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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Intapp: https://bit.ly/intappceleste
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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)

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!

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