Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by gscott » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

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.

Walmart being a established multi-national company they can't really have unprofitable divisions or unprofitable quarters. This will be equivalent to Yahoo's Tumblr acquisition (a failure).... no amount of heads exploding blue dust will save this.

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

#212

Post by mikeyouse » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #106

emagdnim2100 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a badly inaccurate description of how liquidation preferences work, both mechanically and also with respect to what's "market." First, it's exceptionally unusual to see anything more than a 1x liquidation preference (i.e. investors receive their initial investment back before anyone else gets paid) among well-funded companies. It's somewhat common to see a 6-10% interest rate added on top, but a 3x liquidatio…

> First, it's exceptionally unusual to see anything more than a 1x liquidation preference (i.e. investors receive their initial investment back before anyone else gets paid) among well-funded companies I've had options zero-out because the company, after investing with absolutely no preference given (which was part of what induced me to join), they took another round with preference funding at greater than 1x.

Another data point, I worked for a biotech that had to take a down round with 3x participating..

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

#213

Post by djrogers » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

exclusiv wrote: post #189

antisthenes wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I meant Jet is a much cooler brand than Walmart. Sure - many millenials haven't heard of it yet, but that's beside the point. Everyone has heard of Walmart but they struggle online. In your anecdote, 30% have brand recall which isn't as bad as you make it seem. The problem with Jet as it currently stands is that it isn't very compelling for word of mouth. I've used it and had a decent experience but never told anyone…

>In your anecdote, 30% have brand recall which isn't as bad as you make it seem.

I think you misread the parent - he said that out of 16 employees, 11 were millennials and none of those had 'brand recall' as you insist on calling it.

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

#214

Post by djrogers » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

cddotdotslash wrote: post #123

djrogers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $10m is probably best case scenario (after taxes, you can afford a pretty nice place in the Bay Area and have some left over) That's an extreme overstatement - a 'pretty nice place' in the bay area would cost in the $1M range, maybe $2M if you have a pretty jaded view of 'pretty nice'. > you just made a million bucks, which will be about 700k after taxes. More like 500K - 39.6% federal and up to 12% CA state tax.

Jet isn't even located in the Bay Area, so comparing to Bay Area housing is sort of irrelevant (the exception being housing in NYC is close in cost to that in the Bay). Their headquarters are in New Jersey, so a good number of them could probably find fancy houses in NYC or nearby.

I was responding to the parent's assertion that with $10M you could buy a 'pretty nice home in the bay area' - has nothing to do with where Jet is based.

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

#215

Post by ihaveajob » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

kalari wrote: post #78

mason55 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart.com is a pretty big user of Scalia already

It makes sense they want to buy Jet, since what they are currently using is dead.

Apparently the replacement has been proposed already, but the powers that be keep shutting that down, too.

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

#216

Post by __derek__ » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

mandeepj wrote: post #181

__derek__ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart.com has much higher sales than Jet. It already is huge online, even if it's not Amazon huge. If anything, this is about pruning competition and buying potentially useful IP.

>even if it's not Amazon huge are your serious? Walmart's revenue was $482.1[0] billion in 2015 and amazon's was $107b[1] [0] - https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... [1] - https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... edit - sorry, i missed the .com part

Even though I meant Wal-Mart e-commerce, this is a good reminder that the company remains huge despite concerns about its online sales.

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

#217

Post by ihaveajob » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #135

tommynicholas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is the only one I can imagine (that was such a horrible situation at Zynga, I had family get hit), and given the founder, extremely unlikely. I understand why everyone wants a reason to be skeptical of this acquisition, but all signs point to a home run for everyone involved.

Is there anything employees can do to protect against such a horrible Zynga situation legally?

Look for prior dickish behavior by the founding team, and run like the plague if you find any.

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

#218

Post by tootie » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

camelNotation wrote: post #154

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…

I kinda doubt jet.com is more sophisticated than walmart.com. They just wanted a more youthful brand.

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

#219

Post by kafkaesq » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 10:13 PM UTC

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.

Jet.com is a disaster of a company fundamentally.

How so?

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

#220

Post by titomc » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

throwaway324328 wrote: post #172

titomc wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

We have close to 2,000 of them, and maybe 100-200 I would consider proficient in any type of technical role. There was a massive push to hire as many developers as possible, so recruiting extended offers to everyone that applied. Senior engineers who have no degree or have ever worked at a tech company before. I have no problem working with people who are capable of doing the work we need them to do.

Isn't that a problem with the recruiting dept ? and not generally with the Indians ? If the recruiters are not doing a good job, why blame your coworkers ?