Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B • Hacker News Board

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#151

Post by shanemhansen » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #97

michaelbuddy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jet, based on its promotional content is heavy into the home products category. Walmart would love to knock them out to absorb that competition to getting delivery and even subscription delivery of home products. So it may be the price Walmart is willing to pay to ensure nobody is making Jet their new source for houseware products and avoiding the WalMart Brand. We also don't know what else Jet has in the pipeline, n…

What surprises me is that in many European countries, you can now order ALL of your groceries delivered. You place an order, and someone physically walks around a local supermarket, picks up stuff, they put on a van, and it is delivered to your home. It is actually very inexpensive (and free if you spend enough). Yet nobody in the US does that (well nobody outside of big cities). Walmart right now today has a HUGE ad…

Grocery.walmart.com

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#152

Post by notyourwork » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #126

brianbreslin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart has already spent close to $12B funding walmart.com/labs and not made a dent in catching Amazon. Jet has a super smart team looking at ways to gain margins in areas amazon is ignoring. short term their investors won't appreciate this buy.

This super smart team didn't even know how to configure Cloudflare. Non-US access got blocked with a captcha. This same company disabled downloading their app if you weren't in the US. And then the site would plaster big scary banners telling you a ZIP code was mandatory and if you weren't in the US, beware! Who comes up with this stuff? Somehow, with all that money raised, they failed to realise there'd be some cust…

You seem to forget its a startup and not a well oiled industry giant that has been around for ~20 years.

Maintenance to fix a security critical bug in the middle of the day to remain in compliance for credit card processing could have been a reason for this nuisance. Lots of factors and variables.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#153

Post by paulsutter » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

nlh wrote: post #120

Whoa whoa whoa stop the clock ;) Before everyone gets up in a big frenzy on the price, read the article (closely): "It isn’t clear how much Wal-Mart would pay, but a person familiar with the matter said Jet could be valued at up to $3 billion in private markets." That is nowhere near a statement that $3B is number from Wal-Mart. That means "someone" thinks they COULD be valued at UP TO $3B in "private markets". That…

Exactly - I call bullshit on the whole thing

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#154

Post by ctvo » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

brianbreslin wrote: post #83

ktamura wrote: post #55

This buyout is based on FUD, and FUD-based investment is a recipe for disaster. From the OP: >But for both Jet and Wal-Mart, Amazon’s frenzy of warehouse construction and fast delivery—as quickly as one-hour—have proved formidable. The retailer has logged three straight quarters of record profit while locking in an estimated 60 million members to its $99-per-year Prime service, cultivating a loyal customer base and g…

Walmart has already spent close to $12B funding walmart.com/labs and not made a dent in catching Amazon. Jet has a super smart team looking at ways to gain margins in areas amazon is ignoring. short term their investors won't appreciate this buy.

Where did you get the 12bn number for Walmart Labs from? It seems quite high.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#155

Post by blackaspen » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

jodah wrote: post #93

brianbreslin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart has already spent close to $12B funding walmart.com/labs and not made a dent in catching Amazon. Jet has a super smart team looking at ways to gain margins in areas amazon is ignoring. short term their investors won't appreciate this buy.

12B sounds like an incredible number for labs. Is there a source?

I think it's 12Bn of investment in eCommerce, which includes but isn't solely Labs.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#156

Post by blackaspen » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 10:24 PM UTC

Walmart would be better off buying $3B of Amazon stock -- eCommerce is not their strong point.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#157

Post by runamok » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

Wal-Mart can't even leverage their ubiquitous brick and mortar presence to be un-terrible to use for ship-to-store during the two times I tried to use it. Don't think this will end up being an Amazon killer.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#158

Post by rezashirazian » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

zd4akaq85a wrote: post #82

swingbridge wrote: post #67

Given the proposed price relative to funding raised it's likely the investors will get their money back plus a small return, employees with options will likely get nothing or perhaps a token amount (after all the preferred terms are cashed in) and the founder gets to sell off another highly unprofitable business. This will be chalked up as a "failed" startup but at least the investors get to take their money and play…

Really, you are claiming that if a company raised $570M and sold for $3B, the common shareholders will get screwed? Do you have some information we don't? The publicly reported valuation at the last funding round was $1.4B. Those would have to be some impossibly harsh terms to not leave well over $1B to the common shareholders.

Nothing has been sold for $3B, but $570M has been raised and most likely already spent.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#159

Post by api » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #153

nlh wrote: post #120

Whoa whoa whoa stop the clock ;) Before everyone gets up in a big frenzy on the price, read the article (closely): "It isn’t clear how much Wal-Mart would pay, but a person familiar with the matter said Jet could be valued at up to $3 billion in private markets." That is nowhere near a statement that $3B is number from Wal-Mart. That means "someone" thinks they COULD be valued at UP TO $3B in "private markets". That…

Exactly - I call bullshit on the whole thing

It could be something being floated to inflate the price in private markets as a prelude to trying to raise more money.

Re: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B

#160

Post by maxxxxx » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 11:21 PM UTC

rogerdpack wrote: post #70

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

When Jet.com came out, I often checked it against Amazon, and did make some purchases through it. But there's some odd gaps, it has no category through which I can buy Blu-rays, for example. And it has huge inventory gaps on very basic current items. I honestly forgot to keep checking what I could get through it, as the gimmick of adding up a bunch of items for savings rarely amounted to very much.

Totally agree, jet just...doesn't have some things. But it does have some other things, and sometimes slightly lower than amazon. It's so low I almost made a purchase with them once!

I have tried them a few times but it's a lot of work finding the items where they are actually significantly cheaper than Amazon. They also don't have reviews and the item descriptions are often really short and incomplete.

I don't think they are even close to Amazon.