Marc Lore explains his M&A barbell thesis on why mid-market startup acquisitions are the hardest deals to pull off.
Disclosure
Marc Lore refuses to interview candidates with lateral career moves
“Any kind of deviation to that, I don't, I just don't even, won't even interview. So a lateral move, out. Right. You know, move from a Google to Kmart. Sorry, Kmart, but out. Like, I just, I, anything, any little, like, tap that says not top five percent, and s…”
Insight
Marc Lore: Elite talent consistently makes step-function career moves
“Top five percenters, top 10 percentage of the elite people, when they move in step fashion. It'll be a bigger title, much bigger role, or a better company, and they'll get in that company, and they will be promoted multiple times, and then they'll leave, and t…”
Insight
Marc Lore rejects the 'trust but verify' management model
“A lot of people say, oh, trust, of course, trust, but verify. And I don't believe in the, but verify. I think you start out trusting people and until they prove otherwise. And it's very, Risky because you can get burned, but I've seen the power of the upside o…”
Disclosure
Marc Lore uses open compensation with identical pay per level
“That's why I have a open comp system where everybody knows what everybody else is making and everybody at the same level makes the same amount of money. So women, minorities, everybody makes the same. There's no like this idea that maybe it's not fair.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Marc Lore: Retail search engines will be obsolete in 20 years
“The idea of like search engine, 20 years from now is going to be laughably like the cassette tape. It's like, wait, so dad used to like go, you wanted to buy a toast and you typed in toaster in this like search engine and you had 10,000 responses and you had t…”
Disclosure
Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez launch venture fund VCP
“Alex and I A-Rod just started a venture fund called VCP, Vision Capital People. We believe that there's a really big hole in the market for people with big visionary ideas to get a big infusion of capital early, like when they have nothing, so they can go out …”