Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I just feel like today, Walmart would have been like a hot venture-backed startup. It's interesting. The question with applying technology to an existing market is always, what are you using the technology for? I always think about this with tech-enabled businesses. Okay, what are you using technology for, and how does it make your financial statements of your business at maturity look better? Are you using it to consolidate back office operations to make your company more operationally efficient, and thus lower your cost structure, and thus with the same amount of revenue, you just run at better margins? Or you're using it because you're able to get a better distribution? The Internet enables you to generate way more revenue because you're able to reach way more customers on the same set of costs. I was thinking about it as like, what are you actually using technology for in your business, and does that make it a meaningfully better business than non tech-enabled incumbents? I think there’s a lot of stuff in the world today that is a tech enabled thing, that is not all that tech-enabled when you look at the financials. Yup, but Walmart is a perfect example of a tech-enabled business that is the right way to do it.…

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