Speaker
Ryan Cohen
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
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.
eBay spent $2.4 billion on sales and marketing while achieving essentially no active user growth, a major inefficiency Cohen plans to eliminate.
Ryan Cohen's first priority if he acquires eBay is to pull $2 billion of costs out of the approximately $5.5 billion operating expense base.
Ryan Cohen cited a $400 billion total addressable market for live commerce, calling eBay's current live commerce presence embarrassingly small relative to that opportunity.
GameStop has made an unsolicited $56 billion offer to acquire eBay, structured as 50% cash and 50% GameStop stock at a premium.
Ryan Cohen is personally committing $500 million of his own money into the eBay transaction, stating he has never pulled a penny out of GameStop.
eBay's current CEO has a golden parachute valued at over $100 million if he is let go following an acquisition.
Ryan Cohen envisions using GameStop's 1,600 stores as studios, fulfillment centers, and logistics nodes to power eBay's live commerce expansion.
Chewy operated with negative working capital, allowing it to reach billions in revenue while consuming very little external capital.
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.
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.
GameStop's management invited Cohen onto the board thinking he'd be their friendly shield against an activist investor. He wasn't. Cohen crossed 5%, filed a 13D, and eventually took the CEO role because no one else was up to it.
Cohen's original thesis was simple: GameStop was likely to survive until the next PlayStation and Xbox console cycle, when hardware scarcity drives foot traffic. Everything changed when he was pulled deeper into the business.
Cohen tried to turn GameStop into Chewy by hiring e-commerce talent. It was wrong. Unlike Chewy's recurring consumables, GameStop sold discretionary physical inventory that could sit unsold in stores. He pivoted to collectibles instead.
Cohen's plan for eBay is surgical: slash $2B from a bloated $5.5B cost base, rescue eBay Live from obscurity and capture the $400B live commerce TAM, then build the world's first liquid marketplace for in-game digital items — a market he says is bigger than all of eBay's existing physical business.
NFTs promised a market for digital ownership but had no utility. In-game items like skins and weapons are different — they have real in-game use, billions of players own them, and yet no liquid marketplace exists. Cohen wants eBay to be that marketplace.
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.
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.
eBay's board rejected Cohen's $56B bid, citing financing uncertainty. Cohen calls this illogical: the financing comes from eBay's own balance sheet, so if GameStop can't get it, neither can eBay. He's committed to escalate regardless.
Cohen is committing $500 million of personal capital and has never taken money out of GameStop, yet the media roots for an entrenched management team that has never bought a single open-market share. His question: what is more American than risking your own money?
Friedberg argues the media's hostility to Cohen isn't about the eBay deal — it's about protecting the narrative that GameStop was always a meme stock. To grant Cohen credibility now would force every commentator to admit they were wrong.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Business 92%
- Technology 8%
Connections
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