
Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B - doh
http://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-in-talks-to-buy-web-retailer-jet-com-1470237311
======
nlh
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
"someone" could be Jet's CEO. Or their banker.

Wal-Mart isn't dumb. In fact, they're the opposite of dumb when it comes to
paying for things. They wouldn't pay $3B for a failed ecommerce startup if
they can let it fail and buy the assets or pay much, much less in various
other scenarios.

I doubt we'll see this deal go for anywhere close to $3B, if it happens at
all. This is likely a negotaition tactic to drum up interest (and/or the
price) from other potential acquirers.

~~~
fowlerpower
Jet is growing at a staggering rate month over month. They are at over 1.1
billion in sales annually in under a year. Yes, while spending money to do it,
but you can't magically get paying loyal customers without any advertising or
incentives. Amazon didn't do it by making money either.

Amazon is at roughly 86 billion (I'm sure it's more) in sales online, Walmart
is at 12 billion online. Amazon is growing in the double digits Walmart is in
the single digits online. How is Walmart going to catch them?

If jet is at 4 million+ loyal customers in a years time being live, how
exactly is it dumb to buy a company that is at 1.1 billion in sales in a years
time when it took you 10 years to get to that? How long has Walmart been
selling online? Jet will pass Walmart in under 2 years, then what will Walmart
do to beat Amazon?

I think people on hacker news live in la la land. Ecommerce is very different
from your googles and facebooks.

Marc Lore knows exactly what he's doing, he probably won't sell it to Walmart
for that little.

Edits: spelling and grammar.

~~~
driverdan
> If jet is at 4 million+ loyal customers

I doubt many of them are loyal. Most ordered from Jet due to huge discount
codes, making them the cheapest. I'd love to see how many people place a
second order, one with no discount code.

~~~
fowlerpower
What is it with people on hacker news? You all love Amazon or something?
Chances are a lot of them are coming back because their system, at jet, is
guaranteed to be cheaper if you buy multiple things. It is why they have
double the order size when compared to Amazon, at least according to the news
articles.

Amazon is about to close down every Walmart in America. They are going to shut
down the number one employer in the whole country. It is absolutely on its
way.

I for one hope we have a few players in this space.

Edits: for grammar and clarity.

~~~
driverdan
I never said anything about Amazon. I'm not sure what that came from.

Real, sustainable competition is what makes capitalism great. Jet spending
$800mm+ in a year and taking a loss on every sale is not sustainable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Real, sustainable competition is what makes capitalism great. Jet spending
> $800mm+ in a year and taking a loss on every sale is not sustainable.

OTOH, spending and taking losses like that is often the cost of breaking into
a business with established competition, even if you have a fundamentally
better model -- a bit part of what _every_ business wants to do is establish
the kind of "moat" that makes that kind of thing necessary for any would-be
new competitor.

------
ktamura
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 giving consumers fewer reasons to shop at traditional
stores.

The answer is not buying a unicorn startup with seemingly no fundamental
advantage over Amazon. If I were Wal-Mart, I would take the $3B and try to
build a great technology organization and/or fund Wal-Mart Labs more. So much
of what makes Amazon better is the data accrued over the last 18 years and the
insight mined from them by their super-talented team.

And Jet.com is definitely not going to give that to Wal-Mart overnight. If I
were them, I'd focus on long-term viability, not a short-term hack to placate
shareholders.

~~~
brianbreslin
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.

~~~
MichaelGG
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
customers using freight forwarders.

When I went to purchase, the site stopped working, just providing some sort of
generic error page. I called them up. A lady told me they were "performing
maintenance" (middle of day). The website provided zero indication; just
appeared broken.

Shipping took a while.

I'm certain they have smart people. But my anecdotal experience was that
things were a bit clueless and not even remotely close to the level of taking
on Amazon in any way.

~~~
fowlerpower
I'm not sure I understand, or rather I don't think you understand their
business model...

I think they set up their CloudFlare 100% correctly.

Jet does not sell outside the U.S., they have no plans to ever sell outside
they U.S. Most of the cyber attacks against them are from outside the U.S.
Their entire business plan is cutting cost out of the supply chain inside the
U.S. By bundling items together in the same box and saving the consumer in the
U.S. Money.

The entire point is to reduce the risk footprint, when most startups are being
hacked left and right jet is being very smart by throwing captchas and saying
to everyone outside the U.S. we don't want your scammy business.

~~~
MichaelGG
They do sell to people that are outside of the US. They just sell via freight
forwarders. In Central America (and probably all over) there are many
businesses that exist entirely to service customers. The biggest bank in the
country I'm in now (Guatemala) gives people credit cards and a Miami address
specifically marketed to buy stuff off Amazon.

You'd think with all that money spent, they'd have recognized this. FWIW, they
eventually fixed it, a week or two (or so) after several poorly-written emails
I sent them. So I think it is more likely to be the result of bad thinking, or
just being unaware of the situation.

Furthermore, if their anti-hacking defense relies on a captcha or not being
able to easily download their app, they're beyond screwed. I don't think they
are that incompetent, it might have been, at best, oversight.

Probably the fault is at least partially on Cloudflare, though. Trump's read-
only campaign website throws up a captcha at least to Guatemala. And GT isn't
known as a centre of any hackers, to say the least. So if they have high
profile sites like that which are misconfigured, perhaps they don't do enough
review or customer education.

~~~
fowlerpower
The captchas serve to stop bot nets and DDoS attackers who are all over the
world. It is why many sites throw those up. It is not a miss configuration. It
is a smart move.

~~~
MichaelGG
It is 100% the wrong thing to do. On a static page like Trump's website, it is
absolutely unacceptable that it ever shows a captcha to obtain readonly
information. They are already handling the TCP connection, they are sending
back the static assets (custom error page). They just don't send the main
content.

Unless it's under a current attack, and even then it should go by IP or
something. Visiting from an IP never used before should now throw up a
captcha. Nor should it continue to do so on repeated visits.

It's broken, full stop.

Edit: I mention Trump's site because it's a reasonably high profile, static,
site that I've seen CF blocking on. Also, FWIW, after I sent several emails to
Jet, they seemed to reverse course and their app and site are available. Seems
like an oversight/not knowing to me. CF's defaults are not very good so they
probably didn't change them. CF should review their customers and suggest
better defaults, at least to high end clients.

------
swingbridge
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 another round elsewhere. For the employees this
is likely not a great thing. I'm guessing when they joined a hyped up startup
it was in large part because they didn't want to work for companies like
WalMart and stood to strike it rich if Jet went public or hit it big. Now they
could be wearing a WalMart badge and the company sold out to save the ass of
its investors.

~~~
zd4akaq85a
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.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Those would have to be some impossibly harsh terms"_

Harsh terms yes, but not uncommon.

Preferred shares are common for investors that pay out at a multiple of the
common shares, so in an exit the preferred pool can be paid at a dramatically
higher rate than common shares.

Funding often also comes with guarantees on return - i.e., if the exit price
is below a threshold, the investor gets a guaranteed minimum return before
other are paid. This works out for the company if it's a smashing success (the
upside is also capped) but can wipe out common shareholders if the company
sells for anything less than stratospheric valuations.

This should be a lesson to anyone thinking about working for a startup: a
company raised $570M and sold for $3B, and _in all likelihood the employees
will receive very little from this sale_.

In the modern startup fundraising scene, and the way startup equity is
structured for employees, if your company exits for anything less than a mind-
boggling headline-making valuation, you are almost certainly receiving little
to nothing.

~~~
kenrikm
Even if the terms ate up 2.9B of the 3B an engineer with 1 point will still
walk away with close to a million. I don't buy it.

~~~
Xyik
It's rare for an engineer to have 1 point they would probably have to be
engineer #1 or #2

~~~
zd4akaq85a
Granted, I don't think many engineers are making out with seven figures here,
but they should be making whatever their shares were supposed to be worth at
the most recent valuation. That's if they joined after the last funding round,
more if they joined earlier.

------
Fej
Article not behind paywall: [http://nasdaq.com/article/wal-mart-in-talks-to-
buy-web-retai...](http://nasdaq.com/article/wal-mart-in-talks-to-buy-web-
retailer-jetcom-20160803-00816)

~~~
pravula
You can use google search to bypass paywall.

~~~
jjallen
Not anymore I thought? Tried, didn't work.

~~~
pravula
It works still. They have a cap now, which you can bypass using incognito
mode.

------
shaqbert
What asset does Jet have that it is worth anything close to $3bn?

Loyal users? Nope. Their version of "prime" is the proverbial pig in a poke,
as you need to buy that one before you can actually figure out if you like to
become a longstanding customer (experience, logistics, price/value, positive
surprises). Most users are just the coupon cutters who will switch to whatever
next crazy person is offering loss leaders.

A strong brand? Plastering NYC subways without having launched does not mean a
viable brand. Also they nowadays focus pretty much only on performance
marketing. So nope.

Strong technology? Meeeh...

The rationalization at Walmart HQ probably is that with Walmart's purchasing
muscle they might improve the unit economics a lot. But why buy a flash in the
pan in the first place...

~~~
pdq
They've got a three letter domain name. But that's worth a million bucks or
so.

------
_RPM
Jet.com was founded in 2014. How did they get enough traction to be viable
when there are so many other online retailers like Amazon, and all the other
brick and mortar retailers that also have large online presence.

~~~
chris11
I think they've been spending a lot of money getting new users. They've been
offering new accounts discounts, I think you can get 15% to 20% off right now.
They've had a bunch of items show up on some discount shopping forums like
slickdeals. I think they've lost money on some purchases.

~~~
joezydeco
Just got a flyer in the mail offering $10 off my next _3_ purchases. That's
not cheap.

~~~
chris11
Yeah, I even remember a rumor going around that they were dropshipping for
some items. If something was out of stock they would get it from newegg or
amazon and send it to you.

~~~
imcqueen
I have a theory about this, it happened to us when we bought some childrens
books on Jet. They came in the mail from Barnes and Noble with a packing slip
that had a price higher than we paid included with it.

It doesn't explain the Amazon example you mentioned, but I was under the
impression they have special affiliate arrangements with 3rd party retailers
and that they were somehow being allowed to invest their affiliate commissions
into the consumer (which is typically not allowed).

So if they're making 15% affiliate commissions from B&N they're able to drop
the consumer price 10%. They've been focused on scale more than margin since
day 1, so it would make sense that they would just operate on something razor
thin and continue to drive home that they have unbeatable prices.

For the 3rd party retailers it's a way to compete with AMZN on price without
actually having to drop their prices and I can see how that would be
attractive to a retailer that's losing market share.

No basis for this, just one man's theory.

~~~
brianbreslin
I received a box from amazon after making a purchase on Jet.

~~~
brianwawok
The seller messed up and violated the Jet TOS to do that.

------
sargun
This would make Wal-mart the biggest production Azure user in terms of actual
traffic. That'd be a killer position for Microsoft to be in.

~~~
was_boring
> That'd be a killer position for Microsoft to be in.

What do you mean by this? I don't deal with things of that scale, but I would
imagine it would put Wal-Mart in a very good position to negotiate down near
at-cost. It could be good for Microsoft on the PR front against Amazon, but
bad for profit margins (on this one account).

~~~
mason55
Depends. Netflix doesn't get any kind of sweetheart deal with AWS. As far as
I'm aware the prices they pay are exactly the same as what any other high
volume customer would pay.

~~~
Fej
AWS is the big boy in the room. They don't have to prove anything to anyone.

------
cm3
Does the sale mean F# is having its WhatsApp (Erlang) moment, in other words
major industry validation?

~~~
systems
well, I didn't know whatsapp uses erlang until now and I think it didn't
really help make erlang more popular

for me I believe it was couchdb that brought erlang to light .. but now it
seems erlang isn't really getting any more popular

but yea, of course being used by whatsapp is very strong validation for erlang

~~~
cm3
Erlang has been and is in use in many less visible places, same as other
frameworks, but WhatsApp provided visibility in the contemporary world of
short-lived startups.

------
anders098
Note Alibaba is the main investor. Ali wants to use Jet.com to compete with
amazon in US market.

------
swalsh
There are a lot of product categories I've found its impossible to compete in
because jet has this combination of impossibly low prices, and stupid high
cpc's on Google. I wonder if an acquisition will bring things to more
sustainable levels?

~~~
jkestner
Probably, since Walmart presumably doesn't have to work as hard to acquire
customers. Better make your VC-subsized purchases before the deal closes!

------
ikeboy
I love how a 3X exit is a "disappointing end". I'll take disappointment all
day long.

~~~
ProAm
When you are an investor and have tens or possible hundreds of investments, 3x
will not cover much. You need one to leave orbit in order to stay in the game.

~~~
softawre
You can have 1 leave the orbit or 25% of them triple your money.

~~~
ProAm
25% of them making money is very unrealistic.

------
adamgamble
I bet the guy that won 100k shares of jet.com stock is excited!

[http://fusion.net/story/54990/guy-got-rich-using-
jet/](http://fusion.net/story/54990/guy-got-rich-using-jet/)

------
mikeryan
Interestingly not a huge exit its "just" 3x. (Edited from 6x I looked at
investment not valuation originally) For all the news around Jet taking on
Amazon I'm not sure this is signaling a win for them.

~~~
a_small_island
$500M invested, previous valuation ~$1B, so a "3x" exit.

~~~
cfield
It looks like the $1B figure is a pre-money valuation for the $500M raised.[0]
If so, that results in a 2x exit for those investors.[1] This assumes those
investors don't have rights that would entitle them to more than their pro
rata of the acquisition proceeds, such as special liquidation preference
rights that would entitle them to more than a 1x liquidation preference. It's
these kinds of special liquidation preference rights that have attracted some
attention for helping "juice" valuations, particularly with unicorns.[2]

\-----

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-
round/79d35bb376dcc222a8a...](https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-
round/79d35bb376dcc222a8a441cd1ab6cf0b)

[1] Math: $500M invested at $1B results in those investors owning 1/3 of the
company. Assuming pro rata distribution of the acquisition proceeds, they
would get $1B in a $3B acquisition.

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-
fuzzy-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/the-fuzzy-insane-
math-that-s-creating-so-many-billion-dollar-tech-companies)

~~~
mbesto
According to pitchbook, Jet raised their latest round of $350M ($565M total)
at a $1.05B pre and a $1.4B post.

~~~
cfield
Got it. With those numbers, the returns are ~1.86x for the investors of the
$565M. ($3B * ($565M/$1615M) / $565M).

------
DougWebb
I have mixed feelings about this. Jet started up next to the town where I
live, and after growing for a while they moved to the town where I used to
live. I'd been watching their job postings since early on, and I probably
could've gotten hired early. Their recruiter recently reached out to me, so I
could probably still get hired there.

If they get bought out, I'd have missed out on potentially a very nice options
payout. But then I'd have to find a new job, because I definitely wouldn't
want to work for Wal-Mart. So I guess I'm happy with the decision to stay
where I am, despite some of the drawbacks of working for a really tiny non-
startup company. (Not that there aren't good perks too.)

For those of you who spend your careers in startups, how do you feel about new
owners after a buy out? If you have reservations about them, do you stick
around and see how it goes, or head straight for the exit?

~~~
brogrammernot
I'm confused. You do or don't work there?

They raised 820M so I highly doubt it'll be that great of a payout considering
that's only 4x what they raised.

As for a buyout, it's typically crappy because the company buying you ruins
the culture.

~~~
DougWebb
I do NOT work for Jet. I've considered it because they're very local to me,
even closer than the NYC startups.

Edit: I've been through the buyout ruining the company culture, so I
definitely agree with you there.

------
saosebastiao
I have to hand it to Marc Lore. Two spectacularly unprofitable businesses,
with two spectacularly large exits. If this guy had been doing startups in the
late 90's, he'd probably be the worlds first trillionaire by now.

~~~
patrickskim
He'd be yuge.

------
brianbreslin
Jet is on pace to do $1B in sales this year (not profit, but gross merchandise
value). Not bad for a company only selling stuff for 16 months. They aren't a
direct competitor to Amazon in model, they are closer to a seamless version of
Flipkart in india. My friend who works there says they see Target as their
competition more so than Amazon, and that could be what Walmart sees too. I do
wish we could have seen where this company could go, but likelihood is it
became increasingly difficult to attract VC money in this market that is
tightening.

~~~
carterehsmith
I mean, it is not really hard to make $1B in sales if you have >$500M to burn
;)

~~~
brianbreslin
Tell that to Lyft/WeWork, and a number of others ;-)

------
pasbesoin
3 billion is a hell of a price for branding.

Goes to show just how entrenched some of the negative feeling (not everywhere,
but where it exists, including with many in the Amazon demographic) is about
Walmart.

------
CodeSheikh
Wal-Mart should focus on getting rid of (transition) its old mentality
management and try spending top dollar on hiring top talent from the industry.
I happened to work with Wal-Mart tech teams and their hands are tied by
stubborn warehouse-manual-gears mindset of upper management. Basically our
company had a nightmarish experience when we were integrating our services
product with their internal tech products.

All of these companies (Walmart, Bestbuy etc) are trying to compete with
Amazon by offering things like price match etc. Sure it is nice to have a
price match from Bestbuy and pick up your product on the same day from
Bestbuy. But Amazon came back with a KO punch and offered Same-Day/One-Day
shipping. I can basically order it before midnight of the previous day and
have it at my doors by max 7pm the next day. Amazon has successfully created a
concept of brand among household consumers. They are the Apple of household
consumerism and most people don't want to buy from uncool brands. When I
search for a product on Google shopping and if the price is same on Amazon and
Walmart, I would pick Amazon because of "PRIME" shipping. Even if it is $1
cheaper on Walamrt I would still go for Amazon. Brand loyalty can't be bought
with $3B. Brand loyalty needs to be created at grass root level.

------
ocdtrekkie
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.

~~~
rogerdpack
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!

~~~
maxxxxx
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.

------
Hongwei
Wonder if the "tip" is part of a strategy to shop the deal, like the LinkedIn
post-mortem revealed. Last I heard, Jet.com was haemorrhaging cash buying more
growth with massive discounts.

Looks like it would be a good exit given how much capital they've raised:
$565M per crunchbase.com/organization/jet. 6x capital in means everyone should
make good money.

------
kevindong
I'm not sure if Jet's business model is valid, or if it's valid at all.

Back in Fall 2015, I ordered two cases of water (I think 24 count in each;
normal 500 mL water bottles) for $5.70 each with free two day shipping. They
ended up sending me two packages via FedEx Ground (one case per box) with
Jet.com branding on the boxes. I was legitimately shocked that they actually
processed my order since each case was 30 pounds. They lost so much money on
my order. When I checked back two weeks later, they were no longer for sale on
the website.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I agree that I can't understand how jet.com will stay in business with their
current shipping practices. I have ordered over 100 pounds of cat litter from
them at below market prices all with free shipping.

Every other order I've had (3) something has been broken during shipping (as
well as two of the cat litters) due to piss poor shipping practices. They put
a whole bunch of stuff including crushable and fragile stuff along with bulky
heavy stuff in one HUGE box. Of course all the bulky stuff crushed the fragile
stuff, who thought that was a good idea? So they not only refunded the broken
items but gave me $5 credit.

On top of that they gave 30% off my first order and 15-20% off the next few
orders.

That's not a sustainable business.

They also had a couple of really good AMEX offers in the last six months but I
don't know if they pay for that or AMEX does.

------
grandalf
While this is a definite failure for Jet's optimistic investors, it's likely a
great opportunity for Wal-Mart to challenge Amazon, and a win for consumers.
It's also a big win for OCaml.

I tried shopping at Jet and while some of the prices were very good, others
were worse than Amazon, and little things like product detail information,
pictures, etc., were strongly subpar. Product search was also in serious need
of tuning.

Does anyone know which pieces of infrastructure (or ops) that Jet built have
the most value to Wal-Mart?

~~~
sgrove
I _think_ Jet.com is actually F# [0] (which is of course very similar to
OCaml, but has quite a different ecosystem/tooling/etc.)

[0] - [https://tech.jet.com/blog/2015/03-22-on-how-jet-
chose/](https://tech.jet.com/blog/2015/03-22-on-how-jet-chose/)

------
__derek__
I tried to shop for Gatorade and Clif Bars on Jet recently, knowing that it's
promoted itself with home products and such. What I found were comical prices
($127.10 for 21 oz. of Gatorade mix) for a poor selection, so I gave up on it.
I don't really know what value Walmart gets out of this purchase other than a
heavily promoted brand and the ability to go back to focusing on Amazon. It
feels like Yahoo and Tumblr.

------
Xyik
Clearly jet.com's primary user base isn't from the tech crowd. Looking at the
comments, seems like a lot of people don't understand that Jet's user base is
probably value-conscious consumer's that shop for household items on a
recurring basis. Without knowing any numbers I'm surprised at all the backlash
in the comments.

~~~
coredog64
In my experience, jet.com's primary user base is deal fanatics who enjoy
having their consumer goods subsidized by know-nothing VCs dreaming about
being in on the ground floor of the next Amazon.

------
avivo
Did WSJ have the $3B clickbait title and then change it? Or did the HN
submission just add the extra "for $3B"?

All the article says is that "a person familiar with the matter said Jet could
be valued at up to $3 billion in private markets."

If this is a HN addition, can that be fixed?

------
protomyth
When the article says Wal-Mart is closing stores, how does it count when they
close a normal store and open a super store?

Also, at this point I feel safer buying cables and chargers from Wal-Mart. I
now worry about any retailer doing fulfillment for other sellers.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Unfortunately Walmart.com is now selling stuff from third party sellers.

~~~
protomyth
dammit..... so is NewEgg

Is someone actually not doing this?

~~~
happycube
Best Buy stopped doing that (thankfully), and I think Home Depot doesn't
either.

------
ctb_mg
I propose that Walmart needs to use their bulk purchasing power/clout, in
combination with the efficiencies that Amazon has put in place, to provide
lower prices. If you're going to unseat Amazon, it has to be on price.

------
runamok
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.

------
kumarski
So it was a total growth viral sign up tactic.

To secure 250K users, they offered 20K shares or something like that.

To sign up, you had to tweet, fb share, etc....

250K users in queue enabled them to do a lot of things, but in many senses it
may have been a false proxy.

------
losteverything
Doug is a planner's planner. He wants something jet has. Perhaps growth by
acquisition but I suspect more.

Maybe it's a sign Walmart is doing better than it had promised and the time is
right

------
dragthor
What happens to F# now? Jet used it heavily and championed usage.

~~~
edgyswingset
Well, Jet isn't the only company to use F# (just AFAIK, the only consumer-
facing startup). I can't imagine Walmart wholesale replacing their codebase
with whatever the folks at Walmart Labs like to use, as that would be
incredibly stupid of them.

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viggity
this is excellent news. I love amazon prime, and have a hard time seeing me
switching, but Amazon needs a competitor, even if it isn't huge.

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pnathan
I always have kept an eye on jet.com, I like it, but I have not been able to
find the goods I want to buy. Even not even thinking about prices.

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ada1981
The tech industry seems to be primarily a vehicle to grease the wheels of
importing growth from the developing world.

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

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roflchoppa
Perhaps its all in good nature, but anything that Walmart touches I don't want
to be a part of.

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abc_lisper
WTF is Jet.com? I have never heard of it, why is it worth 3B if it is not
common knowledge!! Sigh!

~~~
gk1
This kind of comment comes up often in these threads. It takes a certain
degree of conceit to think a company can only be valuable if _you_ heard of
it.

~~~
antisthenes
> It takes a certain degree of conceit to think a company can only be valuable
> if you heard of it.

No, but it's entirely reasonable to suggest that an e-commerce company that's
trying to compete with Amazon isn't valuable if you haven't even heard about
it in passing from friends or family.

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blahi
Just Marc Lore things.

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clarkenheim
Top Tip; you can get through the WSJ paywall by googling the url after the
domain and going to the top link: [https://www.google.com/?q=wal-mart-in-
talks-to-buy-web-retai...](https://www.google.com/?q=wal-mart-in-talks-to-buy-
web-retailer-jet-com-1470237311)

