All Hail the Consumer

Its the Holidays so we have to talk about consumers.

Dec 04, 2019

Hey all, welcome to my first post on my newsletter, Welcome to the Stage.

Let me preface by saying this is my first ever newsletter, and am very gracious and humbled that you are the first subscribers and readers. My goal is to make these newsletters brief and informative. I want you to learn something.

Without further ado, let’s jump in.

The Macro

It’s the holidays so we have to talk about consumers, Black Friday, and those Lululemon ABC pants you just bought for 25% off(maybe that was just me)

Shopify powered online businesses to over $1.5 Billion in purchases (you can view this in realtime here). Wow. Shopify went public at $17. It trades at $330 today. That’s a return of over 1000%.

Shout Out: Jeremy Levine, the GP from Bessemer Venture Partners(BVP), he led the Series A and B investments in Shopify for BVP and Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke who started the company while living at his in-law’s house in Canada.

Takeaway: Shopify is powering the next generation of small business owners. Full steam ahead.

Black Friday- the big winner this year? Your smartphone. Adobe Analytics ran the data and over 39% of e-commerce purchases this past Black Friday we’re made on a mobile phone. That’s $2.9 Billion in sales. Digital sales totaled $7.4 Billion last Friday

Shout-Out: Allbirds and their co-founder Joey Zwillinger penned a letter to Jeff Bezos and Amazon (ever heard of them?) for selling a much cheaper version($45) of Allbirds very popular wool shoe, the Wool Runners ($99). Joey said gee thanks, but if you’re going to steal something, steal our sustainable mission and practices.

Takeaway: Don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but the future of e-commerce is mobile. Expect next Black Friday sales through mobile to be even higher. Even Jeff Bezos can get shoved in a locker sometimes, politely though.

The Micro

This was tough to write. Not a lot of D2C startups or even retailers for that matter (Home Depot and Chewy.com come to mind but that’s about it ) based down here in the South. We’ll let Los Angeles, San Fran, and New York keep churning those out. So let’s focus on some startups that are consumer-centered.

Landing- Millenials love to rent and if there is one thing we hate, it’s being tied down. What if you could combine the two? Then you’d get Bill Smith’s, Shipt Founder and Startup Jesus of Birmingham, latest venture, Landing. Landing is a network of fully furnished apartments that you pay $199 annually (guess you could call it LaaS or Living as a Service) to have access to the network with flexible leasing options, no deposit required and can stay for as long or as short (30-day minimum stay) as you want.

Shout-Out: Bill Smith for starting what will probably be another home run. Although technically based in San Fran where the tech talent is plentiful, Landing has a key operations office right here in Birmingham.

Takeaway: I’m interested to see who leads their seed and A rounds. Mr. Smith raised money from two very successful VC funds in the past at Shipt. e.Ventures and Greycroft. I’m looking to them to back him again in his latest venture probably at a much higher pre-money valuation bc of his seasoned track record.

Must-Reads This Week

Lenny Rachitskys Newsletter on marketplace startups-Lenny is a former growth product manager at Airbnb and in his latest post, did a deep dive in 4-part series behind what made some of the most well-known marketplace startups(Uber, Lyft, Thumbtack, Zillow) so successful. Do you focus on supply or demand first?

Read Here: https://www.lennyrachitsky.com/

Anything Jason Lemkin posts on Twitter-Jason founded Echosign, sold it to Adobe and now runs SaaStr. Jason freely shares some incredible knowledge he’s learned over time.

Welcome to the Stage

All Hail the Consumer

Its the Holidays so we have to talk about consumers.

The Macro

The Micro

Must-Reads This Week

Discussion about this post