaaStle failed; Rent the Runway lost two-thirds value
“Literally, Le Tote went under, Y Closet went under, Castle went under, they raised over a hundred million dollars and never were able to make it work. RTR lost two thirds of its stock value since its IPO.”
Medina: Ford F-150 Lightning backup power ignores electric grid coordination
“What you mentioned about the Ford F one 50, basically what they're doing is they're discharging their battery on their house, right? But they're not coordinating that with the grid. They're not actively participating on those markets.”
Coder: Aunt Flow is the only direct B2B organic cotton tampon supplier
“So Ontflow is actually the only company that works directly with businesses to supply them with 100% organic cotton tampons.”
Allen: Narrow market and lack of revenue blocked Rowvigor's institutional funding
“Then they started saying, well, we see what you've built. Rowing is still kind of narrow for us and nobody's paying for it. And so those two things became impediments to getting institutional capital.”
Allen: Competitor Hydrow raised $1M pre-product while Rowvigor struggled
“And meanwhile, companies like Hydro Row get a million dollars without having product one for an idea on rowing-based fitness.”
Caldwell: ShearShare helped over 100 previously denied shop owners get PPP loans
“And we're so happy to say that over a hundred people who were first denied for their original PPP application, we helped them secure PPP funds afterwards, the second attempt.”
Downey: VCs are still writing checks despite pandemic slowdown
“Yeah, and I think, like, people are writing checks right now. It's definitely slowed down, to be clear, but we as investors are in the business of funding companies we think are going to be great.”
Trucking firms leave 45% of assets unutilized, spend $20K per hire
“For trucking companies, 45% of their assets are being unutilized, and they're spending between 15 K to 20 K directly or indirectly to hire a truck driver.”
Carriers spend $15K to hire drivers who quit within 30 days
“Companies are spending 15 K to hire a driver, and they come to find out that driver quit in 30 days.”
Blue Bottle Coffee was acquired for $700M with only 30-40 retail stores
“Blue Bottle was a seven hundred million dollar outcome with maybe 30 or 40 retail locations at the time that they sold.”
Sheel Mohnot defends Debbie Wei Mullin for reaching $1M revenue alone
“She built this to a million dollars in revenue all on her own, and you're like, oh, I need to see more proof?”
Yin: Few VCs Actively Deployed Capital Into Startups During Early COVID
“To be quite frank, I don't think there are many investors who are even, you know, spending a lot of time investing in new companies to begin with.”
Ezeugwu: Berkadia partnership secured Who's Your Landlord's last three investors
“I'll be real. Bercadia is the reason why we close the last three investors.”
McGarrity: 2.5 Billion Images Are Stolen Daily Worldwide
“In fact, 2.5 billion images are stolen daily on a global level”
McGarrity: Metapixel's Watermarking Survives Screenshots, Cropping, and Compression
“And we do so by applying a proactive, survivable metamark, as we're calling it, into media. And you can think of the metamark as like an invisible fingerprint, protecting it with Permanent metadata, and it survives everything from screenshots, cropping, and co…”