The Order : Weekly Aggregator Roundup
Chart of the week:
New funding this week: $160M
Funding Craze 💰
US - Acquco $160M [Techcrunch] ... on the back of realizing $100M revenue runrate on their initial $2M equity funding. High five to capital efficiency 🙌
Strategy 📈
Amazon Unbound Interviews - Brad Stone’s Follow up to his 2013 best seller "Everything Store" with a deep dive on Amazon’s evolution is the past few years: The 30min interview covers Amazon's evolving culture and strategic moves. Among the points discussed are ads on the marketplace: In a shift towards profitability, marketplace ads got to take priority to the customer-first obsession principle. [Stratechery]
Sellers with revenues >$1bn (incl Amazon-native brands Mpow and Aukey) suspended from the marketplace in fake-review tackle [Marketplace Pulse, follow on reporting by Techcrunch]
The Amazon Oasis: Understanding M&A’s FBA Assets - interesting take on traditional PE vs startups in the aggregation space: "In many ways, well-capitalized private equity funds and corporate acquirers have an advantage over FBA aggregators and rollup companies. New entrants are continuously raising financing, whereas established institutional investors are free to pursue a multitude of deals without pause." [Global Wired Advisor in Forbes Business Council]
While not eCommerce specific, this take on M&A tooling is more relevant than ever in the aggregators space: As M&A accelerates, deal-makers are leveraging AI and ML to keep pace [Techcrunch]
Let's make this week count,
Christian