Podbit · All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In a marketplace, sellers are the product. eBay cut its concierge programs, forces sellers to rely on third-party tools, and is losing their loyalty. Cohen's fix: get engineering and sellers on the same call and solve their problems directly.
Where this was said
At 42:10 · chapter starts 26:39
Cohen and Friedberg trace eBay's arc from first-mover marketplace leader to a business that could have been Amazon but defaulted into niche categories, with a discussion of PayPal, Skype, and StubHub acquisitions. [1] — Ryan Cohen "Since COVID, every key eBay metric has gone the wrong direction: GMV down, 30 million fewer active users, operating earnings declining, and…" 40:24
Collectibles now represent 42% of GameStop's revenue, worth approximately $350 million, reflecting the company's successful pivot from video game software.
GameStop has $9.7 billion in cash, $333 million in free cash flow, and grew revenue 14% year over year in Q1.
Since COVID, every key eBay metric has gone the wrong direction: GMV down, 30 million fewer active users, operating earnings declining, and operating expenses now consuming more than half of revenue. Meanwhile, every other e-commerce player is growing.
eBay's active user base has fallen by 30 million since COVID, alongside declining GMV and operating earnings.
eBay's operating expenses now exceed half of its revenues — a striking inefficiency for a business that holds no inventory.
Sam built Algrow, a SaaS for finding viral content formats, with zero coding experience using ChatGPT and Cursor. Six months later: 10,000 users, $14K/month in revenue.
Sam's first MVP threw an application error on its very first user — and he shipped it anyway. The core idea worked, and that was enough to validate the product and keep users coming back.
Sam joined Discord voice chats, muted himself, and silently screen-shared his product. Users in the chat started tagging him asking what the tool was. No pitch needed — curiosity did the selling.
Most founders post links in Discord and immediately get banned for self-promotion. Sam's approach was the opposite: build rapport, help people with the tool, let word of mouth do the work.
Find where your ICP lives. Listen before building. Validate with DMs and Loom recordings. Build in public with users inside your own Discord server. Turn early adopters into advocates with free access.
Instead of fearing the self-promo ban in large Discord servers, create your own private server for your product. You funnel in ideal customers and build a relationship that email can't replicate.
Algrow helps creators find and replicate viral video formats, starting at $25/month. It analyzes subscriber counts, average views, and trending formats — and can even generate the videos with AI.
After weeks of Sam silently screen-sharing in a Discord server, the server owner — unprompted — made a full YouTube promotional video about Algrow. Sam paid nothing and asked for nothing.
Producer Gus admits Discord never crossed his mind as a customer acquisition channel. Pat connects the insight to a broader lesson: match your distribution channel to where your actual customers live.
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