Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That's not really the interesting analysis though. The interest analysis is if you bought into this IPO and you are still holding the shares today, obviously, you're feeling good. Actually, even more interesting is, say you bought into the IPO planning to hold for a decade (at least). How good do we think a decision was that? Right. That gets into the question of which of the three horses do you want? Do you want JD, Pinduoduo, or Taobao? Of those who have benefited from coronavirus, Pinduoduo has benefited much more than the users that JD, Taobao, and Tmall have added. They have taken meaningful shares away from Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba. The bet that you have to make is that they're going to, over time, do a good job of monetizing this so far valuable but not that valuable user base. I guess the structural question is the things that they're really good at—this gamification, retention, virality, team buying—are those things going to help them acquire the future users that they need to acquire and extract more dollars from their existing base? I don't know if the answer to that is yes. There's definitely a big aspect of what you said a minute ago, Ben, of what got you here isn't going to get you there going on in the company. The question is, do they know? I think they probably do know that. Are they capable of building the next act? This is actually a case where the most recent news is a little consuming, perhaps.…

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