Shopping Club Site Jet Raises $140 Million before Launching

February 19, 2024 by
Shopping Club Site Jet Raises $140 Million before Launching

It takes guts to challenge Amazon, and that’s exactly what Jet.com CEO Marc Lore said he’s going to do.

The e-commerce startup aims to sell everyday items to consumers using a complex pricing system that makes items cheaper if they are stored physically closer to where the consumer actually lives.

Lore told tech blog Re/code that his startup site is already working aggressively to get a critical mass of customers, so that its business model can work. Lore, who also founded diapers.com, is no stranger to the low-margin, high-volume consumer staples business, and he’s already attracted over 350,000 early adopters to sign up for the site, even though it hasn’t launched yet.

He’s also attracted investors. Last week, it was announced that a number of investors are funding the site with $140 million in seed money, which some rumors claim brings the valuation of the site to $600 million.

The roster of backers has some familiar and unsurprising names: Bain Capital of Mitt Romney fame, Goldman Sachs, and Accel Partners are putting money in the venture.

Some eyebrows will go up to see that Google is also a backer. Google and Amazon have publicly squared off in the competitive battle for e-commerce dollars. Amazon has refused to buy Google’s Product Listing Ads, fearing that Google is moving too far away from discovery and dangerously close to actually becoming an e-commerce player itself.

If Jet takes off and Google gets more involved, Amazon’s paranoia might turn out to be true. Meanwhile, Jet’s customers will end up with cheaper toilet paper and dish-washing liquid.

Tags: ,

Related Articles