Rapid Response: Launching a $500b startup, w/Jet.com's Marc Lore

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I'm learning to play basketball now. Which I thought was appropriate since I bought a team. And the coach has me doing a lot of air shooting, no ball. And it's just foundational, foundational, foundational in business. A lot of times people like shoot with the ball without doing the fundamental work before.

We need worthless land, let's find two hundred thousand acres. Let's get Five million people to move there. The land would be worth a trillion dollars. The community then would

Form an endowment to basically provide the most advanced social services in the world. Mm. It's easier to do a big idea than a small idea. Hey, start a small business, make it profitable. I want to make a couple million dollars a year, I'd be like, I'm out.

The strategy is to come in early With a really big check like pre seed with just a founder and a big idea. Something that could be Worth a hundred billion or more? And we'll give a$10 million check in 48 hours.

That's Mark Lori, the founder of Quidsie and Jet.com, who earlier this year left as head of e-commerce at Walmart and has since made some bold bets, including investing one and a half billion dollars to buy the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves. Alongside Alex Rodriguez. I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. I wanted to talk to Mark because at a time of intense economic and societal uncertainty, he sees almost endless opportunity for transformative new initiatives. From a five hundred billion dollar city in the desert.

to new hundred billion dollar companies across multiple industries. Lori has a system for bringing big ideas to fruition. One that he believes applies equally to startups, the NBA, and a new more equitable, sustainable model for urban life. If that seems wildly ambitious. Well, that's what Lori's all about, using the tools of entrepreneurship to challenge assumptions and drive change.

It would be crazy, he says, to waste the opportunities in front of us. Oh, and he's looking for big thinking founders to join him on this journey. For the right idea and the right person, he says, he's prepared to invest ten million dollars in forty eight hours. Any takers?

I'm Bob Safian and I'm here with Mark Lori, uh founder of both Quids and Jet.com, sold to Amazon and Walmart, respectively. He's an entrepreneur who has Dramatically impacted our retail landscape, although his interests are much broader, as we'll be discussing. Mark, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks to be here, Bob. So earlier this year, you decided to leave Walmart about five years after selling jet.com to the company. And now suddenly you have. wide open space in front of you, but instead of kicking back and resting on the fruits of that labor, you have a whole slew of initiatives underway from plans to build a new city from scratch, uh to buying an NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves.

To a range of new startups and investments. I am eager to dig into all of that stuff. But first, I I want to ask you about your mindset at this time. This is something we focus on a lot at Masters of Scale. Why didn't you just kickback after leaving Walmart. Like what what motivates you at this point? Is it the same Or different from what motivated you at other times in your career. No, it's the same. I love it.

It's fun. It's not work. I enjoy building stuff from nothing. You know, if you look at it like an athlete. And you're sort of like in the single A and then double A and then triple A. That's great, but it's pretty obvious like

You wanna get to the majors, and then you get to the majors, and then you wanna make an all star team, and then you wanna win a championship. You wanna be an MVP. And to me it in business and entrepreneurship seems sort of obvious like you've got all this experience And you've got the ability to raise more capital, hire better people. It'd be crazy not to leverage that, to waste that opportunity is the way I look at it. So tell me about Telosa, this magical city that you've envisioned. I mean, entrepreneurs usually start with sort of small focused ideas and then they iterate and then expand, and you're starting with a pretty

Grand image here. Like, where did this idea come from? Did you like go to Disney World and say, Oh, I want to create my Epcot? Like, where does this come from? Yeah. First off, I always come from the point of view that it's easier to do a big idea than a small idea. I find it really hard. If you said Like, hey, start a small business, make it profitable. I want to make a couple of million dollars a year. I'd be like, I'm out. Like, I that seems way too hard. I don't know how you'd do it. But

I think The bigger the idea is the fewer the people there are playing in the space. So I always like, you know Thinking about how to make The idea even bigger.

But when it comes to the city, it really wasn't about hey, I w I want to build a city. It didn't start like that at all. The city is just a tactic to a much bigger vision of Testing a new model for society. Like many Americans, I think, have just been frustrated.

Watching what's happening in America. Wondering, you know, with all this material progress that we've made. over the last hundred years, why there's still so many people barely getting by. Why are we all not winning here? And so it set me down

A deep dive researching. And I came across this book, Progress in Poverty, by Henry George. He was an economist, late nineteenth century. It turns out the book was the second most read book next to the Bible in its time. And he basically proves what the problem is with capitalism. And so that got me really fired up.

Because An entrepreneur is always looking for what's that little hook or that little thing you can change that makes all the difference. I'm a big believer in capitalism. And the power of it, but there are definitely some drawbacks.

Without government intervention and anti trust. We'd continue to have monopolies. And the workers would bear the brunt of that. And we saw that happen in the early days of capitalism in America. Well, the government I think does a pretty good job now of preventing that and making sure that there is fair competition.

And after reading this book, it occurred to me That You know, land ownership. Sort of this silent monopoly. As people own land and there's only a finite amount of it.

And you sort of have control over it and you basically are able to extract As much value as the market will let you. And that's sort of what a monopoly would do. And so it seems to me we missed it. We just missed it.

uh on land ownership. And I could talk for a long time about exactly the economic theory behind why it's true. But Excepting it's true. I said, Okay, well how do you change it?

It's really something you had to start from the beginning. So that's where the city comes into play. We need worthless land. Call. The Nevada Desert.

Let's find two hundred thousand acres. Let's have the land be owned by a community foundation, a not for profit foundation. And if this foundation could get Five milyen people to move there. And create a real thriving sity.

The land would be worth a trillion dollars. And with that trillion dollars of land value. The community then would Form an endowment. probably sell off the land, diversify and have like a trillion dollar endowment.

where it would earn called fifty billion dollars a year and it would use that fifth. To basically provide the most advanced social services in the world. Health care, education, jobs, training, affordable housing. And it really would bring everybody along with this wealth creation. So that's the idea. I'm calling it

Equitism. It's sort of capitalism. With just this one little twist. It's a small twist, but it's a really impactful twist. And I think if we're able to execute it's gonna change How people think about capitalism, I think we haven't taken enough shots as a country.

We were incredibly innovative, tried a lot of things early on. And so hopefully this encourages other people to take shots, test things. on a large scale to see if we can make improvements. There's no way we've got it. Perfectly right, in my opinion.

And so you're you're you're using this as like a a testbed for this for this new model, which includes more sustainability as part of the city too. But the idea is that like other cities, other locations will then If it works the way you hope it will, will it Adopt. pieces of this will change their own structures? Yeah, that would be the hope, absolutely, since we are building this city from scratch.

We're seeing an incredible opportunity to not only make it the most equitable city in the world, but also the most sustainable. It would be powered by a hundred percent renewable energy and only use autonomous vehicles. And be very Family friendly, lots of parks, very walkable, bikable. Um lot of nature.

With a clean slate, there's a lot of really cool things we can do. And I think the other cities in the world could certainly learn What does it mean when you go fully autonomous with vehicles? If you see it in action live in a siti of five million people. It might be enough to say, you know what? Let's do the hard switch. That's one example, but there'll be, you know, a couple dozen probably

Examples. of things that we do and make work that other cities can look to. And that would be the hope. That would be the dream really. What surprised you about the reaction to this idea? You know, we've got thousands, probably more than ten thousand now. Inbound responses from people.

That are excited about it. Many of them want to move there. That's That was surprising to me. The Saudi Arabian government has its own built from scratch city. In the works. Yeah, no, we've talked to them. It's a very ambitious project as well.

I think There's a lot of Things that we could probably learn from each other. One of the approaches that we're taking, though, that is a little bit unique, is we're really starting with people at the center, not technology at the center. What are the values of the city? What's the mission? How are we gonna live these values in a way that no other city does? What are we gonna stand for?

And so we want to be the most open, the most fair, the most inclusive city in the world. And to our knowledge. No city That's been built has really started with a mission and a set of values and people at the center. It started more as

A big real estate project. And that's what we're avoiding. I have no financial interest in this whatsoever. This is just an opportunity to give back and because it's not a real estate project and not looking to make money, I'm hopeful that Is what makes the difference in the end. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together. learn more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world.

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Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

Before the break, we heard billionaire entrepreneur Mark Laure talk about his vision for a new city in the desert that he calls Telosa. And how a small twist can launch a big idea. Now we dig deeper into the big bets he's making, from buying the NBA's minister of Timberwolves to investing in a slew of new startups that he believes can be hundred billion dollar businesses. Lori wraps all this in a strategy he calls VCP, vision capital people. He stresses the need for a clear delineation between mission and values on one side and

And strategy and vision on the other. Winning. Even winning an NBA championship. Can't be the only goal, he says. Let's hear why.

You've also this year become an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The NBA season starts. This week. It must be uh exciting to be in that new business. Oh, very exciting. This is a childhood dream.

I mean honestly like Growing up as a little kid in Staten Island, New York. You know, I uh was a huge sports fan. There's no words. It's like Beyond exciting and

I can't wait to go to the games and And also dig in through the lens of an entrepreneur again. So I've never owned a team before, I never built a city. I'm just trying to take the startup playbook that I've learned. through doing many startups. And seeing if you could apply that to a team or a city.

Why the NBA as an investment? I mean, is it a business decision? Is it a passion decision? Yeah, I think it was a combination of both. So Yeah, it's a it's a lot of a lot of money and a lot of personal wealth tied up in it. So you don't want it to go down in value, you know. Um

So I think looking at all sports, NBA seems to have the most upside. Just to be global. progressive the younger generation It's

Probably the sport that resonates most. We love the idea that the links The W MBA team was also part of it as well. So we've got two teams. The fact that it was sort of uh an underdog, I would say. You know, in the league.

Minnesota's a big market, and if we get it right there. This could be something real special. We're gonna build the foundation the way we would in any startup. What is your mission? What's your values? How do you live them in a way that no other team does?

What's the vision? Where are you going? What do you want to be in ten or twenty years? I'm always a believer in in what I call V C P vision capital people. If you get V C P right, everything else falls in place. That's been sort of the playbook or formula that I've used. That's worked really well for me. It isn't Winning the mission? People throw around mission and vision all the time and and sometimes it gets a little confusing.

I always try to like separate mission and values in one bucket, vision strategy in the other. Mission and Values is more the emotional connection you have, like Why you exist. It's not a goal.

So winning a championship would be a goal. That's on the other side of the ledger. Mission and values. It's What gets you up in the morning? And

What do you stand for and what do you value as an organization? You can live those values so that players, the fans can say, Wow, like the Timberwolves are X. Like they are the most You know, and we haven't nailed the values yet, but let's say it was the most open team

Wor gets around, you build a reputation for being open and you live it, and that's how you build a brand. And that's how you attract the best people. You need that. To be the foundation of the culture, mission, values. It's so that people feel like there's something bigger than dollars and cents or even bigger than winning. That's mission value. So on the vision strategy side.

Certainly part of the vision of where you want to get to in 10 or 20 years. It's got to include a championship. Like that's part of it. That's not the only thing. when you're thinking about the vision and painting a picture It can't be singularly focused on just a championship. It has to be broader and cover more things that you want to be, but And then put three or five strategies down on paper. That are the big

Building blocks to that vision. And then you go set up metrics. You judge yourself against those metrics. You come up with the tactics And then the organizational structure to support it. There's a certain formula and method. Like I'm learning to play basketball now.

which I thought was appropriate since I bought a team. So I'm learning to play. And the coach is a great coach and he has me doing a lot of air shooting, no ball. And it's just foundational, foundational, foundational. Sort of resonated with me. I'm like, yeah. Exactly. In business.

lot of times people like shoot with the ball without doing the fundamental work. Before you That's what I'm really helping to sort of push here is let's do the air shooting. Fundamentals.

Let's not make any big moves, no big hires, no big Firing s like that's just To The hard Fundamental air shooting first.

And then when everything's in place We start shooting Everyone's gonna feel really good about things. So That's the approach we're taking. Yeah. And I know you made transparency a big deal at Jet, one of the valid pay scales, among other things. How how transparent can you be

As an owner. With players. No, it's it's interesting you said that because Well I don't know we haven't settled on on the value there'll be something in that area of being more transparent, more real with players and fans. And so right now we're in a process of actually learning

from the league and talking to agents like what is Okay. In terms of transparency, like how far can you go? Within the rules that are uh that are in place. Yeah, with it within the rules, but certainly like Nobody should be surprised or read about a trade in the newspaper. That sort of thing. That seems sort of obvious. I'm certainly interested in

pushing the envelope.'Cause I'm I'm a big believer in the power of transparency and what it does to build uh trusting relationship And what that does to culture. There's incredible

Loyalty that builds over time with the players, but also we're only gonna land on three values. I'm a big believer That you shouldn't have more than three values because you couldn't possibly live More than three. in a way that no other team does. And also everyone that you add past three I find to be dilutive.

You just become less likely to to live them in a really differentiated way. You've made a slew of entrepreneurial investments. I'm sure many of our listeners would love to have you as a backer. So uh how do you decide what to invest in? So the strategy is to come in early.

With a really big check like pre seed. call it a ten million dollar check with just a founder and a big idea. And then we'll help the founder raise capital and hire the team. I fundamentally believe as an entrepreneur There's a gap in the market where

The typical approach is you're a founder, you have an idea. You get a million dollars, you build a little something, you do a little testing, you then you put a couple more million in. You build a little more, you five million ten you know, and there's an extraordinary amount of finance risk. And then time you take

To answer your question, it would be A founder That has a really big vision. That'll require a ten million, fifty million, multi hundred million dollar three rounds of financing, that sort of size. Something that could be

Worth a hundred billion or more. But it's just a founder and idea and the thinking is like We like the space and like the entrepreneur. We'll give a ten million dollar check in forty eight hours. But you said a hundred billion dollars. You're looking for folks who are really trying to do something transformative. Yeah, and it has the potential to be that. It doesn't mean it it will exit for that, but if something has the potential to be a hundred billion dollar market cap. type company.

Then That means that there's a high likelihood that the company's gonna raise at a multi billion dollar valuation and really go for creating tens of billions of value. I think it could work in any industry if The idea is big enough.

So you're you're not necessarily focused on Retail, which is where you spent a lot of time more recently. But other areas. I know you're you're an investor in Archer in Passenger drones. Yep. Right. What are the areas that you feel are ripe for disruption?

You just pick any big industry, transportation, okay, energy, education. Healthcare. Sports. you know, e commerce, retail. The biggest sort of buckets out there.

Can you find A way to transform the entire industry. Wizard is a good example. And we just raise fifty million. For that company.

And it's basically conversational commerce, this idea that In twenty years people won't use a search engine to order what they want. You won't like go to a website And type in toaster and get 5,000 responses and have to like weed through them. I think it's gonna be much more personalized and it's gonna be through. Text and voice interaction and you'll just either text

Or say I want a toaster and it'll know everything about you. And come up with three Dead on recommendations that fit. Exactly.

The type of price point, the types of brands you like to buy. And you'll see the three, and you'll just say number two. And number two will show up. This idea of though having to do the work yourself right now, which is the way retail works. I don't think is gonna be

a part of how people shop in the future. And that's what really wished it. Is about it's uh conversational commerce, we call it. It's about the engine behind that that's doing the work in the background. Yeah, it's artificial intelligence, machine learning. And it just keeps getting smarter with every conversation.

That's the idea. It's it's a combination of of intelligent AI, machine learning and really smart merchandising sort of bringing the two together. There's a lot of talk about the scale of some tech businesses. You mentioned monopolies earlier. You've contributed to huge platforms at Amazon and at Walmart. I had a guest on recently, formerly at Google, who kind of Regret he helped make them

So big, so dominant, so scaled. And I'm curious if you have any regrets or any perspective about what scaling to that size Does Or means.

I mean at at Walmart, no, uh no regrets at all, I think the the retail market is is very competitive and it's very healthy. And Walmart investing aggressively to challenge the very formidable incumbent in Amazon. was healthy for the world, for the market, for customers in general. Had we not done that.

That would be worse off. I mean, you don't wanna have any one company with With such dominant share of the market because It starts to get monopolistic. Power. So I'm Glad we did what we did.

All right. Well great, Mark, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Bob. It's great. Thank you. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future?

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