Marc Lore: Early competitive drive came from seeking father's love through achievement
Marc Lore · Diapers.com & Jet.com: Marc Lore · May 17, 2021 · at 9:15
Entrepreneur Marc Lore (founder of Diapers.com and Jet.com) reflects on the psychological roots of his intense ambition during childhood.
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“My dad, you know, was not completely present, and the only way to get my dad's attention was to do something extraordinary. So it's sort of programming as a young kid, like, to associate doing big things with feeling loved, basically. I didn't realize that growing up, obviously, it's only with therapy and as an adult, thinking back to that stuff, but That is ultimately where my drive came from. It didn't come from a healthy place.”
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More from Marc Lore
Lore: Quidsi rejected a competing buyout offer $100M higher after Amazon threats
“Yeah, it's even, even worse that we got a higher offer that we didn't take.”
Amazon threatened to drop diaper prices to zero if Quidsi resisted sale
“They said, well, yeah, we're gonna take the price of diapers to zero, and we're gonna, you know, and they made some analogies to some other, used explicit language, and it was pretty scary stuff.”
Quidsi rejected a $100M higher buyout offer due to Amazon retaliation threats
“Because Amazon very clearly stated that if we took that offer, they would do even more to harm the business.”
Amazon explicitly threatened to price diapers at zero to force Quidsi sale
“They said, well, yeah, we're gonna take the price of diapers to zero, and we're gonna, you know, and they made some analogies to some other, used explicit language, and it was pretty scary stuff. I'll just leave it at that.”
Lore pitched investors that Jet.com would lose $3B before turning profitable
“I told the investors we needed, we were gonna lose three billion dollars.”
Jet.com raised a $618M Series A while operating with negative gross margins
“But the real key was raising, we did a six hundred and eighteen million dollar Series A. So we'd raised some money before that, and then we had the six hundred million Series A. That was a really tough round to get done. That was, at that time, we had negative…”