Facing Cash Crunch, Retailer Jet.com Racing to Complete Funding Round

Post by powera » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 2:14 AM UTC

bramgg wrote: post #10

powera wrote: post #7

I honestly want a list of Jet.com's newest investors so I can remember to never do business with them. This is the most obvious tire fire of an investment I've ever seen in my life (I missed seeing the late 90s dot-com bubble in person). The brand is completely irrelevant, they only have sales because they're losing money on each unit, they're losing $50 million per month and plan to keep losing that much ... what ex…

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/jet/investors There's some pretty big guys in there.

Post by bsdpython » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 2:24 AM UTC

dewitt wrote: post #13

I put in an order when Jet launched. No joke, from the best I can tell, they sent someone to a physical Walmart, where they purchased the product at full retail, for more than they charged me , packaged it up, and shipped it to me with free two-day delivery. But they'll make it up on volume, right? Smart people have said, "do things that don't scale." I guess Jet took that at face value.

Post by mattmaroon » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #22

Not knowing much about the company's internals, my guess is this will end badly. Consider: * Fidelity is supposedly leading the investment in Jet.com -- not exactly a leading VC or PE investor. * The investment totals $500 million -- not exactly a small one-off deal that flies under the radar. * Jet.com is on track to burn all that cash in a year or so -- not exactly a lot of runway. -- Edit: added "or PE" to first b…

Post by cs702 » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 2:42 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #25

cs702 wrote: post #22

Not knowing much about the company's internals, my guess is this will end badly. Consider: * Fidelity is supposedly leading the investment in Jet.com -- not exactly a leading VC or PE investor. * The investment totals $500 million -- not exactly a small one-off deal that flies under the radar. * Jet.com is on track to burn all that cash in a year or so -- not exactly a lot of runway. -- Edit: added "or PE" to first b…

When companies do rounds in that price range, it's often (maybe almost always) from PE or something other than VC. VC funds are usually not big enough for that. I wouldn't take that as a negative indicator.

Post by princeb » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 2:48 AM UTC

bsdpython wrote: post #23

dewitt wrote: post #13

I put in an order when Jet launched. No joke, from the best I can tell, they sent someone to a physical Walmart, where they purchased the product at full retail, for more than they charged me , packaged it up, and shipped it to me with free two-day delivery. But they'll make it up on volume, right? Smart people have said, "do things that don't scale." I guess Jet took that at face value.

That's exactly what Marc Lore did to start his previous company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapers.com