714: From $0 to $5 BILLION - The Blueprint for Building Billion-Dollar Startups | Marc Lore

Nathan Chan (0:01)

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Marc Lore (1:03)

I went in my boss's office and said, I'm quitting, and he laughed at me and said, didn't you just have a baby? You know what I'm paying you? He's like, you must have a damn good idea. Well, I don't have an idea yet, but I will. He's like, you're crazy.

SPEAKER_3 (1:14)

He sold diapers.com to Amazon. Turned a pitch deck into a $3.3 billion Walmart deal in under two years.

SPEAKER_4 (1:21)

And now he's building a city from scratch.

Nathan Chan (1:24)

So let's jump into diapers.com. What did the early days look like?

Marc Lore (1:28)

We had to go to Costco and BJ's, buy the diapers, bring them back to our house, and then ship them out. And of course we bought the diapers for more money than we were selling them. It seemed crazy. It was a lot of risk.

Nathan Chan (1:40)

And what was it like even working with Jeff Bezos?

Marc Lore (1:42)

You know, they were tough negotiators. They started selling diapers at 30% off, which is unheard of. It was very, very challenging to be up against Amazon.

Nathan Chan (1:51)

What was your philosophy there?

Marc Lore (1:53)

A lot of times I see people, they have this thesis, this vision, and then they compromise it because it's too scary or risky. You sort of have to have incredible conviction and you have to really believe in the vision and stick to it. Seven days a week, 100 hours a week, week after week, it was pretty crazy.

Nathan Chan (2:08)

Did you experience burnout?

SPEAKER_4 (2:14)

Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.

Nathan Chan (2:28)

Hey, I have a quick ask. If you're loving these episodes, leaving a quick review is honestly the best way to support us. It helps the show grow and means we can keep bringing you the Foundr stories and insights you tune in for. Please share it with a friend. Thank you so much. Now let's get into it.

So the first question we ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job? AKA, how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?

Marc Lore (2:52)

Yeah, you know, it started, I mean, when I was very young, I think I was just born with the entrepreneur's DNA because my grandma used to ask me what I want to be when I grow up. And I used to say a farmer, this is like four years old, six years old, eight years old. And she said, no, no, no, doctor or lawyer. They're like, no, I want to be a farmer because they grow stuff from nothing. I literally was born wanting to grow stuff from nothing. And no one in my family had ever gone to school, college, and no one ever made any real money or anything. So she wanted me to be a professional and be a doctor or a lawyer. And I was like, nope, farmer. And I did every entrepreneurial business a kid could do, everything from recycling newspapers, baseball cards, lemonade stands, car washes, like everything.

But when I graduated college, there really wasn't this thing that you go and become an entrepreneur. I didn't have any money. There was no startups really at the time. So I went to work in banking, and I was working in banking like seven years, and now it's the late 90s, and now startups are really taking off and they're really a thing. I just felt this pull, this tug from the startup tech world to say, you have to get out of bank and you have to go take a risk here and be an entrepreneur. I just had a newborn baby. I was doing really well in my career.