Episode 19: Jet

Ben & David break down Jet.com’s meteoric rise, culminating in Walmart’s blockbuster $3B+ acquisition of the company just two years after its founding. Will we look back on this deal as an ‘Instagram-like’ bargain or a ‘Pets.com'-sized blunder? And most importantly, can *anyone* compete with Amazon going forward? We speculate wildly.

Sponsors:

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Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Topics covered include:

• Community spotlight: Nowdue, a super fast invoicing platform for teams on Slack. Invoice like it’s the future! This looks very cool.
• Jet’s deep origins in Founder & CEO Marc Lore’s first two companies, The Pit and Quidsi (aka, diapers.com)
• Lore’s chance run-in with Jeff Bezos at a school picnic in Seattle in the early 2000’s
• Amazon's dramatic acquisition of Quidsi in 2010, including Bezos’ admonition to Amazon corp dev to keep Quidsi from being bought by Walmart under any circumstances (covered well in The Everything Store)
• Lore’s less-than-favorable opinion of Amazon's culture
• Lore's vision of Jet as an ‘online Costco’ that can directly with Amazon on price by selling goods to a “huge middle-class of people" at effectively zero margin, and make profit on membership fees
• Jet’s huge, pre-launch fundraising rounds, and subsequent massively promoted public launch in July 2015
• Jet’s pivot in October 2015 to drop the membership model (their only profit engine), and subsequent massive growth (but also accompanying massive losses)
• 'Admitting defeat” to Amazon in July 2016? Immediately followed by the blockbuster $3B+ Walmart acquisition announcement
• Is e-commerce really a winner-take-all business and will Amazon just take over the world? Featuring liberal citations (again) of Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory and the importance of customer experience.
• Is there any path for Walmart & Jet to compete effectively with Amazon? Is Marc Lore Walmart’s only hope?
• Fantastic interview with Tim Cook discussing (among other things) the massive amount of growth still left in the internet

Followups:

• Lucasfilm: Star Wars Rouge One trailer drops! Featuring a strong female protagonist!

New section: Hot Takes! (thank you @cteitzel on Slack for the idea)

• Verizon/AOL acquires Yahoo!
• Lyft reportedly turns down acquisition offer from GM
• Microsoft acquires Beam
• Randstad acquires Monster.com

The Carve Out:

• Ben: Michael Mauboussin’s Talk at Google and Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors after thirty years of honing his craft
• David: Strava, the fantastic social fitness-tracking app
• None this week… coverage of Instagram Stories to come next time!