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

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

#191

Post by bluGill »

ikeboy wrote: post #67
sremani wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use them pretty regularly, since I discontinued my Amazon Prime membership. Amazon without Prime is a shipping fee quagmire. Jet is terrible for ordering books, but other than that they are pretty prompt on delivering stuff within 2 days. You get discount for using debit card (1.5%) and using a larger cart drops prices(which stops after you added a bunch of items).

Amazon also gives you free shipping once you spend above $49. And if you have a business account you get two day shipping as well at the same threshold.

True, but every time I choose that option Amazon takes a week before they even ship anything. (it then arrives in a few days) Back before prime everything I ordered from Amazon shipped next day, or I got an out of stock email and the rest shipped the next day and arrived in a few days. Sure free shipping was advertised as whenever, but the reality was free shipping used to mean about a week not it means 2 weeks to a month. This is a massive loss in satisfaction. There are many things that waiting a week is acceptable, but two weeks is beyond what I'm able to plan in advance for.

I have never ordered enough from amazon to make prime worth considering. The troubles I've had lately mean I just assume Amazon won't ship in time and so once I see something on amazon that I think I want I look to see who else sells it. I'll pay $.50 extra to have it shipped the next day.

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

#192

Post by danielweber »

emagdnim2100 wrote: post #131
danielweber wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

By "zero out," do you mean they were previously valuable and then dropped below their strike price after accounting for the > 1x preference? That sucks and I'm sorry it happened to you. It's still pretty unusual though. Curious to hear - were any of the following factors in play: (i) the company was struggling to stay afloat, (ii) the company was located outside SF/NYC, (iii) the company had less-experienced founders…

The company was sold and my purchased shares were worth $0.00.

The founders had secured, until I joined, funding coming in without any preferences at all, or so management told me repeatedly. I don't know when that changed, or maybe management was lying to me all along.

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

#193

Post by Dirlewanger »

toxican wrote: post #77
Systemic33 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what makes HN so great. Even the original Dropbox "Show HN" pitch was agressively cynical about it; "I can do the same thing with a linux box and some scripts...", etc.

I'll never understand remarks like that. The people who can put together something with similar functionality to Dropbox are by far in the minority. It's like having access to tons of scrap and be able to weld and dismissing metal bed frames because "I can do the same thing with some welding and scraps". Also the claim that it would eliminate my need for a USB drive was 100% on point.

They are the highly technical types that quite bluntly aren't ever going to be entrepreneurs because that's not how they see the world. They just do everything themselves. Not a bad thing, that's just what it is.

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

#194

Post by smitherfield »

antisthenes wrote: post #161
HillaryBriss wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an assessment of how Walmart was doing against Amazon -- from the year 2000: ... the case for Amazon getting crushed by Wal-Mart doesn't stand up when you do some side-by-side comparing of their Web sites. What's wrong with Walmart.com? Put simply, it settles for taking orders for the products people come looking for rather than enticing them to buy things they hadn't even thought of buying. http://www.bloombe…

Amazon sells more than the next 10 biggest websites, combined. It's useful to note that those 10 biggest websites are operated by large retailers with a physical presence, so it doesn't necessarily mean they're in trouble (walmart, macy's, home depot, etc.) But the gap between Amazon and the next biggest e-tail site is huge. It's more of a canyon than a gap, really.

eBay isn't even one of the top 10 anymore? How the mighty have fallen, if that's the case.

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

#195

Post by jjallen »

elbasti wrote: post #89
vessenes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this violate? They are giving a reward, no value implied or stated.

In general, the unregistered "general solicitation" for the purchase of securities is prohibited. You can't go on TV and ask people to buy your stock in exchange for money unless you have registered to do so--an IPO or subsequent S1. Stock is certainly a security. Stock options are just call options of a security, and also a security. Obviously there is some (future, conditional) value implied since it's a reward. It…

You can sell securities to non-accredited investors if you have audited financials (basically conforming to public IPO requirements) and the number of people you do so is greatly limited. This stuff is more complicated than I'm making it seem, but small quantities, again with audited financials (minimum audit costs ~$10K) and this can be possible/legal. Definitely consult securities lawyers if you're considering doing anything like this.

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

#196

Post by ikeboy »

bluGill wrote: post #191
ikeboy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon also gives you free shipping once you spend above $49. And if you have a business account you get two day shipping as well at the same threshold.

True, but every time I choose that option Amazon takes a week before they even ship anything. (it then arrives in a few days) Back before prime everything I ordered from Amazon shipped next day, or I got an out of stock email and the rest shipped the next day and arrived in a few days. Sure free shipping was advertised as whenever, but the reality was free shipping used to mean about a week not it means 2 weeks to a…

Get a business account and order more than $49 at a time and you'll get free two day shipping.

Also, note that Amazon may take time to ship because they're sending it between their warehouses to ship from a closer location. For popular items they'll likely already have one near you, but for less popular ones they move it around before final delivery. So just because it takes time to ship doesn't mean it won't arrive as fast as other options. What counts is the expected delivery time, which is given when you order.

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

#197

Post by tombert »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #193
toxican wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand remarks like that. The people who can put together something with similar functionality to Dropbox are by far in the minority. It's like having access to tons of scrap and be able to weld and dismissing metal bed frames because "I can do the same thing with some welding and scraps". Also the claim that it would eliminate my need for a USB drive was 100% on point.

They are the highly technical types that quite bluntly aren't ever going to be entrepreneurs because that's not how they see the world. They just do everything themselves. Not a bad thing, that's just what it is.

Gah, I'm one of those people. Maybe that's why I don't have any money...

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

#198

Post by rpgmaker »

swalsh wrote: post #96
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…

If you're a cynical person that is an easy thought... but something tells me a 3B acquisition of a company that is losing money in so many places isn't a decision taken lightly. A public company like Walmart, there's some people doing some math here.

> A public company like Walmart, there's some people doing some math here.

Translation: "I can't see how this deal makes sense but WalMart is a huge company so it has to make sense even if to me it doesn't".

By that logic no big company would ever fail or screw up. Every time there's a huge acquisition there are some people here making this fallacious argument or a variation of it. There are always people "doing some math" inside these companies, that doesn't mean that the success of any given strategy is a given.

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

#199

Post by rpgmaker »

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.

Amazon turned a "small" profit just the other day. Overall I think it's still fair to categorize it as a money losing venture (so far).

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

#200

Post by nommm-nommm »

outworlder wrote: post #176
lightblade wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't see anything in the article stating that she disagreed with the decision. Or that that amount of money will actually be missed. 18k is peanuts to many people.

Business savvy people who have a LOT of money often have a "risky investment" fund. Hell, I have a very small risky investment fund myself and I only have a moderate amount of money.
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