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 12 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
Ricketts: Use a three-tier interview framework to extract concrete tactical examples
“The first being somebody is going to throw out just a response to your question. Like maybe it'll be like kind of high level. Like, let's say that I'm like, oh, you know, how do you manage your time? They'll be like, well, this is how I sort of structure my ca…”
Ricketts: High-utility content creates brand halo effects by helping audiences directly
“If they can somehow provide content that helps people get to that end goal for themselves, then they're going to reap the halo effect. Of being able to be that helpful. So producing high utility stuff is what I, it's sort of my go-to recommendation.”
Ricketts: Content must be useful or emotional, and utility is easier
“In order for it to really resonate, it needs to be either really used Useful or really emotional. And by emotional, it has to be like, I'm crying. I have to send this to my best friend right now, which is like really hard to do. And like, you're not going to b…”
Ricketts: Numbered lists and bullets increase reader engagement in long-form content
“If you give people a sense of, like, how much they can anticipate from a certain section, they're more likely to read it, because they're like, oh, I feel like that's going to be digestible, and so knowing that people make those types of calculations and feedi…”
Ricketts: First Round pings Slack when accounts with 10k+ followers tweet
“We even have some mechanisms set up on Slack where if anyone that has over 10,000 followers tweets about a piece of our content, we get an alert. So that we can keep tabs on how many influencers in the space are engaging with and sharing.”
Ricketts: First Round uses content to recruit talent for mentorship and events
“Whenever we see someone who might not be in our community already or who we might not know tweet about us, we will reach out and just be like, Hey, how's it going? And there's a few other things at first round that they can also engage with, you know, our even…”
Ricketts: First Round Review aims to be New Yorker meets HBR
“So we came up with this guiding North Star that we haven't accomplished, but it does help me in my everyday work that we want to be the New Yorker meets the Harvard Business Review. Like, can you tell beautiful literary stories about people that also provide t…”
Ricketts: Unanswered, highly followed community questions make prime content topics
“You'll see a question get asked and be followed by a tremendous number of people, but there won't be a lot of satisfying answers that come up. And that's really ripe opportunity for us to then go find an answer.”
Ricketts: First Round articles take at least several weeks to produce
“It's definitely at the very shortest of several weeks Process because we don't just do an interview. We have a prep conversation with the person so that we're on the same page. Everyone knows what to anticipate. We've teased out a topic we feel really strongly…”
Ricketts: All First Round content is interview-based with one-hour limits
“So all of our content is interview based, which has applied a very interesting constraint and also had forced me to get very good at this particular thing. Cause I only get an hour with most of these people.”
Ricketts: First Round sets no word counts for its editorial content
“We don't have word counts, but we write extremely long.”
Ricketts: First Round holds listening sessions with founders to spot resource gaps
“So a couple things that we've done and some of them just recently is we hold founder listening sessions where we'll have a founder come in and talk to our entire team and about their experience and where are the gaps and what they need to succeed.”