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Evidence receipt / uncertainty

Published · transcript-backed

Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

29 Aug 2016 Acquired Jet

“We don’t know what promises were made but this thing needs a ton of capital to grow.”

— Ben Gilbert

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
uncertainty
Recorded
29 Aug 2016
Publisher
Acquired
Episode
Jet

Transcript context

…Well, I think it’s a couple things. One, a lot of money. Walmart has way more money than Jet would ever be able to raise. So yeah, that’s an interesting thing that like if it really is true that they’re going to let Jet continue to be its own thing. I mean, it’s a tall order to hold Walmart to their word of continuing to pour money into this thing. We don’t know what promises were made but this thing needs a ton of capital to grow. Walmart’s effectively the best private investor or maybe the best since they didn’t have access to the public markets and definitely couldn’t have IPO’d. It’s like hey, this is actually a great place if they’re committed to it, fulfill our mission and just pour a ton of money into growing. I think that’s #2 which was Doug Mcmillon, the CEO of Walmart, you know, well, at least if you listen to the interviews after the acquisition and the press release, clearly has a man crush on Marc Lore. Doug has said Marc is basically going to have Carte Blanche to do what he needs to do to make this a successful business and all the resources he needs. Then I think the third asset that if I’m Marc I’m excited about is the customer base of Walmart, like the vision of Jet originally was to serve the middle class Americans that are price conscious, and that’s Walmart’s customer base.…

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