The optics of successful liquidity events for Blue Nile, Zullily, Chewy and Zappos, and the incredible traction in the 2000s of The GAP as a public vertical consumer brand established meaningful consumer business outcomes. These potential to repeat history through a new crop of Direct to Consumer upstarts paired well with the pent up venture capita... See more

Now-established players have learned that Instagram advertisements and influencer campaigns only scale to a point: they can net no more than a few hundred thousand of a brand’s “first best” customers. This has driven a shift toward physical retail and prompted founders to agonize over if and when to peddle their wares on Amazon, making direct to co... See more

Shopify today has an enterprise value of $34 billion. Its gross merchandise value (GMV) through Q3-2019 was $40 billion, up 50% over the same period in 2018. From this GMV, it collected just over $1 billion in revenues from recurring subscriptions and payments products at 56% blended gross margins. If we assume Q4-19 will be 50% higher than Q4-18 (... See more