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Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

techcrunch.com

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Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#151

Post by titomc »

throwaway324328 wrote: post #105
chatmasta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Walmart already have pretty decent tech? I recall seeing some impressive scalability blog posts from the team st "Walmart labs."

(Throw away for obvious reasons) It is all total crap. We dumped a bunch of time and money into rebuilding everything as SOA and on all the latest technologies. Most of the work was done by an army of Indians that couldn't get jobs elsewhere in the valley. Absolutely nothing scales. We have more servers in total than peak users to the site, and still can't get any respectable performance numbers. The few smart people…

https://jet.com/about-us - the photos shows there is a small army for Indians in Jet too. So do the "few smart people left here" want to jump over Jet now ?

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#154

Post by camelNotation »

rogerdpack wrote: post #92

I figured out what is going on here. Walmart thinks to themselves "we want to be like amazon, we want to be huge online" and then jet comes along and is something of an almost competitor to amazon, so corporate thinks "oh we should snap this up" but...my gut reaction here is this is going to be a terrible deal for walmart, what are they going to do, keep dumping $500M/yr for it at a loss or what? Pretty desperate, bu…

Walmart has something Jet.com needs: one of the world's most advanced product delivery systems. Every Wal-Mart store is a distribution center waiting to happen. They are enormous and they are everywhere.

Jet.com has something Wal-Mart can use to rocket its online presence forward: advanced online infrastructure, patents, a wealth of technology experts, and users.

Together, Wal-Mart can beat Amazon at its own game by doing what Amazon is already doing (building more, smaller DCs everywhere) using what they already have (massive retail locations everywhere).

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#155

Post by sjg007 »

Maarten88 wrote: post #142
rogerdpack wrote: post #92

I figured out what is going on here. Walmart thinks to themselves "we want to be like amazon, we want to be huge online" and then jet comes along and is something of an almost competitor to amazon, so corporate thinks "oh we should snap this up" but...my gut reaction here is this is going to be a terrible deal for walmart, what are they going to do, keep dumping $500M/yr for it at a loss or what? Pretty desperate, bu…

> keep dumping $500M/yr for it at a loss or what? I think building Amazon wasn't cheap too. Amazon made losses for most of two decades straight, so Walmart dumping massieve money into building a competitor, with the insights of today, might still be cheap, relatively.

All shopping is going to be online and delivered for the same price as going to a big warehouse store. With the dash buttons and the third party integration Amazon is too big to ignore.

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#156

Post by jonknee »

rb808 wrote: post #81
WhitneyLand wrote: post #12

Is anyone here using Jet on a regular basis? I tried it once a few months back and dismissed it as nothing innovative enough to be a sustainable Amazon competitor. I must have been very wrong. I don't see how Jet justifies 3B from Walmart. I will credit them on one point - They do seem have great employee sat that is a result of investing lots of time and energy to create a healthy environment.

I use Jet on a regular basis. I try to avoid Amazon wherever possible, they're good but they have too much power so I try to help any alternative. Their selection isn't as good as Amazon, but usually it arrives quicker. Books are not quick, but cheaper than BN (even though BN ships them) They must be burning lots of cash though. I placed a $100 order with about 7 items and it came in 6 different boxes.

> They must be burning lots of cash though. I placed a $100 order with about 7 items and it came in 6 different boxes.

It's an interesting business model for sure. They were spending $20-25m a month on advertising and then on top of that is selling things for less than they cost.

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#157

Post by lightblade »

KenCochrane wrote: post #49

Jet.com ran a contest where they gave 100,000 shares as the top prize for the most signup referrals. This Guy is probably one happy guy right now. He spent $18k and the value of those stocks are probably worth in the millions. http://www.businessinsider.com/jet-insiders-referral-program...

I'm surprised that his wife didn't divorce him for taking so much risk over this much money. Especially when they have 2 kids.

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#158

Post by jonknee »

tedmiston wrote: post #88
WhitneyLand wrote: post #12

Is anyone here using Jet on a regular basis? I tried it once a few months back and dismissed it as nothing innovative enough to be a sustainable Amazon competitor. I must have been very wrong. I don't see how Jet justifies 3B from Walmart. I will credit them on one point - They do seem have great employee sat that is a result of investing lots of time and energy to create a healthy environment.

I use them regularly. Mostly for items that are cheaper than from Amazon. Also with money from their cash back program, Jet Anywhere. I would suspect one portion of it is their dynamic pricing model. I wish there were more info publicly available about the mechanics.

> I would suspect one portion of it is their dynamic pricing model. I wish there were more info publicly available about the mechanics.

It's a pretty simple transfer of VC money to customers in an attempt to increase growth.

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#159

Post by antisthenes »

exclusiv wrote: post #144
rogerdpack wrote: post #92

I figured out what is going on here. Walmart thinks to themselves "we want to be like amazon, we want to be huge online" and then jet comes along and is something of an almost competitor to amazon, so corporate thinks "oh we should snap this up" but...my gut reaction here is this is going to be a terrible deal for walmart, what are they going to do, keep dumping $500M/yr for it at a loss or what? Pretty desperate, bu…

Jet.com is a disaster of a company fundamentally. However, it does make sense for a company like Walmart. I don't know about 3B, but Jet is a drastically cooler brand for them in their ecommerce battle esp. among millenials. Jet was previously fulfilling many orders from Walmart and now they can build a seamless integration to deliver competitively priced items quickly from the stores.

> I don't know about 3B, but Jet is a drastically cooler brand for them in their ecommerce battle esp. among millenials.

Every time I see a comment like this, it really makes me wonder who these mythical millenials are. I work in a company with 11 millenials out of 16 employees and NONE of them have even heard about Jet, let alone bought from it. Now that Jet was acquired and will be quietly folded into Walmart, it's more than likely they never will.

They use Amazon almost exclusively for all of their shopping needs.

Not sure where you got the notion that 'Jet is a drastically cooler brand'. It seems false both from anecdata I have and from the design of their website, which looks like a cheap knockoff of Amazon.

Re: Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash

#160

Post by jonknee »

stonemetal wrote: post #45
thinkMOAR wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know it won't be unlabelled suitcases filled with cash right?

Of course not, it will be a very large novelty check. /s But why cash or at least 100% cash? Just seems weird to me that at least some of it wasn't in stock. Is it because Jet was still private, so any stock in the deal would have been immediately liquidated by the VCs?

> But why cash or at least 100% cash? Just seems weird to me that at least some of it wasn't in stock. Is it because Jet was still private, so any stock in the deal would have been immediately liquidated by the VCs?

Because Wal Mart has lots of cash and that's what Jet.com shareholders wanted instead of WMT shares? Lots of deals by established companies are in cash and in the current environment where you're not getting any meaningful interest on cash that will continue to be a common thing.

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