fahim305

I actually used Native because it was legitimately natural, not the "natural" claim that Unilever/P&G make but still pack it with chemicals that shouldn't be in my body.

Would also like other recommendations for other bathroom products that are truly natural

Jet is losing in the game they thought they would win at. They were screaming discounts and pay less for everything, and now saying that they don't want to be perceived as a discount site. This is mostly due to pressure from brands/manufacturers, so Jet underestimated and miscalculated its strategy from the beginning. There goes the tech media's darling 'Amazon killer'

great idea @ the hustle. now share the data with me so I feel like crap about how relatively poor I am :-D

That is under the IPO price, and well under their once marketcap of $6B. Another classic example of a hot startup (one of the hottest in Seattle) hitting a brick wall once going public

I also worked at Amazon, and believe a lot of what was on this NYT article was overly dramatic (not surprising). I never saw anyone cry, so the assertion that everyone cries is false (I just asked dozens of my former colleagues that are still there and they agreed). While it could be tough to work there because it was intense, so what? They get stuff done. They don't need to give free food and provide nap pods, you are too busy driving hundred million dollar businesses with your team of 1. While there were definitely areas that could have benefited from change, there are several anecdotes in this article that are out of context or extreme. Amazon never claimed to be full of frills and benefits, and they push you hard but its in exchange for more responsibility than most people will ever receive and the ability to be around extremely smart and hardworking co-workers.

On another note, how long before the Washington Post (which Bezos invested in) writes a 180 view of the NYT article???

Jet's major value proposition was that it was supposed to be an attractive alternative option to Amazon for the Retailers and CPG companies. In the short run, that customer is probably more important than the end customer (similar to Airbnb initially with hosts vs. end users) because if they don't have the faith of the Retailers/CPGers, than this model fails very quickly

Jet doesn't own the inventory, it's simply a marketplace model (similar to Amazon FBA, or most of Alibaba's business in Asia)

This sounds like an upcoming Netflix series

Samsung had similar claims about v-nand/3D-nand, which they released on their 850 Pro series

profit is irrelevant. their capex is $1B-$2B per quarter. they could lower their capex at any point and show a few hundred million dollars net earnings. the point is that they are as big as they are and continue to invest in the future, and hence the insane p/e ratio and stock price

yes the measure they are talking about is market cap, not sales. the market cap for Wlmt includes sam's club, walmart.com, etc.

In terms of total sales, Wlmt (including subsidiaries) is close to $500B, while Amazon is approaching $100B. However, Wlmt.com (domestic) is only ~2% of total sales times $288B total domestic sales so only ~$5B sales

This was a long time coming. 20% growth on a business that is approaching $100B revenue (and probably 2-3x that in terms of GMV, a better measure of its size and dominance), and AWS continues to grow as does the digital side of the business. The crazy thing is that they still have low market share in several of the retail categories that its in (apparel, grocery, several product lines even in home, health & beauty, electronics, etc.)

Their achilles heal though continues to be browsability and searching. It is obviously a great place to go if you know exactly what you want, but continues to be a poor experience if you are browsing for an item or don't know what you want. There continues to be duplicate listings for the same items (some listed by 1st party and some by 3rd party), and it is very tough to browse items. Once they actually figure this out and implement, that's when this will really become game over (at least domestically)

While it is sexy to brand this (especially for media) as a 'threat' or 'will take on' Starbucks, that should not be the focus and it should instead be about delivering maximum value to its customers, which are likely going to be different customers than Starbucks customers. Starbucks customers go there for the customer experience, not for the coffee - there is better and cheaper coffee elsewhere, even McDonalds (literally).

I hope they are laser focused on their demographic and who their customer is rather than try to be the universal solution to coffee. A challenge will be how do you deliver the same exciting experience on a coffee stand without having the focus becoming operations and churning out coffee as quickly as possible. Most people can probably grab coffee at work for free if they wanted to but they choose to go to coffee shops for the "cool factor", and to feel like they are taking a break from their normal routine. If the person(s) running the stand need to be super friendly, engaging, fun, etc. if this is going to really take off, and experience shows us that is no leap of faith as you operationalize and expand locations so quickly.

This is a losing proposition. I am very familiar with the space (I used to manage one of the largest categories at Amazon), and there is a lot of blind faith in Jet. While I do think another player can co-exist in the domestic e-commerce space, winning on price is going to be a very tough battle for a variety of reasons (Amazon can strong arm vendors giving preferential pricing elsewhere), especially if it requires a $50 membership fee. IMO, ways to beat Amazon would need to focus on the searching/browsability of items, focusing on certain categories where Amazon has less direct relationships, etc., and I'm not yet convinced that Jet is focused enough to do that.