Billionaire Marc Lore on What He Would Build Today and Future of Ecommerce | My First Million #186

Hire Right, Invest Right, Build Right - May 26, 2021 (almost 4 years ago) • 01:13:22

This My First Million podcast episode features e-commerce expert Marc Lore. Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discuss Lore's entrepreneurial journey, from selling Diapers.com to Amazon to founding Jet.com and selling it to Walmart. They also explore Lore's current ventures, including his acquisition of the Minnesota Timberwolves and his investment philosophy.

Marc Lore's Approach to Business: Lore emphasizes a "vision, capital, people" (VCP) framework. He believes in securing significant capital early on to hire the best team possible. He prioritizes a clear vision and empowering his team, allowing him to pursue multiple ventures simultaneously.
Hiring Philosophy: Lore focuses on demonstrable success in a candidate's resume, prioritizing consistent growth and significant career advancements. He looks for specific traits (SPOTTIC): smart, passionate, optimistic, tenacious, adaptable, kind, and empathetic.
Investment Philosophy: Lore focuses on large total addressable markets (TAMs) and disruptive ideas. He prefers B2C businesses and looks for opportunities where the "puck is going," citing examples like food delivery, telehealth, and conversational commerce.
Ideas for a $100 Million Company: In response to Sam's question, Lore suggests focusing on niche technologies within e-commerce, like virtual fitting technology for apparel, to address the high return rates in online clothing sales.
The Barbell Strategy for Exits: Lore explains that selling a company for between $10 million and $100 million presents unique challenges. Smaller "acqui-hires" and large strategic acquisitions are easier to execute.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	I want to create a company, and I want to sell it for $100,000,000 or more to Walmart or Amazon in 3 years. What opportunities exist in the e-commerce or commerce world that Walmart or Amazon would buy my company? They desperately need something that I'm selling or some type of...
00:16	Shaan Puri	solution that
00:17	Marc Lore	I've created would you like him to do anything else for you sam
00:17	Shaan Puri	the most specific question no that that that's actually not that specific
00:26	Marc Lore	a
00:36	Shaan Puri	Alright, today we have Mark Laurrie on the podcast. This guy is an OG of e-commerce. He sold Diapers.com to Amazon for, I don't know, $600,000,000. He created Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.5 billion. He's a good guy, and both Sam and I were pretty blown away. We kind of felt like little fanboys of his right now! We enjoyed the episode; he had a bunch of good ideas. He talked about how to raise a lot of money to pursue a big vision. Sam asked him a great question: "If I wanted to start a company today that I could sell for $100,000,000 to Amazon or Walmart, what product would you recommend I start?" He had a fantastic answer. At the beginning, he discussed his approach to why he bought the Minnesota Timberwolves and how he's going to run the team. He also shared insights on how he builds his team and hires people. So, the beginning is more philosophical, while the end is filled with ideas.
01:32	Sam Parr	And he also had a great answer. I asked him, "When you bought the basketball team, did you just send a huge wire?" Just hearing those details is really interesting. But we do a whole debrief, a long debrief, at the end of this episode, which you might even find more interesting than the actual episode. It's always fun to discuss. I always find the recap to be one of the most exciting parts, so give it a listen.
01:52	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but he was great! I think you're going to love it. We liked him so much that we wanted him to come back. One hour was not enough. Here's what we ask you to do: listen to the episode. If you're liking it, he said he's big on LinkedIn. So go to his LinkedIn. His name is Mark Lohre, last name is spelled L-O-H-R-E. Just go comment on one of his LinkedIn posts and say, "Hey, if you liked the episode, just tell him you loved the episode and want him to come back." I think if he gets enough messages, we will be able to bring him back on and go deeper on a bunch of ideas that we didn't get to discuss today. Alright, here's the episode. Enjoy! Okay, cool. So we have a guest here. Sam, do you want to tee them up? Who is on the line?
02:32	Sam Parr	Yes, so eCommerce tycoon, successful billionaire, and as of 2017, exceptionally jacked and bald. Mark, I have to ask you, which of these is your favorite part of Jeff Bezos?
02:49	Shaan Puri	sam's been polishing that one up for the last time we're in
02:52	Sam Parr	A band? No, Mark. Laurie, we have Mark. You've done a lot of stuff. You've started four different things, right? Four different startups that have successfully exited. The most popular one is probably...
03:04	Marc Lore	A few more that are in stealth that I'm really excited about. Maybe I can share a little bit about them.
03:09	Sam Parr	But yeah, we want to learn all about it. The biggest one was Jet.com; that's probably one everyone knows. Before that, you did Diapers.com, which you sold to Amazon for approximately $550 million.
03:22	Shaan Puri	That one might have been bigger because it was sold to Amazon very early, and Amazon has appreciated a lot since then. So maybe that one... I don't know. You tell us which one ends up being bigger: is it the early one or Jet?
03:33	Marc Lore	I think, no, definitely. I mean, the Smart stock doubled over the last four and a half years, so that was a good one.
03:40	Shaan Puri	I gotta thank you for that. When they bought you, I bought the stock because I was like, "Yeah, there's plenty of room to run here for Walmart e-commerce." And yeah, I feel like I was a part of the company. I won a little bit as well, just off the news.
03:53	Sam Parr	Man, you also sold the company called The Pit, which sold the tops. That was for $5.7 million, right?
03:59	Shaan Puri	back in the day in the day
04:01	Sam Parr	And prior to that, you worked in banking. But before that, you were a runner. So, I was a runner. I ran the 200 meters and 400 meters. What was your... well, I ran high 20s for the 200 and 48s for the 400.
04:15	Marc Lore	Well, same, same with me. Almost exactly the same. Yeah, high 20s, high 40s, exactly. Yeah.
04:22	Sam Parr	well the same
04:23	Marc Lore	I got slower as the distance got longer. The 400 [meter] was sort of long. I was better at the 60-yard and 100-200 [meter races], but yeah...
04:34	Sam Parr	what was your 100 meter pr
04:36	Marc Lore	1074
04:38	Sam Parr	Wow, and was that fat? Did they do 1,074? Yeah, wow. Well, that's pretty... you're moving!
04:43	Marc Lore	So, I'm slow. I didn't have the endurance to keep it up, you know, in the 2 and the 4. But yeah.
04:49	Sam Parr	So, you've done a lot of stuff. You've done a ton of recent things and a ton of stuff in the past. But even the stuff you're doing now is also interesting. You guys made a bid for the Timberwolves, right?
04:59	Marc Lore	yeah we actually it went through so we signed that's the
05:02	Sam Parr	only time
05:03	Marc Lore	Agreement. So, yeah, we're just going through the NBA approval process now. Then, I hope to close probably in about 6 weeks.
05:09	Shaan Puri	And your part was that a dream? Like, you know, I've had this dream as a kid that I want to own an NBA team. That's the essence of doing business.
05:17	Marc Lore	out you know as a really small kid it was like play professional sports
05:21	Sam Parr	of course
05:21	Shaan Puri	that's where
05:21	Marc Lore	You start every kid... You eventually realize, "Okay, it's not gonna be that sport. It's not gonna be that sport." It's not, you know? And then I was like, "Oh, maybe you know, it would be decathlete. You know, and go to the Olympics." And then I was like, "Okay, that's not gonna happen." Like, alright, forget it. You know what? I'm just gonna... like, one day own a team. That's what I'll do.
05:40	Shaan Puri	that's amazing
05:40	Marc Lore	So that was the dream, you know? I was a huge sports fan growing up. Followed every sport, watched every game... I was a huge Knicks fan. Then, you know, I had two kids and life happens. You sort of get a little bit detached from sports. But I love it, I'm excited to dive back in and have a reason to.
05:59	Shaan Puri	It seems like back, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago, the sports team thing was like, "You've made it." It's like buying a car, right? It's like, "I buy my toy. I always wanted this toy. This is kind of a lifelong dream." I think it's obviously still kind of a passion thing, but also the business merits of buying a team as an investment have actually become a pretty big deal. These franchises have appreciated like crazy because there are only, whatever, 30 of them, and there are sort of more billionaires than there are teams. So, give me a pie chart. What percentage of this was just, "I just want to have it," like art, versus, "This is actually a good business decision"? How do you think about that?
06:40	Marc Lore	Yeah, it's probably 80% the former and 20% a good investment. It's not so much about being a great investment; it's just about not losing money. And I'm going to have a lot of fun. Anytime you can have a lot of fun and not lose money, like I love going to the horse track. You have a lot of fun, but you also spend a lot of money. I kind of like this approach, where you can have a lot of fun and maybe make a little bit of money too. It's like perfect. I'm excited about innovating. I think there's a lack of real innovation in sports in general, especially in the application of a technology mindset. How do you bring augmented reality to the entertainment experience? How do you move to dynamic announcing so you can choose your announcer? Dynamic real-time ticketing is another idea. I want people to be able to move to any open seat in the stadium at any time. I've got all these tech ideas on how to augment the experience, and it's just fun to have a platform to be able to buy these things and try them out. And even, you know, what's the "Moneyball" version of basketball? As a mid-market team, how do you win? What's the strategy? Thinking that through, how do you apply the same techniques of vision, capital, and people? What's the mission? What are the values? What do you stand for? How do you show up every day? How do you live those values? Treat it like a real startup. To date, I've talked to a lot of people, and it doesn't really seem like anybody's gone down that path yet.
08:14	Sam Parr	And are you just going to run this like a company? I mean, you're incredibly successful at running companies, but you don't... I mean, you know a bit about sports, I imagine. But like, this is totally outside of everything that you've done. You've done e-commerce.
08:25	Marc Lore	You're both... I love the challenge because every business that I get into, I don't know anything about it when I start. I didn't know anything about retail when I did Diapers.com. I didn't know anything about the pit when I started that. I've started a bunch of startups recently, and I don't know anything about that either. I'm starting and building the city, I'm doing a reality TV show, and I'm doing these things. You know, it comes down to vision, capital, and people. You have to have the vision and just think about it. Share it with people like a piece of clay; you keep molding the vision. Molding it like, "Wow, this is a big vision!" Everyone agrees, "This is freaking huge!" Okay, great. How are we going to capitalize it? Great, that's what I do. I raise money. I have lots of connections with investors. I've raised over $1 billion. So, like, okay, we're going to capitalize it. And then the third part, which is the most important and the hardest to get right, is people. It's finding a great CEO and a great executive leadership team. Setting the values, setting the mission, the corporate culture, getting the org structure right, getting the right people in the right spots, and creating a culture where you get the very best out of each person that you bring in. Then you kind of just sit back. You're there as a strategic adviser. I think if you try to just sit, you know, micromanage, and make decisions when you don't have the experience, that's where you get in trouble. You know, if I were to come into the team and say, "You know, I think you should draft so-and-so," or "Why are we doing this?" or "We should be playing this," that's not going to work. I just don't... I think, "Who is the very best person in the world to run this part of the business? To run that part of the business? To be the chief people officer? To bring in the very best talent and create a great culture?" Who are the best people in the world? Get them in the right spots and the right positions. If the vision is right and everybody's clear exactly where you're going, what the north star is, and you've got great people who are happy and empowered, great things will happen. That allows me to do multiple things at the same time now because, you know, I'm not getting into the weeds of it.
10:24	Sam Parr	a lot of your companies did or how much do you guys raise at diapers.com
10:30	Marc Lore	diapers were raised 55,000,000
10:32	Sam Parr	okay so that's a lot but not close to I mean jet was what like a bill I mean because
10:37	Marc Lore	jet raised you know like 800,000,000
10:42	Sam Parr	So, substantially larger, although both are quite large. This idea of being able to hire the best in the world and being able to hire people to do a lot of the work that they specialize in... Could you have done that if you were bootstrapping your companies?
10:57	Marc Lore	No, I mean, that's why, you know, we started. Alex and I, Erod, 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 significant infusion of capital early, like when they have nothing. This way, they can go out and hire the very best team in the world. I think a lot of startups face a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation: how do you get the capital unless you have the team? You can't hire the team until you have the capital, but you don't get enough capital until you prove it. So, you get $1,000,000, then you get $5,000,000, then you get $10,000,000. At each step of the way, you're sort of on a tight wire. You know, you're basically one little thing away from going wrong. So many investors lose confidence, or you overpromise and underdeliver. Lots of things could go wrong. We basically say, "No, Vision Capital People, you have a big vision. We know this could be a really big idea. We know somebody's going to do this. It's the right time to do it. Let's not undercapitalize it. Here's $10,000,000 in seed funding. Go out and hire the best team in the world." That puts you in a position to have the best shot at a really successful business. If you have the best people, the capital, and the vision right, you're a player now. Worst case, you're going to exit; somebody's going to pick it up because you've got great people, it's the right time, and it's a big vision.
12:16	Shaan Puri	What do you think? So, there's the case where that clearly is what happened, and it worked. Then you see something like Quibi, where clearly successful people at the start raised a bunch of money—raised about $1,000,000,000 or so, maybe even more than that. They had a big vision: "Hey, we're going to rethink Netflix for mobile." But it didn't quite hit it, and they're burning a lot of money. So even though they raised a lot, their burn still left them with, I don't know how many, you know, the same sort of two years of runway or whatever it was that a normal startup has. So how do you think about that? Do you think it's just a numbers game? It doesn't always work out? Or do you think there's something different in the strategy that maybe they could have done, or you've done differently, that leads to better results?
12:59	Marc Lore	Yeah, I don't know that intimately. Do you know the story? I do think that's probably more the exception than the rule. I mean, I think... wait, listen, startups don't all work, so some of them don't work. Do I think it had a higher probability of working because it was a big vision? They had a lot of capital and great people? Yeah, I think it does. Specifically, why it didn't work... the only thing from the outside looking in was: were the most talented people in the organization fully committed and all in to it? That's the only thing I wonder. I don't know. Obviously, you had really talented people, but were they dedicating their lives to it? You need somebody in these businesses that's sort of like, "I'm running this business and dedicating my life to it." It doesn't have to be necessarily the person that's doing the VC at the top, but who is that person? And do you have the right team to support? So, I don't know the answer to that. That's where I'd probably wonder.
13:53	Shaan Puri	And so, Sam and I talk about this a lot because we think about, "Alright, what's next for us?" We’ve got some money in the bank, we’ve got time, and we have all these dreams about what we might want to do. One of the paths is similar to yours, where you, as an entrepreneur, can see these opportunities. You can be the spark that helps start them, but you're not necessarily going to be the day-to-day operator in the weeds, maybe like you were with your first startup.
14:15	Marc Lore	right
14:16	Shaan Puri	And some people, like you, seem to be pretty successful with this model. It seems like it's dependent on those three things you talked about: 1. Having the right vision 2. Shaping that first 3. Getting capital in Then recruiting the right people. On the people part, take us into a job interview with you. Obviously, there's the standard stuff, you know... you ask what they've [done in the past, their experience, etc.].
14:35	Marc Lore	what they've let me say I I've hired I've tried to calculate it but over a 1000 people right that I personally like you know interviewed in my career and I've honed over the years and it's changed my thinking has changed on hiring people resumes and I've I've I've gone from you know early in my career when I first started you know I just wanna feel like I wanna have a beer with this person right and I realize how wrong that is and people make that mistake today and it leads to all kinds of unconscious bias and things like that it's the worst possible thing to do I spend an incredible amount of time upfront on resume reading which I never used to do before I used to be like hey this person's great oh they they were a cfo I'm looking for a cfo you say they're great come on in let's interview them I I don't listen to what people tell me necessarily about people because there's always somebody out there that'll say something good about everybody and so I kinda just discount that for the most part there might be a select couple people that I really trust that like you work with this person trust me they're they're top 5% okay but that'll show on the resume and so when I look at the resume like I'm looking for a demonstrable level of success in whatever they do so I'm think I get into their mind I start at the beginning when they graduate school and it doesn't matter what school they go to but but they graduate they go into into a company if if they're there for a few years did they get promoted like what did the trajectory look like and then the most important part when they leave that company and go to a new company is it something that a top 5 percenter would do top 5 percenters move in a certain way that you start to learn machine learn these these you know trends right and top 5 percenters top 10 percentage of the elite people when they move 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 there'll be another step change and so I'm looking for that like multi company movement within the company and big step changes any kind of any kind of deviation to that I don't I just don't even won't even do so a lateral move out right you know move from a a a Google to kmart sorry kmart but out like I I just I anything any little like tap that says not top 5% and somebody could say hey but that's not fair like I'm actually good or this person's great I'm like you know what I'm not gonna interview because you know what there's a chance I get honey potted right honey potted everyone's everyone experienced this you basically bring somebody in for an interview the resume is maybe not ideal they come in you spend 1 hour with them and you just really like them and they throw some buzzwords around they've got all experience and you're like hired think about that I mean you're committing to like hire somebody and keep them in your company hopefully for years to be an important part of the company and like you have an hour with them maybe you have multiple people spend an hour but it's still a pretty small amount of time and and so I don't let myself get honeypotted I've been honeypotted many times in the past and I unless that resume screams superstar which again it's only 5 out of a 100 resumes if you say top 5% or 10 out of 10 1 out of 10 and be really like say no no no it's hard because you're tempted like oh they have good experience this person whatever no so when I interview someone I know that they're a superstar on the resume and so I can focus primarily on core values and their spotic traits so spotic is an acronym I come up with for traits I look for in people I hire smart passionate optimistic tenacious adaptable kind and empathetic and the last 2 are really important kind and kindness and empathy I found over the years and you can get somebody that's super tenacious passion that will run through a brick wall but also run through people and over people and they're not you find somebody that has the passion they're optimistic and tenacious and adaptable because you need that in start up but at the same time they're very kind and empathetic and you get that person that's able to balance that that's magic and so those are the things and and the interview questions have nothing to do I won't ask one traditional interview question they'll all be questions to open them up to to try to get at what makes them tick and do they exhibit these traits
19:09	Shaan Puri	And you know, I have this theory. If you work in tech, you meet so many smart people that "smart" becomes kind of like table stakes. Great, everybody's super intelligent. Well, now what? Clearly, being smart isn't the only thing that leads to success. You need a whole bunch of other things that you mentioned. I sort of found what's in rare supply. So, which of those traits is in the most rare supply? I'll give you my opinion. I found that two really simple ones tend to be, to me, the lowest in supply and have a pretty outsized impact in startups. Those two are energy or enthusiasm. I think bringing energy to the table every day is quite contagious, and you need it at the beginning when you're starting something from scratch. It seems like one of those "duh" things—anyone can do it. Yeah, anyone can do it, but most people don't. The other one is courage. The courage to either build something new, say something that's on your mind, or not let something that's below our standards go. Courage, I feel, is in extremely short supply.
20:13	Marc Lore	yeah you you actually take risk too
20:15	Sam Parr	right I call it boldness we call it bold at our company right yep but yeah
20:20	Shaan Puri	Do you feel like when you meet people, is there something you're just like, "Ah, I wish more people had X"? What is X for you that you feel like is in short supply?
20:28	Marc Lore	you know I mean what you said there so when I say you know passionate and optimism I think optimism is you know the sort of the optimism that allows you to be bold and take risk and it's that optimism that you believe not only great things can happen but also believe that people are good like your starting place is that is just an optimistic view of the world I think that's really important and it allows you to trust which is one of the core values in in in in in all my companies I think trust is really important if you want to create a culture where the company trusts the employees and the employees trust the company that's really important to create an environment where people are happy and feel empowered and they feel a sense of ownership trust is so I have this idea that you know a lot of people say you all trust of course trust but verify and I don't believe in the but verify right 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 of trusting somebody before they've necessarily proven that they deserve it it's incredibly powerful motivator and I've seen it in my personal life I've seen it in business people wanna they wanna run through a wall for you when you're like wait you trust me but you can I can burn you I can yeah but I trust you are you gonna burn me of course not you know you're trusting me I'm not gonna burn you that is an incredible value that I've learned it's it's trust transparency being really open with your employees not hiding not secretive here's the cap table here's the rounds of financing here's the numbers here's all the information you need this I'm an open book what do you wanna know like there's no secrets here you right work in this company you're an owner you have stock options trust transparency the other one is fairness that it's really important that people feel in order to create an inclusive diverse workforce you have to create a safe work environment where people feel safe coming to work they have to feel like it's fair they there should never be this feeling of like that's not fair 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 my colleague why is my colleague that I do the same job why are they making more money than me that sort of thing which is usually a big reason why people lose trust and they don't feel like giving you everything they've got and so I kinda take that off the table so those are the three primary values so you have the values of the organization how they live them and then the traits that you look for in people you hire I mean you kinda get that right I think it's it's magical thing
23:20	Sam Parr	Where did this confidence come from? Because having the confidence to hire the top 5% is a pretty big deal.
23:27	Shaan Puri	it's high school track days sam yeah same place your confidence comes from
23:31	Sam Parr	no no
23:31	Marc Lore	It's actually just trial and error. Failing a lot early on... you know, well, just somebody I want to have a beer with. It's making those mistakes, getting honey-potted, hiring a person, and then going through the pain of having to let them go and replace them. There are so many lessons. I make so many fewer mistakes now than I did early in my career because I see everyone makes the same mistakes. That's why I like to talk about it. It's the same mistakes, and people say, "Yeah, you know, I guess you're right." There was, you know, the resume kind of did, but I was kind of like, "Well, the person said they were good. I liked them," and so I hired them. You have to be really, you know, extremely focused and selective in that. The other thing, by the way, it does help with unconscious bias too. If you're inclined, when you go through the resume and bring them in, it's not about whether I like the person. They've already shown that they're rock solid, and you really can focus on spotting and sort of help there.
24:38	Sam Parr	So, I want to ask you about... I mean, I think we should ask you about ideas. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask one quick question. You left banking in '96, right?
24:49	Marc Lore	no it was 99
24:51	Sam Parr	Okay, what? And then I'm looking at some information here on your timeline. You started this thing called "The Pit." The Pit was in the internet marketing space.
25:01	Marc Lore	Yeah, it's basically a sports stock market. We used to avoid gambling, so we used the baseball card as a proxy for the athlete. But essentially, it was meant to be a sort of sports stock market where you buy and sell players like stock.
25:15	Sam Parr	and you sold that for like $6,000,000
25:18	Marc Lore	Yeah, that was right after the whole NASDAQ crashed in 2000. I don't know if you guys remember, like it went down... I don't know, 80% or something. And yeah, there was no way to raise any venture money. We only started it maybe 10 months earlier, and we were able to raise $5,000,000 and sold it for $5.7 [million]. Everybody's like, "Yeah, do it! This is a great exit!" And we're like, "Okay, well then we'll do it again. Let's... that's great. We'll sell this and get the next idea."
25:45	Sam Parr	That's what I was going to ask you. How could you sell for $6,000,000 after such a short amount of time? But I guess the answer is, well, because you raised a fair bit, at least for $6,000,000.
25:56	Marc Lore	Yeah, it was just... I think it was just, you know, the tops at the time were interested in the people that we'd hired. We hired a great team. We had a vision for what we wanted, and they were there to provide some capital. So, yeah.
26:09	Shaan Puri	So, let's talk about some ideas that you would need optimism about right now. I think we could discuss Jet, for example. It takes some courage and optimism to go after that prize and basically compete with the empire of Amazon. But we'll come back to that. I want to start with where you need to be optimistic today. What are you optimistic about? What ideas are you considering? I know you've talked about startup cities. I don't know if that's the one you want to discuss or if you have some others. So, share some ideas of what you think is exciting and that you're optimistic about, even if maybe the whole world isn't. You know, it's not proven yet.
26:42	Sam Parr	mhmm
26:42	Marc Lore	I mean, I tend to gravitate more towards B2C (business to consumer) businesses. I just like consumer businesses, and I think it's easier to understand some of those businesses compared to, you know, a biomedical company or something like that. It's harder to wrap your arms around. Most of the ideas and thinking I do is in the B2C world across lots of different industries. I've made a number of investments, and I'm involved with a few companies I'm really excited about. One is Archer, which is basically a passenger drone company. I think of it as an autonomous electric helicopter that flies passengers around. It's safer than a helicopter.
27:27	Shaan Puri	the spac that you did
27:29	Marc Lore	Yeah, it did a SPAC a couple of months ago, and it's going through the SEC process now.
27:35	Sam Parr	that's crazy
27:36	Marc Lore	I'm super excited! That was a great VCP. So, the two founders came over; they actually sat on the couch right here. They said, "We got this vision for these flying cars, these drones that carry passengers. It's the right time. This is why it's the right time, Mark. This is how big the industry is going to be. This is why it's going to work. This is why the technology is right." I was really taken by the vision. I thought they had it nailed. They said, "Hey, we need $5,000,000 now. We're going to hire the best engineers in the world. We're going to take them from the best companies. We're going to go raise $50,000,000 and build the state of the art, the latest and greatest of these aircraft." I thought the two founders were exceptional. It was a great start to the founding part of the VCP. I thought, "Okay, I'll give them the $5,000,000, and I'll help them hire this team and help them raise the $50,000,000, and then you're on your own." That's what we did. I put in $5,000,000, we helped hire the engineering talent, and we helped them raise $50,000,000. That was two years ago, and then they just raised $1,000,000,000 through this back. So now, it's a $4,000,000,000, or $3,700,000,000 market cap or something. It was really just an idea on this couch two years ago. But it shows you, like what I was saying before, about rather than going through this process of like seed, can't hire the great team, the chicken and egg thing, it's like, "Here's $5,000,000, and let's get the team and simultaneously go and raise $50,000,000." In a very short order, they had $55,000,000 and the best team. I do think they've built the very best aircraft in the industry right now, and they're on their way. It's a massive TAM, and so I'm looking at opportunities like that. I can tell you about some other ones too.
29:18	Sam Parr	yeah go
29:18	Marc Lore	Yeah, well, another one that was in the news is basically mobile kitchens. So, looking at the trends in food delivery, millennials and Gen Z not wanting to cook, and wanting food delivered... I just saw that it sort of takes a long time to get it delivered. Inconsistent quality suffers in transit, and it's expensive. I thought, "Oh, if you can solve those three things, how do you do it?" Well, what if you cooked in a mobile kitchen? If the restaurant basically came to you and cooked in your driveway, it would be much faster because the truck's already on the road and they're likely just minutes away. So, I made a pretty big bet on that company. It's still in stealth mode, but I'm really excited about it. I think there's a lot of potential.
30:07	Shaan Puri	How's that different than a food truck? So, it's a mobile kitchen, but it's for multiple types of food. Or...?
30:12	Marc Lore	How do you like it? Each mobile kitchen is a different restaurant with a different cuisine. The idea is to get the best restaurant of that cuisine in the country and sort of bring it to a central place. You know, it's high-quality food that's piping hot and delivered to your door fast. That's exciting! I think there's a big market for food; that's where the puck's going. I think there are lots of things happening now with laws changing in sports gambling and things. I think there are really big opportunities there to maybe bring back some of what I did before with that.
30:50	Sam Parr	and what what was that exactly
30:53	Marc Lore	what you
30:54	Shaan Puri	said you're talking about the pit yeah
30:56	Sam Parr	but you said bringing it back before
30:58	Marc Lore	No, just... and now with the gambling laws changing, I think it's an opportunity to create a true sports stock market and do it right. Like where it really feels like you're buying and selling players like stock, by leveraging some of the changes in gambling laws.
31:13	Sam Parr	Have you seen something? I mean, Sean was really into this big club. Did you see that?
31:18	Marc Lore	no I didn't
31:19	Sam Parr	You don't know what Big Club is? Oh my gosh, Sean, you want to explain? I mean, it's pretty much what you're describing.
31:26	Shaan Puri	So, what they did was they basically took Twitter and turned it into a social network where you don't just follow a person; you can invest in them. The cool thing about this was that they took the top 10,000 Twitter accounts and raised, I think, $150,000,000 from VCs here in Silicon Valley. They used this money to pre-buy and invest in all those accounts. So, on day one, when I walked in, they said, "Hey, if you sign up for Bitcloud, if you claim your account and verify it"—basically meaning you tweet out that, "Hey, this is my Bitcloud"—I walked into like $75,000 worth of my own coin, worth of my own stock. Others were already buying it because they were saying, "Hey, if Sean joins, we think that he might continue to grow his following, and so we want to invest." The idea being, we've all had this experience where you discover a band early, or an athlete early, or a content creator online—a blog. If you see them before they're huge, but you really like their stuff, you can buy their coin. It's like every single person gets their own little Bitcoin, basically. As more people buy it, yours appreciates. So, as a curator, as a fan, you get to sort of go along for the ride with the star themselves.
32:44	Marc Lore	Everything is unique to value. Ultimately, I think that's the key. A lot of these things fall down in the end, so they don't have a ton of intrinsic value.
32:52	Shaan Puri	They don't have a ton of intrinsic value. The one thing that it does have is now, as the creator, I have all these shareholders, right? Some people own tens of thousands, some people own a thousand, and some people own $100 of my coin. I can then basically reward my shareholders. In the stock market, you give out a dividend, or you can reward your shareholders in this way. I could do the same. I could literally say, "Hey, for whatever I earn this month, my shareholders are going to get their proportionate share." I could also say, "Hey, we're going to do a version of this podcast that only my shareholders get to listen to," right? Like an OnlyFans or these different products that sort of say, "If you're a subscriber of mine, then you get the content." So, you can kind of pay... well...
33:34	Marc Lore	the content it's a dynamic membership almost like a membership that can I
33:38	Shaan Puri	[Creators] can come up with whatever perks they want for their members. So then the creators all jockey to offer better value to their holders because their stock appreciates. The more incentivizing they make it, the more valuable it becomes. Now, this is a 1 in 1,000 idea, but I do think there's something interesting here.
33:54	Marc Lore	I think there's something interesting. Yeah, it certainly sounds interesting. I tend to shy away from things where I don't see the 20-year or 30-year intrinsic value, like how it ultimately could lead to a great exit. With gambling laws changing, there's a way to give players intrinsic value. You basically say, "At the end of somebody's career, I'm going to pay you based on their career stats." So, you know, this rookie comes up and it has real value because the exchange, the stock market, is giving it intrinsic value by providing a predetermined amount of money based on certain stats over their career. That kind of...
34:34	Shaan Puri	That’s kind of interesting. So, you could say the house basically sets the line. Let's say Zion comes into the league and we say, "Okay, the house believes that Zion..." you know, the market, the line gets set that Zion's going to be a Hall of Fame player. Maybe that means X, Y, and Z stats: this many MVPs, this many points, whatever it is.
34:53	Marc Lore	do you think it's better than that you buy
34:55	Shaan Puri	You buy if you think that's not going to happen. You don't buy, or you short. Basically, the career is that you get to predict the player's journey. The better you do, then it's like being a super fan, basically.
35:07	Marc Lore	as yeah
35:08	Shaan Puri	The better they perform, you feel like you're being vindicated. You're actually going to economically benefit from having identified somebody who's going to perform higher than what the market thinks. That's cool.
35:17	Marc Lore	yeah yeah exactly
35:18	Sam Parr	What I think I read somewhere is that you like to look at Google Trends a lot. Because you're a serial entrepreneur, you invest in a lot of stuff. You're always looking for trends and what's popular. What I want to know is, what signals do you look for to figure out where you're going to go? Also, what signal told you that Jet was interesting? A lot of people probably said, "Don't even think about doing this." I imagine a lot of people are like, "Amazon or Walmart or someone already owns the space. What are you, crazy? This is like an impossible feat."
35:53	Marc Lore	Yeah, no, it's two different things. I mean, I think with Jet, I had been intimately involved in retail, you know, with Diapers.com and Wag, and selling it to Amazon. I'm working inside Amazon, and I just felt like there was a huge market and a huge tailwind. E-commerce is going to continue to grow at double digits for the next 5 to 10 years. I just believe that it wasn't a winner-take-all situation; there was room for another player. I thought we could raise a significant amount of capital and hire a great team. So we had this really big vision with this tailwind: raise a ton of capital and have a great team. I thought if you do those three things right, good things will happen. I don't know what's going to happen. Either it works, or a strategic buyer wants it. If you're in the right market at the right time, you have a great team, and you've invested the capital wisely, you've got an asset that, in the worst case, is going to be worth more than the capital you raised. That's my mentality with these things. In anything you do, right? The worst place to be is sort of in that no man's land where you spent not a ton of money, you don't have the best people, but you spent enough money that it's kind of expensive for somebody to buy as a strategic asset. It's not really worth it. You know, people tend to buy using the barbell strategy. They'll buy the acquihire. You raise $1,000,000, and you bootstrapped it, and you have like three good people. Somebody will say, "Oh, this is great! Here's $10,000,000." You're like, "Oh, that was not a bad exit. I made a little money. I'm going to work for this company." Then there's the other side where you can be big enough to matter to a really big company that has the capital to put down $100 million or billions in an acquisition. There are a lot of people in the middle, and that's what VCP is. That's why it's like, "No, $10,000,000, $50,000,000. Let's hire the very best team. If it's the right market, there's going to be a buyer for it."
37:41	Shaan Puri	right
37:41	Marc Lore	and that's kind of the strategy
37:43	Sam Parr	What's interesting is, when I sold my company, we never revealed the price. But let's just say that, hypothetically, it was around $30 or $40 million. I noticed that, for the sake of argument, a deal of that size seemed like it was as hard of work as if I sold it for $400 billion.
38:06	Marc Lore	no it's harder that's what I think it's harder at
38:08	Sam Parr	It was harder because I was doing a lot of the work. I actually didn't hire a banker, so I was doing almost all the work, and it was hell.
38:15	Shaan Puri	But it's not just the work on your side. I think what he's pointing out is that the price tag is significant, where the company can't just cut the check real quick like you could with a small acquihire. But you don't have enough of an asset that they can say this is a big strategic bet that they're making. You're in the middle, and I think that's... forget the entrepreneur side, it's always harder as an entrepreneur.
38:35	Marc Lore	really tough place yeah
38:37	Sam Parr	yeah well I'm saying that that's just one of the reasons why it was hard
38:39	Marc Lore	But also, it was hard for many reasons. Really hard. You must be a really good entrepreneur because it's really hard. I think to exit in that middle ground is challenging. It's hard to exit most companies in that middle ground; they don't exit successfully. You know, it's easy to do the acquihire, and I think it's easy to do the big acquisition of a large company. It's tough for those companies that are sort of like $10 million to $100 million. The entrepreneurs I know that have exited in that space, they're strong. They're like really strong.
39:11	Sam Parr	Well, that's kind of an interesting thing because I think that me, well, younger—like even just a few months younger than me—as well as most people would think that, well, as far as selling something for $20 to $30, that's like bite-sized-ish. That's something a company would buy without having to get board approval. It would be a no-brainer for them to do it. What you're kind of saying, and what I experienced a little bit, is that it's actually probably easier to be a little bit more audacious.
39:38	Marc Lore	yeah
39:38	Sam Parr	And raise money and go after it. Or I would actually say the other way around. It's easier to do that. If your goal is to build wealth and have a good life, it's probably best maybe not to raise any money and never sell. Just try to build the company over a long period of time. Yeah, true.
39:55	Shaan Puri	Let's say you were you, but you don't have your brand name, right? So, let's just bring you back. We give you youth, but we take away your reputation. Right, so we're going to take you back. You're 21, but you don't have the reputation. However, you do have the same sort of mindset that you have today. You have the same knowledge. Let's say, what spaces would you be going into? Would you also be trying to do the same type of bet? Do you think you could raise a large amount of money just through charisma, hustle, and vision without having the reputation? So, take us through a scenario. What do you think you would be interested in working on or building if you were 21 again today without the reputation?
40:29	Marc Lore	Yeah, no, it's great. I think early on, a lot of people share this feeling: you think it needs to be something really original or something nobody's thinking about, something niche. That's kind of what it is—it's niche. The venture capitalists might say, "It's not that interesting." I've learned that it doesn't need to be something niche or super inventive. It could just be about finding a really big Total Addressable Market (TAM). For example, take health care. What's a really big idea? Where is the puck going in health care? I would study where the venture capitalists are investing, what types of companies are doing the research, and where the money is going. Follow the money, because that'll give you some idea of where some of these trends are right now. With artificial intelligence and telehealth, there's a lot of money pouring into that. So, I would look at the landscape, study the different companies, see who's getting funded, who's doing well, and think about whether there's another angle. It doesn't have to be something inventive or super original—just a little hook of something different that's not being done. Put together a big vision that ultimately requires hundreds of millions in capital. Work backwards from that and say, "Okay, we think this is going to be a multibillion-dollar opportunity." You know, we're going to start with $10 million, hire this great team, and here's the vision—here's how we're going to get there. Work on that plan and that pitch deck. I'd spend hundreds of hours on that deck, on the vision, and mapping it out. Somebody will bite because it's the right time and the right space. If you're really good and they feel like you've got something, and you've got this big plan, there's a good chance you'll get that $10 million check to go hire a great team.
42:24	Shaan Puri	You've talked about "Where's the puck going?" Give us more. What are some other... So you talked about food delivery and you talked about how the next evolution of that might be restaurants on wheels. That solves a bunch of problems. You talked about transportation, right? Huge TAM [Total Addressable Market]. Flying cars might be where the puck is going. We see that Google funded Kitty Hawk, and we know Uber was working on it. A bunch of people were working on this... maybe there's something there.
42:48	Sam Parr	I'll give you
42:49	Marc Lore	a couple more yeah give you
42:50	Shaan Puri	some more
42:50	Marc Lore	So, one, I think conversational commerce is the next big step change in retail. The idea is that you would use text and voice to order anything you want in a very conversational way. Imagine talking to someone who is as knowledgeable as the most knowledgeable person in that area, like being in the showroom of a specialty retailer. If you want to buy a TV, it's like you're there at Best Buy talking to the TV expert. You're just conversing with someone who knows you well, like your best friend. This hyper-personalized approach aims to provide you with the best answer. The idea of search engines 20 years from now is going to be laughable, like the cassette tape. It's like, "Wait, Dad, you used to go and type in 'toaster' into this search engine and got 10,000 responses? You had to read reviews and filter through all that?" That's not how it's going to be done in the future. You'll simply say, "Hey, I need a toaster. How much? I don't know, what's a good amount? $200?" You'll get a recommendation for a great toaster, and it will just ship to you. It's going to be very conversational. We talk a lot about personalization in retail, but nobody's even close to doing it in a way that it will be done in the future. I think voice requires one best answer; otherwise, voice doesn't work. You can't give a hundred options. It should be like asking your best friend, "Hey, I know you know toasters. What should I get?" It should be very straightforward.
44:30	Sam Parr	Who's doing this now
44:31	Shaan Puri	that's exciting I like that a lot
44:33	Sam Parr	what what companies are doing this now
44:35	Marc Lore	I mean, there are a lot of companies that are, again, in the early stages of it and stuff. But there's nobody, again, that's... if you said, "Who's got the world-class team? Who's raised, you know, significant capital?" You know, nothing.
44:47	Sam Parr	But is there a product I can go look at and be like, "Oh, I get it. I understand what he's getting at. I understand why Mark is obsessed with this?"
44:55	Marc Lore	Yeah, I mean, we had something called Jetblack when I was at Walmart. It was basically for New York City, primarily for parents, and it was gangbusters. I mean, it was like, you know, people stopped using Amazon Prime. They just dropped it. All the shopping, the entire wall chair, was given to Jetblack, and it was multiples of what they were spending on Amazon. It was deep into the tail; people loved it. It was a great test, but it was very expensive. In order to get the conversations... sorry, you need to see a lot of conversations to have it automated. So in the beginning, you have humans in the loop to sort of bridge between the time that, you know, right, there's the AI.
45:39	Shaan Puri	past tense did it go away or that still exists
45:42	Marc Lore	no it it went away but gotcha
45:44	Shaan Puri	because it was expensive yeah
45:45	Marc Lore	it was expensive and there just wasn't the right time for walmart right but I think if for in the start up world yeah I think I think it's totally different because walmart maybe doesn't wanna you know invest 100 of 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 but a start up totally different doesn't hit your income statement everyone gets the gate knows it you put capital to work and you build something great so there's that I think in health care too I think like things I was talking about with telehealth and all the stuff coming together I think the idea of like people taking control of their health with home diagnostics and things yep like there should be a dashboard that exists you can look up I put in my name okay mark lohrey here's my dashboard I've got a number of gadgets in the home that I do on a weekly monthly basis like you brush your teeth twice a day to take care of your teeth what are you doing every day to take care of the rest of your health like you don't do anything yeah there's all kinds of devices and things you know monitor you know a little prick of blood and monitor blood sugar you know do the blood test once a month get all your things in there look at the trends of what's happening with your psa do you have this issue and then basically the machine learning and through all the data to be able to see like okay you should see a doctor here you should do this then you should do this so here's the probability of dying at this age here's the you know here's the the the heart attack risk that you're running your cholesterol is too high if you get it down here's your probability of heart attack comes down like sort of make it more transparent right now it's like this black box you go to the doctor once a year do some tests and whatever like it's just kind of like a black box like oh you know here's some medicine for your cholesterol you don't know what's what or why or how it impacts your odds and like whether you should be really worried a little worried no doctor will ever give you probabilities about anything there's no diagnostics it's like you have to go to the professional there's no home stuff I think all that's gonna change in the future I do think people are gonna like really take control of their their health in a completely different way and they're gonna be doing things other than brushing their teeth to take care of themselves on a daily basis that's who
47:50	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I just had a daughter and I feel like when she's my age, she's gonna be like, "Dad, how were you even alive back then? You guys didn't know what the hell was going on inside your body!" Now we have this thing that we wear that tells me everything I need to know. I know when I take a bite of this, my blood sugar goes up or down. I know how stressed I am. I think it's gonna seem like we were cavemen, how we operate today.
48:12	Marc Lore	I agree, there's gotta be certain things you get tested for at certain times. You know, my daughter had celiac disease. We didn't figure it out until she was 9 years old. I mean, it's not that rare of a disease. Some doctors should've been like, "Hey, here are the things you do, here are the probabilities of what's what, and these are the tests you need."
48:30	Shaan Puri	I was asking my mom. My mom has celiac disease as well, and she found out when she was like 50. And she's like...
48:36	Marc Lore	yeah
48:36	Shaan Puri	As a kid, everyone was like, "Oh, I don't know, you just have an upset stomach all the time." And she's like, "You know, I'm a kid in India. I'm sure I had this my whole life; it's just that nobody ever knew." I was like, super... I never gained any weight because I couldn't process any of the food I was eating. It took till I...
48:50	Marc Lore	I was 50 when I found out. Exactly, everyone should have a genetic profile. You know, that gives changes to your probabilities based on genetics. Everyone should have that. There should be, you know, tests at certain times that influence your odds and probabilities, and certain ways to structure everything. That's just... it's more organized. Like right now, it's not organized. I don't know if you guys feel that. I feel like it's not organized at all.
49:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, well, you got like a wall and then an Oura ring. I have a smart scale, a continuous glucose blood monitor, and a smart bed. I've got like 18 different smart things, but they are quite siloed. They don't actually tell me the answer. They just, you know, they don't actually say, "This is what this all means." Maybe they'll say, "You're extra stressed this morning, sleep more," or "Don't work out as hard," or "Your body fat is too high." But it's kind of limited to pretty high-level stuff.
49:47	Marc Lore	Yeah, it should be way more structured. You should be much more in touch with it. Like sleep apnea is another thing. I don't know... so many people struggle with this. They're like, "All these things," and the doctor doesn't just say... you know, it takes a long time before the doctor's like, "You should do a sleep apnea study" or something. Totally. There are things you could have, devices that are listening near your bed that can know. It sounds... that sounds like... well...
50:12	Sam Parr	I always thought it was weird. There are a lot of cancers that you can cure or are okay, like if you can get a certain type of cancer and be perfectly fine, so long as you catch it early enough. It's kind of outlandish and archaic that you can have cancer and not know for, you know, many months or even a year. It's like, "What the fuck? A year?"
50:30	Marc Lore	yeah many years
50:31	Sam Parr	yeah you could have known this like instantly you know and that's kind of like crazy to me
50:35	Marc Lore	Well, MRI... by the way, there are MRI scans that you can do, a whole body scan, and they detail anything cancerous. They stitch it together every year, and you can see micro changes in things that exist. Now, it's just not made available to the people because of the cost. But nobody even has the option of knowing that this is available. I should do that. You could imagine a system that basically says, "Hey, here's a probability of cancer. You can take this test; it's a couple grand. It's up to you." But at least you know, "Okay, wait, maybe I should just spend the $2 because it'll increase the probability of catching it X number of years in advance." And I know, "Okay, it's healthier." No, we just wait until we're sick. Like you said, with cancer, it's like, "Alright, now it's... now it's, you know, definitely."
51:22	Sam Parr	I like asking these questions because I like knowing what meets your standards. But basically, who in this space are you looking at where you're saying, "That's kind of promising"? Is there any one or two companies?
51:32	Marc Lore	Yeah, I don't... and I kind of maybe I should more, but I really spend a lot of time just thinking about like a complete... sometimes, if you know too much about a space, it's hard to have a clean slate and invent. You kind of get tied too closely into what people are doing. So, I like the idea of just thinking about it through the lens of a consumer. What are these trends that are happening in telehealth and AI? You know, these trends are happening, and then how do you stitch it all together? That's just thinking, sitting and thinking every day: what's the big idea? When it's really big, you do know nobody's doing it. Then you can reverse engineer and go back and say, are there any people that are working on certain things that could be helpful to it? But you gotta go so big that you know nobody's playing there, and that's where I think the opportunity lies. It's like, yeah, it's gonna need a billion dollars to pull it off. You're gonna have to prove it in a small area. It's gonna be very expensive, but then when you prove it, it extrapolates out to a trillion-dollar market cap opportunity.
52:42	Sam Parr	let's say yeah but you
52:45	Marc Lore	Yes, I don't... I couldn't tell you. I'm not able to tell you all the different little components that exist right now.
52:53	Sam Parr	Something that you said earlier was basically, you kind of like, we're reverse engineering a little bit. You'd be like, "I'm gonna find where the money's going, then I'm gonna build this deck, and I'm gonna raise money, and then go build the thing." What's something that, let's say I said, "Mark, I want to create a company and I want to sell it for $100,000,000+ to Walmart or Amazon in 3 years." What opportunities exist in the e-commerce or in the commerce world that Amazon or Walmart would buy my company because they desperately need something that I'm selling or some type of solution that I've created?
53:26	Shaan Puri	I think would you like him to do anything else for you sam the most specific question
53:30	Marc Lore	no that that that's actually not that specific
53:32	Sam Parr	a lot I mean a lot I'm not I don't work at amazon
53:34	Shaan Puri	I don't work
53:35	Marc Lore	to you you're a 100,000,000 in 3 years
53:37	Sam Parr	yeah no so well you said one personalized shopping
53:40	Shaan Puri	conversational shopping
53:41	Marc Lore	That's not... I think that's not likely a 100,000,000. That is like way bigger, or it's... or it's not exist. Like that's a little bit more binary, right? I don't think a 100,000,000 is necessarily impossible.
53:53	Sam Parr	sorry I 100,000,000 was just some rent but good you got a good number
53:57	Shaan Puri	no it's good it's good I have a goal
53:58	Marc Lore	$100,000,000 in 3 years. I think it needs to be a sort of niche technology. That's where the puck's going; that's going to be helpful to differentiate. It's going to have to be tech more than having shown real market traction. But it's going to have to be a technology that's probably hard to build and involves, you know, AI. The thing that comes to mind would be something like fit analytics. This idea that you're going online and you're buying a dress and being able to see it fit on you without having to get it delivered to your home. You know, return rates on apparel are 40%. It's very expensive for retailers, and it's a pain for people to buy stuff, bring it, try it on, and then send it back. So, the idea that you know my body dimensions and use artificial intelligence to know the inside dimensions of the garment to see exactly how it's going to lay on my body without having to try it on could cut down return rates dramatically. There's a billion dollars that you can save retailers there, and apparel is definitely an area where there's a lot of focus. That's just one idea; I don't know off the top of my head, but I love that.
55:11	Shaan Puri	that's a great answer
55:13	Sam Parr	That's a great answer. There's... I saw this guy in Japan. He's a billionaire entrepreneur, and like this is his 3rd or 4th swing, but he created a suit that had these ball-like dots on this black suit. He would send you this body suit for $20, and these white dots on this black body suit would...
55:32	Shaan Puri	know video game where they motion capture you
55:35	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it was. The camera was able to tell differently than if you weren't wearing this suit. He would use that to try to upsell you on proper fitting clothing. I saw that it never went anywhere, but I was like, "Oh, that's kind of intriguing."
55:50	Marc Lore	For every idea out there, there are hundreds of people trying. That's why it's never really about the idea; it's about execution. It's about BCP (Business Continuity Planning). So, were they undercapitalized? Did they have the best team in the world? Like in the case of Quibi, I know you mentioned it in the beginning, but are there examples of, you know, big vision, right time, massive TAM (Total Addressable Market), like raising a lot of capital and having a world-class team that's all in? There aren't that many examples I can think of. In fact, when I think of those examples, they usually have instances of things that have worked.
56:24	Shaan Puri	that worked yeah
56:25	Marc Lore	I don't experience that many times where you have a world-class team, a ton of capital, and a big vision at the right time. Those companies get acquired because...
56:33	Shaan Puri	Like DeepMind was a good example of this. DeepMind, an AI company, was acquired by Google for $500,000,000 when there was no usage yet. It was just vision and team. Then I think DeepMind, they said that once they've plugged it in, they do the fun stuff like beating the best Go players in the world or the best chess players in the world. So they show kind of its power; it flexes from time to time. But they also apply it to the Google AdWords machine learning, and I think it's generated like incremental multiples of $1,000,000,000 already for Google just on the slight optimization of AdWords. On the other side, you have Magic Leap, which would probably be the current example of a company that raised like $1,000,000,000. It has a huge idea that looks awesome in the demo, but they haven't executed it.
57:18	Marc Lore	Well enough where it actually works... Yeah, or you could argue also a little bit early. That same exact company, like today going forward, could be a totally different game. So it is kind of interesting. It'll be great to map out BCP [Business Continuity Planning] against companies that have worked and didn't work, and see what the hit rate is.
57:36	Shaan Puri	right
57:36	Marc Lore	sorry guys I'm realizing I have a 4 o'clock
57:38	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you gotta run. Okay, now where should people find you if they want more? If they want more, plug how few people can follow you, find you, contact you—whatever you want.
57:47	Marc Lore	Yeah, I mean LinkedIn is my primary platform where I'm putting out a lot of business advice and things like that. So I would do LinkedIn. I just recently finally launched Instagram and started becoming more active there, but LinkedIn is probably the best place right now.
58:02	Shaan Puri	alright mark this was great thank you for coming on
58:05	Marc Lore	alright thanks guys thank you
58:06	Sam Parr	it it went way too fast
58:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it was good, but it ended quickly. I wanted... I had so much more we could've talked about.
58:13	Sam Parr	I had so much more
58:14	Marc Lore	I think
58:15	Shaan Puri	We should actually hit him up and be like, "Dude, after this episode goes out and he gets some love, we should ask him to come back." I need a part 2. I had like 5 other things I wanted to discuss.
58:26	Sam Parr	Had so many questions. He seems like a great guy. He's really charismatic. I understand why he's successful.
58:37	Shaan Puri	He would be describing an idea off the cuff, and I'd be like, "You know what? This makes so much sense." I would... I would back you to the hills. Yes, this makes sense. I could see why he's been able to raise so much money.
58:49	Sam Parr	Yeah, I asked that confidence question because he just oozes with charisma and confidence.
58:56	Shaan Puri	so let's talk about okay so first I really love that cover I thought that was great
59:00	Marc Lore	I thought he
59:01	Sam Parr	was I agree
59:01	Shaan Puri	I thought he was great, and I thought he made for a great guest, especially in the second half.
59:07	Sam Parr	His setup was bad. I cannot stand when people... I think he was talking to an assistant on a phone or a laptop. With someone who's as successful as he is, how do they not have awesome Zoom setups?
59:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's crazy to me, but I think they're just on the go all the time. So they're like, "I don't even have... I don't even hold my phone." This woman holds my phone for me, and you know, I just sort of speak out loud. I don't even type anymore. That's my job.
59:30	Sam Parr	abreu just said he doesn't own a computer was he I think he was
59:33	Marc Lore	on the show
59:34	Shaan Puri	Is that true, Abreu, or are you just bullshitting in the chat? That's what I was told - he doesn't own a computer. See, that's what I was saying, dude. I knew it. I knew he's in that ultra-rich... Wait, so there's the mega-rich, so all the most rich is they don't own a computer, nor do they even touch a computer. Their emails get printed out for them, and they either handwrite or just say things out loud and people go relay the messages. I think he's one notch below that, where he doesn't own a computer and he just does shit off his phone.
59:59	Sam Parr	That's weird to me. I mean, not weird because if you're a baller, go ahead and be a baller, ball out. But like, what if you just want to type a long essay? Or if you want to... or if you want to...
01:00:09	Shaan Puri	just like folks like us can't understand the the the feeling where you don't need to type nothing ever
01:00:14	Sam Parr	Or, you just want to search the web and read it. It just seems easy to have.
01:00:20	Shaan Puri	If you take my computer away, forget the work. I would be so bored. I need to, like, you know, browse the internet.
01:00:26	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's crazy! So he doesn't own a computer? That's pretty cool. The guy's awesome. He said he had a few really good ideas. I wanted to ask him. So he sent us these notes ahead of time, and he mentioned something about the difference between $1,000,000 and $1,000,000,000. I was like, "Oh, come on!"
01:00:41	Shaan Puri	I'm dying save it we gotta save it yeah
01:00:43	Sam Parr	I wanted to know what he what he what he was gonna say
01:00:45	Shaan Puri	I think we slow played it a little too much at the beginning, and that's my fault. I should have gone into one of these. So, a couple of things. Here are my takeaways. I don't usually do takeaways because I don't think... I don't know, I just don't bother usually. It's not like I really learned so much that I want to do takeaways. I was just kind of entertained. But in this, I actually did have a few takeaways. I thought I would just rattle them off. Insight number 1: The barbell of selling your company. It's very easy to sell at the small end and even at the high end. The hardest path is actually that middle ground where both of us actually sold our companies. I think that that's true; it feels very true from my experiences. I've never heard anybody kind of say it out loud, so I thought that was a good insight. I liked it.
01:01:30	Sam Parr	And that basically what he... I don't think you summarized it, or I don't think you said everything. Basically, he said it's easier to sell a company for, like, he actually said $10,000,000 or under, yeah, or like $100,000,000.
01:01:42	Shaan Puri	Right, exactly. The reason why is that with the small ones, you can kind of cut the check just on talent. For the big ones, you're buying a more fleshed-out asset, whether that's technology, traction, or unique talent. In the middle, you've usually raised enough money where your asking price is too high for them to just do it without blinking. However, you don't have enough proof or enough of an asset that they can justify a big strategic purchase. So, that's actually the hardest one. I think he was hinting at something that I believe is true: the entrepreneur who has done that is the most dangerous entrepreneur. They have enough money where the next thing they chase is going to be bigger, but they didn't get enough to be satisfied and just chill on the couch or on an island somewhere. They've been through it, but they're not done. I think that's what he was kind of saying—those entrepreneurs are the ones you want to bet on. When I invest, that's a great signal to me: when somebody has had a small win under their belt or a medium-sized win.
01:02:44	Marc Lore	I should say
01:02:44	Sam Parr	Yeah, I had [heard of] Andrew Chen, [a] very successful [partner] at Andreessen [Horowitz]. He said some of the most... He just said: > "The most dangerous entrepreneur is someone who's somewhat wealthy enough that they're set, but they have a huge chip on their shoulder."
01:03:00	Shaan Puri	exactly
01:03:00	Sam Parr	and he was for
01:03:01	Shaan Puri	Example: Travis, before he started Uber, had Red Swoosh, which was like a kind of tens of millions win. Evan Williams, before Twitter, had Blogger, and that was a good win. But, you know, he went for more. There are a bunch of examples.
01:03:15	Sam Parr	mark cuban did the same thing
01:03:16	Shaan Puri	Right, okay. Some other things I thought were interesting. His model, I didn't realize this beforehand, but it's basically kind of like moonshots. It's anti the traditional playbook of Silicon Valley, which is to raise in small steps. So, raise a little bit of money, make a little bit of progress, raise a little more money, make a little more progress, and then raise more money to make more progress. He's sort of like, "Find the biggest market you can go after, raise a bunch of money, and make the boldest bet in that market." For example, what he did with Jet. He said, "E-commerce is a huge market and growing in double digits." I thought it was interesting when he mentioned that you don't need a brand new, novel invention. The bet is going to be on execution. You do want to have a new hook or something that's kind of like 10 to 20% innovative, but 80% is the same as other players in the market. So, he was saying to basically go raise a big chunk of money, recruit the best people, create a great product, and then go raise a huge amount of money to go for the home run shot. I thought that was interesting. Most people don't use that playbook or talk about it, and that's his specific lane as an entrepreneur and as an investor. I thought that was cool.
01:04:33	Sam Parr	he also I asked him a question that you laughed at a little bit but I thought it was a great question
01:04:37	Shaan Puri	And he had a great answer. The reason I laughed is that it was a great question, and he actually gave a great answer. But you asked, "What's a company I could start and in 3 years sell for $100,000,000 to Amazon or Walmart?" It was so specific that I...
01:04:48	Marc Lore	was like
01:04:48	Shaan Puri	It's almost like, "Hey Mark, I don't want to think. Just tell me what to do and I'll go do it." It was such a "solve my problem for me" moment. I just laughed.
01:04:57	Sam Parr	Well, I... it was, what was the word that you said the other day? "Orthogonal." It was my orthogonal way of asking, "What is a problem that big e-commerce businesses have?" Yeah, that they... that they have. What are the problems that need to be solved?
01:05:16	Shaan Puri	pain. Yeah
01:05:17	Sam Parr	that was my way of asking that
01:05:18	Marc Lore	he gave
01:05:18	Shaan Puri	a great answer
01:05:19	Sam Parr	He gave a great answer. The answer he actually gave was a previous answer where he said something like "conversational commerce," which is a really cool thing he'll explain. But the answer that he gave for that was, "Oh, fitting at..."
01:05:33	Shaan Puri	virtual fitting yeah
01:05:34	Sam Parr	<FormattedTranscription> Virtual fitting. He gave a ton of really cool answers. The guy, Mark Laurie, who started Jet.com, sold it for $3.5 billion. Then he was the CEO or president of Walmart eCommerce. Before that, he sold a company for $600 million to Amazon. His perspective is about as great as it can be. </FormattedTranscription>
01:05:59	Shaan Puri	Yes, exactly. I thought that was really strong. I liked some of his insights on the interviews, particularly the job interview side. I think, I don't know how much people will love that content because it's not as fun and it's not as "junk food" as ideas, right? But if someone ever actually has to do that, I thought there were some good insights in there. Even though it was a little bit safe—like nobody can disagree—the things he was saying were good. I didn't feel like it was just cookie-cutter. I think he genuinely believes it, and that's genuinely his approach. It matters a lot to him, and I think that came through during that part, which is cool. You always wonder, like, "This guy's doing this and this and this, how's he doing it?" Well, it's like he's got great people underneath him doing all those individual projects on a day-to-day basis. Alright, well then, how do you find those great people to actually make the difference between failure and success of the same idea? It's having that great operator underneath. So, I thought that was pretty good. What did you think of that part?
01:06:59	Sam Parr	Yeah, I wanted to ask him more about it, but we didn't have time. Basically, it sounds like he's not totally in the weeds of his businesses, which is the way to go. You know, like if he can go...
01:07:09	Shaan Puri	I don't want to be in the weeds of anything. I don't want to be in the weeds of my marriage. I don't want to be in the weeds of parenting. The weeds... the weeds are the weeds, bro. I don't want to be in the weeds.
01:07:18	Sam Parr	I only want to be in the weeds of the things that I want to be in. When you start a company, there's so much stuff that you think you have to do. It's cool. I wanted to hear his perspective on what he's like: "Look, I have the vision, I hire the initial people, and I raise a ton of money. I just deploy that money and make everyone else specialize in what they specialize in." But we didn't get to ask him about it, so I hope that...
01:07:43	Shaan Puri	He did show, it was sort of like when we were discussing, "How do you figure out what that vision should be?" He talked about a couple of things. He said, "I look at where the trends are. Where's the puck going?" One way I do that is by seeing where investors are pouring in money. Okay, that tells me that these spaces are probably big or these technologies are breakthrough technologies. So, it's either a technology like AI or machine learning. Okay, cool, I can apply that in another industry. Or, if a bunch of people are pouring money into e-commerce, then e-commerce is probably really big. Education and healthcare are also significant spaces. Now, how do I go create the most bold vision that has a slightly novel hook? I thought it was cool that he was basically like, "I don't get bogged down in the details of what this player is doing versus that player." He's just sort of like, "How should it be?" When he was talking about healthcare, he said, "I should just wake up, and I have a dashboard that says, 'Here's what's going on in your body,' and it recommends, 'Hey, you should get this checked with a doctor,' or 'You should improve this.'" I thought that mindset, coming from the perspective of a customer instead of just industry research, was better. That's a big Amazonian thing to do, which is to start with the customer and say, "Here's how their life should be that would make them really happy." Alright, now I have a pleased customer. Now I'll go figure out how to make that happen instead of the other way around, which is, "What can I do?" and then, "Does that partially satisfy the customer?" Okay, that's good enough.
01:09:08	Sam Parr	And I wanted to ask him about Amazon and working with Bezos and things like that. I wonder what his opinion will be.
01:09:15	Shaan Puri	Or buying the Timberwolves. I feel like there's more we could do there because he bought a sports team. You know, one thing—there's a crazy story that I'll just share here. I didn't get to bring it up with him, but Ben found this when he was doing some research. When Jet was growing or early on with Jet, they had a contest. I don't know if you've seen this article, but they had a contest. It was awesome.
01:09:37	Sam Parr	it was awesome
01:09:38	Shaan Puri	About who can acquire the most customers for Jet. You become a marketer; you go spread the word. Whoever gets the most customers gets 100,000 shares of Jet. Some guy went and did it. He basically just did paid marketing, but in a unique way. He spent $18,000 on the paid marketing, won the contest, and his 100,000 shares became worth $20,000,000 when it sold. So this guy turned $18,000 into $20,000,000 as a fan of the company, outside the company. He probably made more than anyone else in the company besides Mark, which is amazing to me.
01:10:13	Sam Parr	I remember that story, and I was one of those people trying to... This was like, you participated in this? Oh, definitely! You didn't participate? Like, if you would just... It was basically, so Robinhood did a good job of this. I believe it was Robinhood. Clubhouse has done a pretty good job, but like, basically, Robinhood's campaign right before they launched was, "You're on the waiting list. Refer 5 people to move off the spot." Right? This was Jet's version of that, although Jet was first, I believe, then Robinhood. And it went incredibly viral, if I remember correctly. I think they had billboards promoting this.
01:10:48	Shaan Puri	the contest
01:10:49	Sam Parr	I yeah do you remember that when you would I
01:10:50	Shaan Puri	think dude we should have asked him about this alright we'll save this one for next time but I thought this is an amazing story
01:10:55	Sam Parr	Yeah, I could spend about 2 more hours with him easily. So I hope he comes back. Let us know in the reviews what you think! Oh, and quick update: we're going to Miami, I think in 8 days or something. June 4th. We sold 300 tickets!
01:11:12	Shaan Puri	that's great
01:11:13	Marc Lore	I think we
01:11:14	Shaan Puri	have we have a few left we're releasing maybe what eighty more 100 more something like that
01:11:17	Sam Parr	yeah we moved it to 400 it was 300 we moved it to 400 we'll see what happens
01:11:22	Shaan Puri	Alright, if you want to come see us and get us to autograph your dollar bills, bring them to Miami on June 4th. I don't know how they should find the Eventbrite.
01:11:31	Sam Parr	Just go to MFM Pod or My First Million Pod. So, mfm pod.com and we'll put in...
01:11:39	Shaan Puri	your email we'll email you the details right
01:11:41	Sam Parr	Yep, and there'll be a link on there. If you go to mfmpod.com, and also if you just follow one of us on Twitter, you could definitely see the links. We're promoting it.
01:11:49	Shaan Puri	And do us a favor. If you like this episode with Mark, when we post it— I don't know, I guess go on LinkedIn. I want to shower him with love from people being like, "Dude, this was great! Come back on," and then he'll come back on. So, we need to game LinkedIn a little bit. I might have to dust off the old LinkedIn password to go on. Because that's the thing: when guests come on, I've consistently heard this from the very beginning of this podcast, which is, "Dude, I get way more messages about this podcast than any other podcast I've ever been on." I don't know why that is. I don't think our audience is bigger, but something works. And when they get that magic moment of people emailing them being like...
01:12:30	Sam Parr	it works
01:12:30	Shaan Puri	that was amazing it works they're they're down to do whatever and come back on or do whatever else
01:12:35	Sam Parr	and you only need about 10 20 30 like you don't need a significant amount right
01:12:39	Shaan Puri	20 emails in one day, being like "I loved it, I love you," is a lot of emails for most people. It feels like a million.
01:12:47	Sam Parr	So, Mark's name is MarcSpaceLore. Look him up on LinkedIn and just whatever his recent thread is, click like, comment, and say, "Just saw you on the podcast! So good!"
01:12:59	Shaan Puri	I saw you on my first Milieu. Amazing! Yeah, go, go, go! Hammer his LinkedIn comments or something like that.

Discover

Listen

Catalog

Connect

Billionaire Marc Lore on What He Would Build Today and Future of Ecommerce | My First Million #186

Transcript: