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The Ledger

Predicting the future is the easy part. This page is the hard part — every public call on this site since 2017, graded against what actually happened. The hits, the misses, and the partial credit reality insists on.

12Hits
7Misses
5Partials
60%Hit rate*
2017Hit

Why Snapchat Is In Hot Trouble (With A Little Help From Facebook)

Facebook is successfully clawing away bit-by-bit at Snapchat's future user base. And without future new users that consistently use the social media tool - there's little that snapchat can offer to its partners to keep it afloat.

Instagram Stories hit 250M daily users within a year — bigger than all of Snapchat. Snap's growth stalled exactly where predicted, and the stock spent five years below its IPO price.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2018

2017Miss

Journalism: The Future Of Snapchat?

Snapchat has a unique value proposition to the Journalism industry - let Spectacles be the mobile, risk-free, and cheap medium through which you now capture events that you see with your eyes.

Snap wrote down $40M of unsold Spectacles less than six months later. Citizen journalism absolutely took over the news — it just happened on the phone already in everyone's pocket, no camera-glasses required.

Called 2017

2017Partial

Amazon Bought Whole Foods For This Secret Product

No shelf space wasted. All products sell. Costs are reduced. Profits will soar. Amazon might have just set itself up to give its customers a brand new Secret Product - customized grocery stores that cater to each of its audiences.

Half right — Prime became the Whole Foods membership layer, exactly along the demographic overlap described. But the data-customized store never shipped, and Amazon was still rethinking its grocery formats six years later.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2023

2017Hit

Why Bad Eyesight Is Going To Get (Even More) Expensive

The new optical behemoth would control every aspect of the supply chain for numerous players in the eyewear industry - an efficient vertically integrated company that can make frames, offer insurance, and sell lenses. […] Don't be surprised if a year down the line, price can't be one of the factors that helps you differentiate one pair of glasses from the next.

Merger closed October 2018 — EssilorLuxottica then bought GrandVision (7,000+ more stores) and kept gross margins above 60%. Price never became the differentiator.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2021

2017Miss

How Google Can Fight Facebook (Hint: Snapchat Helps)

Google should Buy Snap Inc.

Nobody bought Snapchat — Google+ shut down in 2019 and Google still has no social network. Snap spent most of the decade worth less than the rumored $30B offer.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2019

2017Miss

The Real Reason Google Wants To Be In Your Home

With Google Home in your home, Google can capture some data from that previously dark enigmatic period of time. […] The applications are limitless.

The data-capture motive was real, but the goldmine never materialized — smart speakers commoditized into kitchen timers, and Google folded the whole effort into Gemini. Limitless, it was not.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2024

2017Hit

The Real Reason Why CVS is Spending $69 Billion

CVS wants to own and profit off of all 3 components of this healthcare conundrum. […] CVS is getting rid of overcharging by doctors, overtreatment by specialists, and oversubscription of medicines by combining all 3 industries.

Merger closed November 2018 — HealthHUB clinics rolled out the next year, and CVS Health became one of the five largest US companies by revenue: insurer, pharmacy, PBM, all under one roof. Executed almost to the letter.

Called 2017 · Resolved 2018

2018Hit

How Disney Broke Cable TV... and Netflix?

With Netflix subscription prices rising, will Disney do to Netflix, what Netflix did to cable?

Disney+ launched in November 2019 and hit 100M subscribers in 16 months — the fastest streaming ramp ever. By 2022 Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a decade and got dragged into ads: the script ran as written.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2019

2018Hit

T-Mobile is Trying to Win an Election with the Sprint Merger

If T-Mobile is able to utilize its low band, in combination with Sprint's mid-band frequencies, a cheap 5G network for its customers becomes a more feasible idea.

Closed April 2020 — T-Mobile built its 5G lead on Sprint's mid-band exactly as described and passed AT&T in subscribers. The spectrum thesis aged like wine.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2020

2018Miss

Why the World (and you) should be Watching Zillow

It's clear to Zillow that house C is dramatically undervalued - Zillow will buy it. […] Zillow wants to flip houses.

Zillow Offers bought high, sold low, lost roughly $880M, and shut down in November 2021 — taking a quarter of the company's jobs with it. The data moat was real; the unit economics ran the other way.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2021

2018Hit

The Real Reason Disney Is Spending $70 Billion

They're fighting to collect even more content (21st Century Fox) — to get ready to roll out their own streaming service in 2019 (using BAMTech).

Disney closed the Fox deal in March 2019 for $71.3B, took operational control of Hulu, and launched Disney+ that November — the exact blueprint, on the exact timeline. One of the most literal resolutions in this ledger.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2019

2018Miss

Disney Should Open Up Movie Theaters

In 2 years time, you will pay to watch content at Disney owned-and-operated movie theaters.

In 2020 a federal court terminated the Paramount consent decrees — the exact rule that made studio-owned theaters legally fraught — and Disney still never opened one. Disney+ was the theater all along.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2020

2018Miss

Why Amazon is Going Backwards to Move Forward

Amazon is setup to open thousands of 'Four Star Stores' across the World.

Amazon opened a few dozen, not thousands — then closed every 4-star store, bookstore, and pop-up in one sweep in March 2022. The funnel turned out to be a cul-de-sac.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2022

2018Partial

The Real Future of Ride-Sharing

The practical and inevitable future of inexpensive ride-sharing - one possibly without drivers altogether.

Driverless arrived from Google's fleet, not Tesla owners renting out cars — and rides still aren't cheaper than an UberX. Direction right, mechanism wrong, economics pending.

Called 2018 · Resolved 2025

2020Hit

A $20B public company may very well be completely fraudulent?

A $20B public company may very well be completely fraudulent?

It was — founder Trevor Milton was convicted of securities fraud in 2022, and Nikola filed for bankruptcy in 2025. The $2B GM partnership quietly evaporated along the way.

Called 2020 · Resolved 2022

2020Partial

An extension for the music streaming industry that may have a ton of money in it...

An extension for the music streaming industry that may have a ton of money in it - 'album musicals'. […] Sold à la carte like Mulan for $20-$30 (more than an album, closer to a movie).

Right shape, wrong shelf — Taylor Swift's Eras Tour film and Beyoncé's Renaissance both sold as feature-length, movie-priced experiences, exactly as described. They just shipped through theaters instead of streaming platforms.

Called 2020 · Resolved 2023

2021Hit

Implications of the ridiculous H1B decision - burgeoning tech hubs in other parts of...

Our wonky immigration policies will accelerate international tech/startup hubs in India, China etc. Think about what happens when (largely) technical 'knowledge workers' are no longer invited to the US - they stay and build something amazing elsewhere.

Trump's 2025 $100K H-1B fee triggered exactly this — Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft added 32,000+ jobs in India that year, and India passed 130 unicorns to become the world's third-largest startup ecosystem. Restrict the visa, lose the talent, just on a longer clock than expected.

Called 2021 · Resolved 2025

2021Partial

Netflix and Amazon should consider a 'grandparents' streaming plan.

Netflix and Amazon should consider a 'grandparents' streaming plan. […] Capture the market that uses your service the least, while doing some good in the world.

Nobody shipped a discounted seniors plan — but the gap it was trying to close did close some anyway. Netflix's $6.99 ad tier (2022) gave price-sensitive households a cheaper way in, and 65+ streaming adoption kept climbing.

Called 2021 · Resolved 2022

2021Partial

The future of Snap Inc. in one picture = bridging the virtual and real world...

The future of Snap Inc. in one picture = bridging the virtual and real world through a camera (and I'm sure Meta won't be too far behind).

The future was right; the winner wasn't — Meta's Ray-Bans sold in the millions while Snap's AR Spectacles stayed a developer kit. 'Meta won't be too far behind' turned out to be the most accurate clause in the post.

Called 2021 · Resolved 2025

2021Hit

I think we're going to see a spike in vaccination rates over the next 4 weeks...

I think we're going to see a spike in vaccination rates over the next 4 weeks - driven by a large flurry of businesses that will require vaccinations to do business / enter (at least in the US).

The FDA's full approval landed August 23, the corporate mandate wave followed immediately (United, Tyson, Google, and more), and US daily vaccinations climbed sharply through September. Four weeks, as called.

Called 2021

2021Miss

The difference in type of curve is why Salesforce acquiring Slack could be a good thing.

The difference in type of curve is why Salesforce acquiring Slack could be a good thing. […] If Slack is truly a better product, Salesforce should help provide exponential growth to catch up to MSFT teams soon.

The curve never bent — Teams blew past 300M users on the Office default while Slack stopped reporting user counts and its founder left within two years. Distribution beat product, exactly the thesis this post made about Microsoft, turned around and pointed at Slack.

Called 2021 · Resolved 2023

2022Hit

The greatest “Easy” revenue lever that Netflix has is not letting folks share...

The greatest 'Easy' revenue lever that Netflix has is not letting folks share passwords / accounts.

Netflix pulled the lever in May 2023 and posted its biggest subscriber surge since COVID — then crossed 300M members by the end of 2024, square in the predicted range. Right mechanism, right elasticity, right number.

Called 2022 · Resolved 2024

2023Hit

It's becoming clearer that Sam Altman was removed as CEO because of governance...

He wasn't fired because OpenAI was necessarily doing 'poorly' -- he was fired because his Board wasn't 'aligned' with Sam. […] Just 24H later, I don't think it's too late for the situation to be salvaged.

Five days later Altman was back as CEO, the board was replaced, and Microsoft had an observer seat. The salvage scenario ran exactly as sketched — 738 of 770 employees threatened to walk, and the board folded.

Called 2023

2024Waiting

TikTok has significantly reduced quality of life, particularly in Western markets.

There will be a lookback on how detrimental the Business was on topics that dominated young people's mindshare, how TikTok influenced the way young people see the world, and how (unfortunately) a CCP-influenced algo played a large role in it all - at a global scale.

The US passed a divest-or-ban law in 2024 and the app went dark for a night in January 2025 before a forced restructuring — but the full societal lookback this called for hasn't been written yet. The ledger waits.

Called 2024 · Still open

*Partials count half, because reality loves a technicality. House rules: grading is self-administered, which is exactly as suspicious as it sounds — so every verdict names what actually happened, and the misses stay up forever. Deleting them would defeat the point.