Quote · All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's $56B Plan to Take Over eBay
Where this was said
Building and selling Chewy for $3.35B
At 9:45 · chapter starts 1:56
Cohen explains how a neighborhood pet store visit sparked the Chewy idea, outlines the recurring-revenue logic, Amazon competition dynamics, and the supply-chain discipline required to survive on razor-thin margins. [1] — Ryan Cohen "Cohen was about to launch an online jewelry store when a trip to his neighborhood pet store changed everything. He saw a fragmented, recurr…" 02:05
Cohen was about to launch an online jewelry store when a trip to his neighborhood pet store changed everything. He saw a fragmented, recurring-revenue market Amazon hadn't truly conquered — and built Chewy to fill it.
Chewy operated with negative working capital, allowing it to reach billions in revenue while consuming very little external capital.
Ryan Cohen built Chewy from scratch and sold it in 2017 for $3.35 billion, after which it went public at a significantly higher valuation.
Cohen's rule: supplier gifts signal you're losing, supplier hostility signals you're winning. His relentless, adversarial negotiation style was core to Chewy's ability to survive on razor-thin pet food margins against Amazon.
Cohen hired a woman from a nursing home who applied multiple times despite lacking conventional qualifications. She became one of Chewy's best operators. Cohen's framework: hire diehards willing to go all-in, not résumé stars.
