Idea
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.
Fact
Roll-ups like Thrasio use debt to buy already-profitable businesses
Shaan explains the capital efficiency of e-commerce roll-ups: Thrasio reached a planned $10B exit in ~3 years by financing acquisitions with large amounts of debt, which works because the target companies are already profitable and producing revenue.
“3 years old and very capital efficient how they went there because they used a lot of debt to buy these companies because the companies already are profitable or producing a lot of revenue. So they're able to use big debt to do this. And so Open Store is doing the same thing without the Amazon style. It's for Shopify..”
Idea
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.”