David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…So this is a good time. I mean, a lot of times we pause and wait for tech trends until later. For new listeners we’ve got our sections coming up. Our acquisition category, what would have happened otherwise, what tech theme does this illustrate for you, then we grade the acquisition. And rather than saving this for what tech themes, you know, David, is he wrong about the future, that the economics that the internet creates can turn retail into a winner-take-all market? Well, I think if you go back to our favorite analyst on this show, Ben Thompson, and the idea of aggregation theory, this kind of is the underpinning sort of ideology of the internet and internet business models is that you can take all of these industries that before the internet were by necessity fragmented and could have multiple winners because you needed physical store space in every market in town, and that led to some companies would do better in some locations and others and others. All of a sudden, there’s only storefront and it’s a website. That can lead to just this huge ability to aggregate. You know, if you can create the best customer experience – and we’ll get back to this a lot. I want to talk about the idea of the customer experience of Amazon versus the customer experience of Jet, that the best customer experience is going to win and be a winner-take-all. Yeah. I’m trying to look up a stat here. E-commerce has a percentage of US retail revenue. In 2012 – I’m sure it’s only a few percentage points more now – but in 2012, it was like 5 percent. Like there is so much of retail that is transacted physically that has yet to move to online. You and I were talking about this the other day about I’m doing the dumb thing where I try and time the market and wait for a little dip in Amazon so I can buy it and then realize that short-term little gain and then hold on to it for the long while. And you’re making the obvious point that, Ben, there’s so much retail that still has to move to online. There is 10x or 100x more growth left in this company if they continue to conquer the way that they are. I do wonder as all this, you know, the 90 percent of retail that’s left physically as it moves to online, it is that Marc Lore comment. Is history going to disprove that, right? Maybe it will be a winner-take-all market because if you vertically integrate and have all of the distribution centers –…

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