Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…To think about that, you're going to earn $50 in contribution margin profit over five years. That means consumers are spending 25X of that in terms of the dollars they're spending on the platform. That's a huge amount of economic activity you're generating. By keeping those margins lower, this is the whole thing about flying close to the ground, Bezos says your margin’s my opportunity. You're generating more value for consumers, and for the restaurants, and the Dashers in the platform, presumably too by keeping that lower. Other people won't be able to match that. You get more density, you grow over time. The flywheel spins here. So, $50 bucks to you, but what's that $2500 in spend that the customers are doing over five years? Can that grow as you add new categories? I think it could. You better hope if you're a buyer of this stock that it can grow as they add new categories. David, this is the best illustration yet of the whole point we've been trying to make on this episode, which is in order to try and be profitable and grow without massive investor influxes of cash. In order to be a cash flow positive company who is profitable and growing in this category, you have to fly so freaking close to the wire, if it can be done at all, and the best possible illustration is for one order, one $30.36 order, they get to keep 80 cents. Boy, are they working hard to get that 80 cents. They have to believe that they're providing tons of value all around the ecosystem and betting that there's going to be a crap ton of those transactions in order for you to believe that this business can eventually spin off a lot of cash. Indeed.…

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