00:00Forrest Lee didn't want to be Jeff Bezos. He wanted to be worth billions.
00:12And in order to do that, he needed to build a giant company that could eventually be sold for tens
00:19of billions.
00:20There's nothing wrong with this, by the way. This is literally the entire point of venture capital.
00:36Entrepreneurs use VC money to grow their businesses as large as possible, and then they sell it to someone who
00:43wants to run it as a real business.
00:46But here's where things get messy, because Shopee isn't a normal business. They're not a tech company. They're not a
00:53retail company. And they're not a logistics company. They're a combination of all three.
01:00If they were a normal tech company, they could easily be sold to Meta or Google or Amazon.
01:07But Shopee isn't a normal tech company. They have real-world operations and infrastructure and assets.
01:14If they were a normal retail company, they could easily be sold to Alibaba or Walmart.
01:21But again, Shopee isn't a normal retail company. They operate entirely online.
01:27So what is Shopee?
01:29Well, Shopee is essentially a technology-driven flea market.
01:33Now you might think that this is a weird way to think of their business.
01:37But hear me out.
01:38A flea market is basically an online marketplace.
01:41A flea market is basically an online marketplace.
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