David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…Right. Zero inventory risk. Zero inventory risk. I mean, when we talked about the Webvan boat flipping upside down, it was that they had plowed so much money into inventory and their fulfillment centers. Then when they were losing money on every order and a tidal wave of demand came in, they didn’t fail because people didn’t want the product. It failed because the capital demand has gotten too great on the business. That’s how they lost all of the $800 million they raised. Instacart doesn’t have that problem. More demand is more gross market for them. So that’s good. And I think with this acquisition, what this is certainly going to do in the medium term is it is going to drive everybody in the grocery, pharmacy, any local retail space. If they weren’t afraid of Amazon already, they’re going to be driven into the arms of Instacart. I think probably starting with Trader Joe’s, like if Instacart can land Trader Joe’s, to my mind they’re sort of the last bastion of differentiation in this space, and they’re sure as heck not going anywhere near Amazon after the Whole Foods acquisition. So I don’t think all is lost. Then the other thing for Instacart is of course the other player in the commerce space which is Walmart which has been very inquisitive. Acquired Jet, just also acquired Bonobos today in a story that was vastly overshadowed by Whole Foods; that acquired ModCloth, plenty of others. They are going to be very interested in this space too. And Walmart’s in food. I mean, they have the superstores. They’re effectively just huge grocery stores attached to Walmart.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.