At the Morgan Stanley Internet Conference a few weeks ago in SF, I was asked to sit on stage with Bill Gurley and Alfred Lin and take questions from the moderator and audience. It was fun. Bill and Alfred are two of the best VCs in the business and it was a treat to be on stage with them.
One question we got from the audience was what company was going to get most disrupted by the Internet. Bill answered Hertz and Avis, for obvious reasons. I think he’s got a great point. I answered Walmart. Here’s why.
Until now, if you want something right away, you have to go a store. If you are willing to wait, you can order it online. But it sure feels like same day/same hour delivery is coming and coming fast now. And when you can order something from Amazon, or Instacart, or Starbucks and get it right away, there are going to be a lot less reasons to go to a store.
We’ve got a horse in this race with Sidecar and I am seeing it happening right in front of my face. These real time driver networks that Sidecar, Postmates, Lyft, Uber and a handful of other companies have built can do a lot more than move people around. They can and are moving packages around. And more and more ecommerce companies (including bricks and mortar retailers!) are doing deals with these driver networks to get their stuff to their customers on the same day and even in the same hour.
This is going to put even more pressure on companies with lots of stores, lots of in store inventory and labor, and processes, systems, and procedures optimized for the in-store experience. That’s why I answered Walmart.
All that said, I am not advising you short Walmart. Please don’t take public stock market investing advice from me. I don’t know anything about that. I’m a VC.
