Marc Lore recounts acquisition negotiations for Quidsi (Diapers.com) in 2010, revealing why the company accepted Amazon's buyout over a higher competing bid.
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Partly supported
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…”
Disclosure
Walmart acquired Bonobos strategically to change its image and attract elite talent
“The most strategic part of the plan was to change the narrative. I knew that we didn't have the talent inside of Walmart at the time to do what we needed to do. We had to attract the best people in the world, and at that point, you know, honestly, that wasn't …”