Part of the Silicon Valley greater fool model requires ramping whatever metrics are necessary — page views, unique visitors, revenue or profit to attract prospective buyers to acquire the business.
Elizabeth Knight in the Sydney Morning Herald looks at the cracks appearing in online retailer The Iconic where revenues of thirty million dollars were subsidised by forty-four million in losses in the e-commerce operator’s first year of trading.
The Iconic has all the hallmarks of a classic ‘buy me’ Silicon Valley operation — big marketing spend, high customer acquisition costs and fat operating losses in an effort to build market share.
Getting market share is one of the key aspects of the greater fool model, being the leader in a segment almost guarantees a buyer, usually the one of the shellshocked incumbents.
Knight quotes emails from one of The Iconic’s founders, Oliver Samwar, on the importance of being number one in their sector.
‘‘The only thing is that the time of the Blitzkrieg must be chosen wisely so that each country tells me with blood when it is time. I am ready – anytime!’’ one said.
‘‘We must be number one latest in the last month of next season. Full month, not a discount sales month
‘‘Why? Because only number one can raise unbelievable money at unbelievable valuations. I cannot raise money for number 2 etc and I have seen it how easy (sic) it is for me in Brazil and how difficult in Russia because our team f….d up.’’
As we’ve seen with companies like Groupon, being number one can impress gullible corporations but when that market position has been bought by investor’s money subsidising operations, the business is rarely sustainable.
Whether investors are prepared to continue subsidising The Iconic’s losses or if the business can attract a buyer will depend upon the business maintaining momentum on its key metrics.
Probably the most important thing for companies like The Iconic though is the availability of easy credit and accessible funds.
As we saw in the original dot com boom, when that easy money evaporates so to do most of the businesses.
For the incumbent businesses threatened by well funded upstarts, some might find the best hope for survival is to hope challengers run out of money.
In the meantime though, they may have to survive a market blitzkrieg.