Five Takeaways From Walmart’s Acquisition of Jet.com

Jet.com, once laughed at — or, should I say, often laughed at — will now have the final laugh. Walmart will announce tomorrow that it has acquired Jet.com, which has raised upwards of $565M of venture capital from some of the best funds in the world, for $3.3 billion. That is a home run, and CEO Marc Lore is now laughing all the way to the bank. This news will stun many in startup-land because, in some ways, it’s unfair — a negative gross-margin business with a huge capital raise could’ve been a symbol of tech and startup excess — and yet, here we are, counting the ways in which the cap table will get paid off for their risk.

Here are my quick takeaways from the deal:

1/ Teams and Targets Matter: Lore’s history with Diapers.com was already a success. He famously didn’t love what happened at Amazon post-acquisition, so he went all “Revenant” on his former employer and launched Jet.com, raising what seemed like (at the time) an obscene amount of venture capital. And, he repeated this with a model that was part innovative (help CPG create a channel right to the consumer) and part-silly (losing tons of cash to acquire customers). Lore’s bravado, big goals, and chip on his shoulder helped him field a team and attracted VC money. That’s all those investors needed — a big market and someone who is proven and is on a mission. (Making a few assumptions based on Pitchbook data about the company’s first round of financing, a VC writing a $10m check in the first round at an implied valuation of ~$150M, with ownership maintained pro-rata, would now be returning 20-22x that amount in about two years’ time, though we don’t yet know how much of the total sale price is related to Lore’s and the team’s earn-outs.)

2/ “Climate Change” in The Retail Sector is Very Real: About a year ago, I wrote this post on how the challenges facing traditional retail in the U.S. were so steep, a range of startups could jump in and make very strategic acquisitions. In this post, while I mentioned Walmart’s woes, even I overlooked Jet.com as a potential puzzle piece for an incumbent. I will admit that I didn’t fully understand the dynamics here and, having never met the CEO and his team, clearly underestimated how much confidence they can inspire, even if their audience is living in fear.

3/ Startup Life is Unfair: Like life, startup outcomes are not fair. I can imagine many founders who haven’t broken through yet and investors who haven’t seen liquidity in years shaking their head in a “WTF” rage. To some, Jet.com represented too much risk to take; to others, its inherent risk and need for cash was its appeal. Risk, like love, is in the eye of the beholder.

4/ Walmart Isn’t Dumb: Yes, Amazon is very smart. A savvy investor friend of mine (who was in this Jet.com deal early) recently remarked to me that Walmart is the only U.S. company that had enough cash and heft to make this move to level-up against Amazon. The natural reaction in startup-land is that there’s no way The Waltons can keep up with Bezos, but then again less than 10% of all commerce in the U.S. is transacted online. Who will help the remaining 90% accelerate? (Side note – I like Priceline’s angle here, too. That’s for another post.)

5/ M&A Chatter Turning Into Reality: I’ve been back at my blog writing a bunch lately, all unpacking huge acquisitions. This chatter has increased over the past few weeks. With stock prices at all-time highs and incumbents with huge cash sums sitting around, everyone in the ecosystem is hoping this triggers a 6-12 month wave of consolidation, to move from a “dry bubble” to a more liquid realization of value — in cash.