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Organic Groceries and Amazon's Physical Bet

overview

Ben and David are once again live on the scene, this time covering the biggest disruption in grocery since... well, sliced bread: Amazon's $13.7B purchase of Whole Foods Market. We place this deal in context by diving deep into the long, intertwining history of grocery, tech and Amazon, from the infamous dotcom flameout Webvan (domain name now owned by Amazon) to its much more successful progeny Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon in 2012) to current Silicon Valley unicorn Instacart (founded by former Amazon logistics engineer Apoorva Mehta). One thing is clear: for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, realizing the longterm vision of the Everything Store truly means building the everything store.

More on the episode

Topics Covered

The origins of Whole Foods Market as "Saferway" in the late 70's Austin, TX hippie scene, founded by CEO John Mackey ("the Steve Jobs of grocery stores") and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson Hardy
Whole Foods' expansion through acquisition throughout the 80's and 90's
The company's recent struggles with competition, leading to sales declines and attracting activist shareholder interest from Jana Partners
Amazon's acquisition of the company on June 16, 2017 for $13.7 billion, a 27 percent premium to the stock's previous day closing price
In depth history and analysis of the four keys to understanding this deal: Webvan, Kiva Systems, AmazonFresh and Instacart

Links

Walmart/Jet buys Bonobos for $310M

Carve Outs

Ben: Mark Zuckerberg's 2005 CS50 guest lecture
David: Exponent on Podcasting and Centralization

corrections

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.