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All in with Ryan Cohen

1:03:02 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Ryan Cohen wants to buy eBay and run it himself, betting his own capital against entrenched management.

  1. Will over skill when hiringA customer service leader came from an old people's home and kept reapplying after being rejected as unqualified; she ended up being incredible, and Cohen built the team from people as relentless as h
  2. Chewy's playbook did not transfer to GameStopMaking GameStop more like Chewy was the wrong strategy; cost cutting and collectibles replaced it, and collectibles are now 42% of revenue, $350 million, with Q1 revenue of $835 million, up 14% year o
  3. eBay is a marketplace he would not stock himselfHe would not take in first-hand inventory or go head to head against Amazon; the value is cost cuts, live commerce and digital in-game collectibles, sold to sellers whose pain points eBay has stopped
Executive Summary AI
  • Ryan Cohen dropped a ready-to-launch online jewelry business for pet food because it was consumable and recurring, and built Chewy by copying Amazon's supply chain while keeping the neighborhood pet store's product knowledge; he sold it in 2017 for $3.35 billion.3:07
  • GameStop began as a passive investment under 5%, and when the CEO offered him a single board seat to fend off another activist he declined, kept accumulating through COVID, crossed 5% and filed a 13D rather than a 13G.13:16
  • His first GameStop strategy was to apply everything he learned at Chewy, hiring e-commerce people from Chewy and Amazon under a CEO he hired, and it took him just over a year to see it was wrong; as CEO he switched to maniacal cost cutting, the pre-owned business and collectibles.19:36
  • For eBay he names three areas: pulling $2 billion of costs out of a business spending 2.4 billion on sales and marketing for no user growth, live commerce with a $400 billion TAM where eBay Live is invisible, and a new marketplace providing liquidity for in-game digital items, using GameStop's 1,600 stores as creator studios and fulfillment nodes.44:38
  • The eBay board rejected the offer citing financing uncertainty and has not engaged, while Cohen is putting 500 million of his own money into a 50% cash, 50% stock deal and says he will not go away.50:05
Key Quote
“If our suppliers are telling us they never want to speak to us again, it means we're getting the right price.”
— Ryan Cohen8:52
Key Quote
“I look for will over skill.”
— Ryan Cohen9:45
Key Quote
“I was on the toilet.”
— Ryan Cohen30:44