Serial entrepreneur who founded Diapers.com and Jet.com (sold to Walmart for $3.3B); now founder and CEO of Wonder.
Sam recounts Jet.com founder Mark Lore recording the podcast standing up with his iPhone on a tripod, saying he hadn't touched a computer in years. Sam predicts that the laptop will eventually be replaced by small handheld devices.
“And Mark Lore said, I haven't touched a computer in years. And of course that is something that you pretty much, you kind of have to be pretty wealthy in order to do that.”
Shaan predicts the next trillion-dollar consumer-device company won't be a phone company but a healthcare monitor, a wearable measuring what's happening inside your body and feeding the data back to you. He frames Apple itself shifting toward health via wearables.
“So I don't think the next Apple is a phone company. I think the next Apple, the next Apple, which is going to be a trillion dollar company that has, uh, that gives you kind of like a consumer device. I think it's going to be a healthcare monitor. I think it's going to be something that is going to be measuring what's going on inside your body. And feeding that data back to you.”
Intro recap of Lore's track record: he sold Diapers.com to Amazon for around $600M, then built Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.5 billion.
“He sold diapers.com to Amazon for like, I don't know, $600 million. He created Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.5 billion.”
Marc Lore explains his VCP model: give founders with a huge vision a big seed up front (e.g. $10M) so they can hire a world-class team immediately, instead of crawling through tiny rounds where one stumble kills investor confidence.
“Vision Capital people, you have a big vision. We know this could be a really big idea. We know somebody's gonna do this, the right time to do it. Let's not undercapitalize it. Here's $10 million seed. Go out and hire the best team in the world.”
Steal thisRaise enough up front to hire elite talent immediately instead of dripping in capital and living on a tightrope.
After personally interviewing over 1,000 people, Lore screens hires against an acronym he coined: Smart, Passionate, Optimistic, Tenacious, Adaptable, Kind, Empathetic. He stresses kindness and empathy as the rare balancers for tenacious people who run over others.
“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 two are really important, kind and kindness and empathy.”
Steal thisScore candidates on the SPOTIC traits, weighting kindness and empathy to filter out brilliant jerks.
Lore rejects trust-but-verify, arguing that trusting people before they earn it is an incredible motivator. He pairs it with radical transparency: an open cap table and open comp where everyone at the same level makes the same money.
“I think you start out trusting people 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.”
Steal thisDefault to trusting hires and open up comp and the cap table to kill the unfairness that erodes loyalty.
Two founders pitched Lore their flying-car vision on his couch. He put in $5M, helped them hire engineers and raise $50M; two years later a SPAC raised a billion and the company was valued around $3.7B.
“I put $5 in, we helped raise, you know, helped hire the engineering talent. Helped them raise $50 million, and that was 2 years ago. And then they just raised a billion through the SPAC. And so now it's a $4 billion, $3.7 billion market cap or something. And it was really an idea on this couch 2 years ago”
Lore pitches mobile kitchens that bring a top restaurant to you and cook in your driveway, solving food delivery's speed, consistency, quality-in-transit and cost problems. He made a big bet on a company doing this, still in stealth.
“Well, what if you cooked in a mobile kitchen? If the restaurant basically came to you and it cooked in your driveway, hot, much faster because the, the truck's already on the road. And so they're, they're likely just minutes away.”
Steal thisSolve delivery quality and speed by moving the kitchen to the customer instead of moving cooling food across town.
Lore frames exits as a barbell: a sub-$10M acquihire is easy (buy the talent) and a $100M+ strategic buy is easy (buy a real asset). The no-man's-land in between is the worst place — you've spent enough to be pricey but lack the proof to justify a big strategic purchase.
“it's the barbell strategy. They'll buy the Aqua Hire. You raise a million bucks and you bootstrapped it and you have like 3 good people and somebody will say like, oh, this is great. Like, here's $10 million.”
Steal thisEither stay cheap enough for an acquihire or go big enough to be a strategic must-buy; never get stranded in the middle.
Lore predicts retail shifts to ordering by text and voice from an assistant as knowledgeable as a showroom expert and as personal as your best friend. Voice forces one best answer, making today's 10,000-result search engine look like a cassette tape.
“You want to buy a TV? It's like you're there at Best Buy talking to the TV expert and you're just conversing. And somebody at the same time who knows you as well as your best friend. So hyper-personalized, this idea of getting a one best answer. The idea of like search engine 20 years from now is going to be laughable, like the cassette tape.”
Steal thisBuild commerce around one hyper-personalized best answer, because voice cannot return a list of 10,000 options.
Walmart ran Jetblack, a text-based personal shopping concierge for NYC parents. Users dropped Amazon Prime and gave it multiples of their Amazon wallet share, but it needed humans in the loop until the AI could learn, making it too expensive for Walmart to keep.
“I mean, it was like, you know, people stopped using Amazon Prime. It was, they just dropped it. It's like all the shopping, the entire, the entire wallet share was given to Jetblack, and it was multiples of what they were spending on Amazon.”
Lore envisions a personal health dashboard fed by home devices (blood-sugar pricks, monthly blood tests, PSA trends) that uses machine learning to give real probabilities, when to see a doctor, and how habits change your heart-attack odds, replacing the annual black-box checkup.
“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.”
Steal thisBuild a unified health dashboard that turns siloed device data into probabilities and clear next actions.
Lore cites that return rates on apparel sold online are 40%, an expensive problem for retailers that a virtual fitting solution could dramatically reduce.
“Return rates on apparel are 40%.”
Lore cites that return rates on apparel sold online are 40%, an expensive problem for retailers that a virtual fitting solution could dramatically reduce.
“Return rates on apparel are 40%.”
Shaan recounts a Jet.com referral contest where the top customer-acquirer won 100,000 shares. An outsider spent $18,000 on clever paid marketing, won, and his shares were worth $20M at the Walmart sale — likely out-earning everyone at the company except Lore.
“He spent— the guy invested $18,000 into the paid marketing, won the contest, and his 100,000 shares became worth $20 million when it sold. And so this guy turned $18 grand into $20 million as a fan of the company, outside the company, probably made more than anyone else in the company besides Mark, which is amazing to me.”