Podcasts about ebay paypal

אז איך עושים איקומרס בתקופת משבר? איך מכינים הזמנות כשהראש עם החיילים בעזה ובצפון? איך נותנים שירות ללקוחות כשהלב עם החטופות והחטופים? איך יושבים על הדו״חות כשהכאב על מי שאינו איתנו לא עוזב לרגע? הימים קשים, ולפעמים, אומרת הקלישאה, דווקא ההתעקשות על שגרת היום מסייעת להתמודדות במצב בלתי נסבל.  אז איך מנהלים איקומרס בתקופת משבר כל כך ארוכה כשסופה אינו נראה לעין? כדי לשמוע וללמוד מנסיונם של אחרים, אירחתי בפאנל מיוחד ביוזמת והפקת דמרקר לייבלס, אורחים שמייצגים חלק משמעותי מעולם האיקומרס הישראלי והבינלאומי. מזמין אתכם להקשיב לנוי הדס היא היא נוי השדה,  לקרן בן ניסים מ- ACE , למיקי סוקולובסקי מ- eBay  ולאפי דהן מ- Paypal. תודה גדולה למלכה האם אורלן בר, למפיקה אורטל, לאולפני מלון, לאלי אלון מ- BIZI ולכל מי שלא מתייאש ועושה כמיטב יכולתו על מנת שלכולנו יהיו כאן חיים ששווה לחיות.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe Sullivan has been at the forefront of managing security risk in rapidly growing high tech companies over the past 20 years serving as the Chief Security Officer at Facebook from early start-up through the IPO, CSO of Uber and CloudFlare, and as a security leader at eBay/PayPal. Joe was also involved in a landmark legal case for a breach at Uber which resulted in a criminal conviction that serves as a precedent for executive liability in cybersecurity going forward. In this OODAcast we discuss: Joe's early career and how he got interested and involved in technology and started his career as a federal prosecutor focused on cyber crime. The transition into serving as a technology company CSO and his experiences at eBay/PayPal, Facebook, Uber and Cloudflare. Lessons learned from building and managing highly functional security teams in dynamic environments. Frameworks for managing risk at companies like Facebook and Uber. His experiences being prosecuted and convicted surrounding circumstances associated with a 2016 incident at Uber. How the courts will handle future cases like this and the associated liability for C-suite executives. His current work focused on supplying technology for remote learning to displaced children in Ukraine. Official Bio:Joe Sullivan is CEO of Ukraine Friends and President of Joe Sullivan Security LLC. Previously, Joe had served as the Chief Security Officer of Cloudflare since July (2018 - 2022). Prior to that, Joe was employed as Chief Security Officer at both Uber (2015 - 2017) and Facebook (2008 - 2015). His first private sector experience was in senior security and legal roles at eBay and PayPal (2002 - 2008). He also held the position of Commissioner for the United States Presidential Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity in 2016 and spent the first eight years of his career with the US Department of Justice, including as a federal prosecutor focused on cyber crime. Joe also advises a number of companies on security practices and mentors a number of developing security leaders. Recommended Books: Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 Beneath A Scarlet Sky

David Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, building infrastructure that extends the capabilities and utility of Bitcoin. Prior to Lightspark, David led all payment and crypto efforts at Facebook/Meta and scaled Messenger to 1.5BN users. David previously founded three other companies: Zong (acquired by eBay/PayPal for $240M), Echovox (acquired by MBO), and GTN (acquired by World Access). In Today's Episode with David Marcus We Discuss: 1. From Losing Everything to Becoming Changing the World of Fintech: How did seeing his family lose everything lead to David starting his first company, GTN? Does David believe that great companies can be built in Europe? What are the biggest mistakes David made with Zong? How did they impact his mindset? 2. The Secret to Building a Great Company from Mark Zuckerberg's ex-Right Hand Man: Where does David think Paypal lost its way? How did David "brutally" change PayPayl's company culture when he came in? What worked and what didn't in scaling Messenger to 1.5BN users? Why did Diem (formerly Libra) fail? How did David know when to give up that fight? What is David's biggest lesson from working with Mark Zuckerberg? 3. Crypto & AI's Ripple Effect on The Rest of The World: What will be the fallout from the de-banking of crypto?  How does David think the future of AI will impact income equality? If David was in charge of the SEC, what would he do first? What worries David most about the next 1-5 years in the crypto industry? What are the most significant signs that the tea leaves not looking great for the US dollar? 4. How The Best Leaders Hire The Best Talent: Why does David believe that naivety is good for entrepreneurs? Does David believe we'll be in a worse macro position by the end of the year? How has David changed most as a leader over time? What is David's biggest piece of advice in regard to hiring across many different companies?  

How do you assess your self-awareness as a leader? In this episode we cover, the five fundamental skills all great managers and leaders master, from motivating people to developing self-awareness. We cover three distinct tools at your disposal as a boss—and when to use each. Thrasher also covers proven approaches to the key manager responsibilities, from setting clear goals with employees to keeping people accountable (without becoming the dreading micromanager) to attracting superstars to the team. If you're wondering how to positively influence employee engagement in your organization, this is the episode for you. THE FINER DETAILS OF THIS SHOWWhat should we be training individual contributors for vs. a manager? (12:30) How do you succession plan for an individual contributor moving into a managerial role? (13:46) How can leaders better understand their team's motivations? (21:00) KEEP UP WITH GUESTCheck out Alicia Thrasher's Book, https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Playbook-Exceptional-Management-Competitive/dp/B09MYTMMNQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+managers+playbook&qid=1663952583&sr=8-1 (The Manager's Playbook). EPISODE RESOURCEShttps://remarkable-leadership-lessons.mn.co/plans/221111?bundle_token=4b95ffe2499218bea24341d2cab48999&utm_source=manual (Join the Remarkable Leadership Lessons Community Now) https://rllessons.com/ (Visit the Remarkable Leadership Lessons Site) Got questions? Send them here Interested in being a guest? https://calendly.com/denisecooperspeaks/podcast-overview-referral (Schedule an introduction call)! Subscribe on https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1453921255?ign-itscg=30200&ign-itsct=lt_p (Apple Podcasts), https://open.spotify.com/show/52hAJHuGUXlyhKuOyuon3U (Spotify), or https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vY2xvc2luZy10aGUtZ2FwLw (Google Podcasts), and leave us a rating or review GUEST BIOAlicia Thrasher is the co-founder and CEO of MGR360, a leadership development and software company based in Austin, Texas. She is the coauthor, with Joel Trammell, of The Manager's Playbook: Make Exceptional People Management Your Competitive Advantage. With more than 20 years of management experience in the information technology and consulting space, Alicia understands what it takes to manage people effectively, even through the most complex situations. Before becoming CEO of MGR360, she brought her leadership, vision, and strategic oversight to many executive positions, including leading programs for eBay/PayPal, Google, and Anheuser-Busch. Alicia graduated with a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in Management Information Systems. She also holds Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certifications.  “The past year has presented an unprecedented shift in the U.S. economy. The demand for workers came soaring back after it dipped low during the pandemic, and millions of workers have retired early, quit their jobs or otherwise stayed on the sidelines. Now more than ever, strong leadership is necessary to help organizations stay ahead of these continuing challenges. In her new book, The Manager's Playbook: Make Exceptional People Management Your Competitive Advantage (January 2022), management expert Alicia Thrasher draws on her decades of experience to provide new and powerful strategies for better people management.”

PayPal Mafia - The Founders Story & Their Battle w/ EBAY w/ Jimmy Soni  - BRT S03 EP36 (135) 8-7-2022   What We Learned This Week PayPal Mafia – alumni created or involved many other co's – Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Yelp, Yammer, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube & more PayPal had may contributors & a real long shot to happen during the DOTCOM Crash of 2000 Claude Shannon – creator of Information Theory, predecessor to the modern computer age, & algorithms Bell Labs was a classic Tech Incubator like Fairfield Semiconductor, Xerox Parc, Menlo Park – Edison / GE, Manhattan Project, Tuxedo Park PayPal sold to EBAY in 2002 for $1.5 Billion, prior to this, the two companies were rivals as EBAY wanted a different payment system         Guest: Jimmy Soni, Author https://jimmysoni.com/ https://twitter.com/jimmyasoni   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmysoni/ My books are passion projects. My topics come because I look for a book to buy on the subject and can't find one. I know it's supposed to be fancier than that, or that there must be some grand theory of my work, but there isn't one. That said, my readers seem to enjoy what I've written, so maybe it's fine? I am inspired by my literary heroes, including Robert Caro, Laura Hillenbrand, Candice Millard, Daniel James Brown, and Barbara Tuchman, among many others. They are all rigorous researchers—but reading their books doesn't feel like doing homework. That's what I'm going for, and hopefully I hit the mark a few times. For me, books are all-consuming projects, leaving little other time for the things that should populate this section like hobbies, interests, and even the ability to remain in basic touch with people. I enjoy obsessing over a subject for years, and my goal is to find as much information as possible and then make the material readable for a general audience.  When not writing or reading, I spend time with my daughter in Brooklyn, NY.  If you'd like to connect, please drop me a line at hello [@] jimmysoni.com.   https://jimmysoni.com/books/   The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley A definitive, deeply reported look at the origin of PayPal and its founding team, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and others whose stories have never before been told. They defined the modern world. This experience defined them.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia Paypal Mafia   Elon Musk – Tesla, Space X, Boring Co. Peter Thiel – 1st FB Investor, AirBnB Investor, Founders Fund, Palantir Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn (sold to Microsoft) Max Levchin – Affirm, Investor in Yelp David O. Sacks – Geni.com & Yammer Chad Hurley – YouTube Russel Simmons – Yelp   https://fintechboomer.com/guide-evaluate-the-founders-the-story-of-paypal-and-the-entrepreneurs-who-formed-silicon-valley/   https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu-business-line/20220620/281758452959411   https://twitter.com/jimmyasoni/status/1488992532268732419       A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Soni and Goodman reveal Claude Shannon's full story for the first time. With unique access to Shannon's family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and always playful genius to life.   https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-claude-shannons-information-theory-invented-the-future-20201222/ QUANTIZED COLUMNS How Claude Shannon Invented the Future Today's information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hfWiQKhcs&t=2s A Mind at Play | Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman | Talks at Google     Life in Code and Digits: When Shannon met ... - ScienceOpen  Shannon is credited with the invention of signal-flow graphs, in 1942. He discovered the topological gain formula while investigating the functional operation of an analog computer. For two months early in 1943, Shannon came into contact with the leading British mathematician Alan Turing.   Ed Thorp, Claude Shannon and the World's First ... - Winton https://www.winton.com › technology › 2018/07 › ed-t... Jul 13, 2018 — Thorp, 85, is a former American mathematics professor and hedge fund manager, who became a New York Times bestselling author in 1962 with his ...   https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html The No-Stats All-Star     Notes: Claude Shannon Bio – A Mind at Play (2017) Claude Shannon – mathematician & MIT professor created Father of Information Theory – How do you make info transferrable, & secure in wartime? Friend of Alan Turing (British Mathematician), both worked on coding in WW2, German code breaking scientists became celebrities in WW2 and raised funding The science behind compressing info, digitizing info and MP3 files, transfer data Mathematics Theory of Communication, Shannon's paper and theory considered the Magna Carta of information age. Great paper theoretically and practically. Shannon created algorithm called sigsally. Imitation Game – WW2 bio movie about Alan Turing Shannon's work used for Gun torrents on Navy ships, target projectiles Bell Labs – math group that Shannon was a part of Famous Groups of Genius - Menlo Park – Edison/GE, Manhattan Project – Built the A Bomb Fairfield Semiconductor – predecessor to Intel and other Silicon Valley tech co's Bell Labs had money and started as R&D Dept. in Bell Telephone Bell Telephone ran all land lines in America, had a Fed guaranteed monopoly on the phone system Bell invented touch tone dialing, transistor, satellite tech, cell tech, communication networks We are all affected by Bell tech and inventions, modern age owes a solid to Bell Had big group of talent and could afford all of it, leading scientists of the time. During WW2 many major U.S. corporations – Bell, Ford were recruited by the US Government. War effort created urgency – math used to shoot down the enemy. The Founders – story of PayPal (2022) Dot Com burst created urgency to Pay Pal, bleeding money, had to survive. Dotcom crash – companies started 1 day, & BK out of business next day. Rise like a rocket and crash in 2 years Next Gen of Genius Teams - Xerox Parc, Microsoft, Apple Music Producer – Brian Eno coined the term “scenious” Scene meets genius - Clusters of talent American Revolution – Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Franklin all together for 1 cause Inklings, Fugitive Poets, 1960's British Music scene, Bill Walsh 49ers Coaching staff of the 1980s Paypal is the story of many – Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Reed Hoffman Alumni of Fairchild Semi led to Intel, Atari and Xerox Parc led to Apple. Post WW2 Bell Labs pressure decreased compared to PayPal. Bell Labs allowed free wheeling, could work on a project for 10 years. PayPal “mafia” Alumni – Yammer, YouTube, Slide, Yelp, Palantir, Tesla, Space X, LinkedIn, investers in FB Ghostbusters – safe jobs at universities vs real world, they want ‘results' Pet.com star of 2000, went BK end of 2000 with Superbowl Ad David Sachs – Palo Alto was “Killing Fields” of tech co's when, Dot coms go bust NASDAQ lost 80% of value in 2000 crash, Crypto Winter of 2022 is analogy Dotcom bust forced PayPal to create a real business and profitable transfer user to paying clients This in a time of infant internet, AOL mailed internet CD to potential customers PayPal doing credit card payments online 20 years ago with dial up internet MB recap of PayPal, 100 to 1 odds. Four year crazy time for PayPal and internet companies. Paypal survives, goes public IPO (2001) and is acquired by EBAY for $1.5 billion 2002. Still top payment system 20 years later, even owns Venmo, another big payment platform Spun off from EBAY (2015) as of 2022 - EBAY market cap $26 billion, PayPal market cap $112 billion Paypal grew email payments and reconcile payments, EBAY did not want to handle payments, clunky. Meg Whitman, (of HP) was running EBAY in 2002. Paypal lived in fear of her. No playbook to build Paypal or EBAY Raising funding, running business, recruiting talent is all hard, start business from scratch. Online payments was revolutionary Reid Hoffman – Dad and firefighter of PayPal had to broker EBAY / PayPal deal Max Levchin – engineer of PayPal – heart of company. Classic immigrant story – ambition and interest. Have to determine appropriate balance of user growth and fraud to keep business going David Sachs – cop, person who brings discipline to product design, Dr. No, must add value. Peter Thiel is a biz guy, raised money and ran PayPal Really smart people in the room, how to settle conflict when they disagree, often happened at PayPal Sales vs legal battle is a classic fued in business Internet was ‘wild west' in 2002, five years old with Section 230 David Sachs was the user ally, user experience ‘conscious' of PayPal Sachs appreciated the user experience and design just like Steve Jobs of Apple Elon Musk ran for X.com – was merged with Confinity (Thiel / Levchin) to be called PayPal (2000), both were trying to create online payments. PayPal was a product of Confinity. Reid Hoffman “Dad/Fireman' of PayPal, had to be the adult and fix problems Book process for Jimmy - 270 interviews over 6 ½ years to create and write book on PayPal. Lesson – Email a ton of people, many will respond So many people made significant contributions to PayPal. Huge cast of characters at the water cooler. Book is about business, tech, personalities. Sign up for EBAY, set up bank account, get 2 small deposits of 2 cents and code. Called Random Deposit system, micro deposits, created by Sanjay Bhargava Julie Anderson – X.com alum, came with Musk. Created Omaha customer service hub for PayPal, she was from Omaha, NE. PayPal still a large employer in NE Jack Selby – raised financing worldwide from Europe, Japan etc. Jack Malloy – early investor and VC in PayPal. Thiel raised $100 million right before DOTCOM bubble burst. PayPal paying money people to use PayPal and get users, cash burn rate Amy Kleiment – unsung hero of PayPal, she understands the Full Picture - resolves conflicts – saw how design went with Ops – Amy was Part Ops – historian – therapist Analogy of Shane Battier – Michael Lewis article (No Stats All Star) on former Duke player, whatever NBA Team he goes to, they win, Battier is the glue of the team. Big strategic decisions matter and that's what is written about. The Interesting problem solving and execution to start and grow a company is often not done by CEO (who gets credit), but by unsung hero no one knows about. Lots of people are involved to build a business. Jimmy does not have tech background. Wrote a history of PayPal and the stories Greg Kouri created Zip2 with Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk, their first company sold for $307 million in 1999 to Compaq database/software company. Musk reinvested the $ in X.com Epilogue – PayPal Mafia affected and inspired tech startups worldwide Chris Wilson taught PayPal story in prison with Stephen Edwards in prison for murder in Baltimore, MD (think The Wire). They taught inspirational story of the entrepreneur. No ceiling on success, past does matter if you add value to others.           Tech Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Tech-Startup-VC-Cybersecurity-Energy-Science   Best of Tech: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/size/5/?search=best+of+tech     Investing Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Investing-Stocks-Bonds-Retirement     ‘Best Of' Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Best+of+BRT   Legal Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Legal-Asset+Protection-Estate+Planning     Thanks for Listening. Please Subscribe to the BRT Podcast.      Business Roundtable with Matt Battaglia The show where Entrepreneurs, High Level Executives, Business Owners, and Investors come to share insight and ideas about the future of business. BRT 2.0 looks at the new trends in business, and how classic industries are evolving.  Common Topics Discussed: Business, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Stocks, Cannabis, Tech, Blockchain / Crypto, Real Estate, Legal, Sales, Charity, and more…  BRT Podcast Home Page: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/ ‘Best Of' BRT Podcast: Click Here BRT Podcast on Google: Click Here BRT Podcast on Spotify: Click Here                    More Info: https://www.economicknight.com/podcast-brt-home/ KFNX Info: https://1100kfnx.com/weekend-featured-shows/   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts, Guests and Speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent (or affiliates, members, managers, employees or partners), or any Station, Podcast Platform, Website or Social Media that this show may air on. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes. Nothing said on this program should be considered advice or recommendations in: business, legal, real estate, crypto, tax accounting, investment, etc. Always seek the advice of a professional in all business ventures, including but not limited to: investments, tax, loans, legal, accounting, real estate, crypto, contracts, sales, marketing, other business arrangements, etc.    

Original Air Date — June 15, 2014 NEW site: https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ WCN CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClCE... WCN MERCH: shop.worldcryptonetwork.com Subscribe to the WCN Audio Podcast on Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/w... Featuring...Derrick J. Freeman (http://peacenewsnow.com)Will Pangman (https://twitter.com/BitcoinMKE)MK Lords (http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com) and Thomas Hunt ((https://twitter.com/MadBitcoins)THIS WEEK:1. eBay CEO: PayPal Will Have to Integrate Digital Currencieshttp://www.coindesk.com/ebay-ceo-payp...2. CoinJar returns to the Apple App Storehttp://www.coinbuzz.com/2014/06/05/co...3. Silk Road Reduced Violence in the Drug Trade, Study Argueshttp://www.wired.com/2014/06/silk-roa...4. Can Chinese Exchange OKCoin Rescue Mt. Gox Creditors?http://www.coindesk.com/can-chinese-e...---------------------------------------------------------------------World Crypto Network https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ On This Day in World Crypto Network History https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/on... WCN: Hosts & Guests https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ta... WCN: Topic https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ta... WCN Clips - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClCE... World Crypto Network Store | Teespring teespring.com/stores/world-crypto-net... --------------------------- Please Subscribe to our Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCry

Original Air Date — May 18, 2014NEW site: https://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/WCN CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClCE...WCN MERCH: shop.worldcryptonetwork.comSubscribe to the WCN Audio Podcast on Itunes:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/w...Featuring...Davi Barker (http://shinybadges.com) Kristov Atlas (https://twitter.com/kristovatlas) Will Pangman (http://bitcoinmke.org) Midas Marni (http://midasmarni.com)and Thomas Hunt (https://twitter.com/MadBitcoins)THIS WEEK:F.C.C. Backs Opening Net Neutrality Rules for Debatehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/tec...Bitcoin Integration With PayPal Being 'Actively Considered' Says eBay CEOhttp://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-inte...Hundreds attend China's first bitcoin summit, defying Beijing's warninghttp://www.scmp.com/news/china/articl...Chinese bitcoin firms plan to go offshore to sidestep crackdownhttp://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/ar...Bitpay raises $30Mhttp://www.coindesk.com/bitpay-closes...Kraken raises $5Mhttp://www.coindesk.com/krakens-jesse...MaidSafe also raised $5M http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptocurren..Questions and Answers from the Audience! and Predictions!World Crypto Networkhttps://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/On This Day in World Crypto Network Historyhttps://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/on...WCN: Hosts & Guestshttps://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ta...WCN: Topichttps://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/ta...WCN Clips - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UClCE...World Crypto Network Store | Teespringteespring.com/stores/world-crypto-net...---------------------------Please Subscribe to our Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCry..

Read the full show notes on our website.Alicia Recommended Resources:MGR360 App for Microsoft TeamsMG360 1-on-1 Meeting CardsThe Manager's PlaybookThe Five Dysfunctions of a TeamThis episode features Alicia Thrasher, the Co-Founder, and CEO of MGR360, a leadership development and software company based in Austin, Texas. She is the co-author, with Joel Trammell, of The Manager's Playbook: Make Exceptional People Management Your Competitive Advantage.With more than 20 years of management experience in the information technology and consulting space, Alicia understands what it takes to manage people effectively, even through the most complex situations. Before becoming CEO of MGR360, she brought her leadership, vision, and strategic oversight to many executive positions, including leading programs for eBay/PayPal, Google, and Anheuser-Busch.

Joel Trammell is a successful tech entrepreneur, CEO, and investor, and Alicia Thrasher is a successful executive who has led programs for eBay/PayPal, Google, and Anheuser-Busch. Together, they are the co-founders of Manager360, a certification program for managers. They have also co-authored a book, The Manager's Playbook. The book and certification program are largely based on their 30 years of management experience. During their lifetime, people spend about 90,000 hours working and 70 percent of the workforce reports being disengaged at work. The Manager360 program teaches managers how to coach their employees, so they are content and productive.  

Embedded finance looks set to radically transform digital businesses and create a new benchmark for customer experience across multiple industries. According to Juniper Research, the embedded finance market will be worth $138 billion by 2026. In the near future, embedded finance will enable digital businesses to serve SMEs and micro-entrepreneurs worldwide, helping them sell to their core offering and create diversified revenue streams by embedding payments, insurance, lending, and other financial services under the banner of their existing brand. Innovative businesses are also expected to adopt embedded finance to overcome perennial challenges around handling payments across geographies, currencies, and differing regulatory zones. As a result, they will be able to offer fintech as a service to help clients implement financial services into their own business models. Frederick Crosby - Chief Revenue Officer at NIUM, joins me in a conversation about the trend towards embedded fintech and how the Nium platform enables banks, payment providers, travel companies, and other businesses to collect and disburse funds in local currencies to over 100 countries. About Frederick Frederick is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nium, an advanced global payments platform redefining how consumers and businesses can send, spend, and receive funds around the world. Frederick leads the global Business Development, Marketing, and Communications teams that have helped inform and transform business models for banks, fintechs, and other platforms that needed new payment capabilities in this quickly evolving digital age, and that have made Nium one of the fastest-growing global fintechs in the payment space. Frederick is a veteran in the cross-border payments and e-commerce space and has catapulted huge global businesses and customer bases at start-ups and enterprise companies alike. In the early days of PayPal, Frederick unlocked the potential of cross-border e-commerce by aligning eBay/PayPal's massive supply/demand, and providing new functionality for global buyers and sellers to transact. At Western Union, he led a team that transformed digital remittances into the largest growth engine at the company to attain the #1 position in all their global markets. As CRO at Veem, Frederick joined a pioneering team bent on making global SMB bank payments into a five-minute affair. His sales and marketing teams built a network of over 170K SMBs around the world who could send and receive payments in a click, and the partnership team, in turn, brought the capability into the world's largest small business accounting and e-commerce platforms.

On today's episode, Dana Stalder shares lessons on company building from his time as an early executive at Netscape, Ebay & Paypal. Dana is also a General Partner at Matrix Partners and shares the fintech investment themes he is most excited about.

EP274 - Warby Parker and AllBirds IPOs  Warby Parker and AllBirds filed their S-1 registrations with the SEC in preparation of making an initial public offering. In this episode we deep dive into all the information revealed in the fillings. Surprising Learnings From Warby Parker And AllBirds IPO Filings (forbes.com) Episode 274 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday September 1st, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 274 being recorded on Wednesday September first 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason we have a lot of favorite things on this podcast but you know it's even cooler than some fresh Amazon quarterly results hot new Gadget. Even some exciting Star Wars news. Jason: [0:55] No what's God. Scot: [0:57] A fresh delicious hot out of the oven S1 and you know it's better than S1. Jason: [1:02] I'm guessing to S ones. Scot: [1:04] You are right that is right we have we're very excited this week because not only do we have one s one but we have two s ones so I don't know if that's an S 1 squared or S2 or how we talked about that I guess 2's ones, and what's really exciting is one of our favorite topics on the show is digitally native vertical brands also called dnv B's and we have two of them that filed within a week of each other so that's pretty exciting so the two are Warby Parker and allbirds and before we do a deep dive into those S ones and highlight some of the things that we found that were interesting for listeners I wanted to give everyone just kind of a reminder of a great way to read an s-1, so an s-1 is. [1:52] Haven't haven't done a gone public before it's kind of like a sandwich so you have three parts you have this kind of first part where there's all this introductory stuff and you're kind of like CIA in that part and then you get into the delicious sandwich part of the the meat and potatoes of this one which is commonly called management discussion and Analysis they called em DNA and that's the best part because really management actually writes that now they have a lot of guidance from lawyers and investment bankers and PR firm in all this Jazz but it's really most of the times it is the founders you know putting pen to paper and describing the business and their words then after that you have the lawyers kick in and then you have a pretty good chunk of risk factors and then the accountants kick in and you've got your your your Gap financials and all that stuff and all that's interesting but if you're going to I always start a nest one from the middle out so I like to read that mdna first because it's the best way to hear about the company from the founders. [2:54] Now Warren Buffett and his Charlie Munger they always kind of famously start at the back of this one and they like to start at the audited financials and that's kind of how they look at a business and that's important but especially for these I think it's pretty interesting because you know it tells us why the founders do this dnv be thing how's it going how do they think about their business what are the key metrics they're looking at inside of there and I think that's particularly relevant for listeners of this show because you can learn a lot you know these businesses may be there ahead of you or behind you and your scale but it I always learned a ton about. [3:34] You know what other operators are doing and thinking about their business and you pick up a lot of interesting new tidbits there may be things you like and don't like that you can add to your repertoire. Jason how do you how do you peel into a delicious yummy new S1. Jason: [3:49] Yeah well I mostly take your advice that I guess to two alternative views is just skip the s-1 entirely and wait for the retail Roadshow and so you can kind of watch a movie instead of have to do all this math and read. Scot: [4:02] Yeah I like the retail Roadshow too but sadly it comes weeks after this one so this one is like an appetizer before you get to the movie. Jason: [4:10] Yeah and II may be uniquely odd in this regard but I do find it amusing and humorous to read the risk factors. I know they have nothing to do with the business and weren't written by anyone that has anything to do with the business but I feel like. They're increasingly more creative in the voluminous wig west of apocalypses that could. Could strike the Earth and I want to say like of the hundred seventy one page Warby Parker S1 about a hundred pages of it is the risk factors. Scot: [4:42] Yeah, yeah and I mean it is fun to read but you're taking the right approach at it what drives me crazy is actually went through and looked at a bunch of the headlines for both these companies and I would say about 1/3 to 25 percent of the. Press that covers you things you know to be and I don't know if this is just lack of understanding or clickbait or some combination of those things but they always pull out the risk factors so you'll see you know allbirds is worried about Nike as a competitor and you know and then you're like what did they read about that and they've just pulled out a the competitor list of the risk factors well the lawyers are saying you know if anyone has ever sold a shoe put them in the risk factors you know it's not like it's not like the founders in their own words are staying up late at night worried about Nike but maybe they are but. Most of that stuff is not the founders words it's lawyers kind of saying you know here's a checklist list everyone that you've ever think you thought you've competed with now that's their guidance. Jason: [5:42] Yeah I mean the list of competitors isn't remotely shocking it's more of the zombie apocalypse that makes me chuckle. Scot: [5:48] Yeah and now there's all these, yes every time new legislation comes out you have to add a risk factors know it's like you know GDP our cyber security we use cloud computing that could go down we it's kind of like you have to think of everything that's ever happened and you want to cover it so that if you do get sued you can say well it was a risk factor you should have known we warned you. Cool so we flipped a coin and you are going to kick us off with a deep dive into or be. Jason: [6:21] Yeah yeah so we'll jump right into it and we'll start with some of the financial metrics per your point is pretty interesting because these are. Private companies they don't necessarily disclose a lot of this and so you kind of go from like a pretty vague view of these companies to a pretty detailed View and if you're some other DMV be that still private like there's great benchmarking data in here so Warby Parker. [6:48] 20/20 in this is all complicated because of course 2020 was an anomalous year 2020 revenue for Warby Parker was just under 400 million in sales so 393 million and kind of to give you a progression they were 272 million in 2018 then they jumped up, 370 million in 2019 and then you know a much smaller jump up to three hundred and ninety-three million in 2020. The more eye-popping number is they have six months of data from 20 21 and they're already at 270 million in 2021 so if you kind of compare first six months of this year to first six months of last year. Last year there were 176 million this year there are 270 so they're definitely seeing a nice clip of growth. And obviously as you grow bigger you would hope that that scale would help you with profitability when you're you know small and still you know in growth mode it's sometimes hard to make a profit, and in this case. It doesn't appear like they've achieved that escape velocity where they're starting to turn a profit yet like the gross margins are. [8:00] Are in a reasonable ballpark they're pretty consistent in the kind of 658 to 60% range and so they are generating. Net positive ebit has but they basically have had a net loss every year except 2019 when they broke even. So what's a little worrisome about that is. [8:26] You know you like if you look at 2018 you said hey they sold 270 million and they lost 22 million on it in 2019 they sold 370 million and they broke even. Like that's looking like a pretty good Trend that scale starting to help them with their profitability but then in 2020 where they had a lot of extra costs from covid and as we'll talk about in a bit they're somewhat store. They were even bigger 393 and they had their biggest loss ever 55 million, and they're doing better this year but they're not on a path to profitability this year either so they're the on the 270 million they've sold this year they've lost 7.3 million. Um before I jump further does any of that financial news sort of surprise you at all Scott or does that. Scot: [9:17] Now I have a different opinion but well we're going to do a little kind of analysis again. Jason: [9:22] I like it cliffhanger. Scot: [9:23] Yeah yeah. Jason: [9:24] So one of the interesting things well a all these digital native Brands you start off by like generating some buzz and selling some stuff to people that are already friendly to you and it's super easy sales and and cost to get those sales is very low but then pretty quickly all these companies go into digital advertising mode and they buy ads on Google and buy ads on. [9:47] To grow quickly and the first ads they buy a relatively cheap because, that they can you know Target a very specific audience and there aren't a lot of other people buying that exact same audience so the, the cost per ad is low and so the the customer acquisition cost can be pretty reasonable but as you get bigger. [10:06] You have to buy a bigger chunk of audience from Facebook and more people are competing for that same audience and it's a reverse auction so you have to pay the most to get the ad and so growing purely on this digital ad business. Pretty challenging particularly when Google and Facebook are so good at optimizing the the the maximum cost per ad and so. For almost every DMV be we've ever talked about they they have trouble scaling and they almost always Implement some new tactics later in their evolution to kind of scale beyond the digital ad phase and so in war Beast Partners case they were one of the first retailers to say, the MVPs to say hey we need to open a bunch of stores and stores can be really profitable billboard to help dramatically improve our customer acquisition costs so by 2018 they already had 88 stores, and right now they have a hundred and twenty-six or a hundred forty five stores so so they have a reasonable Fleet of stores that has grown pretty pretty quickly. Obviously there's a lot of extra costs for running those stores and obviously those stores didn't do particularly well in covid. [11:21] So some of the interesting things about the stores is that like in 2018 sixty percent of the revenue came from e-commerce forty percent of the revenue came from retail about the same in 2019 but as they jumped up there store counts and 2020 that. So in 2020 sixty percent of the revenue came from these retail stores 40 percent came from ecom's so the store is really are becoming the primary acquisition Channel. It's super interesting to look at the. [11:54] The unit economics of a customer how expensive it is to acquire a customer how much money they make on each customer has sticky each customer is and different s ones you know give, different granularity in case of Ori Parker they reported a customer acquisition cost so they said that in 2018 they spent $26 per customer to acquire customers. In 2019 they said they spent $27 to acquire customers and in 2020 and the pandemic influenced year they had to spend more they spent $40 per customer to acquire customers now put a big Asterix on that there's some controversy will get to in a minute but. If you take those numbers on face value those are pretty darn good customer acquisition cost for this kind of business other. [12:42] Kind of did you a native vertical brands that have have done it s one have disclosed some kind of eye-watering Lee expensive customer acquisition costs and so famously like Blue Apron was paying $400 a customer to acquire customers so so even $40 a customer it's pretty reasonable to kind of put that in perspective in 2020 they were getting about 218 dollars in sales per customer which is a little over two orders, um so the the the unit economics are potentially viable. Except for that sgna line and all the expensive advertising that they're having to do which is ultimately driving that those those net losses. So those were kind of my big. [13:31] Takeaways and I alluded to a controversy friend of the show and former guests Dan McCarthy who's a assistant professor Emery and one of the true gurus and in clv um he looked at this as one and at first he was like wow that's a really good customer acquisition cost they should be commended and then he like started reading the fine print and they've used a novel definition of customer acquisition costs they've divided all of their expenses by all of their customers and. About sixty percent of their customers are returning customers so in theory. You shouldn't be dividing all of your digital marketing by your total number of active customers you should be dividing it by the new active customers and that's kind of the traditional definition that Dan and most of the rest of the world use we don't know what that number is for Warby but it's probably a lot higher than the. Forty dollars that would be disclosed based on this kind of unique definition of customer acquisition costs. Scot: [14:39] They did they kind of elaborate on that or. Jason: [14:44] No they didn't at all. Scot: [14:45] And easier he just kind of picked it apart and like there was no. Jason: [14:48] Yeah like they like there's not enough data in the s-1 to try to estimate a. Revised customer acquisition cost now what Dan has done in the past is he's gone a hold of credit card panel data. And kind of backed into like customer acquisition cost by looking at the the. The spend from you know the from customers I haven't you know I don't know that he's done that analysis yet for these guys are the even has access to the data to try but. Yeah so at the moment we don't know what their khakis I have to be honest you like even if. You you kind of like double it because you say like oh they should have only been chart you know counting all these costs against the 40% new customers and not against the hundred percent active customers. You're still at like 80 dollars which is expensive you you can't make money spending $80 for a customer that you only sell $180 to. It's still better than a lot of these other companies that we've looked at. Scot: [15:58] The worse is Casper were the cactus a good couple hundred dollars higher than the mattress. Jason: [16:04] Yeah and I would say. Like these guys have about the most mature store model of any of these companies like Casper's up there too but the next company will talk about allbirds has a lot less stores so, you know if the opening your own stores is the way to lower kak then you would expect to see it in Warby Parker's S1. And my my takeaway from this is. Either you have to get to a much bigger and you're going to say something in a minute that potentially disagrees but either where we Partners hypothesis is you have to get to a much bigger number to get profitable. And so maybe you know instead of one or million run rate I need a billion dollar run rate. Or you need an alternative customer acquisition strategy beyond your own stores and digital ads which are the two tools warble uses and I would also argue where B is. About as good as it gets at sort of organic demand generation and they do they do great like social they do gritty like they do all the other guerrilla marketing tactics so like. [17:15] Um I would you know if they're not profitable on 390 million with their type of product it seems hard to imagine that someone else with the same type of product. Is going to do much better because they seem like a externally they seem like a darn good execute. Scot: [17:37] Yeah isn't in the die where category is dominated by the luxacore Oslo Exotica and they own like everything right so they do they have you know they have a licensed almost every frame like. Jason: [17:50] Yeah almost every designer brand you've ever heard of is a is actually like license to Exotica. Scot: [17:58] Yeah then they own the. Jason: [18:00] And they own a bunch of the chains of retail stores. But they also do wholesale so Exotica like both sell all those license frames to the third parties. And they sell through their own stores, and they sell at a way higher price point than Warby Parker so they have way more margin like you know part of the premise of Warby Parker is the eyewear should be affordable so their average per glasses is $95 whereas. Like that the aov firm exotic is going to be much higher. Scot: [18:33] Yeah I do I'm not a customer but I knew I do know people that are and they do tend to buy more I've heard him say is anecdotal but I've heard him say especially women they'll say you know the prices are low enough I can buy a two or three different pairs that kind of they almost become accessories at that just kind of interesting. Jason: [18:48] So that's what I was hoping to see right like you go man I've been part of a frame cost $500 I can't own that many frames but if they cost a hundred dollars I might have different ones for different outfits right or. Right and so yeah like. Could their average order value be much higher but on average they're only selling 2.14 pair of frames per customer. So they're like again frame is $95 their average revenue per orders $184. Um so they're not necessarily like seeing a huge kit I'm sure their customers like you describe but they're not there are apparently are not enough of those customers that that's. [19:28] Change dramatically changing the economics also where we park our his kind of expanded to be a vision care company rather than just eyeglasses so they launched contacts they have optometrist services in all the stores and you might go oh wow I wonder how those things are contributing and at the moment / this one they're not, like the the all the non glasses products cumulatively are about one percent of Revenue and all the Professional Services are one percent of Revenue so these the the eyeglasses are 98% of their business now maybe that means there's a lot more growth there. [20:05] But like my so my overall take away. These numbers did not surprise me in terms of Revenue it was about exactly where I would have expected I wasn't sure they would be profitable by now it wouldn't have surprised me if they were so it's a little concerning to me. That they're that they're not. Again if a ton of this loss in 2020 is because of the pandemic and they really did break even on 370 and if they find a way to end up profitable in 2021. Um I'm their biggest Revenue year ever then you know that that probably looks pretty good but I can tell you a ton of people were shocked by these numbers a ton of people thought Warby Parker was much bigger a lot of people were speculating that they were near or over a billion dollars in annual sales which I did not view is very likely and so I think this is kind of a. [21:01] Glass of cold water in the face of a lot of the DMV be Fanboys and d2c Fanboys that like these guys are, are basically the poster child for that whole segment and they're better than most of the other ones and you know even they do not have. Home run financials and so you know frankly like this this bodes poorly for the financials of a lot of other like apparel DMV bees that we haven't seen yet. Scot: [21:33] Well I guess my seemingly controversial take is when. You know when you talk to these investment bankers there's all of this data that indicates that you should really focus on growth and not profitability if you're if you're if you're in a category like this which you know the pitch is there's this new way to build a brand it's direct-to-consumer it's digitally native yeah we're having some stores so by focusing on ibadah you're essentially saying we were making profit and we, need this we don't have anything to spend it in essentially because it's just going to kind of move over to your balance sheet especially when do an IPO you're in a load of the balance sheet with presumably at least a hundred million maybe more so. When you when you look at the data especially at this scale it's much better to lose money or to not get profitable for years because. You want to pump all that into growth so every dollar you can drive into growth gets a much bigger multiple than a dollar that goes to the bottom line. [22:42] So yeah so that's that's why and then the other challenges once you're profitable. It's kind of hard to undo it the classic example is Amazon in our retail world you know how many times have you and I heard retailers complained that Amazon is a profitable this is when they weren't profitable today they are only say they're not profitable, eventually Amazon got to the point where they just couldn't not be profitable so but you know for a good kind of like, I don't know 20-year run their they weren't profitable so they were the extreme example of this and it gave them much more leverage over like a Walmart who had been printing ibadah never got used to it and got valued off eBay doc then you can't go in and say, there's a new disruptor and hey everyone we're going to we're going to stop being ibadah positive and growing even on we're going to focus on the top line to you know our spend. 500 billion on some fulfillment centers so it yeah I think it's appropriate and I'm sure you know the risk factors that's going to be probably one of the first ones is we. I don't plan to make money and we may never make money so yeah so I think it's actually. I would almost expecting to be losing more you know if I look at kind of 21 so a lot of these. [24:04] S ones they do a six-month view because they don't want to update it every quarter its kind of pain wdesk one while you're in process so they'll do it like a six-month you and I believe their six-month view was 270 million Revenue so that put them in a 540 anyone's is that what it was the okay. Yeah and then loss is 20 that's even a lost that loss of seven so losing 14 on that that's. Jason: [24:31] The well the even has our positive by the way the it's only the net loss that like so like they have they made 20 20 million ibadah on 270 million in sales in the first six months of this year so that's. Scot: [24:43] That must be the way you're some accounting the other thing that's really frustrating is a. Jason: [24:48] They have all sgna below that you badal line which is weird to me at least I don't like. Scot: [24:54] Yeah that is weird. Jason: [24:56] That's that's why you got from this yeah that's why you got get from this positive ebitda to this negative net loss. Scot: [25:06] Yeah this is one of the ways Amazon lost money for so long is they would capitalize the leases on now it's become an SEC rule I think this gets kind of the edge of my accounting knowledge. Jason: [25:16] Yeah and they didn't there was not like detailed disclosure about the real estate so I that is an interesting question how they finance these stores and do they own them and all that stuff but. Scot: [25:25] So I would almost say. As in a potential investor I'd rather get to a billion dollars faster and have a negative ebitda a light you know at a 500 million they had like a hundred million ebitda law side. I actually kind of think that's okay especially if they could grow faster. Jason: [25:44] Yeah and so I'll just say I generally agree with you and I certainly get the argument about profitability the the bigger concern for me is there an 11 year old company that's executed about as well as you can execute done all the things that the talking headset are smart to do and they only got two with a super compelling value proposition and very high MPS scores and they still only got to 390 million so I like my biggest cautionary take away from this whole thing is it's way harder to get to a billion dollars then people realize and none of these companies have done it not one have them have gotten to a billion dollars in run rate unless you call like white cloth digitally native vertical brand. So I do think scaling is hard and if it's hard for these guys it's going to be a heck of a lot harder for these why you know companies that want to be super Capital light and not have stores and and all of those things and I well I. Don't over worry about the profitability I will tell you the unit economics are mildly concerning their making a custom product like they have to you know make those lenses for each customer and if they're having to spend $80 to acquire a customer that only half their customers are buying a second time they're only getting a hundred and or 218 dollars in revenue from each customer and they have to make a custom product in that it just like. [27:13] I'm not saying they can't get to profitability at a billion dollars but it's. It doesn't look like a home run business I could it still could be a good investment right and I mean as long as there's someone that's willing to pay more for your stock after you own it not saying the stock won't do well at all but it doesn't look like. A company that's likely to just you know generate like obscene free cash flow like Amazon does. Scot: [27:40] Yeah I bet if you looked at a kind of store cohort you'd be happier with the profitability and maybe that was something. Jason: [27:49] Yeah I would have loved to see that in this one and obviously they didn't put it in there. Scot: [27:53] Yeah you know and and yes so they must have been advised that the institutional investors aren't going to be that concerned that I think. I think they're actually close enough with the lines are the lines are converging so you know you can kind of see if you just kind of. Plot them out you can see they'll cross no get profitable because they're already been up positive So eventually they'll get to that net loss off when the lines are diverging like Lyft and Uber when they went public they had to spend a lot of time in there s one talking about well we know our lines are diverging but it's because we're if you take our cities that are over a year old they're very profitable and the reason our losses are growing faster than revenue is because we're opening city so fast and that's how investors got comfort in that example. Jason: [28:37] Yeah and their lines are diverging from 19 to 20 now they're going to say well but that's covid-19. Scot: [28:43] Yeah yeah that's project I could see that. Jason: [28:44] No I'm sure does yeah and especially again because stores. So Scott what did you learn from the allbirds S1. Scot: [28:56] Yeah allbirds was it was a good read I enjoyed it it was different you know so I kind of appreciate that having read a lot of these it was less dry of any S1 especially the mdna section was felt like the founders had definitely put their heart and soul into it I don't know if you do you listen to the podcast how I built this they. A really good episode on there and you know the thing another thing I appreciate about allbirds is there's consistency there every time you every time I hear one of the founders I go in a store have an online experience Packaging. They're very purposeful and brand message is very very tight in and until you try to do that it's hard to appreciate how hard it is to execute on that so, so I just really felt like that was interesting that even this one kind of landed on me as if you know the same vibe that I got from the store and the product and everything so that was really cool and kudos to them on that probably the most interesting thing about the allbirds S1 is they try to kind of tilt it and they say look we're not going to do an IPO we're going to do an S peo and what they're essentially doing is saying we want to elevate the discussion and talk a lot about sustainability and so they call it a sustainable public Equity offering and spe now I'll get into more of that but I wanted to go into some of the numbers first. [30:26] So on the number side there 2019 Revenue was a hundred ninety-three million and then in 2020 they did 219 million so so that's 13 percent year-over-year growth. [30:38] So that was interesting to me and then they it has accelerated from 20 22 21 looking at the six month period to 27 percent, they unfortunately there they've got a fair amount of international business you've got this kind of no Financial impact of currency conversion the FX is what they call it so do their 25 or 27 depend on depending on the currency situation but let's call it mid-20s and. So that's interesting so they've got accelerating Revenue growth which Wall Street loves to call that ARG ARG and then they broke out digital and said that it was 89 percent of their business and in 2020 that was a hundred ninety-four did you see that going down because part of their use of proceeds is opening a lot more stores they have 27 stores as of the IPO so June. [31:33] June 20 and then I've been 21 and then they have the pretty much say you know one of the we're going to open a lot more stores and it's gonna be a big push for us they also are losing money they're losing about 40 million a year so kind of twenty percent of Revenue is being lost which kind of feels you're going to lose money you might as well lose you know twenty Thirty forty percent of of Revenue to accelerate so that felt more in line with kind of what I've seen is public-private kind of vc-backed company coming into the public markets couple highlights on the other metrics they talk a lot about how their nudging gross margins up they in 2018 gross margins were at 47% and then moving up to 51% and a good expansion there on the margin side that's pretty typical as you scale and you start to nail down with any kind of manufactured product there's definitely margin benefits of scale right because you're buying more pallets of wool I don't know what we'll comes in sheep's of wool and you're getting more you know your. Paying off your fulfillment centers and you're taking a lot of these fixed costs you just putting more stuff through them so on a unit basis it drives in Crete drives down your unit cost just driving up your gross margins. [33:00] They were they were much more silent on cackle TV than what you saw with Laura B and so some of the data they had was they try to repeat customers and that number has gone up and. 2019 it was 46 percent of their revenues from repeat customers and then that was up in twenty twenty two fifty three percent they last raised a hundred million on 1.7 billion and I'll come back to that and then let's see the biggest thing about their IPO I hinted at the top with this spe oh is there all about sustainability and it's pretty interesting because some people they just kind of throw that in there in the hopes that there's the public markets there are increasingly large number of either, purposely built vehicles for investors that want to focus on this area or. [33:55] There's a big investors that are moving this way one of the biggest public investors is called Black Rock and they run out, huge massive amount of capital most of it in mutual funds but I think they have some hedge funds and whatnot and their CEO is basically put a Line in the Sand and said by can't remember the year but let's call it 20 30 or something like that they are going to shed any investment it doesn't really have kind of a framework around sustainability and you know. What people uses This Acronym ESG so environmental social and governance in essentially everyone wants companies to to self report what they want to do across those three dimensions and even the SEC is started kind of hinting and recommending that companies that they're going to start doing some things here and requiring them in things like us ones and then, the thing that's really interesting in a public company that I didn't learn until I was kind of deep inside of one a lot of these mutual funds so you go public and you have this new set of shareholders that are largely got mutual funds you've got index funds and you've got hedge funds and then retail which would be individual people like buying to their Charles Schwab well the mutual funds in the index funds when you. [35:17] When every year you put out these different things that you want your shareholders to vote on well they they don't like to vote on those things they like to defer that to a third party and there's several of these third parties once called ISS and the other ones called, glass Lewis or something like that and these third parties therefore become very powerful because they aggregate a lot of the, you know because these decisions are referred to them they thus aggregate a lot of power from your shareholders and they are really starting to get where they are they're saying you know even that's going to be kind of the first Domino to fall I think where they're going to say hey the recommendations we make on your board and comp and all these things that they have to opine on to the, to to the shareholders that have Outsource that to them they're going to really focus in on ESG so so it's a big movement and there's a lot of even CNBC runs like a every other day segment on this topic because it's become such a big big deal and you know I actually think it's good I think you know you would as a as you know. [36:24] Public means transparency and I think companies should be transparent about this stuff and if if they say you know I don't know where we're a liquor company and we're not really focused on this that's fine or if they say we're all birds and this is going to be a huge differentiator for us that's fine too it just you know at least let potential shareholders know where you are on the spectrum of things okay so that's the background the. [36:51] So these guys say look we we think this is so important we want to put a stake in the ground and we've come up with 19 criteria that we hope we're going to be the first we're going to kind of self rate ourselves against these criteria and they fall against, cross effectively two categories for each of the es and the D environmental societal and governance so it's things like you know they want to be carbon neutral they're going to like an environmental they're going to favor vendors that that kind of have a similar carbon neutrality and sustainability mindset to them and on the governance side they're going to have more diversity on their board and those kinds of things. [37:31] One of the interesting things they do explicitly State and this caused a lot of noise on Wall Street is they when you go public you get all these people there's kind of this this literal they call it the book so let's say you're going to sell a hundred million worth of shares you do your Roadshow and then you typically end up with maybe a more orders than you have shares she'll get 300 million so one way to you have an allocation problem so one thing you can do is you can just cut everyone back to a third and you can say well you want to 10 million now we're give you three that's how you could Jam 300 million of demand into a hundred million dollar opportunity well these guys have said is we're actually going to your allocation is going to depend on where you are as an investor as it relates to ESG so essentially they're saying if you're like one of these companies like BlackRock that that is really kind of pushing the foundation there we may give you your full allocation but if you're this kind of hedge fund that doesn't really even have a website and no statement on this then you may get no allocation or a smaller size allocation so that was pretty interesting that's the first time that's been done and that that was kind of. [38:37] Pretty interesting on that so encountered an actually mentioned sustainability in the s-1 over 200 times which is it just shows how important it is to them and you know a lot of companies. Tried this out but allbirds was founded with this right the whole idea of allbirds was could you find sustainable products to make a shoe with and they started with the wool even the soul is made from a plant-based material, if it was obvious like she shows her something to remember what it is. Jason: [39:07] I Scot: [39:09] But it's not rubber it you know it's not a you know there's two types of rubber there is a plant-based rubber from a rubber tree but most rubber is obviously from a petroleum-based so the other thing I thought was interesting is the essentially layout they have five pillars essentially and they basically say hey here's our five pillars we're going to be product Innovative platform Purpose Driven brand with an inspired voice. [39:38] Connections with our repeat customers around the globe so so Global and repeat customers are important to them vertical retail distribution strategy robust infrastructure creating a platform for scale the sequence of those is pretty interesting because again the first one is product Innovation and then second one is purpose-driven and that's where they capture a lot of the ESG stuff. [40:00] The I thought for listeners this would be the most interesting one is vertical retail distribution strategies I just wanted to add one will highlight here are digitally LED vertical retail distribution strategy combines our digital offerings with our stores so we can meet customers where they are delivering value and convenience with our store serving as brand begins our company was born online from the outset we developed a direct convenient digital platform for our customers we opened our first store and 2017 have since been expanding yada yada so and then they wrap up and say in 20 as of June 30 we 20:21 we had the ability to reach up to 2.5 billion consumers in 35 countries across our digital and Retail platforms so I thought that was pretty interesting where they're basically saying this D and B, be thing even though we're at a relatively small scale we think it's still important part of our future and stores are really more of a brand, front face to the digital back and so I thought that was interesting, let's see that some data on repeat analysis but you know the. [41:10] Those are the highlights they that is really confusing table where people bought more than their repeat purchase rate went up. [41:19] I kind of get wrapped up in a chicken and egg thing there because like just by buying more haven't you already made your repeat purchase go up like I couldn't unpack that in my head but I need and up figure that one out for me look at a secret credit card data my analysis on this one so that those are the kind of highlights my analysis was this one was shockingly smaller than I would have thought you know I. I kind of backed in this because I had heard that valuation of 1.6 on their last they're kind of in this unicorn status here 1.6 billion in your like okay a lot of these Brands you look at kind of public comps you get 325 x as an e-commerce company so let's give them a generous valuation of 5x so they must be three or four hundred million and then. Turns out they're kind of in this lower 200 or 300 million scale so that was like well they must be growing at a crazy Pace because if you're going at a hundred percent then you can still get a really nice vault. A super-sized multiple like they must be that makes them hopefully even higher right so there like a times multiple but they're really not they were going 25% so it's kind of a bit of a head-scratcher for me and I'm really curious to see how the IPO does because I kind of assumed I'm not smarter than than all these investors have looked at this and put this price tag on it so I must be missing something so you know the things I think I may be missing. [42:43] You know there's there's a lot of talk they've partnered with Adidas and they're definitely going after the running category and so taking on Nike if you can build anything that's, no one 20th of a Nike that's a big brand so that could be people could be looking at this and seeing the optionality of that is this could be you know counter to Nike this ESG piece it could be that there is an supply-demand imbalance I think. [43:15] I think this is definitely the case where there's a lot more ESG aware dollars looking for places to invest than there are places to put them, so that could be a factor maybe there's some bullish bullishness on the store business where people have done models they say well if they're at, 25 stores and they go to 250 that's going to the growth is going to accelerate a tremendous base so you know I kind of swirl all those around and you know it is interesting so I then I kind of put myself and say well if I was going to be with Nike how would you go about them and Nike doesn't have a lot of weaknesses and yeah they're ten years ago you and I would have said while their weaknesses are not going direct to Consumers but they've largely fixed that right and you've got a lot of you've got a whole deck on that that's excellent so that's not a weakness anymore and but you know Nikes weakness is could be there is a, you know and I don't know any facts on this it's just there's a lot of noise out there right that there's these Chinese labor camps that their products are made in and these sweatshops and children making the shoes and then certainly so there's there's kind of that that they're kind of unclean sourcing if you will. [44:32] People claiming it I have no idea what's going on there and then you know there is an argument to be made that Nike to my knowledge hasn't done a lot to say wow our products are sustainable in these ways is just really isn't their thing so so it is a clever way to attack Nike and maybe it's actually a combination of all these things that investors see and they say we think this is a pretty clever way to attack Nike they're going to get some market share because we think it's important to Consumers it's important to us and they kind of scroll all that together and that's why it gets the bigger multiple so I may be curious to see how the IPO does to see if, that multiple holds up or in a there's definitely something going on there or maybe it was just an anomaly in the private Market. Jason: [45:20] Yeah and in both cases like the. The economics of the IPO aren't really revealed yet right like we're a ways away from from like Target prices and like understanding what the valuation is going to be for the IPO. Scot: [45:37] Yeah yeah you know these guys that could have effectively a Down Round where they essentially say hey we want. Jason: [45:42] Both have raised a lot of money at some like reasonably High valuations. Scot: [45:48] Yeah and you know they probably wouldn't be going public if the bankers weren't telling them they're going to get. Yeah I really nice mark up unless there was some desperation reason and I just don't they're not burning enough Capital that I don't think the existing investors couldn't sustain them for years so so mi bat is the bankers think that they're going to do really well and we'll see a big pop so it will say. Jason: [46:18] Yeah well if you think so a I would say like one of the things that encouraging so a one thing a few things to remember that are different between these two companies is allbirds is much younger than Warby Parker so I want to say Orbeez like 11 years old allbirds is like 5 years old so there earlier in their evolution that 27 stores versus a hundred forty five stores and that's a. A huge difference because a big expense in having stores is advertising to get people to your stores and you know. Beyond the digital advertising which is very expensive per customer like traditional advertising is much less expensive but you have to buy traditional advertising. Based on a metro area and when you only have 27 stores it means basically you're buying an ad to that getting amortized for a single store whereas when you have a hundred and forty-five stores you can have six stores in a a big Metro and that same ad is driving customers to six doors so my first thing I would say is. It seems like they're committed to a store strategy but they're early in the face like they could get an ice pop as they open more stores because all of the marketing and advertising that they're already doing spending money on, will work much harder when they get to a little bigger feet of stores and the. There are economies and scale of running a fleet of stores versus at 27 stores they're probably pretty inefficient. Scot: [47:48] Yeah they talked about how they've had they've invested in some distribution centers into the store so they're probably over distribution Centered for you know 25 stores. Jason: [47:58] So I do think the stores thing is encouraging, um I always am uncomfortable on the whole Purpose Driven thing so because I guess I'm going to mines and you didn't mention it but I think one of the novel things about them is they're one of the first companies to go public that's a certified B Corporation. Scot: [48:16] There's several others so there's that brand for girls nothing to you. Jason: [48:28] Okay well it's I mean regardless a hundred percent think as a marketing tactic that you're a hundred percent right like there is a cohort of customers that really care about a variety of these different missions and Nike doesn't particularly appeal to a lot of them right and so. Kind of providing a viable alternative you know is certainly a way to win a segment I do think. They're very credible like they've been talking about this this sustainability purpose since the very beginning they've invested in it the shoe is more expensive to make because of some of the sustainability choices that they've made so it's not just kind of. [49:12] Ecology washing on top of a you know a greedy brand and like I think their claim in their in their last one is that the the shoe has a like 30% less. Less ecological footprint than a traditional shoe and I think traditional she was code named for Nike by the way. So so I do think they are they are credible in their Purpose Driven thing and there's a. At the moment there are all these surveys of consumers that o gen Z is way more purpose-driven and and way more so than older cohorts they say that you know they really care about a brand that aligns with their goals and they care about the ecological issues and ethical issues in all of these different things and it feels like Auburn's is well positioned to cater to those customers so superficially you go oh nice it's a. It's a growing favorable Trend in there a strong executor at it and I think some of that is legitimate. [50:16] But in the back of my head there's this this famous academic paper from like 8 years ago called the myth of the ethical consumer and basically all young consumers have always said in surveys that they care about these various missions but when you look at their spending habits, there their convictions are a lot less strong than their stated preferences are and so I do I worry. [50:43] About completely hanging my hat on consumers doing the right thing when they're there. [50:50] Happily buying a lot of Nikes obviously I did also think it's interesting. Obviously the unit economics are wildly different than Warby Parker because of the nature of the product but they have 3.3 million us consumers worry Parker has two million consumers despite the fact where we Partners got this way bigger Fleet of stores and has been marketing for six more years so, so they are getting decent reach, both companies disclose their MPS scores their net promoter score and and they're both astronomically high and allbirds is even higher than Warby Parker so they. They're making their customers happy. They're doing well the one thing that jumped out at me as a opportunity is for allbirds that would be harder for worry Parker is. Okay you start out purely online and you're growing through digital ads and then you start opening stores and you invest a bunch in opening your own stores what other levers could you pull if you need to get your customer acquisition cost down. And it's not obvious to me what the big ones are for for Warby Parker, a play that some similar companies to allbirds have run is expanding in a wholesale once once they sort of reach a plateau and allbirds absolutely could do that as well and so it again my takeaway from both of these companies is. [52:17] Scaling is way harder than the the Twitter DTC Universe realizes they all want to imagine these companies are much bigger than they are because they've raised a bunch of money. It turns out raising a bunch of money doesn't equal winning a bunch of customers not saying these two companies can't be wildly successful in win a bunch of customers, I'm just saying it's really hard it's a huge competitive advantage to be a big company that already has a bunch of customers. And it's hard to start a new brand from scratch and catch up and these both of these are examples of that and it's going to be really interesting as they keep trying to grow to see what. What new things they try to accelerate that growth. Scot: [52:59] Yeah absolutely and I was curious I just looked it up allbirds is an 86 net promoter score and War B's latest measure is 83. Jason: [53:08] And those are both astronomical and side note there's some controversy about how people measure it in the inventors of the metric. Our kind of annoyed with how everyone's misusing it so it's not guaranteed that that's perfectly Apples to Apples but. That those numbers kind of fit with the consumer sentiment that I've experienced for both brands. Scot: [53:32] Yeah yeah we do a whole show on the purity of net promoter score. Jason: [53:37] That would be awesome. Scot: [53:40] But that in with some attribution man that's a party right there. Go well it wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show if we didn't have a little bit of. Jason: [53:52] Amazon news new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [54:04] That's right we got a couple in lausanne news items the one I wanted to chat with you Jason is, Amazon announced they are partnering with buy now pay later firm a firm so that was an interesting one did that take you by surprise. Jason: [54:21] It did it totally did not it didn't surprise me at all that they're getting into buy now pay later it's a huge trend. In a way like I knew they didn't have one but it kind of when I heard it read it and I said it to myself out loud I was cut it's kind of shocking. That they're just now adding it now they have dabbled in the past. With with much earlier iterations of these sort of installment plans but what totally took me by surprise is that they chose a firm like a a firm is working with a lot of. Direct Amazon competitors that aren't going to be happy about this I'm thinking of for example Walmart. And so I'll be curious to see how that flushes out and have a firm can successfully keep both of those clients happy that would be impressive and frankly there's just so much money to be made in this space and an Amazon scale I'm somewhat surprised that they didn't do it themselves. Scot: [55:14] Yeah that shocked me to the thing is I've been digging into these being the combi and pills and it's really interesting so if you look at a firm karna and a bunch of these, you know what they're finding is the under 30 year old consumer, doesn't like the way credit card debt Works where you have this pool of you know that you can pull down and then it accumulates they much prefer to match it with a purchase and pay off the purchase and it's really interesting to read about that and then the the both the firms in there s ones they have a lot of data around us and increasingly even after they've gone public there's more data coming out about this trend so I was I was thinking. You know why Amazon has they if you're a seller though and you money you know they've got their own credit card there's got to be like. What is the larger Banks kind of effectively inside of Amazon that doesn't really Market itself as a bank because it doesn't want to be regulated like a bank maybe that's part of what. Triggers them not doing it. Jason: [56:16] Dress fear about yeah Fair. Scot: [56:18] Yeah there's any trust thing but it is funny you know we've been at this long enough I remember. I'm old enough to remember there was this startup called bill me later and they came on the scene and Amazon used it and you know loved it and was actually giving them quotes that conversions were up 20 percent and then eBay bot eBay / PayPal but Bill Me Later and Amazon ripped them off the site the next night it was controversial and we're all like holy cow I can't you know I think we're all shocked how quickly Amazon turned that off after seeing his praises so it is kind of funny to watch now Amazon jump back into it you know probably been 15 years at this point back into it and partner up with the firm so I almost kind of wondered if. Maybe there was an investment phase but also doesn't Shopify own a chunk of a firm like there's an alliance there too which is another it's unlike Amazon to lay down you kind of have connections into. Competitors even one degree away with a firm in the Middle With both Walmart and Shopify it all. Jason: [57:22] And there is Juicy data at play in this service so it is it is interesting. Scot: [57:28] Yeah days was famously he wouldn't ever he really didn't want to buy any Google ads because he didn't want them to see what they're up to. Jason: [57:36] No I mean part of me would almost suspect that Amazon is like trying to learn on a firm and that it wouldn't be a long-term deal but I entirely speculation. Scot: [57:46] I think both of our Spidey senses are tingling on this one and we'll keep an eye on it then there was a battle of press releases where Amazon Walmart said we're hiring 20,000 people and then Amazon du ha ha we're hiring 50,000 so that was that was the other Amazon news I saw. Jason: [58:02] Yeah I saw that too I got to be honest to me those were nothing Burgers it's super complicated both of those companies hire a ton of seasonal Labour way more than that right and. Sidenote like targets hiring a hundred and thirty thousand people for Christmas so those numbers just didn't seem that impressive and if I was if I was Walmart my press release would have said hey we've hired 500,000 people since covid-19 like that seems that's true and that seems a lot more impressive than than the 20,000 I guess what is interesting in both cases is, this is not seasonal labor these are full-time jobs just dedicated to fulfilling e-commerce orders so that's kind of interesting. [58:42] And two other tiny pieces of Walmart news in the the time that we don't have left Walmart did announce. An enhancement to their advertising echo system so they have a thing called the Amazon or Walmart connect and they launched a DSP for that. Demand-side platform it's a way to use Walmart data to Target segments and by ads both. On Walmart so walmart.com and in Walmart stores but also um across the the interweb using Walmart's first-party data and as we talked about in our privacy show as it's harder to use Google and Facebook targeting because of all these privacy concerns. It makes sense that that retailers are trying to maximize The Leverage they have with their 1p data Walmart has the most customers so they have the most wimpy data and so that that's kind of an interesting evolution of their ad platform and a potential competitive Advantage for Walmart. [59:47] And then another one that's just kind of interesting that I didn't necessarily expect Walmart launched a new delivery platform. Which is delivering goods for other retailers. So they call it Walmart Go Local and essentially you can be independent owner operator you know, in a town and sell stuff for home delivery and Walmart will use their network of owned delivery. People in vehicles to pick stuff up from your bakery and drive them to a customer for a fee. Scot: [1:00:19] Yeah we'll see how that goes I don't know if I want my bakery to be delivered by Walmart. Jason: [1:00:27] Yeah I mean there's a number of issues it just to me it's interesting because obviously Walmart used to be a pure retailer you know you're seeing them lean into a lot of services they it was a few weeks ago but they announced this deal with. With Adobe whether they're they're selling software to Adobe and now they're selling delivery services to you know Main Street when you know used to be the narrative was that Walmart was putting Main Street out of business so it just it's interesting to see the evolution of Walmart. Scot: [1:00:57] I've whenever Walmart talks about some of the services they show kind of a low WalMart delivery vehicle that looks a lot like an Amazon Prime van. Jason: [1:01:06] Yeah they have a lot of different they have kind of a patchwork Fleet of delivery services and some of them use different vehicles but you you maybe more expert in the Walmart delivery Fleet than I am. Scot: [1:01:20] I just see this picture and it I think a lot about Vans everyday and it resonates with me. [1:01:32] I appreciate it thanks for looking out for me well we are out of time and one of the topics we wanted to cover but what with all the juicy IPO news didn't get to this time but will dedicate neck so to it is there is a lot coming up we're kind of coming in to wear it the past the halfway point of Q3 and all eyes will turn to Q4 with the holiday season it's going to be really unique this year because we cut the covid thing we've got the Delta variant we've got all kinds of crazy weather going on with hurricanes so as a retailer it's a really wacky time and one of the things we want to talk about next show is ship again so we coined that here on the show last year and turned out to be probably bigger than even we anticipated what's going on with that and 2021 I see a lot of time thinking about Vanagon there's also chip again so which which caused Vanagon so with want to talk about all the geddens that we're seeing out there. And then also you know there's a lot of interesting things going on the supply chain we've been you know the team here at the Jason Scott show and our many analysts have been listening in to the quarterly results and and talking to retailers about this and we have a lot of information to share on that kind of T up what we think the holiday is going to look like from from those angles. Jason: [1:02:55] Wow that sounds like an awesome show I can't wait to hear it. Scot: [1:02:58] I know I cannot wait for us to make it. Jason: [1:03:01] Will Scott it's happen again we've totally used up our allotted time as always if this was valuable we sure would appreciate that five star review on iTunes and only takes a second it's easier than ever before to leave it jump over there give us a review and make sure you're subscribed to get that next podcast Scot teas. Scot: [1:03:21] Absolutely thanks everyone and until next time… Jason: [1:03:24] Happy commercing.

This week eBay announced some international changes, PayPal updated us on fees, and Poshmark put a new feature into an invite only beta. Plus we'll recap my top 10 sales and more. Pay Pal Raises Fees and New Fee List eBay leaving Spain and Korea Shoe store smashes boxes Give this podcast a review at https://www.podchaser.com/GalaxyCdsRocksAndFlips Visit My Website: https://galaxycdsrocks.com I've created a series of Reselling Logs, and Personal Journals, which you can see on Amazon! Watch My YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/GCRocksYT Shop My Ebay Store: http://ebay.us/oljLOV Visit the Galaxy CDS Rocks Swag Store: https://galaxy-cds-rocks.creator-spring.com Save 10% Through 6/12 with Code Galaxy 21 Donations to the channel accepted at: https://www.paypal.me/galaxycds Stuff I use: (These are affiliate links, and by using them you will support the podcast when I receive a small commission for referring you, at no additional cost to you. So click away Galaxians!) If you enjoy every aspect of reselling except storing and shipping your products, you might want to check out eBliss Reseller Solutions! They'll handle your shipping and storage needs, allowing you to source, sell, and collect your money! Check out my interview with them here to see what they're all about: https://youtu.be/t6FR3a7w6ic Then use this link and Promo Code Ryan to save 20% off your first month! https://eblissreseller.com/ryan-shoemaker/ Try List Perfectly! I recently signed up and am in the process of moving over 6000 listings from eBay to Mercari, watch for future updates! Use this referral link, be sure to input referral code 634 and save 30% off your first month, please and thank you! https://listperfectly.com?ref=634 Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/galaxycdsrocks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/galaxycdsrocks/support

In this week's episode of Reformed Millennials, Broc and Joel start out discussing how to properly think about investing and the competing market participants. After the Market update they also dive into best investments ever, Onlyfans most recent venture round and whether Substack can handle their great expectations.Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.If you aren’t in the Reformed Millennials Facebook Group join us for daily updates, discussions, and deep dives into the investable trends Millennials should be paying attention to.👉 For specific investment questions or advice contact Joel @ Gold Investment Management.📈📊Market Update💵📉To start todays episode we want to talk about something that we think is important to understand as market participants. When we were first starting out, time horizons were difficult to conceptualize. We pitching ideas to get them into portfolios you can’t possibly run money without also first understanding why you own something. Why someone else owns something and how that affects prices. Investing isn’t binary. 101010There isn’t always a right and wrong when it comes to stocks, and investing. It’s missing the point. With the RM podcast we make an effort to point listeners in the direction of global trends to make more informed business and life decisions. We feel like were pretty damn good at that. But that job requires a certain time horizon... And that horizon isn’t a short one. It’s quite the opposite. It’s much longer... So tune in for 2 stories: First one is from my favorite writer in the world. Morgan HouselKnowing what game you’re playingAn idea that’s obvious but overlooked is that investors on the same field play different games. We buy the same companies, read the same news, talk to the same people, are quoted the same market prices – but we’re everything from day traders to endowments with century-long time horizons. Even investors who think they’re playing the same game – say, stock pickers – have wildly different goals and risk tolerances. My view is that most investing debates do not reflect genuine disagreement; they reflect investors playing different games talking over each other, upset that people who don’t want what you want can’t see what you see. Understanding your game, without being swayed by people playing different games, is a rare investing power.Second is a story/lesson from Peter Lynch “Invest In What You Know”Peter Lynch on the biggest mistake investors make: "They don't know what they own. They do more research on a microwave oven and buy based on a tip they heard on the bus. They buy into the potential of something. They hear a terrific story." "I find when you hear that [story], you just have to black out. You have to think of a movie you went to recently because the stories are very appealing." “The public is very careful with their money when they buy a dishwasher or a TV set, when they rent an apartment. When it comes to the stock market, for some reason they just don't do any work." What would they find out with 30 minutes of research?"They would first of all see if the company has sales and profits. A lot of times they buy companies and there's nothing there. There's literally nothing there." "There are people that own electronic stocks that don't know the difference between an EPROM and the senior prom. And they're trying to buy stocks."EPROM = erasable programmable read-only memory, had to google that one. "Wal-Mart started as a public company with 37 stores in October of 1970. 10 years later you can tune into Wal-Mart. Their profits are up 20x. And the stock was up 20x. It still had another 10 years left. Profits went up 25x in the last 10 years. You can make 25x your money again" "You have plenty of time. My best stocks have been the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year. Not the third week the fourth week. People want to make the money very rapidly." Wal-Mart's first annual report:💯Unofficial List of The 16 Greatest Investments Ever🍄Naspers - Tencent (2001): $32m -> $250B (7800x) Softbank - Alibaba (2000): $20m -> $100B (5000x)Saverin - FB (2004): $15k --> $14B (866,666x)Peter Theil - FB (2004): $500k --> $1B (2000x)Sequoia/Kleiner - GOOGL (1999): $13m --> $20B (1500x)Jeff Bezos - Google (1998): $250k --> $5B (20,000x)Andy Bechrolsheim - Google (1998): $100k --> $1.5B (15,000x)Jackie & Mike Bezos - Amazon (1995): $250k --> $20B - $60B (80,000x to 240,000x)Bruce McKean (Tobi's father-in-law) - Shopify (2007): ~$200k --> $7B (35,000x)John & Cathy Phillips - Shopify (2007-09): $750k --> $4.4B (6000x)SIG-Bytedance (2012): $5m --> $15B (3000x) Steve Jobs - Pixar (1986): $5m --> $7.4B (1480x) Ruby Lu - Kuaishou: $40m --> $12B (300x) FB - IG (2012): $1B -> $250B (250x) GOOGL - YT: $1.6B --> $300B (200x)eBay - Paypal (2002): $1.5B --> $100B (70x)Worst sale ever candidate: Goldman sold its position in Alibaba in 2004 for $22m. That stake would be worth $200B now. Goldman's current market cap is $110B 🤯The Tale of Two Creator PlatformsOnlyfans:The business of only fans - set to do $4B in GMV in 2021.They take a 20% cut of the GMV as their “rake”. OF is closing in on doing $1B in revenue this year (growing 400% y/y). As of late 2020, it had ~75% EBITDA margins. 550 employees.Substack:Substack raises $65m series B @ $650m valuation.Someone on twitter deduced that from credit card data the average paying user, of which they have 500,000, is paying for about 2 subs or on average $18/month.That 18 puts their gross revs at about $18mm per month ($216mm per year) or said another way, their net revenues are somewhere between $1.8 -$2.7 mm per month ($32mm net revenue).Substack has 95 employees and their current valuation at 30X net revs or 3X gross revenue.🌊Best Links of The Week☔Chips with everything - Following last week's Intel strategy reset, with $20bn or more of new investment in fabrication plants announced, TSMC has announced a $100bn (!) building program over the next 3 years. I wrote about this last week: chip production becomes a step harder and more expensive with each generation and that's now reached the point that real money is involved, and that only a handful of companies can do this, with TSMC dominating. Meanwhile, for context, apparently Amazon is designing its own new networking chips, presumably to be made by TSMC, or Intel if its foundry business takes off. This isn't just about PCs anymore - more and more devices need chips, more and more companies want to go deeper into the stack, and so more and more companies (Apple, Google, Amazon) want their own. Links: TSMC, Amazon ($)US stimulus/infrastructure proposal has a lot of tech (and chips)- The new US president has unveiled a big stimulus and infrastructure investment proposal, and a large part of it involves investment in tech, including migrating US government vehicles to electric and building chargers, expanding broadband access, $120bn of R&D and science spending, $35bn on climate tech - and $50bn on semiconductors. China is mentioned, a lot. LinkUS online gambling - The US allowed states to license online sports gambling in 2018, and that has been slowly rolling out state by state. Draftkings is now a $20bn company and did two big deals in the last week (WWE partnership and content acquisition), while NYC will probably legalise it this year. Links: New York regulation, DraftKings/WE🥊 UFC 260: Who's next for Francis Ngannou, Stipe Miocic and Sean O'Malley🥩 How Much Do We Age in a Day?All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. For our full disclosures and disclaimer, visit our website: https://gold-im.com/disclaimer/ Get on the email list at www.reformedmillennials.com

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP106 -- Ty sits down with Roman -- owner of a popular cook group (you'll learn more about this in the discussion). We discuss the transition of Sneaker Heads into the Sports Card market. We also breakdown how cook groups, monitors, & bots are are being used to assist folks with buying their product. It's a CRAZY underworld within the sports card community and it will definitely lead to more questions. The idea is to keep you informed. I'm not an advocate of this activity, but I think you need to know the reality of it! Don't forget. FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- TRY EXPRESS VPN RIGHT HERE SECOND - Go check out Pastime Marketplace RIGHT HERE THIRD - Go to www.StarStock.com and use code BenchClear to receive a free $5 when signing up! Bench Clear Media Production

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP106 -- I sit down with Roman -- owner of a popular cook group (you'll learn more about this in the discussion). We discuss the transition of Sneaker Heads into the Sports Card market. We also breakdown how cook groups, monitors, & bots are are being used to assist folks with buying their product. It's a CRAZY underworld within the sports card community and it will definitely lead to more questions. The idea is to keep you informed. I'm not an advocate of this activity, but I think you need to know the reality of it! Don't forget. FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! SECOND - Go check out Pastime Marketplace RIGHT HERE THIRD - Go to www.StarStock.com and use code BenchClear to receive a free $5 when signing up! Bench Clear Media Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

在这期中，我们将首先探讨即将在A股与H股上市的科技金融巨头——蚂蚁集团，值不值得打新？并介绍另一个科技支付领域巨头——Paypal的上市历史，说说当年华尔街狼王是如何主导Ebay分拆Paypal上市的。同时谈谈对于投资A股还是美股、投资基金还是个股的看法。推荐一些我们所推崇的投资大师：巴菲特、查理芒格、段永平、彼得林奇、Ray Dalio等，聊聊他们对于投资的见解。以及我们自己的投资组合与投资理念等。 申明：股市有风险，入市需谨慎。本音频内容不作为任何的投资建议，我们也不保证内容的真实性。请谨慎、独立地作出自己的投资决定！ 关于我们：一个留德法学博士生、一个纽约州律师，两个热爱投资、理财与瞎扯的法律人，与大家一起闲谈财经、时政与社会新闻。希望得到大家的关注！喜欢我们，就订阅我们吧！记得给我们留言、点赞、评论哦！

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP105 -- I get on a soapbox for 30minutes and talk about this idea of a Sports Card bubble...and why it's the wrong question to ask. What is the data showing and how should we respond? THE POST is HERE.... with chart: FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! SECOND - Go check out Pastime Marketplace RIGHT HERE Bench Clear Media Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP104 -- I sit down the Darren Herman - Venture Capitalist and Sports Card enthusiast. You'll want to listen to this conversation as we dive into some of economic elements of the hobby...and unpack where the sports card marketplace COULD be going. Check out his Sports Card Market Cap article RIGHT HERE FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! SECOND - Go check out Pastime Marketplace RIGHT HERE The Show page is HERE: YouTube Link RIGHT HERE --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

Welcome to BEHIND THE NUMBERS -- a weekly football card podcast from the Bench Clear Media team. This week we breakdown the action from the Week 4 games. What performances surprised and/or disappointed us? Special Guest: Shani Pelled FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! Other Topics include: The Weekly Pricing Ladder ( LINK HERE ) Breaking down WEEK 4 Action! Top Performances - RC's Will the virus kill the season? MUCH MORE! Enjoy the podcast and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below. For show notes visit: https://benchclear.us/behind-the-numbers-week-4-football-card-podcast/ YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/x0qM5s3CeP4

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP103 -- I sit down the Ezra Levine - CEO of COLLECTABLE. You'll want to listen to this conversation as we dive into the new world of FRACTIONAL OWNERSHIP within the sports card hobby. Ezra brings a fresh perspective, great hobby experience, and one heck of a team behind him. Check out Collectable HERE Here are FEW things we covered in today's chat. FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! TOPICS TODAY INCLUDE: The origins of Collectable.com Where does Fractional ownership fit within the hobby? What are goals / visions for future IPO's? Perspective on the current climate of Sports Cards Will the Yankees win the World Series? and SOOO much more! The Show page is HERE: YouTube Link HERE: Ezra provides us yet another perspective into the crazy 2020 in Sports Cards. Hope you enjoy! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

Welcome to BEHIND THE NUMBERS -- a weekly football card podcast from the Bench Clear Media team. This week we breakdown the action from the Week 3 games. What performances surprised and/or disappointed us? FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! Other Topics include: The Weekly Pricing Ladder ( LINK HERE ) Joe Burrow vs Justin Herbert? Is Justing Jefferson for real? BUY / SELL / HOLD Russell Wilson, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers -- MVP? Where does 2020 Origins Football fit? Enjoy the podcast and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below. For show notes visit: https://benchclear.us/behind-the-numbers-week-3/ YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/tIB-pHURagA

Welcome to BEHIND THE NUMBERS -- a weekly football card podcast from the Bench Clear Media team. This week we breakdown the action from the Week 3 games. What performances surprised and/or disappointed us? FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! Other Topics include: The Weekly Pricing Ladder ( LINK HERE ) Joe Burrow vs Justin Herbert? Is Justing Jefferson for real? BUY / SELL / HOLD Russell Wilson, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers -- MVP? Where does 2020 Origins Football fit? Enjoy the podcast and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below. For show notes visit: https://benchclear.us/behind-the-numbers-week-3/ YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/tIB-pHURagA --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP102 -- I sit down with Joe (Bunch) from the RekT Podcast (COINHQ Network). I pick his brain around the similarities between Cryptocurrency/Bitcoin and the Sports Card Market. There is a LOT we can learn from the bubbles in other markets, this conversation provides yet another angle of insight. Here are FEW things we covered in today's chat. FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! TOPICS TODAY INCLUDE: Macro Economic View -- What are you feeling? Concerns about the breakdown of the middle-class? Volatility of Crypto - any parallels to other asset classes (ie sports cards)? What role do you see Crypto playing in late 2020 through 2021? Joe provides us a different perspective into the crazy 2020 in Sports Cards. Hope you enjoy! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

In BreakerCulture Weekly EP101 -- I sit down with Brent Williams (BrentAndBecca) for almost 2 hours! But.... this was one of the most insightful conversations I've ever conducted. Let this soak in for a minute... Brent has completed nearly 250,000 sports card transactions on eBay. Unreal. Here are FEW things we covered in today's chat. FIRST -- Don't Log into eBay/PayPal/etc... unprotected. Protect yourself with the #1 VPN provider in the world...and the only VPN I trust -- EXPRESS VPN !! TOPICS TODAY INCLUDE: + The Transformation of the Hobby + eBay Secrets for being PRODUCTIVE in your selling + Sell Sets, Grade, or FLIP quick? + 2020 Allen & Ginter Reaction + Why Brent did NOT group break + Allocations for Sealed Wax What a great conversation with one of the most impressive and influential voices in the hobby! Want some of the supplies Brent mentioned? Fujitsu IX1500 Feed Scanner: Rollo Thermal Label Printer: (I've used this for YEARS!) #000 Bubble Mailers (Pack of 500): Resealable Team Bags (BCW): TitanShield Card Sorting Tray: --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakerculture/message

CEO of ShoppinPal. Previously, as a Product Manager and grew $40B payment volume products at eBay/PayPal, 1st non founding engineer at Trustgenix (acquired by HP). Recently featured in Leaders of Tomorrow (India's version of the Shark Tank) and selected twice by Invest Stockholm as one of the most promising ventures identified to expand business in Sweden. Passionate about helping SMEs, creating top notch enterprise software from the ground up, identifying raw talent and creating the right opportunities for the team to grow into world class engineers, and contributing to the growth of the startup ecosystem, especially in India. UC Berkeley MBA, Carnegie Mellon MS.

EP219- Live Listener Questions Episode 219 is a live show featuring live audience questions. Jason & Scot get to interact with listeners live. It's also a rare chance to watch the podcast, as the episode was recorded with video, watch it on YouTube.  Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 219 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, May 7th, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 219 being recorded live on Wednesday May 6 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-hosts God Wingo. Scot And Guests: [0:40] Hello cats and kittens. Oh sorry wrong shh hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show us nurse about two months ago we had our first live live live listener event and it was so popular. That we had a lot of requests to do again we had we couldn’t get to all the questions so we have a backlog of questions from that Jason before we jump in I see we’ve got some QA going on here. One housekeeping thing is if you do want to ask a question we would love to do it live where we’ll have you your audio come in and you can ask it. Using the audio so that when people listen to the podcast they have a little Variety in what they hear but before we do that Jason any road trips Irani report on or any news you want to go through. Jason: [1:24] I have done amazing road trips in the last two months I’ve been to Russia I’ve been to Europe you know ordinarily like I booked all these gigs and I have to reserve like three or four days travel time to get to them and now I can do like three gigs in different continents in the same day so it’s a embarrassingly more efficient and I feel like I see more credible when I’m further away on a screen than I do when people get me in person so so yeah. Scot And Guests: [1:57] You got in your joke timing down I found on the zoom it’s little bit harder to kind of like judge the audience with your tongue. Jason: [2:03] Yeah I just assume I have my own laugh track I play for my own benefit and so I just I’m just assuming that that works. Scot And Guests: [2:12] You had time to do a laugh track but not our theme song I’m hurt. Jason: [2:15] I’m prioritizing yeah I apologize to all the live listeners you didn’t get to hear the show music that ordinarily gets added in post but if I were a more diligent audio engineer I would have arranged a way to play it for all of you to get in the mood for tonight. My bad Scott Moore. Scot And Guests: [2:33] One thing I want good. Jason: [2:34] I was just going to say like this is a three-day Streak For Me of goodness like May the force be with you Day always a super important holiday is you know I have a young son that’s. Like completely fixated on Star Wars so he’s decided that that’s the greatest holiday ever. And with utter fear on his face he asked me first thing in the morning on May 4th dad do Jewish people celebrate May fourth day. And he was thrilled. Yeah he was thrilled to find out that it’s a non-denominational holiday and then we transition seamlessly into Cinco de Mayo and I did a lot of customer gigs with margaritas. Scot And Guests: [3:18] The correct Star Wars holiday there is a competition is returned to the fifth. Jason: [3:24] Yeah I got you I did. Scot And Guests: [3:26] Revenge of the fifth yeah sorry. Jason: [3:28] I could have could have stretched it out to two days I had no no idea. Scot And Guests: [3:34] And then today was you get to podcast So Good Times. Jason: [3:39] Exactly I feel like and special honor we’re already being Zoom bombed in in the chat. Scot And Guests: [3:47] Yeah Olivia we got to bring Olivia into the live discussion. Jason: [3:53] Yeah yeah are you oh Egypt person that’s having fun with us or are you a troublemaker that I have to boot. Scot And Guests: [3:59] A troublemaker. Jason: [4:00] Seems like Olivia should get booted. Scot And Guests: [4:03] Yeah I vote the boot. Jason: [4:05] Yeah alright bye Olivia it was good knowing you. Scot And Guests: [4:09] Well you’re booting alyvia one of the things I want to talk about is there’s been some more earnings since our last podcast last week last week we really focused on the Amazon q1 results which were pretty stellar and then since then we’ve had Etsy this afternoon this morning was Shopify it was yesterday was Wayfarer and then this afternoon square and PayPal and I would say the the overwhelming theme has been you know everyone has seen this surge of activity due to the pandemic. The PayPal CEO said he feels like digital payments have moved three years ahead into the future square as well. One thing I didn’t understand about square is they blew away the top line but the bottom line had a huge impact I don’t know if that’s because when they sign up new customers to get some really good rate or something and then Etsy was interesting they they have become the go-to place for handmade masks which is there have been quite a moment so they’ve sold something like I think. [5:08] Three to eight million mask on their platform which was an amazing you know handmade face mask and then Shopify just kind of crushed expectations and the one analyst I follow their Collins Bastion he may be on he raised their price Target from 475 to 820 and it’s currently at 7:30 so whoever asked for stock recommendations that may be an interesting one to look at because it’s kind of one of those you know playing the the guys selling the pickaxes and shovels versus the actual folks doing the mining so Shopify stock I think it’s going to rip pretty good. And then you have tried it about Peloton they crushed estimates as well and after hours I saw they were trading up pretty substantially and they haven’t even been able to launch their new treadmill because it has this white glove in-house delivery that is not social distance friendly so those are some interesting things going on in the stock side that have an e-commerce digital time. Jason: [6:09] Yeah are we jumping into the stock question or were you just you were that was just kind of a pre-analysis. Um yeah so a like I’m the world’s worst at stock advice and and what what I have learned is. It turns out it’s not all that helpful to predict what companies are going to do well and not do well like what’s more important and is to understand. [6:32] What sin or not in the existing price if you want to make money. [6:37] So so with that huge caveat that I’m usually wrong I’m going all in on the pics at pickaxe and shovels and I’m going to suggest some stocks like. Um some of the micro fulfillment centers that that grocery stores are now buying right like so my premise is digital grocery before covid-19 was 3% of grocery sales and there was a prediction that they might get to five percent by 2022 digital groceries at 10% right now. So basically we’ve jumped forward at least five years in the future of digital Grocery and huge caveat and digital grocery it’s wildly unprofitable so when the retailer has to pay for all the grocery picking and the grocery delivery grocery delivery doesn’t make any money so the way retailers are going to ultimately make money on this digital grocery is. Get you to pick up your own groceries via curbside pickup and use a robot to pick the order instead of paying a human being to pick the order in the store and so these these robots for grocery stores are called micro fulfillment centers and there’s at least three of them out there that have big Pilots with Grocers right now and they all have reported more than double digit. [7:57] Um sales growth since the beginning of the pandemic and so it was super early in their evolution and so the the fact that there. [8:08] Already seeing this this spike in demand like bodes probably really well for them so that’s companies like alphabat and take away and I’ll think of a couple others I’ll put in the show notes tonight. Scot And Guests: [8:23] Should we hit the audience up for some questions. [8:36] If anyone wants a child but I think at the little hand raised there. Jason: [8:40] Yeah should we start with a while we wait for some reason our hand should we start with. Scot And Guests: [8:48] Here’s Michelle let’s hope this isn’t a crazy Zoom bomber let’s see what we got. Jason: [8:52] Oh I see it hang on Michelle we’re turning you on. [9:09] We’re we’re excited for you to be here for the rest of the listeners you are a past guest on the show when you were with your monitor and you’ve actually started a new gig recently with Salesforce. Scot And Guests: [9:22] Yes I am I now work at Salesforce I started in early March there’s one place to start working at during a pandemic Salesforce is definitely it’s a great company and I’m really enjoying my time here. Jason: [9:37] Yeah and it seems like there so go ahead Scott. Scot And Guests: [9:40] Have you met Marc benioff not yeah but it’s definitely on my to do list how about the top of the Salesforce Tower. Also on top of my to-do list once it’s reopened I’m also excited about our new tower that’s coming in Chicago the top floor will be open service I hope. Host quite a few events once it’s built in three years nice. Yeah my question is are there any topics or themes or issues in the retail that aren’t getting enough attention. That you think that we should be aware of. Jason: [10:25] Good one I have a few opinions but Scott did you have something you wanted to say. Scot And Guests: [10:31] I would say one of the so you go to these conferences right and there’s all the talk in the front of the house and then there’s this, back of the house talk I would say the back of the house talk I hear the most in e-commerce it’s kind of bubbling out now is the sustainability sustainability and scalability of this kind of direct to digital brands so does DMV be have legs can you build something over a hundred million or some of these things anomalies like Dollar Shave Club and some of those or, you earned is this kind of giant Gold Rush of these digitally native for cool Brands going to will sustain or will it die in a big fire pit of people that don’t make it through so so I think that’s really interesting to Think Through. The same time whenever I’m watching TV I’m seeing a lot of ads for these things now added ad rates have come down because traditional advertisers are kind of on pause so you’re seeing a lot of these kind of calm or direct response kind of ads on TV so it’s an interesting topic that I don’t think is getting enough probably coverage out there. Jason: [11:35] Yeah and again it depends on what echo-chamber you’re in and what you hear in terms of what you think might be covered or not covered but I’ll tell you in. [11:45] In conversations with retailers I’m still somewhat shocked how unrealistic a lot of retailers seem to be about. The likely duration of the impact of all of this so you know we like we talked to lots of retailers that have like this three stage plan or this four stage plan but the the final stage of their plan is almost always back to normal and binormal they mean, pre covid-19 and back to normal is almost always the end of 2020 or maybe. The middle of 2021 and I’ll be honest both of those things somewhat surprised me like I don’t think we ever go back to, pre covid-19 I think there’s enough things that are permanently going to change the retail and Commerce in the US are going to be wildly different. In the future and so I think just the notion of going back is is. Sort of quaint and you know frankly like we you know we’ve actually brought in some epidemiologists and some immunologist to sort of help us scenario plan and it just doesn’t seem like you talk to any credible expert that really sees this ending. [13:06] Or you know going back to the kind of things where we all get to go in person to a trade show or or you know go to these big mass group things or frankly have unlimited traffic in a retail store. [13:21] Until we have a full-blown and widely distributed cure. Um for the virus and realistically the fastest of a vaccines ever been produced in the history of the world is five years so let’s imagine that with the crazy resources marshaled we do it way faster than that and we do it in 18 months you still got to find a way to get 7 billion doses. Out into the world and get everyone to take it and oh by the way a lot of vaccines require more than one dose like there’s all this negative news. That makes me think that we’re going to return to a lot of our old activities but in a significantly modified way. For probably two years and I like don’t hear that a lot when I talk to people thinking about their plans when I talked to retailers that are forecasting their sales like none of them are thinking that like for the foreseeable future they’re not going to be allowed to let an unlimited number of customers in their storm like that’s that you know they think of that as a very short term. Thing and I you know I hope to be wrong but I think they’re missing it what about you Michelle his there anything that that’s that you feel like people aren’t talking about enough. Scot And Guests: [14:36] Well I am particularly curious about returns because we see all of these you know we see all the metrics to digital Commerce Commerce Rising but you know obviously there’s a high return rate associated with. It was e-commerce particularly in clothing and Footwear so I’m I haven’t seen too much around the returns issue and has return rates you know have that have they drop down because people you know are. I’m buying what they don’t need they’re not necessarily buying three items only keep one or. Our return retooling steady sort of a the shift in consumer behavior and then be we are seeing a little bit more around the actual Logistics. Doing the returns how do you keep the merchandise clean and safe and audio process it but yeah I’m really curious about the return issue and. How that’s factoring in into the situation. Jason: [15:37] Yeah yeah it’s a great topic and in my observation at the moment has been like the categories that are most up in e-commerce are not the categories that traditionally had super high return rates right so all, digital generally always has a higher return rate than in store but in a parallel for example it’s much more acute and you know apparel Sales Online have been pretty soft right now and so then you know then the retailers that are really booming have temporarily sort of. Cancel their their return policies and so so like if anything there’s a slight extra kiss right now in profitability that that a lot of these retailers are seeing lower returns because either they’re not accepting returns or there’s extra friction on the part of the customer to do returns and so they’re just not doing it so. Sales of the high return items seem way down but return seem way down. [16:39] Honestly though in my mind that’s getting overwhelmed there are all these other costs of e-commerce sales that are artificially high right now that you know are more than eating up the margin the that retailers are gaining by by this you know what I presume is a temporary abatement of returns and so to me like the top-line story that we’ve heard in a ton of their earnings is hey good news e-commerce is up it’s not up enough to make up for all those sales we lost in the store and those sales are way less profitable than they would have been if they were in the store and so margins are super super challenged so. Scot And Guests: [17:24] When I follow the startups in the return space and it’s interesting that I’ve been at this like 20 or 30 years and you know they always fall into two categories there’s ones that have like some digital solution where they don’t touch anything at the end of the day they’re kind of like issuing an RMA and doing some tracking look every retailer already has that so I don’t understand understand how that it solves anything or they go super heavy and they’re like going to build a whole infrastructure and touch every product and graded and resell it in some way and I’ve never found a company that has some kind of like solution in the middle that helps companies handle the logistics I remember in the late 90s like this kind of. Two to four time frame there’s a company called return by and they raised like 30 million dollars and they went and built this big returns facility and I did a tour of it was amazing and I had all these conveyor belts and things would go upstairs and go through the sorting system and I was there in the hole I was like on the 30-minute tour and I was there for. [18:24] You know I saw five packages go by and some of them were the little ovens like the Barbie ovens but they couldn’t resell those because the food inside had gone bad and then there was one Barbie with without a head and that I was kind of like all right I’ve been here 30 minutes I’ve seen five products that probably can’t be sold online what how is this business sustainable at all so returns are really hard because there’s no you know there’s probably some benefit of scale and if there is Amazon’s going to win because they’re going to have the internal in-house scale that no one else is going to be able to get to. Jason: [19:01] Yeah in the the related question like so like we have these kind of problems with like how do we make stuff that gets returned safe to resell or to get some some monetization from for the apparel guys if win at the store is ever reopen and customers are allowed back in the stores a big question is how you make dressing room safe like both of you know how do you keep the room itself safe but what do you do with the clothes that a customer tried on and didn’t buy and so their interesting questions there do you have to disinfect that stuff and you do it in a way that doesn’t harm or damage the products you know one one idea we’ve seen a lot in China so far is the close that customers Tryon get quarantined. And so literally you know customer tries on a dress doesn’t buy it and they have to put that dress in a quarantined area for two days before they bring it back out. So I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting new things that you wouldn’t necessarily think about it first blush. Scot And Guests: [20:06] Thanks for the question oh you’re welcome thanks for taking it good luck in your new role and Sinister softly with Marc benioff yes I will I’m gonna garfi first with Rob. Jason: [20:18] That I feel like the garfi is easier but I do think it’s a funny time to start a new job because like you probably haven’t seen the lower half of any of your co-workers yet. Scot And Guests: [20:28] I haven’t I haven’t met any of them in person since I started so. Jason: [20:32] Yeah that’s odd. Awesome well thank you much Michelle I will safely remove you from participating so you don’t have to worry about making noise. Scot And Guests: [20:48] Anyone else have a question raise your hand don’t take Olivia or penny. Jason: [20:53] Yep they’re both God. Scot And Guests: [20:53] The Bad actors okay we do have a right one right in when here let’s tackle that Christopher ask what brick-and-mortar retailers are going to come out of this stronger and why. Jason took a four shot at it. Jason: [21:08] Yeah well your friend Jim Cramer on Mad Money had a rant a couple weeks ago where he said like we’re trending towards the world when there’s only three retailers left in the United States and in his mind they were Amazon Walmart and Costco. I do think all of those retailers are super well situated. [21:31] You know obviously selling Essentials is a very helpful right now having already leaned into digital and particularly omni-channel retail is super helpful right now so so those read in those particular three retailers. Probably had the best balance sheets in retail going into. The pandemic so so those are the kind of retailers that are going to do super well I didn’t say this to Michelle but another one of the things I don’t think is talked about enough is. How many retailers are likely to go out of business because of this and so these healthy retailers are going to grab up that share. The in get even bigger so we’re going to see some huge consolidation at the top but even the retailers that don’t go out of business. Are likely going to right-size The brick-and-mortar Fleets and so I we saw the first announcement it was either today or yesterday but Nordstrom is closing 16 Mainline stores which is about 14% of its Mainline stores and people were talking about being surprised by that I actually think that’s a light I think a significant number of relatively healthy retailers are going to close something like 25% of their stores. Scot And Guests: [22:47] I didn’t see at Nordstrom’s news. Jason: [22:49] Yeah I’m here for you. Scot And Guests: [22:49] So do you think so so no one’s about apparel during this time and you know one Theory would be people you know they have all this you know if they’ve survived this and have the means there’s going to be a big kind of bump in buying apparel items you don’t think Nordstrom benefits for that or you’re just not sure they make it through to that point. Jason: [23:09] No well so I can but I think there’s a bunch of headwinds against a pair of so there is this premise there’s all this delayed gratification and and you know in China they talked about when they reopen stores they were really hoping for Revenge shopping is what they called it which I thought was pretty funny and this this notion that there was all this pent-up demand for consumerism and they hope can customers would go out and help Goose the economy by by aggressive spending in general like whether there are some occasions of that particular in luxury like there’s some luxury retailers that set records the first day they opened up in general we haven’t seen that kind of Revenge shopping and part of the reason is is because there’s huge economic uncertainty almost every Market is exiting from this quarantine period of the pandemic in a. [23:57] A super deep and sudden recession and so consumer confidence is super low. And so in the apparel space you just have all of these problems you had a perishable inventory that’s sitting in all those Nordstrom stores that they couldn’t sell even though Nordstrom is pretty better than most it online the majority of their inventory was locked in stores that were locked in mall so they couldn’t sell that inventory. It was perishable so it’s not it’s not fashionable or desirable when they can reopen those stores most of their stores are at malls and there’s a lot of evidence that customers are more afraid of going back to the mall than they are to freestanding stores. Nordstrom didn’t know what to do and I don’t mean Nordstrom particularly apparel retailers haven’t known what to do when they could reopen when they’re beat a man for their goods again so they’ve. Their supply chains are all screwed up and they haven’t ordered the next season stuff. And you know a lot of occasions that people buy apparel for. [24:58] Are now gone like you didn’t need to buy a prom dress this year you didn’t need to buy an Easter dress this year you didn’t you’re not going back to school shopping at the moment and so. Like even if there’s a little pent-up demand and they get a little bump when they reopen stores there’s enough long-term negativity in that apparel category that I think in any apparel every retailer is really smart maximize their liquidity right now and get their balance sheet in the best shape they can but but particularly in a parallel you. You really need to buckle up for a pretty rough ride because it’s not going to be pleasant. Scot And Guests: [25:34] When the I think it’s going to do well is Apple so I’ve had like ten instances where I wish I could go just run to the Apple store and grab a widget or something and then you had to either wait or I know several people at work have gotten broken computers they want to take in to have fixed and and you know if the Geek Squad or whatever that is called is broken no Geniuses to be had. How about you didn’t say grocery. Obviously those are going to do really well and then we have I think the drug stores have done pretty well I’ve kind of wandered into a couple of drugstores and they’ve been pretty busy and one here in town got some hand sanitizer it was like. Jason: [26:14] No exciting. Scot And Guests: [26:15] Very very exciting so caused a pretty big set of demand from them. Jason: [26:20] That in your in Raleigh that could be a huge event even before the pandemic but yeah. Scot And Guests: [26:26] We get excited about little stuff. Jason: [26:27] Yeah yeah grocery is like obviously the shift to digital groceries really exciting so if you’re someone that’s in the digital grocery space in particular like there’s a huge Boom for you for traditional grocer it’s a mixed bag because um the the shift to the digital channel is hugely problematic from a profit standpoint and there’s other bad stuff that’s happening simultaneously consumers are buying bigger packs of stuff which are less profitable the the Grocer’s cost right now or skyrocketing they’re paying employees more they have all these extra cleaning processes companies like get spiffy charge them a fortune to come in and and Queen their facilities in the morning before they open they have restricted hours they can’t let as many people in so they’re like. It is good there is higher demand for grocery there’s a lot of operational challenges with profitability I think in the long term those gets solved but it’s not going to be an overnight thing and and then like really for grocery for it truly to be a win there’s a behavior that’s happening right now that has to stick and and this is the most interesting thing to me about the pandemic as I talk about these kind of six different categories of consumer behaviors and which ones might be permanent versus which ones will regress after the the quarantine at the moment. [27:53] There’s an enormous shift from consuming meals in restaurants to consuming meals at home and if that if a version of that behavior sticks like it’s clearly not going to stick to the level we’re at now but but if the new normal is more skewed towards consuming at home that that obviously is a increases the Tam for grocery but if the consumption goes back to the exact same levels and it’s just a shift from in-store sales to digital sales that’s probably not an economic windfall for the traditional Grocers it might be an economic windfall for the instacart sand fresh directs of the world and a big Debbie Downer for the pea pods of the world that turned off their e-commerce right before the pandemic. Scot And Guests: [28:38] Oops looks like a Christopher has question let’s see what he has to say. Jason: [28:42] Christopher let me find you here and you are on hi Christopher. Scot And Guests: [28:48] Hey guys you guys actually just answer my question. Jason: [28:51] Tell us what it was so we again take credit. Scot And Guests: [28:54] So it was the I was asking the question that you just answered about what brick-and-mortar retailers are going to earn a come out of this stronger I’ve got I’ve got a backup. Yeah it’s a backup question you know are there how are retailers handling training their Frontline staff. Specifically kind of best practices with covid and and I ask the questions obviously right like the two stores that I’ve been in. In the last month CVS has one way aisles that their employees seem to disregard. And and Target you know kind of has this as this buy online pick up in store option but the they haven’t made the pivot of moving their their pickup area. From away from the cash wrap and so what it does is it sort of creates this bottleneck of people. So I don’t know if there’s sort of any examples of companies that you guys have found that you know are really kind of thinking about sort of how to address kind of a post covid or in covid kind of environment in a better better way. Do I take it first Jason or. Jason: [30:02] Sure so both hey I was sort of quoted in the Wall Street Journal article this week with the exact same observation that like Milo’s local grocer has one way Isles and all the employees and professional Pickers in the store totally ignore it right so it and you know training customers for new behavior in the store requires like a significant effort and a significant amount of messaging and reinforcement none of which is happening right now so that that particular example totally agree with you inside note. Totally controversial and not good evidence that one way aisles are safer right like so that the notion behind One Way Isles is you don’t have to walk. Cross someone in these narrow aisles where their droplet spray is almost certainly going to hit you if they’re not wearing a mask a the science on the on the droplet spread like your droplets are staying in the air long enough that that you’re walking through the droplets of the person in front of you even though you’re both walking in the same direction so that’s kind of a bummer but the bigger problem is if one way Isles make you spend thirty percent more time in the store to complete your shopping list. You’re actually walking by more people and getting exposed to more risk and exposing more people to risk. Because of the one-way Isles then you’re actually reducing risk because the one way also that particular ones controversial. [31:29] Direct answer to your question to me the best retail operators in the world there are killing it right now or some of the regional grocery stores so to me an absolute hero of this is a chibi which is a regional grocery store in Texas. Drake backstory these guys identified the potential impact of the pandemic in January sent their whole executive team to China to talk to the the grocers in China that were being impacted by this they came back they put a plan in place in February they totally revamped their supply chain. [32:02] They instituted all these touchless processes in the store and they have a great engaged employee base that they really made him bass Udders for all these changes so I going to a regional like a chibi or hi v– and Iowa those guys are executing really well if you step up to a big National grocer um like to me Kroger has taken an interesting leadership position because not only if they rolled out a lot of best practices they actually published all their best practices launched a website and are giving away all of their employee training materials and assets to any other retailer that wants them. So if you’re a smaller grocer that like need signs explaining to customers what new policies are or you need audio messages to play over the PA system or you need a new addendum near employee handbook and training for employees Kroger is giving all that away and so like it you know there was an extra level of diligence and creating that that created the materials good enough not only for their own use but to share with the rest of the world so so prop props to them. Scot And Guests: [33:14] Yeah I would say you know the 30,000 foot level there’s. You know every consumer has fear uncertainty and doubt so it’s your job to try to give them peace of mind and everyone has different response to this there’s some people that are pretty Cavalier. And then there’s other people that are like super freaked out right so the more options you can give people then they can kind of use the risk-taking kind of. [33:38] Choose their own risk path if you will one of my best experiences during the pandemic was Best Buy they have curbside delivery so I did a normal boat this so I did a buy online pick up in store I needed to get some batteries for for a nest camera kind of thing and. Then you know in the app it kind of geo-fenced and it said hey looks like you’re near the store are you ready for your curbside delivery I said yes so it did some smart things using the app and then I’ve done a lot of curbside delivery with some of the food and stuff this one is like almost instantaneous you know the runner came out then the runner like stayed pretty far from the car and they went to the passenger side and they actually asked and they were wearing PPE and they asked you know can I set you know can I want me to hand this to you or just set it in the seat next to you so there was like a lot of awareness on the on their side about kind of seeing where my risk level is. I’m pretty high risk I just kind of smile normal mode of operation but it’s really interesting that they were really sensitive to that so that was one experience I think I think table Stakes is you got to have PPE for all your staff you can’t that has to be. Definitely gloves and a mask you know the the more medical the mask looks I feel better as a consumer so some of these like cloth ones just kind of like you know they have like a brand on them I appreciate the brand, you know as an entrepreneur but like the fabric Thing is a little dodgy touchless payments you know I’ve been in a lot of these I’ve tried using a lot of them and it really. Jason you’re like this one went to a grocery store it’s called Fresh Market. [35:06] And I used my Apple I did touchless with Apple pay and then she said I want to see the credit card why do you have a physical Apple card but she’s looking for the digits right. [35:16] Plus the thing generates random digits is my understanding right it generates a one use credit card I tried to explain that to her and not so then so then I had to switch to ATM and then I was like well while I’m here I’ll get some cash back. And then you know I put in like $50 cash back she’s like well the maximums 40 but then the terminal had a fifty dollar. Cash back button and then and then I was like you know the third time I was like well maybe this one you know maybe third time’s a charm and she was like. She’s really even Flinch because I guess it happens all the time that have these things so so do the touchless stuff but make sure you know I would have a some of the managers go through the experience to make sure it’s really working flawlessly. That was one other thing I have found grocery shopping is I’m like the only non instacart person in there by instacart I mean Postmates and all the other shift and whatnot so I feel like those people need some other workflow or something like their own registers or something like that because they are you know they take a lot of time to shop because they’re kind of like looking at the app and they’re kind of like you know and then they’re scanning something. I feel like it’d be interesting to have some other alternative way maybe there’s like one store that is designated just for them or something I don’t know the answer to that but it’s kind of weird because I’m kind of like I’m very transactional and are clogging up the aisles there’s literally like eight of them on an aisle and I’m trying to like juggle through them to get through the store. Jason: [36:40] Yeah and there is the that’s that was a problem when only 3% of grocery was online and so now that we’re a 10 like there’s a lot more of those professional Shoppers in the aisle and and there are a lot more of those conflicts like there are you know efforts around dark stores and those Choppers shopping from the dart stores that some retailers are doing interesting things like they’re having professional hours and Shopper hours so both Costco and Whole Foods are for the most part not letting professional shoppers shop the store at the same time as customers they’ve they’ve narrowed the hours that throw up in a customers and they have dedicated hours early in the morning and late at night for the professional Shoppers so all of this has allocation problems like you know you can just sell less. [37:31] Curbside orders if you’re limiting the hours that the pickers can pick but but since they all have artificial caps on their density in the store at the moment it makes more sense to have the Shoppers in some hours in the customers in other hours so you’re seeing a lot of that definitely touched your lips payment is way up in the thing that’s going to be interesting there is you know there’s a lot of self-service POS in retail particular and grocery that I’ll have touch screens which are now super icky right and so you can imagine there’s a rush to retrofit all of those and the non-touchscreen solution for all those is going to be that your mobile phone interfaces with the terminal and use the the interface on your own mobile phone and so that’s going to be a new Behavior we’re going to see rolled out and have to educate customers about but I think you know going to those touch POS systems scanning go with some retailers it experimented with. Is is definitely going to be bigger so so I guess some of those things are interesting. Scot And Guests: [38:36] What they wanted and they had put a thick mylar bag over the terminal and it was so thick I could hardly press the buttons I guess they must met you know they must take that off and clean it or something or it may may be just as. Jason: [38:46] Yeah we just want you to believe that exactly great questions thanks very much Christopher. Scot And Guests: [38:52] Thanks Christopher yeah thanks guys all right we got Ricardo and Scott Waiting by Let’s see we got here. Jason: [38:59] Okay Ricardo we are you are live hey. Scot And Guests: [39:05] Hey hi guys we are done here reporting to you from San Francisco they kind of a show. Thanks for calling in what’s what’s what’s on your mind I’m curious if you can talk a little bit about like the p&l office seller obviously differentiate in the u.s. versus in China you know like a referral fees the same I was just because the same. I think I’m really curious you know I know China is as a percentage of retail e-commerce a lot more and I think it’s maybe because they don’t have a lot of the physical stores that, we got in the west but still when you compare with other developing nations still so much more ahead so I’m just creating your thoughts on that thanks. Jason: [39:44] Yeah well good question Ricardo a couple of things so the dominant marketplaces in the u.s. tend to be different than in China so obviously Amazon’s the the dominant Market Place in the US and Amazon has a singer Lehigh take rate so they charge like a. [40:02] Like compared to most other marketplaces a very high commission for each transaction Ali Baba’s Team all which would be the most analogous to, to Amazon and China has a way lower take rate so first thing is the unit economics of the actual sale are more profitable for the seller because you’re paying a lower commission but that’s a little bit of a artificial economy because Team all is even in China is even much bigger than Amazon Marketplace is here and so visibility and discovery of your product listings is non-existent like there’s so many listings and so many products your product just isn’t organically going to be found in China and so Ali Baba has a really low take rate because, they charge you extra for all of the marketing services and search visibility services so what you end up doing is having to pay a lot more to the to Ali Baba’s marketing arm which is called Ali Mama to have your stuff show up and and if you kind of compare apples to apples like the the general economics of the business end up. Netting out to be similar by the time you pay your Amazon marketing services in your take rate in the US or your only Mama services and your take grade in the China those are similar. But digital Commerce is way more penetrated in China and. [41:28] You know they’ve LeapFrog brick-and-mortar as you implied so pre covid. [41:34] Depending on how you Define retail I’ll go with the forester definition 16% of Commerce in the US was e-commerce the rest was brick-and-mortar in China it was 38% before covid. So u.s. today in April 16 percent goes to 25%. In February in China at the peak of the quarantine. 38% went to north of 50% so. Digitally you’re going to sell a lot more goods and then one other economic thing that’s wildly different in China than the US the cost of delivery is. Way lower in China so because there’s so much inexpensive labor you you can pay someone a very low rate to deliver anything in an hour or two a in a five-kilometer radius of your store and so it enables you to offer all kinds of cheap delivery of goods that would the unit economics would never work in the US and frankly that driver like those guys delivering all those things I say driver but a lot of times it’s a bike or something else those delivery guys that’s a middle-class wage in most Tier 1 and tier 2 cities in China so it the economics all around workout much better in China because of that Scot anything I botched there. Scot And Guests: [42:57] Let’s get the payments I think is a little bit lower so we’re used to kind of a two percent take right I think there’s a lot cheaper. And then the payment is to Ally pay a lot of times and then the other thing I would say is most Chinese sellers are embedded in a factory so that they’re like. They’re very very close to where the product is made. And that gives them an edge where you know if you’re a saint it’s awesome when you hear that works for an auto parts company so if you’re at an Autoparts retailer there’s a distributor there’s all these manufacturers some of them maybe there’s another layer where they took it from China and then the parts from China and then added something so you can be kind of you got seven people you know two to seven people dipping into the margin stack there whereas in China you’re typically Factory to right into the marketplace essentially maybe through a seller so because of that also it also creates this very fast feedback loop so you’ll see like this really interesting things happen where they can you know they’ll iterate very very quickly because they have the factory tied to the marketplace and then this this feedback loop accelerates. [44:06] Nothing if you stacked the another challenge for the Chinese seller is the same widget if you take currency and try to normalize it is selling for thirty to forty percent less in China so the good news is in the US for the same same item and if you looked at the currency rates you’re probably get 30 percent more for that in the United States than in China because it’s so competitive and people are. Very value-oriented the China so you have more more P to put in more margin to kind of put into things in the u.s. so those are some of the interesting differences. Because of that you know most Chinese sellers their strategy they actually make a lot more money selling out of China so the song to Russia they’ll sell into. Mercado Libre Brazil South America they’ll sell what the most popular destinations is the marketplaces in Australia and then obviously the US and Europe. That’s where pre-pandemic companies like wish and all the express were making a ton selling these kind of Hot Products coming direct from China. Jason: [45:08] Good points great question Ricardo thanks very much. Scot And Guests: [45:12] You guys have a good one thanks. Jason: [45:17] Should we go to Scott Landry next or do you want to take some of the typed in question Scott. Scot And Guests: [45:22] Let’s do let’s just got in the will hit the typed in once. Jason: [45:25] Awesome Scott you welcome to the show I feel outnumbered by the Scots now. Scot And Guests: [45:33] You are yeah I’m good treaties between us yeah exactly and I’m also here in will just outside of Raleigh I’m in Morrisville North North Carolina. Jason: [45:44] I heard Morrisville is much cooler than Raleigh. Scot And Guests: [45:47] It is much cooler it is much cooler and I’m a longtime listener first-time caller I a few weeks ago you guys had on Scott another Scott on the show and he talked about this being with time to not sit back and cut costs but to actually invest in companies invest for company owners to invest in their companies saying that those failing to prepare prepare to fail. We’ve also seen a lot of non-essential Amazon Seller struggle during the first few weeks of this pandemic. You know a lot of come back strong since then but and you know these companies had to Pivot and develop a multi-channel approach to their business so this sets up my very fun question do you know of a software that would that you would recommend to all your listeners that would help them with managing a multi-channel approach that includes. Maybe a single user interface to manage all their e-commerce operations such as I don’t know content inventory orders marketing advertising product content feeds. Scot Jason do you know of anything like that John A blank over here Jason guy Nick. Jason: [46:51] I thought you were going to a channel advisor. Scot And Guests: [46:52] Scot full disclosure Scott’s an account manager over at John visor so he’s seeing up the old Channel advisor what we do there. But all right yeah a lot of people start you know to be fair a lot of people especially smaller sellers they’ll start with a Shopify Bigcommerce woocommerce Magento one of those offerings and then they’ll have a little bit of an ability to sell and other marketplaces sometimes their shipping software will get them a connection to another Marketplace but then ultimately they’ll grow out of that and that’s kind of what we’ve built for. Retail does. Jason: [47:28] Yeah so certainly like I think there’s different answers it different tiers of business and maturity of businesses like I’ll be honest I don’t generally think of there being. Complete unified Suites that are super successful for a broad range of customers there definitely are unified Suites in particular Niche markets that really focus on a vertical so you can find a unified suite for a Furniture retail or for a quick serve food restaurant that are that are pretty comprehensive it like Shopify is inching towards being a unified sweet they’re adding more and more of those services and if I were a betting person I would say like they’re eventually going to get to a pretty comprehensive unified Suite that seems to be an important part of their strategy and hopefully they spend their money there instead of the stupid Shop app that we could talk about later the there at certain niches there there are some interesting unified sweet so I Oracle owns a product called netsuite which actually has like a pretty comprehensive set of e-commerce order management Channel management. [48:37] And outside of those you end up there are some some tools that cover a lot of what you just discussed so there there are Pimm’s that are expanding into. Feed management content management and starting to you know do more of those kinds of things so I think of like a salsify you know as becoming more comprehensive for those kinds of things but but like honestly there’s no dominant player like the Enterprise level, the Enterprise players are mostly pretty sucky at it like bye by far the best in terms of a unified sweet amongst the Enterprise guys now would be Salesforce so Michelle that was on earlier could talk to you about that. Scot And Guests: [49:28] Thanks guys appreciate it just I was just kind of tearing up the channel advisor commercial. Jason: [49:34] Yeah yeah yeah I can’t believe Scott didn’t send me one to play. Scot And Guests: [49:42] Cool alright so over in QA Kelly ask has anyone done any good research showing the correlation between retailers being owned by private equity and their subsequent and ability to react to covid. Seems that PE ownership equals under investment in Tech equals poor ability to respond to changes in business climate but it’d be great to see some research yeah so if you know seems like Kelly’s pretty. Read up on this whole topic but there are this this tier of investor called private Equity firms we call him PE firms in the industry and they essentially go do buyouts and what drives their thinking a lot of times there’s a like anything there’s a broad spectrum of PE firms they’re not all like this but a lot I would say 80 or 90 percent are in the genre of they do some financial interest in engineering so they’ll go look at a business like a retailer they’ll see that it has a certain ibadah and cash flow and then on the other side of the equation they have super cheap access to cash so what they’ll do is they’ll go they’ll go by that retailer they’ll use that cash flow to go by debt. [50:44] And you know because they’ve got this cheap access to debt they can usually get a lot of debt so they can go and say this retailers making a hundred million they can put a billion dollars where the debt because the whoever is providing this dead is just looking for pretty small amount of cash flow to cover a large debt they do all that and then when they when they do that they effectively have extracted the future value of that retailers cash flow out and and that is what drives their their calculations so it’s kind of like running the business through a spreadsheet based on this these kind of metrics of this current view of cash flow the downside of that is what it does is you know it makes the company essentially a hundred percent not bulletproof so you have a recession you have something that impacts that cash flow and then suddenly the cash flows here the debt is like 80% of cash flow cash flow dips to 30% and now the company is essentially if it has something on its balance sheet it will burn to that relatively quickly and then go bankrupt so this is ultimately what led to the demise of Toys R Us India Circuit City I believe had a large private Equity component here in the Southeast Belk cut by a private Equity Firm before pandemic and I’m kind of interested to see if if they make it through pretty much most of the large retailers with the exception of Nordstrom Walmart. [52:13] Costco the drug stores don’t have private Equity but many of the mall based retailers have except Apple are have a big private Equity component and I think they’re at risk so I haven’t seen a study but I would say the correlations very high just because of the nature of the Beast it’s like saying how many slow gazelle get eaten by lions beautiful pretty much all of them so I would say the correlation would be you know almost a hundred percent correlated Jason. Jason: [52:43] Yeah I would agree with your hypothesis I have not seen the study and it is a smart interesting question if there is a steady because the ones you disproportionately hear about are these leveraged buyouts and they of course have you know really challenging balance sheets and therefore are super, I’m vulnerable to covid right and you know Scott mentioned the Toys R Us in certain cities of the world like Nieman is a poster child for that situation right now the unit I can economics at Neiman Marcus are pretty favorable it’s a totally viable retailer with a unmanageable amount of debt so right you know sorry to my friends at Neiman covid is probably putting you out of you know into a reorganization at best. [53:27] But I don’t actually know statistically how much of the private Equity debt in retail is. Um leveraged buyout this we hear about the over-leveraged ones the most and there’s another kind of private Equity debt which you know tends to also under invest like the super risky early private Equity debt which is the Venture debt like those guys you know tend to not be making huge infrastructure Investments and and that that’s going to tighten up at the moment but there are mezzanine level private Equity firms that do invest in retailers they don’t tend to leverage those transactions and and as negatively impact the debt so so for sure. [54:16] All the poster child’s we hear about about private Equity investors are going to be the negative ones that are killing retail and look at Scott with his Advanced Audio Video right there but I like I’ll be honest I do think there are some private Equity firms that are much more beneficial to retailers that we just don’t hear about as much and what I don’t have a good sense for is as a total percentage proportion of all retail like is are those there’s good private Equity firms a unicorn or they 50% and we just don’t hear about them don’t know. Scot And Guests: [54:49] And I don’t know Kelly if you can see the screen here but I did find this article and Retail wire it’s pretty current so July of last year so you know obviously covid is going to tick this up but they found 10 out of 14 companies that filed bankruptcy had been acquired by pe companies they actually pay get to 1.3 million workers lost their job there’s a classic movie called Wall Street it is pretty interesting to watch it because the whole premise of Wall Street is effectively a PE lbo and you know this one guy has to decide the moral implication of the spreadsheet World it looks great and then he realizes like all these people I think there’s a familial relationship his dad worked with are going to lose their jobs so It’s oddly one of those weird things that has stood the test of time because it’s been the strategy for 30 or 40 years you get to see very young Michael Douglas as well this report I have on the screen references what looks to be a more even kind of detailed report on this so that so you know I would Google this this kind of Jim Baker private Equity stake holder project and you could probably a lot of times you’ll see this kind of puffy article about one of these things then you go find the underlying paper and there’s a lot more really interesting data and you can see some actual data that feeds these studies. Next question is from do we have a lost the ability to see the hand raised. Jason: [56:14] Yep so we have two more and we are coming up on time so we probably want to just go to speed round a little bit. Scot And Guests: [56:22] All right lightning round. Um hopefully I said your name right there do you think the market for our demand for refurbished products are secondhand e-commerce go down due to the pandemic. You know I think it definitely will you know Jason mentioned returns you know I’m not going really want use clothes and that kind of thing I think there’s you know just like I said before I think what you could do though is if I was the seller I would talk about how I have used you know anti microbials disinfectants sanitization I’m becoming an expert on this oddly enough I’m a computer science guy but I’ve had, have a crash course in this so there is a there is actually an EPA website that you can go to and see which chemicals are covid effective in can bear that claim. So imagine your seller what I would do is I would say you know I have formed these actions on this product and I know the best my knowledge it is been sanitized and disinfected and very safe for reuse so that’s interesting we did have CEO of I always get this wrong the used person-to-person Marketplace. Jason: [57:32] Offer up offer up. Scot And Guests: [57:34] I always want to I use the apparel one yeah and he said they’ve actually seen you know a huge spikes so you know we’ve seen these macro trends of home gym home office and they saw in their kind of local platform a lot of activity going on there. Jason: [57:51] Yeah I would say like like most things there’s conflicting Trends here right like people are more concerned because of the health ramifications but we’re also people are like super economically conservative and value oriented and so previously owned is likely to have a pretty nice Spike and if I were a guessing man I would say it’s net-net going to be favorable um to refurbished in previously owned because I actually like of all the health risks the virus spreading through items that are several days old frankly like it is. Probably in overestimated Risk in most people’s mind there are ways to make those things safe and even in the virus still exists on something that’s a day old it likely isn’t very virulent and it’s less likely to infect you so I have a few over time we’re going to find out that. You’re probably not likely to catch it from a set of weight you bought from someone else that sat in your garage for four days before you use them. But you know I think those things are going to sell a lot more so we’ll have to follow that one. [59:00] And then Daniel Goldman with what probably is going to shape up to be our last question. He referenced so just for those that didn’t know Jason intrigued by your comment in the last podcast that if someone offered you Amazon web services as a business I wouldn’t say no but I kind of made the point that Amazon Marketplace is. [59:26] Extremely profitable as well but since it’s not separately broken out on Amazon’s earning statements people don’t tend to realize how profitable it is and so my point in last week’s show was everyone talks about Amazon web services being the prophet driver of Amazon I was saying the percent the proportion of Amazon’s retail business that’s a Marketplace is probably as good or Better Business than Amazon web services so he’s asking why I said that and I may have just inadvertently explained it the that to me a market like it is hard to lose money on a Marketplace the you lose money if you don’t make the marketplace work so if you can’t get enough sellers or buyers that’s how you lose money on a two-sided Market places you don’t get enough of of both sides of the marketplace but if you have both sides to Amazon there’s no economic risk on the marketplace there’s no carrying costs of goods there’s no inventory there’s no cost of returns there are none of those things and you take a commission on the successful transaction so it’s it’s. [1:00:29] A hundred percent profit with extraordinarily low overhead and very little cash burden and so like the unit economics of that are even better than AWS AWS is highly profitable but it’s actually pretty capital-intensive and so in my mind the marketplace just scales even more profitably than AWS and I would argue the marketplaces bigger than AWS so that was my Y and then he the smartest part of his whole question he left for last who cares what Jason thinks what would Scott think about that same question. Scot And Guests: [1:01:08] So the surprise surprise you because I was surprised Jason just chose Marketplace in the it’s hard to answer a theoretical question because. It’s so theoretical but this scenario I’m imagining I’m I have the offer to either maybe buy or get AWS or the marketplace not actually take AWS because the marketplace in the retail business and Amazon are in next trip young what makes it work also is the fact you have the Amazon offer interlinked there and then you can actually beat Amazon. That’s what makes part of what makes the magic of the hybrid Marketplace at Amazon work really well Amazon keeps the marketplace honest the marketplace keeps Amazon honest. Now you know there’s a lot of noise or there was there was a little bit of a scandal last week we talked about where there’s you know they always talked about this Chinese wall there ain’t no Chinese wall they’re actually using that data allegedly did. Out what’s going on shocking so it would actually. You know I’m kind of reminded of the eBay PayPal split that actually happened and it wasn’t too painful but I always still pay with PayPal and eBay so that was like you know those economically, terrible I think for me to get rid of the whole payment system and then. Now it’s getting all this value from other places so so you know the short answer is AWS is much more extractable and could have Amazon as a customer without any impact kind of like PayPal ended up being the marketplace because of lives and is integrated so deeply with the retail experiences inextricable and if you if you pulled it apart I think the value would go down significantly. Jason: [1:02:38] There you go and if you look. Scot And Guests: [1:02:39] The first thing Amazon would do is buy a Marketplace in the be with you and I don’t think you want to be in that. [1:02:54] One thing one last thing we wanted to do is do a shout-out to Jamie Dooley he could not join us tonight because it’s his birthday happy birthday Jamie hope you’re having some delicious cake or something probably not eating out I would guess but hopefully you’re having a fun pandemic themed birthday sorry you could make it tonight. Jason: [1:03:12] Yeah and and happy May 4 Theta J belated me for Theta Jamie who is another big Star Wars fan. Scot we’ve blown through our our once again our and nine minutes so super grateful for all those listeners that stuck it out with us for the whole time that was very kind of you and these are super fun and it’s great to see everyone thanks very much for supporting the show and please be safe out there and until next time happy commercing.

【Joy要管】關於組織管理與領導 38 矽谷快速行動的不傳之密—OODA循環（OODA Loop） 分享者： Steve Wu 講師 領英（Linkedin）創辦人李德．霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）於他主持的播客（Podcast）節目〈規模大師〉（Masters of Scale）提到了矽谷快速行動的不傳之密—OODA循環（OODA Loop）。為何這個聽起來像繞口令的字詞，被為數眾多的高科技公司奉為管理圭臬？對於希望在商業界成功的朋友而言，這絕對會是個值得探討的主題。 OODA循環（英語：OODA loop），也被稱為柏伊德循環（Boyd cycle）。這是由美國空軍上校約翰．柏伊德（John Boyd）提出的決策方法。最早應用於戰鬥機飛行員的訓練，作為交戰程序之一，進而成為軍事戰略的一部份。近年來更被廣泛應用於商業管理與策略規劃等領域。 OODA由以下四個英文字詞的縮寫組成，並且是一個反覆進行的循環： O（Observe）觀察 O（Orient）定位 D（Decide）決定 A（Act）行動 兩軍交戰，勝負往往取決於敵我決策循環過程的快慢。在空戰武裝衝突中，哪一方能更快完成OODA循環；也就是更快、更好地完成「觀察-定位-決策-行動」的循環過程，將決定飛行員的生存與否；更有甚者，決定了誰是最後贏家的關鍵。所以OODA循環的精髓正是「快速行動」以及「立即反饋修正」。 然而現今商業上的競爭，相較於戰場中的攻城掠地，其殺伐決斷與分秒必爭的程度絕對毫不遜色。這也是為什麼會有「商戰」、「商場如戰場」等這類的說法。因此，原本用於作戰的OODA循環理論，也適用於現今商戰策劃的實務應用。這也是為什麼矽谷的新創公司以及中國的互聯網巨頭如BAT（Badu百度、Alibaba阿里巴巴、Tencent騰訊）等都積極擁抱這個決策管理模式的原因。而騰訊的創辦人馬化騰所提出的「小步快跑，快速疊代」，更是OODA循環的最佳註解。 OODA循環應用在商業策略時，可分為以下四個步驟： ● 第一個步驟為「觀察」：透過對企業所處的外部大環境；例如趨勢走向、產業現況、消費者行為、競爭者策略等的觀察，蒐集情報並進行分析。 ● 第二個步驟為「定位」：根據所觀察、蒐集到的情報，進行總體狀況分析與研判，發展出策略規劃前的假設，並依此提出可行的商業模式。 ● 第三個步驟為「決策」：根據定位階段所做的研判、假設、與模型，制定企劃的目標與方針，並決定重要的策略與達成策略所需的戰術規劃。 ● 第四個步驟為「行動」：將企業決策落實於行動計畫，並按執行計畫進行執行與監控等活動。 先前我們已經提到OODA循環的精髓除了「快速行動」之外，另一個重點就是「立即反饋修正」。由於環境隨時在變化，所以執行時必須將監控、觀測的結果反饋於「觀察」階段，重新進行OODA。透過一次又一次的反饋、重新觀察、再次定位、決定、然後行動的循環操作，決策更能符合現實的狀況；行動便可有效的達到預期的效果。 網路電子支付的開創者PayPal成功，正是善用OODA循環的最佳例證。PayPal團隊能迅速完成觀察、定位、決策與行動，以此勝過資金雄厚的大型競爭對手。 PayPal在創業之初，觀察到線上支付平台Dotbank.com提供註冊獎金，用戶每找一位朋友確實註冊就能獲得十美元獎金， PayPal了解到以獎金做為誘因會是很有效的做法，因此決定並於一星期內提出加碼的作法，用戶不用找到朋友確實註冊，光是提出註冊邀請就有十元獎金可拿。這種獎金成為很強的誘因。 同時他們發現電子郵件是一個簡便的宣傳工具，PayPal用戶能匯款給任何有電子郵件帳號的對象，無論對方是否為用戶都行，匯款以後，對方會收到一封附有連結的電子郵件，請他註冊為會員以接受匯款。在這段期間內，PayPal每天都增加兩萬名用戶。 原本 eBay的買賣雙方是靠郵寄支票或現金完成交易，Paypal觀察到郵寄的時間長，於是決定讓賣家只要請買家利用PayPal付費，每筆交易都能立即獲得十美元當作回饋。馬上拿到這筆差額對賣家有強大的誘因；這招殺得eBay措手不及，PayPal則獲得爆炸性成長。 eBay原本打算扶植Billpoint來對抗PayPal。然而PayPal在這場激烈的競爭當中，不斷使用OODA循環觀察每一個環節的變化，並且對自己的資源與處境做好定位；同時以此快速決策，迅速行動。在不斷重複這個循環之下，PayPal以小兵之姿在之後的每場戰役不斷擊敗資源雄厚的eBay/Billpoint聯軍。即使於2000年網路面臨泡沫化時，PayPal仍在2001年第一季首次獲利。當年矽谷一間間網路公司關門大吉，而PayPal卻在2002年二月首次於NASDAQ公開發行。並於同年七月讓eBay放棄Billpoint，選擇以15億美元收購PayPal。 孫子兵法有云：「兵貴勝，不貴久」。兵貴神速，戰場如此，現在的商場更是這樣。精熟OODA循環，將對企業主能快速擴展有很大的幫助。

【Joy要管】關於組織管理與領導 #38 矽谷快速行動的不傳之密—OODA循環（OODA Loop） 分享者： Steve Wu 講師 領英（Linkedin）創辦人李德．霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）於他主持的播客（Podcast）節目〈規模大師〉（Masters of Scale）提到了矽谷快速行動的不傳之密—OODA循環（OODA Loop）。為何這個聽起來像繞口令的字詞，被為數眾多的高科技公司奉為管理圭臬？對於希望在商業界成功的朋友而言，這絕對會是個值得探討的主題。 OODA循環（英語：OODA loop），也被稱為柏伊德循環（Boyd cycle）。這是由美國空軍上校約翰．柏伊德（John Boyd）提出的決策方法。最早應用於戰鬥機飛行員的訓練，作為交戰程序之一，進而成為軍事戰略的一部份。近年來更被廣泛應用於商業管理與策略規劃等領域。 OODA由以下四個英文字詞的縮寫組成，並且是一個反覆進行的循環： O（Observe）觀察 O（Orient）定位 D（Decide）決定 A（Act）行動 兩軍交戰，勝負往往取決於敵我決策循環過程的快慢。在空戰武裝衝突中，哪一方能更快完成OODA循環；也就是更快、更好地完成「觀察-定位-決策-行動」的循環過程，將決定飛行員的生存與否；更有甚者，決定了誰是最後贏家的關鍵。所以OODA循環的精髓正是「快速行動」以及「立即反饋修正」。 然而現今商業上的競爭，相較於戰場中的攻城掠地，其殺伐決斷與分秒必爭的程度絕對毫不遜色。這也是為什麼會有「商戰」、「商場如戰場」等這類的說法。因此，原本用於作戰的OODA循環理論，也適用於現今商戰策劃的實務應用。這也是為什麼矽谷的新創公司以及中國的互聯網巨頭如BAT（Badu百度、Alibaba阿里巴巴、Tencent騰訊）等都積極擁抱這個決策管理模式的原因。而騰訊的創辦人馬化騰所提出的「小步快跑，快速疊代」，更是OODA循環的最佳註解。 OODA循環應用在商業策略時，可分為以下四個步驟： ● 第一個步驟為「觀察」：透過對企業所處的外部大環境；例如趨勢走向、產業現況、消費者行為、競爭者策略等的觀察，蒐集情報並進行分析。 ● 第二個步驟為「定位」：根據所觀察、蒐集到的情報，進行總體狀況分析與研判，發展出策略規劃前的假設，並依此提出可行的商業模式。 ● 第三個步驟為「決策」：根據定位階段所做的研判、假設、與模型，制定企劃的目標與方針，並決定重要的策略與達成策略所需的戰術規劃。 ● 第四個步驟為「行動」：將企業決策落實於行動計畫，並按執行計畫進行執行與監控等活動。 先前我們已經提到OODA循環的精髓除了「快速行動」之外，另一個重點就是「立即反饋修正」。由於環境隨時在變化，所以執行時必須將監控、觀測的結果反饋於「觀察」階段，重新進行OODA。透過一次又一次的反饋、重新觀察、再次定位、決定、然後行動的循環操作，決策更能符合現實的狀況；行動便可有效的達到預期的效果。 網路電子支付的開創者PayPal成功，正是善用OODA循環的最佳例證。PayPal團隊能迅速完成觀察、定位、決策與行動，以此勝過資金雄厚的大型競爭對手。 PayPal在創業之初，觀察到線上支付平台Dotbank.com提供註冊獎金，用戶每找一位朋友確實註冊就能獲得十美元獎金， PayPal了解到以獎金做為誘因會是很有效的做法，因此決定並於一星期內提出加碼的作法，用戶不用找到朋友確實註冊，光是提出註冊邀請就有十元獎金可拿。這種獎金成為很強的誘因。 同時他們發現電子郵件是一個簡便的宣傳工具，PayPal用戶能匯款給任何有電子郵件帳號的對象，無論對方是否為用戶都行，匯款以後，對方會收到一封附有連結的電子郵件，請他註冊為會員以接受匯款。在這段期間內，PayPal每天都增加兩萬名用戶。 原本 eBay的買賣雙方是靠郵寄支票或現金完成交易，Paypal觀察到郵寄的時間長，於是決定讓賣家只要請買家利用PayPal付費，每筆交易都能立即獲得十美元當作回饋。馬上拿到這筆差額對賣家有強大的誘因；這招殺得eBay措手不及，PayPal則獲得爆炸性成長。 eBay原本打算扶植Billpoint來對抗PayPal。然而PayPal在這場激烈的競爭當中，不斷使用OODA循環觀察每一個環節的變化，並且對自己的資源與處境做好定位；同時以此快速決策，迅速行動。在不斷重複這個循環之下，PayPal以小兵之姿在之後的每場戰役不斷擊敗資源雄厚的eBay/Billpoint聯軍。即使於2000年網路面臨泡沫化時，PayPal仍在2001年第一季首次獲利。當年矽谷一間間網路公司關門大吉，而PayPal卻在2002年二月首次於NASDAQ公開發行。並於同年七月讓eBay放棄Billpoint，選擇以15億美元收購PayPal。 孫子兵法有云：「兵貴勝，不貴久」。兵貴神速，戰場如此，現在的商場更是這樣。精熟OODA循環，將對企業主能快速擴展有很大的幫助。

EP194 - Amazon Q3 2019Earnings and News   Amazon Q3 Earnings Revenue accelerated in the US and intl due to 1-day prime juicing demand US - 24%  (Q1 - 17%, Q2 - 20%, Q3 - 24%) Intl 21% (Q1 - 16%, Q2 - 17%, Q3 - 21%) Unit growth (items sold) accelerated to 22% - 4% acceleration (18%) - fastest in 2yrs. This came at a cost - profits were down 26% y/y and TODO wall st estimates because shipping costs grew 46%  Specifically GAAP operating income of $3.16b came in 2% below street consensus of $3.22b  EPS was $4.31 vs street $4.56. This caused the stock to soften by 7-9% in after-hours trading and articles are already out that bezos no longer richest man. Amazon’s Q4 midpoint revenue was $4b below Wall St. estimates and they projected lower margins than wall st expected. Specifically, guidance is $80b-$86.5b with midpoint of $83.25b - implies 15% growth, 5% below Wall St. Amazon’s Ads biz which grew 45% y/y and represented $3.6B in the Quarter.  Brian T. Olsavsky - CFO:  “So other revenue, which is principally advertising grew 45% this quarter, up from 37% last quarter. And the biggest thing in there is advertising and advertising grew at a rate higher than that 45%.” Amazon News Amazon Ad Conference - 400 people “AdCon 2019” 10/2 & 3 Cutting back on apparel Brands  Free shipping on $1 items, no more CRaP, No more Add-On Amazon Counter Expansion Amazon acquires digital health start-up Health Navigator  Amazon Launches Premium Gin “Tovess”  Amazon charges brands for slots in holiday catalog  Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan by Franklin Foer of  The Atlantic Is Amazon Unstoppable? New Yorker Charles Duhigg Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 194 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday October 25th, 2019. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 194 being recorded on Thursday October 24th, 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott your listeners Jason I want to start us off with a deeply, personal question of personal nature and I know this is private awkward to just jump into on a podcast but do you have your episode 9 Star Wars tickets yet they just went on sale. Jason: [0:57] I know they went on sale I do not have them and I know you're probably mad at me. Scot: [1:04] I'm not because I got you an extra ticket so all you have to do is buy a plane ticket to RDU and you can come watch it with me. Jason: [1:13] Is as likely I'll be in RDU as a Chicago on that day so it's a December. Scot: [1:20] But it's an open offer to so if you have a hard time getting tickets let me know. Jason: [1:24] Yeah I just not a good enough plan or to know that I could get a babysitter on December 20th so we didn't buy tickets and I have to admit a total Star Wars newbie move I'm somewhere when the tickets went for sale and I got like a push notification on my phone and I'm like. Wait how did I miss this is the movie about to be released and I missed it. Of course it's there selling tickets 2 months early. Scot: [1:50] Come on dude that's that's embarrassing. Jason: [1:52] I'm going to edit that out of the podcast so people think I'm cooler like you are. Scot: [1:58] Speaking of Star Wars the even before then we have a big event the new series Mandalorian premiers on it's kind of one of the launch pieces of content for Disney plus that comes out November 12th so is Star Wars fans are going to have to big drops Within what is that like 40 days so it's going to be pretty exciting and rise of Skywalker so it's going to be exciting frothy times for Star Wars fans. Jason: [2:26] Yeah it is for sure there's a I feels like that watch is going to be successful for a variety of reasons I know you wouldn't read the trade press that my company poo Bose S1 the marketing contract Market Disney blessed so so I've been inundated and surrounded by Disney plus content. Scot: [2:49] Rico does that mean we can see the content early his friends Acres. Jason: [2:53] No I haven't when I say surrounded by Disney content I mean promotional mix actual show content unfortunately yeah yeah I'll be somewhere with you on November 12th. Scot: [3:06] But this is not a Star Wars podcast if this is your first time you listen to it she may be confused this is actually a retail e-commerce podcast Jason. It's a well-known for your sisters know that Jason has I think 50 different Alexa devices in his house did you jump in on the new Alexa faucet. Jason: [3:26] Yes I am staring at so this is not an Amazon product has a third-party product but I am staring at a box from Delta faucet right now which is the Alexa upgrade for my digital kitchen sink. Scot: [3:42] So what commands does it know on off. Jason: [3:45] Yeah so I'm a I'm utterly convinced this is going to be the least useful home automation product I've ever owned but I have. Scot: [3:53] The Alexa toilet. Jason: [3:54] But I had to have it yeah. Like when you hear about it you're like oh my god do I really need Alexa to flush a toilet Siri is, it's a it's an it's a very expensive way to put on an Alexa device in your bathroom and the hope is that we control music lights and your shower in your bathroom which kind of makes sense right like walk in and have some some music playing in the the proper lights and have your shower preheat so you can get in when it's Altos. Scot: [4:29] Does the music come out of the toilet. Jason: [4:31] It does not. Scot: [4:33] Wait are you talking about substance use are you talking about the faucet of the toilet. Jason: [4:38] I was so I was given into the toilet because you went there. And that the toilets are these Kohler toilets that are few that have an Alexa embedded in them in the one that's most like. Talked about because it's so ridiculous there is a $10,000 toilet that has the additional amenity of it has a motorized widtsoe in addition to flushing the toilet Canon fax. Put the way it up and down by voice commands and it also has a multicolor LED so you can set your own color scheme for your toilet. Scot: [5:14] Brickell and then tell us more about the faucet. Jason: [5:17] Yeah to the faucet is a Delta products and. It lets you so you can turn off and on the faucet you can specify a water temperature like not a specific degrees but you can say, hot water or cold water and then you can specify a volume so you can say like Alexa fill the Delta Fire ask the Delta faucet for 60 oz of water. Scot: [5:45] Pickle unfortunately the only time we can talk about it cuz once you get it installed Wii U you can't talk about it without turning the water on and off soon. Jason: [5:55] That I had to hit I had to hit mute on the device in this room like when I realized you were going to ask me about the faucet so we're safe. And yeah this is an upgrade to an already smart faucet that Delta cell so it also has like, its own website and its touch-sensitive so you so if you don't want to use voice you can touch anywhere on the metal. Fixture to turn off and on the faucet which that feature is at I have actually found to be useful and I now can't use anyone else has kitchen sink because I just touched there. Scot: [6:27] Tap it nothing happens you like what's wrong with this thing. Jason: [6:29] Yeah I've lost it. Scot: [6:31] People live in like 19 2019. Jason: [6:34] The Flintstones exactly. Scot: [6:37] Well if this is your first time listening to podcast it is not a Star Wars podcast nor is it a plumbing podcast that are actual topic du jour is an Amazon Q3 hot take it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without talking about Amazon. Jason: [6:58] News new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [7:06] So it was an interesting week in e-commerce we had back-to-back eBay and Amazon releases so I can want to set the table before we dig into some specifics first of all kind of the macro table is 2/3 is really important in the world of e-commerce because it's leading quarter into the all-important fourth quarter which is the holiday quarter I'm in still is true even though Amazon has Prime day and and, you know we don't see any of these like Toys R Us anymore and that separates each category where you had like seventy 80% of of their business done in Q4 but we still all retail Ducey a super sized before so it's very important time frame and so we like to we like to kind of it also kicks off kind of our holiday coverage on the podcast so kind of read the tea leaves a few 3 and then we're going to start to get some of the forecast of holiday coming in and then that'll see us up to then talk about the results of things like singles day and then Black Friday Cyber Monday and and all that good stuff Scot of the kick-off the holiday season oddly enough even though you know I'm here in October doesn't feel like we're quite that yet there yet here they make you jealous Jason here in North Carolina we had like an 85 degree day so it doesn't feel Christmassy but definitely right around the corner. Jason: [8:29] But you are drinking like a peppermint latte right. Scot: [8:32] No not yet not yet wait till have to wait till after Halloween to get in the spirit. To eBay announced yesterday and Amazon announced today and personal a quick disclaimer when we when we talk about these kind of financial results on the Jason Scott show we always like to go with a constant currency measures in and US results it doesn't matter but when Amazon eBay these other folks announce International you could talk about euros and then you weren't that $2 but that that exposes the results to the degrees of currency changes so currency constant currency you look at Euros vs Euros or basis vs. bases whenever the currency is so it's more true indication of actual growth rate of the company's stripping out the the different currency exchange rates between periods in the retail we always look at your rear because of the all the seasons that we have in retail okay that being said eBay was interesting because you had to set up the air oven September the CEO kind of shockingly announced his departure and I think use Twitter as the platform for that one Island usually got a lot of Co departures lately. [9:42] Olive public companies Under Armour for example I'm had one as well so see you there Devin when he got out of line with the board board wants to break parts of eBay further apart so that the kind of obviously split out PayPal about a year-and-a-half ago now and I think the board wants to split out there classifieds Division and StubHub and then Devon didn't wasn't on board with that so they have split up it's always scary when someone leaves a company kind of before the quarters announced so there's little bit of pins and needles going on around what's going on inside of their and if shirt off eBay has been on a little bit of a decline and their gmv went into negative territory on a year-over-year growth rate to - 5% a year ago their year-ago comparisons of Q3 at 18217 was plus 5% that's a 10% swing of a really really. Free large pool of Jim be there so you be as losing share and you know there's the world of eBay there's a lot of different reasons why I kind of feel like Amazon is a nut reason for that, eBay definitely kind of place that more value on a consumer in Amazon the convenience ring consumer the bifurcation we talked a lot about on the show so there is a world there's room for eBay I just think they're not really executing really well and they are distracted by a lot of these kind of corporate. [11:05] Mechanics that they're dealing with like the split of eBay PayPal and now StubHub and I was going to stop so heading so so that was kind of little bit of a Dark Cloud over the world of e-commerce and uneven retail and then today we had Amazon and the set of four Amazon is they announced that they were taking Prime from two day service level to one day in April and they even talk about how you know there's something like fifty million Prime eligible products and they talk about how, I'm each quarter they would add 10 to 12 million products into the one-day Prime bucket, and it's clearly on the site you know you when you add something to your car even before then you you can see if its 2 day primer one day Prime Saudi Amazon has been doing is turning that dial and trying to get the bulk of the Prime eligible products to be one day instead of just today so. So that that's interesting and you know what so it's listed in the results so the. Jason: [12:08] I was just going to say one fun fact before you jump into the actual Amazon results about eBay CEOs another one of the surprising CEO changes last week was Mark Parker the CEO of Nike. Announced that he was stepping down in the the reason I bring that up is his replacement was announced who is John Donohue who I think used to be a CEO at eBay. Scot: [12:34] Yeah it's Donohoe and it's really interesting cuz the CFO of eBay in John's regime is now the CEO of Intel so it's kind of funny I oddly I'm not a name-dropper in but I have like a Forrest Gump weird thing where I have met some folks there but they miss so I now know the CEO of Nike and until. Jason: [12:56] That's not remotely surprising to me but very cool. Scot: [13:00] Feels feels odd and here I am wearing Crocs so mean I need to get some Nikes. Star Wars Crocs that stick their own brand for me digging in the Amazons Q3 results the good news so it's kind of a good-news-bad-news kind of thing the good news is one day Prime has really accelerated to man so urea revenue for Amazon grew 24% in the third quarter and here's kind of the trajectory so the first quarter and then you ask this so this is North America the growth was 17% and then Q to 20% and now in Q3 24%, Just 4 percentage points higher than Q2 and so that that's pretty impressive and then internationally also saw acceleration to 21% so when you pull in those together Amazon grew about 20 to 23%. [13:54] The international progression goes to one of this year's 16% and then 17% and noun in Q3 21% sewing, also about a 4% acceleration on the international side another metric that we look at really closely as Amazon talks about paid units Nicole that unit growth that's a metric that it's slow down to about 12% and it is accelerated to 22%, how much is it straight in the last 2 years so so kind of packaging that together consumers love when they Prime and it is actually accelerated demand materially for free Amazon which I think is really good Top Line set up going into holiday now the bad news is this just comes at a pretty steep cost because you know his listeners know the difference between if you went to your your any carrier and you said what's the difference in price between 1 and 2 day shipping. [14:51] Quite pricey right so Amazon profits were down 26% on a year-over-year basis and that created a headwind on wall Street's bottom-line estimates because shipping cost effectively Groove 46%. This this makes a lot of sense and you know an Amazon philosophy that, that we talked about on the show but I live everyday is the Amazon philosophy is first figure out the man and then you can figure out the cost and. I'm doing this on a daily basis and it really work so if you can go put a product out there and get a lot of demand for it, decreased scale and scale is how do you drive the per-unit cost down it's hard to solve that equation at the same time so so I have a lot of confidence that these are one-time cost and we also see is an Amazon doesn't report this will see a little bit later you know in and you talk a lot about this Jason is we're getting to somewhere around half of the package has been delivered are Amazon delivering them and I think that's what they're going to do I think I think as that goes to 100% that's how they're going to get the cost down is by using that driver Network that they filled up, taking the third party shippers increasingly out and which is better user experience and War costume. Jason: [16:12] The interesting Lee they were to ask what the the ratio of Amazon deliver packages to carrier deliver packages was on their earnings call and they sort of coyly dodged the answer to that. Scot: [16:25] Yeah some people report on it I'm not exactly sure where they're getting their data so it's it's interesting but I can save for me you know what when you order from Amazon and look at the tracking number she can tell if it's a FedEx UPS USPS or are UPS never see FedEx any more rarely ups and, you may be 20% USPS so I'm almost at like 70% Amazon delivery 80%. Jason: [16:54] Also very high maintenance before but Chicago is a a test market and so we've had, Amazon doing their own deliveries along before that was a program they rolled out and we we've actually had one like all my Amazon packages are one day so. And it's like there still are some some ups and USPS deliveries but the overwhelming majority of of mine are Amazon carriers and I think you're right like so Amazon hasn't disclosed the exact breakdown but there are a couple of these companies that scrape. Email boxes. And so that's all you 1010 data and rocket on a data which intelligence which you speak sliced and we talked about in the show but they reported like quite, quite significant growth in the the the Amazon delivery percentage in I'm I'm sure at the end of Q3 it's even much. Scot: [17:59] So what you would call in Wall Street parlance what you call this quarter is a top-line beat in a bottom line Miss so specifically the bottom line and there's a couple different ways to look at this there's this guy property income earnings per share Yap operating income came in at 316 billion which was 2% below while she's consensus and EPS was $4.31 per share versus the street estimate of 4 56 now it's interesting is Amazon print out their own guidance and Wall Street and crap that up and kind of didn't listen to Amazon Amazon it tried to tell everyone last quarter hey this one day Prime things kind of expensive so. [18:37] We're lowering our ups and while she kind of said that they were wrong Amazon, I'm after hours this caused the stock to slide pretty significantly started judge after hours things like I'll look tomorrow and see what's going on, I bruised down as much as 9% and of course you know everyone was jumping with Glee that that Bezos because of that slide was no longer Richest Man that, Bill Gates was back on top and see how that goes, another kind of cause for concern was Amazon also in the current quarter they they tell you what their projection is for next quarter and their guidance was a midpoint on the revenue side that was below what Wall Street had estimated, about my belt for billion that sounds like a huge amount but at Amazon scale couple points percentage points so specifically the guidance was a bottom range of 8 revenue for sale 80 billion to 86.5 billion - 83 and a quarter billion. [19:47] That place at 15% growth rate and that was all she did kind of thought it would be about a 20%, to hear so it's I put out a lot of data there until let's go back up to 30,000 feet I've been falling Amazon for a good 15 plus years there lies pretty prudent going to queue for cuz you do have you know sitting here today we know the consumers in pretty good shape to condoms in pretty good shape but we got a lot of potential negatives out there around these terrorists and and there's a lot of sessions coming in, like noise in the market so it's always prudent to be pretty conservative going to queue for especially because it is such a big quarter but you know I'm going to go ahead and call it as a side from some externality that that I can't see I think they're just going to Absolute blow that away that midpoint in and I think I think even the top of the range is pretty conservative because you know what. [20:47] What you see in Q3 is it's really clear consumers a loved one day Prime its accelerated this business and it was really amazing to me is 300 billion dollar business accelerating its Revenue up to 23% yeah I don't think I ever seen anything like that Walmart is kind of just this kind of General size and growing Buttes low-single digits like you know for Walmart to accelerate their business to 24% if something like that after like add 24% more stores or their e-commerce would have to go up like math is probably like 300% or something like that so we've never seen a company scale like this I'm in the world of retail now some of the pure digital companies like a Facebook a Microsoft hey Google they've had periods of acceleration like this but never a company that has you where houses and shipping products in these kinds of things it's pretty crazy I'm so kind of help. [21:49] We talk about such a big numbers I always kind of like to try to ground it and something we can all kind of get our mental image around since here's my stab at that most will see if the Slants with you so, Amazon is forecasting about an 80 billion dollar fourth-quarter each percent they grow in their. 800 million JCPenney is they do 3 billion a quarter so effectively each 4% than Amazon grows in court 4th quarter is a JCPenney, I didn't Tire JCPenney so yo at like a 24% growth like let's say their growth is straight line from Q3 to Q4 and its 24% that is. [22:32] That's essentially six JCPenney's that that Amazon's going to have you no incrementally take out of the market if they grow that much your rear so last thought if you if you kind of piece this together and you look at Amazon's growth trajectory here's kind of what 2019 looks like let me see if you can pick out the dew point that doesn't really kind of fit in here so q1 they did 17% year-over-year growth due to 19%. [23:01] Q3 22% now they're saying oq for is going to be 15% do we really think Amazon's going to slow down to their slowest quarter in the fourth quarter after they spent all this money and time getting everything to one day Prime, he actually kind of look at that Trend you could kind of say well I could see that it could be 23 24% so, so the last thought is Wall Street is really fickle right now so eBay did better on the bottom line but didn't show growth that punished Amazon showed tremendous growth at the scale punished so young, when the world saying you're kind of in a lose-lose situation you might as well just kind of like rip the Band-Aid off and be super conservative out there and what I think's got the market in this choppy Waters is the the rough IPOs that have come out from Uber and Lyft and withdrawals of IPOs and then we work is got a whole Market on a spooked and let you know this company set to go public at something like you have 50 billion dollars and now it just had to raise Capital at 8 billion dollars to a bottom-line Bill Gates I know you'd listen to the podcast and so does Jeff Bezos don't worry Jeff I think you'll be back on top of Bill here shortly. Jason: [24:15] As you're saying that I'm getting like Iams from Bill and he's like pointing out dude I'm trying to give away all my money so. Scot: [24:24] She's stroking $500 checks here and there so yeah he's doing his best. Jason: [24:28] Exactly so I don't I'm not sure it is his aspiration to stay out of jail so that was quite the earnings call, I am. I'm with you on the revenue side for sure it seems like, one day shipping is going to drive a lot of incremental revenue for Q4, I guess the bigger question is like half how expensive that will be in it and you know it is there a commensurate drag down on earnings as a result of a lot more expensive deliveries for Q. Scot: [25:04] Yeah they framed that on the call I forget the exact amount but they did put in a pretty. Jason: [25:10] It's a big number is 1.5. Scot: [25:12] Pretty big number and I I suspect you know that number is the number if they had 24% growth and they put in 15 but yard is they have a blowout quarter I think they could have a blowout bottom line now I think what we'll see Amazon thing on a 10-year chunks I think over the next five years you're going to see them in criminally you'll get those they will figure out a way to get one day Prime to cost the same as two different and get it to scale first but then what's going to be killer is once they figure that out then they can probably just turn the dial on same day Prime, and probably without too much cost. It's not going to be as big of a jump it probably like half or less the jump from two to one day the same day I'm so so if you listen to this in your thinking how do I compete with Amazon that's that's what you're up against you know so they're they're going to be because they know that this is. So clearly created so much demand for consumers they're going to continue to turn the dial on on this in a lowering the the shipping time on Prime, and clean more and more season 2. Jason: [26:20] That. Hundred percent agree I feel like the they're very confident didn't however much pain it takes them to get to one day shipping if it will be orders of magnitude more painful for anyone else to match them cuz no one has close to there there's a film in infrastructure right so you know if if they give themselves a cold by doing this like they're giving their competitors Ebola. So very good play there was an interesting comment from Bezos he was playing up the fact that one day delivery is greener than two day delivery. Which it was not immediately intuitive but what he saying is, ultimately the only way we'll will cost-effectively get to one day delivery everywhere is. Way better Logistics and staging more of what people want closer to those people like it just not going to be possible to put stuff on planes everyday. For next day delivery and so, so his you know it it's for your point it seems like they're just investing in the infrastructure to Stage more Goods closer to customers and get them there quickly. Via cost-effective delivery mechanisms mostly their own sew-in the interns chimed in while while you were chatting in the but that data point we had from rocket on intelligence has Amazon at 47% of their own packages so just. Scot: [27:48] Daniel is kind of round hat that's a little bit I haven't seen an update that and it's it's kind of like the spring so. Jason: [27:55] Ya no soy it very likely has passed and that that update still have 1.6% of packages being delivered by FedEx which is no zero so yeah so. Yeah all interesting stuff that one of the things I knows about the earnings call they hired a hundred thousand people in Q3. Which is a big number and it's very likely that a lot of those people are. Delivery drivers and extra shifts in warehouses. Scot: [28:29] Those are 1099 they wouldn't show up in here I got to get spyware house and they're adding to AWS like crazy right now. Jason: [28:35] Yeah but that's so not all delivery drivers are 1099 so for example a lot of the the Chicago delivery Force are W-2 employees. So there. Scot: [28:47] Hi some Union thing. Jason: [28:48] There's a blend. I'm getting there as that has all the teachers on strike here in Chicago this week but yeah so huge hiring thing, and Sebastian I'm from Baird like he called that hiring number the most surprising metric in the room, I always like to keep an eye on the brick-and-mortar number which in the overall scheme of Amazon isn't isn't a. Is usually financially relevant number but it is interesting because it is. Absolutely going down. The rate of growth is like brick-and-mortar sales than Amazon actually declined and when we say brick-and-mortar sales what we're really saying is Whole Foods because the rest of the Amazon free is in. Really economically significant enough to impact the Whole Foods numbers so whole food sales are lower today than they were in 2017 when Amazon acquired them which is pretty interesting. And obviously there's a lot of Buzz about some new retail formats that are you seem like they're very close to opening and you know I've been speculating that there's a new grocery format that's going to open in Los Angeles here imminently. Going to be interesting to see. [30:04] What they do because you know is we both of observed Amazon doesn't always win with their first effort in something but you know they also don't tend to tuck their tails between their legs and retreat. [30:20] So that's going to be big you mention AWS that is also a declining its growth rate which you know. Pretty prodigious so they were they grew at 37% last quarter and then they drop down to 35%. Let you know there's a method gets repeated too much that all of Amazon's profit is AWS that's not true retail is profitable but but AWS is the, biggest contributor to profit and so is the fact that it still growing at 35%. Is certainly very robust and obviously the law of large numbers is that you would expect that rate of growth. To be slowing and what's interesting is you know they have two competitors Google and Microsoft who they sort of had a six-year Head Start Over. Until they have much bigger share than either of those two competitors we've actually seen those competitors. Rates of growth which are you know they're much smaller business is slow and worse than Amazon so it seems like. There's a little bit of plateauing in these cloud services and it's you know in Amazon is the least affected by that Plateau so. Yeah I would call that mostly positive signs for them. [31:39] I know you are a big fan of the marketplace side at. The Amazon business and you know that the marketplace sellers have for awhile accounted for over half of all sales. On Amazon but the it seems like the Knicks slightly to Klein this quarter so it went from. [32:00] 54% last quarter at to 53% this quarter and I'm assuming that's because. 100% of Amazon stuff is probably one day Prime and a lot of the and in some you know a significant amount of the. The 3p is not one day Prime and so the the. Shift to one day Prime probably uses a first-party sales a little bit disproportionate. And then the last thing that I always like to follow in his earnings calls is the advertising business right and so this is you saw the famous we listed as other in an Amazon parlance but other Groove 45%, so that was 3.6 billion dollars in Revenue in the quarter and Brian the CFO like answered a question about ad revenue and he kind of. Confirmed what we had all been saying other revenue is principally advertising advertising grew at 45% and you know. Advertising is the biggest part of other in fact, advertising had to grow bigger than 45% to cause other overall to grow at 45% so so the ad piece of business and Amazon is actually growing even bigger than 45%. Scot: [33:28] Yeah there's some kind of in this kind of rough on the add thing there was a couple reports out there is a is this a competitor of yours or part of your sperm dick Merkel put out some stuff about, yes I'm trans they saw I thought it was even more interesting though emarketer had a report out where, for the first time that I've seen how you can fax at me on this they did talk about search ownership or search. Pie chart of of search this kind of always been boring look at this cuz it's kind of like Google it 90% then you have like a little bit of Microsoft in a little bit of Verizon and like you know ask to use her ass or something like that so for the first time Amazon is listed as number 2 with about 13% share of search I'm So it seems like there now, expanding the definition of search from what we would think of is that you know that you know ask Google anything kind of a search to include product search and when you do that Amazon has cross the materiality threshold we've all known this because there's been surveys that just look at product search and Amazon's ahead of Google in that so this is another kind of interesting Awakening out there in the ad world that you know Amazon is actually compete with Google and it really interesting way that a lot. Jason: [34:54] Oh yeah and I think it's very clear that Amazon is taking advertising dollars from Google the. Like I am slightly skeptical about some of the like surveys that say, Amazon is leading Google in product search cuz I would just point out those tend to be tiny surveys of i2000 users and they're just kind of these like silly stated surveys like they just ask people and nobody has a consistent definition of what a product search is right so if if I die Pizza. [35:28] Is that in your definition of a product search or searching for a product of pizza you know there's a lot more pizza searches that happened on Google then that happened on Amazon, so you don't really have Amazon surpass Google you have to have a pretty narrow definition of product but but I absolutely think like. In that narrow definition Amazon is very big they're generating a bunch of dollars those daughters are clearly coming from Google and what super interesting to me is. Amazon actually had their first. Conference for advertisers this year is very beginning of October 2nd and 3rd in in Seattle and the big take away from this conference was. That they don't just want to be a search advertising engine so that the huge Focus was, I9 using Amazon for what we would call top of funnel advertising so like high-level brand-building not just the very specific product searches. And you know they're they're one of the biggest media properties out there with traffic to Amazon and all their video properties and everything else so it's. It's a little bit of stretch but it's it's totally credible that you know Amazon has it set set not just on Google's product search but on it so it's entire at business. Scot: [36:47] Anderson. Jason: [36:49] So that being said there's actually a fair amount of other interesting Amazon news over the last couple weeks that we should we should cover briefly. I mention Amazon had their their first advertising con conference adcon. So that's interesting you know Amazon's conference for for AWS is actually quite big event now so it won't surprise me to see this advertising show start to expand dramatically as well. I actually saw an interesting article this week from a former guest of our show and I I'm going to Massacre Joe's last name do you know how to pronounce it properly. Scot: [37:30] Concha. Jason: [37:31] Yes we're going to call in a joke a and he'd been studying all the private labels on Amazon and he noticed that like, 32 of the hundred apparel brands that Amazon has launched are no longer for sale on Amazon so it sort of highlighting the fact that that a lot of those. Those like quickly launched house Brands like don't appear to have a lot of legs in the Amazon has has taken them down which is interesting. [38:02] Another news item that really caught my eye first written about by Jason Delray and then confirmed on the earnings call today. It seems like Amazon is scaling way back on. Sort of enforcing what they historically have called crap which is the acronym for can't realize a profit. You know historically Amazon you know his put a lot of pressure on manufacturers to make products profitable of the cell and what that usually means is. They don't want to sell items that are difficult to ship and that are inexpensive so you can't buy a single roll of paper towels for example that you don't cost $2 and it's pretty Bowl. [38:43] And historically they would do things like at make that an add-on only sale that you can only add to a box when you had a bunch of other stuff in the box or they'd asked the manufacturer to provide a bigger bundle or things like that, and it now seems like Amazon is much more content. To sell one or two dollar items and include them in the Amazon Prime one-day shipping. Into it a lot of items that were formerly add-on only are now available for sale with free shipping witch. You again says that like Amazon appears to be willing to forego some profitability in exchange for. Fulfilling customer to man and catching more more share your point earlier. And I assume that the strategy is you get a big enough share of wallet you do a bunch of deliveries they all become much more cost-effective I just you know habitualized in the customer to buy everything from you. [39:40] Amazon has been expanding this program they call Amazon counter so there now a bunch of retailers in addition to Kohl's with that you can. [39:50] Have your packages shipped to and pick up so Rite Aid is in there. A number of other retailers are now providing the amenity of letting you ship Amazon packages to their store and come pick them up there. So that's an interesting play I think just today Amazon announced that they bought a new health company which is called Health Navigator. So listeners may remember that Amazon bought pillpack a couple years ago so this is a second acquisition in this space and my understanding is that Health Navigator is primarily like. Online symptom checking in remote diagnosis so. It sounds like some sort of friend in tool that you could imagine Amazon building into a future health offering and you know Amazon is already announced that they're doing a health pilot for their employees and they said they'll use this as part of the. The offering for their own place so it seems like there as everyone expects continuing to invest in hell. The most interesting private labeling as when I seen from Amazon in a while as a product I wouldn't have necessarily expected them to private label they launched their own, brand of gin last week so we may have to do a, a test on on the shelf or whenever episode Scott but they invented a new brand called tovis in their they're now selling their own premium gin. Scot: [41:12] Yep seems like a deep dive we could tied into a fun drinking game. Jason: [41:15] Exactly I'm sure they're already are some bad drinking games for a podcast drink every time Jason says um for example would be a good one and I just got two drinks right there so. When they got a bunch of Buzz that I don't think it's so surprising Amazon prints this a holiday catalog every year physical catalog that you know mostly focuses on what all the hot toys are going to be and it came to light that Amazon sells slots on the internet catalog so you can you no pay to have your product listed as the hot hot toys for the holiday. Retail have been doing that for a long time it's not super surprising the the slight Nuance here is when someone buys an ad on amazon.com, Amazon does the note that is a paid at like they they put a sponsor badge on it and the catalog. Doesn't have a disclaimer like that so it does sort of look like Amazon's claiming its editorial content and so you know it may surprise some listeners or viewers to know that they could. [42:19] That a lot of the products in that catalog to be in there because the the manufacturer paid for them. And then the the final thing that I think it's worth pointing out to our listeners is there were two really interesting long-form articles. [42:35] Primarily about Amazon and maybe even more about Jeff Bezos that came out in the last couple of weeks it's all put links in the show nose to both of them but one of them is called Jeff Bezos master plan. And that was in the Atlantic and there's a really long form article kind of talking about. The five phases of Jeff Bezos Evolution from juice or pre Amazon aged. Sort of his is space in Hollywood age today and that it's a really interesting Deep dive into some of his personality traits and how they've helped. Help the company grow and then there was also a really long expose in the New Yorker that was called is Amazon Unstoppable. And you know the big Travis there was Amazon is dominant not because they have a particularly you know a single. Interesting product or capability or piece of Ip that the real secret sauce on Amazon, is the Amazon culture and the business process that they've adopted and so it it focuses a lot on Jeff in the leadership style and the culture and process that they didn't still on the premises. Did that that culture has served them really well to dominate a bunch of different Industries so both really good reads if you haven't. Scot: [43:54] Yeah the spoiler alert the answer is Amazon's probably Unstoppable. Jason: [43:59] Yeah I think that might be the conclusion they're both a little balance so they both like in Meijer lot of Jeff Bezos traits and they also probably point out some. Some things that like some of us might be was personality flaws so I'll leave it to the two listeners to draw their own conclusions but. They're pretty interesting and Scott that's going to be a good place to leave it cuz we've slightly surpassed the amount of time that we budgeted for tonight show but as always is we've spawned a question or comment feel free to continue the conversation on Facebook or Twitter and as always if this is the show that finally got you over the hump we'd love it if you jump over to iTunes and give us that five star review that's really the best way to thank us for producing all this content. Scot: [44:46] Things are what we hope you've enjoyed this Q3 Amazon hot take. Jason: [44:52] And until next time happy commercing.

“Hardwired for Authentic Leadership and Excellence in Execution.” Kathy Kersten speaks with Mark Roenigk, an influential change agent that has helped lead some of the world’s best technology companies grow from small enterprises to hyperscale in just a matter of years. Mark’s Top 5 Signature Themes are Achiever, Responsibility, Arranger, Relator, Individualization. As a head of hardware engineering, Mark is responsible for the building, scaling and innovation of infrastructure at one of the world’s leading tech companies. Previously, Mark was the COO at Rackspace, where he managed the global infrastructure and associated services such as data center engineering, operations, hardware design, networking, infrastructure services, supply chain, procurement, facilities, physical & cyber security and enterprise IT. Mark began his career as an engineer at Compaq before moving into management, and has held senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Intuit, Sirius XM, and eBay/PayPal. Mark has been a strong supporter of charities dedicated to enriching the lives of children with disabilities. He is on the Board of Directors of Taelor’s House Foundation, Morgan’s Wonderland and supports the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, Special Olympics and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He previously served as technology advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is the current chairman and president of the Open Compute Foundation. Mark holds a BBA degree in management from Texas A&M University. Kathy Kersten is the host of Obey Your Strengths, the podcast dedicated to fanning the flame of the Strengths movement one success story at a time. As a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach since 2008, Kathy has helped 70+ organizations, hundreds of teams and thousands of individuals leverage individual’s strengths to increase performance. Kathy’s Top 5 Signature Themes are Strategic, Input, Learner, Belief, Maximizer. If you would like information on individual, team or organizational coaching, visit kathykersten.com. To discover your own strengths, visit gallupstrengthscenter.com. Instagram: @kathy.kersten Facebook: @obeyyourstrengths

“Hardwired for Authentic Leadership and Excellence in Execution.” Kathy Kersten speaks with Mark Roenigk, an influential change agent that has helped lead some of the world’s best technology companies grow from small enterprises to hyperscale in just a matter of years. Mark’s Top 5 Signature Themes are Achiever, Responsibility, Arranger, Relator, Individualization. As a head of hardware engineering, Mark is responsible for the building, scaling and innovation of infrastructure at one of the world’s leading tech companies. Previously, Mark was the COO at Rackspace, where he managed the global infrastructure and associated services such as data center engineering, operations, hardware design, networking, infrastructure services, supply chain, procurement, facilities, physical & cyber security and enterprise IT. Mark began his career as an engineer at Compaq before moving into management, and has held senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Intuit, Sirius XM, and eBay/PayPal. Mark has been a strong supporter of charities dedicated to enriching the lives of children with disabilities. He is on the Board of Directors of Taelor’s House Foundation, Morgan’s Wonderland and supports the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, Special Olympics and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He previously served as technology advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is the current chairman and president of the Open Compute Foundation. Mark holds a BBA degree in management from Texas A&M University. Kathy Kersten is the host of Obey Your Strengths, the podcast dedicated to fanning the flame of the Strengths movement one success story at a time. As a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach since 2008, Kathy has helped 70+ organizations, hundreds of teams and thousands of individuals leverage individual’s strengths to increase performance. Kathy’s Top 5 Signature Themes are Strategic, Input, Learner, Belief, Maximizer. If you would like information on individual, team or organizational coaching, visit kathykersten.com. To discover your own strengths, visit gallupstrengthscenter.com. Instagram: @kathy.kersten Facebook: @obeyyourstrengths

It’s time for another update episode. Listen in as we discuss some of the current events in the reselling world, go over some amazing hustles, and give some of our favorite BOLOs. Help Us Continue Providing Value For Free By Donating In The Link Below: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=HSnY9k0UhOmw5CnnPo9YaS81hPubnvBhwJeaIvC_Vai6-VikyZs0f-a60inpB7Z5AL4210&country.x=US&locale.x=US Twitter - @purehustlecast Facebook - purehustlepodcast Instagram - @purehustlepodcast Youtube - Pure Hustle Podcast - www.youtube.com/channel/UCuEJMAB8GdoaPK7eLkKmAiQ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pure-hustle-podcast/support

A regular on Treasury and Risk Management Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in Finance” list, Smartsheet CFO Jennifer Ceran joined the company, a SaaS platform for managing collaborative work and automating work processes, in 2016 with impressive Silicon Valley bona fides. She’s served as CFO and in senior finance executive roles at Quotient Technology (formerly Coupons.com), Box, Ebay/PayPal and Cisco. Ceran’s current mission is to help lead Smartsheet’s long-term strategy, and she’s thrilled by Smartsheet’s market opportunity. “It’s in the multiple billions of dollars,” she enthuses. “We have a real chance of extending our leadership position, so we’re going after [a goal of] $1 billion in revenue within four to six years.” Ceran is equally enthusiastic about sharing career guidance with future finance leaders. She identifies two crucial propellants to the CFO seat: 1) Amassing as much corporate finance knowledge as possible in all of the realm’s key functional areas; and 2) Understanding the value – and exceedingly positive impact on company performance – that a healthy and candid CFO-CEO relationship engenders. “It’s really important that you and the CEO have mutual respect and alignment,” Ceran adds. “It’s important that you’re in an environment where you feel safe on both sides to discuss the toughest situations at work, debate the issues and then come together on a course of action.”

Liz is A former executive at Oracle, she worked over the course of 17 years as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development. Currently Liz  is the President of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Some of her recent clients include: Apple, Disney, eBay/PayPal, Facebook, GAP, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce.com, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world. She is the author of three best-selling books: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter , Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work ,and The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools. She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review and Fortune. http://whatgotyouthere.com/ 15% off Four Sigmatic with discount code "WGYT" http://foursigmatic.com/wgyt Free 30 day Audible Trial- http://www.audibletrial.com/WhatGotYouThere Sunniva Super Coffee- Use discount code WGYT for 20% off your order!- www.drinksupercoffee.com   http://thewisemangroup.com/ Books- http://multipliersbooks.com/ LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4215807/profile Twitter- https://twitter.com/LizWiseman Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/multipliersbooks/?hc_ref=ARQ2DlqE4zgZR0QpGFdsnDgC_sfoG-Vs1CWG1hoI9TkrxLHllhohm8A-oVPjIH3TN0U&fref=nf&pnref=story Sean DeLaney Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/seandelaney23/ Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/whatgotyouthere/ Twitter- https://twitter.com/SeanDeLaney23 Intro/Outro music by Justin Great- http://justingreat.com/ Audio Engineer- Brian Lapres   

Our GuestStephanie Tilenius is the Founder and CEO of Vida Health, a next-generation digital therapeutic and health coaching platform for chronic physical and mental health conditions deployed at Fortune 500 companies, large national payers and providers. Prior to starting Vida, Tilenius was with Kleiner Perkins Canfield & Byers, where she worked primarily with late-stage KPCB portfolio companies, with an emphasis on companies in the Digital Growth Fund. While at Kleiner, Stephanie invested in Nextdoor and MyFitnessPal. Prior to Kleiner, Stephanie was at Google, where she was vice president of global commerce and payments, helping build and launch new products and platforms including Google Wallet, Google Shopping and Google Express. Prior to joining Google, she was at eBay and PayPal for nine years, and in her last role was SVP of eBay.com and global product where she helped lead the eBay Marketplace turnaround. Prior to eBay, Stephanie was VP of Merchant Services at PayPal where she built the off-eBay PayPal business from the ground up into a multi-billion business. A co-founder of PlanetRx.com, she has also worked at Intel, AOL and Firefly. Stephanie sits on the public boards of Coach Inc. and Seagate Technology.Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:Stephanie is passionate in making an impact in other people’s lives and doing the things that matter. Everything that she had done in her career had affected millions of people and improved lives and now in Vida, she is focusing on health care and eradicating chronic conditions, which is a real problem in the country.She had worked with eBay, Google and PayPal and her experience in building products and platforms from the ground up and reimagining how things are done during her time with these companies had helped her in her current work in healthcare, which, in some ways, is one of the last industries to adopt consumer-facing technology. Vida is an app service for managing your health. They match you to a coach, a nurse or a health expert, and a digital therapy program, to work in the area that you are most concerned in. They cover both mental and physical conditions and programs focus on concerns such as diabetes, hypertension, weight loss, and smoking. They use machine learning to personalize your programs to help you succeed.Stephanie shares an example of a mobile experience of one of their customers, Jenny, which led to great results. Jenny is a 49-year old, mom of three who lost 80 lbs. in 8 months. She had diabetes, cholesterol and hypertension and found profound benefits from Vida.The new movement today is that health care is being self-care. People are now trying to track their behavior in a more holistic way than they have done in the past and this is very beneficial compared to the traditional way wherein you only get one reading per year during an annual physical exam. Vida is connected to the most popular wearables and anything out there which will enable you to monitor your health. They connect to other apps as well so they can integrate your data into one place for your coach to see. The benefit of this is for your coach to personalize your experience and help you achieve your goals by knowing everything you are doing. This day-to-day insight helps people make the right behavior change and make decisions.Pure execution and scale, just like other companies, are one of Vida’s challenges. Things get more complicated as they scale so they continue to get customer feedback – from onboarding, retention, engagement with their coaches and programs, the use of different features inside the app – and just continue to iterate. They note that they should be mindful of population profiles and their use of the app.Building a two-sided market place is always complicated and one things that has been tough for Vida is balancing the supply and demand. In addition to this, they have to have tools for both their users and coaches so this is twice the work versus other apps.

Das Weihnachtsfest naht - klassischerweise die Zeit, in der viele Online-Händler und Unternehmen generell die meisten Umsätze generieren. Doch was erwarten die großen Namen wie Ebay, PayPal und Google vom diesjährigen Weihnachtsgeschäft? Wie werden sich die Konsumenten, zumindest voraussichtlich, verhalten und welche Produktkategorien werden besonders beliebt sein? Darüber sprechen wir ausführlich in der 35. Ausgabe unseres OnAir-Podcasts.

Das Weihnachtsfest naht - klassischerweise die Zeit, in der viele Online-Händler und Unternehmen generell die meisten Umsätze generieren. Doch was erwarten die großen Namen wie Ebay, PayPal und Google vom diesjährigen Weihnachtsgeschäft? Wie werden sich die Konsumenten, zumindest voraussichtlich, verhalten und welche Produktkategorien werden besonders beliebt sein? Darüber sprechen wir ausführlich in der 35. Ausgabe unseres OnAir-Podcasts.

Episode 160: Liz Wiseman - Why Lack Of Experience Is Your Advantage Liz Wiseman teaches leadership to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She is the President of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Some of her recent clients include: Apple, Disney, eBay/PayPal, Facebook, GAP, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Roche, Salesforce.com, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world and recipient of the 2016 ATD Champion of Talent Award. She is the author of three best-selling books: Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools. She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review and Fortune and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc. and Time magazines. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU, and Stanford University. A former executive at Oracle Corporation, she worked over the course of 17 years as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development. During her tenure at Oracle, she led several major global initiatives and has worked and traveled in over 40 countries. Liz holds a Bachelors degree in Business Management and a Masters of Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University. Liz lives in Menlo Park, California with her husband and four children who share her over-active curiosity and sense of adventure. (Bio from thewisemangroup.com) (Picture from thinkers50.com) Episode 160: Liz Wiseman - Why Lack Of Experience Is Your Advantage Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “The leaders job is to pull out the greatness around them." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Having an outward orientation and thinking beyond yourself will lead to sustained excellence Liz describes a "genius vs a genius maker" "The leaders job is to pull out greatness around them. They are past themselves." Larry Ellison is a prime example of a leader who pulls out the greatness in others How to earn the trust of the CEO Why learning beats knowing Only 15% of what we know today will be relevant 5 years from now Why lack of experience is your advantage Career advice to younger workers: "Don't try to replicate someone else. Don't be a "Steve Jobs wannabe" -- Be yourself Managers need to understand the value of rookies The disciplines of a "multiplier vs a diminsher" Signs you've reached a plateau in your career: Things are running smoothly You have "ready answers" You're getting positive feedback all the time You're the mentor You're busy but bored You start to play it safe Diminisher = Energy killer, puts a blanket on new ideas Multiplier = They use their own intelligence to amplify and help others grow and succeed A Diminsher is A trophy collector... Treats talented employees like trophies (until they leave) A tyrant... A creator of stress A "know it all" A Multiplier is A talent magnet... People grow around multipliers and other great leaders flow to them A liberator... They give space A challenger... They invite people to do hard things. They get comfortable inviting others to be uncomfortable. They create a warm environment. Someone who creates a safe environment for intellectual curiosity and creates stretch “Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else." - Sara Blakely Continue Learning: Read: Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing In The New Game Of Work Read: Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter To Follow Henry on Twitter: @LizWiseman To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 047: David Marquet - "Turn The Ship Around" Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Liz Wiseman on the show, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Daor Design - Daor Design will help you build your brand like nobody’s business. Most of their work falls into one of four categories: Logo Design, Print Design, Web Design or Digital Marketing. They pride themselves in being a trusted, valued resource for their growing family of clients.

John Donahoe served as president and chief executive officer of eBay Inc. from 2008-2015. In this role, he was responsible for growing each of the company's business units, which included eBay Marketplaces, PayPal and Skype. In this episode: -Notion of servant leadership -Being a purpose driven leader -Growing from adversity -Figuring out what’s right for you -The right fit – team ethos -Facing down fear -How success in team sports and business aren’t so different -Emulating his father -Balancing his professional and personal life -Qualities of those who sustain success over time -The importance of grit -The constant process of understanding who he is -Meditation and why “Buddha Nature” is important to him

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