Opendoor

OpenStore: instant offers to buy your Shopify store, the Opendoor model for e-commerce

Shaan pitches OpenStore (Keith Rabois and Jack Abraham) as Opendoor for e-commerce: plug into a Shopify store's data and give the owner an instant buyout offer with no banker, deck, or process — rolling up Shopify stores the way Thrasio rolled up Amazon FBA businesses.

“OpenStore is the same thing for e-commerce. They're saying, you want to sell your e-commerce company? I'll buy your Shopify store right now. You don't have to go through the whole banker process, make a deck, do, do all this stuff. I'll just plug into your data and I'll just give you an offer right now. And so what they're trying to do is roll up Shopify stores.”

Steal thisApply the instant-liquidity model to any market of small sellers: plug into their data, skip the broker process, and make an instant cash offer to roll them up.

Keith Rabois's Open Store: 'Opendoor for buying businesses'

Shaan explains that Keith Rabois (Opendoor founder) and Jack Abraham are starting Open Store, which Shaan believes is Opendoor for businesses (likely online ones): tell them about your business, get an instant offer, and they buy it from you.

“his new company he's starting, uh, with, with Jake, Jack Abraham is, uh, called Open Store.. And so you have Opendoor and now you have Open Store. I know they haven't released a bunch of details, but I think I know what it is, which is it is Opendoor for buying businesses. So it's the same idea for buying. I think it's going to be specialized in online businesses, but maybe not. Where basically you just say, here's my business, and then they say, here's your offer, we'll buy it off you.”

'Opendoor for X': instant liquidity for illiquid assets

Shaan generalizes Opendoor into a pattern: take something illiquid that takes time and hassle to sell (a house, a business, used electronics) and offer instant liquidity by buying it today and reselling on a spread.

“what is Opendoor for X? So what other parts of life and, and, uh, and, and the world could use instant liquidity? Cuz that's what this is. It's basically taking something that was kind of illiquid, like your house, and takes a lot of time to get liquid where you actually sell the thing and takes a lot of, you know, you got to like, you got to move out, you got to stage it, you got to repaint it, you got to get a broker, you got to list it, you got to do tours. No instant liquidity. We buy your house today.”

Steal thisPick an illiquid asset class, buy it instantly from sellers at a discount, and resell on a predictable spread.

The fat startup: big vision, big capital, win-or-die

Shaan defines the 'fat startup' via Opendoor: start with a big vision, raise tens of millions in equity plus debt early, no MVP, come out swinging with a big team and budget. SpaceX and Tesla are the same archetype.

“Opendoor would be like a fat startup, meaning immediately started with a big, uh, big vision, not like kind of a small like, uh, wedge. Uh, immediately needed a bunch of capital to do this because they had to go buy homes, and every home is expensive. And so they needed tens and tens of millions of dollars pretty early on that they got through equity plus debt. And, um, they didn't have like some MVP. They like came out swinging with a big team, big, big bank budget”