Lydia Jett - Investing in E-commerce - [Invest Like the Best, EP.282]

My guest today is Lydia Jett, Managing Partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers. Lydia leads the team’s consumer, internet, and e-commerce investments and has worked with many of the most significant consumer platforms in the world, including as a board member of Coupang and Flipkart. We cover all aspects of e-commerce and explore Lydia’s evolution as an investor alongside Masa Son at SoftBank. Please enjoy my conversation with Lydia Jett.    For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus streamlines the investment research process so you can get up to speed and find answers to critical questions on companies faster and more efficiently. The Tegus platform surfaces the hard-to-get qualitative insights, gives instant access to critical public financial data through BamSEC, and helps you set up customized expert calls. It’s all done on a single, modern SaaS platform that offers 360-degree insight into any public or private company. As a listener, you can take Tegus for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick. And until 2023 every Tegus license comes with complimentary access to BamSec by Tegus.   -----   Today's episode is brought to you by Brex, the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best.   -----   Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.    Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:34] - [First question] - What curiosity thread she’s been pulling on thus far in her career [00:05:17] - The biggest felt differences doing things one way for a decade and changing now [00:07:08] - Learning about tailwinds and what the predominant ones are that exist today [00:10:44] - Competitive frontiers that exist today in e-commerce [00:12:14] - What drives companies that grow faster than their competitors [00:13:15] - What areas the world’s most innovative e-commerce companies are focused on [00:16:38] - Unique characteristics that they select for in ecommerce CEOs and founders [00:19:03] - Upside down approaches to e-commerce that aren’t common in America yet [00:23:05] - Lessons learned about business models that don’t work in e-commerce [00:27:47] - What western investors should know about Coupang  [00:30:12] - Everything she’s learned about vertical integration [00:33:01] - Everything she’s learned and cares about in regards to margins [00:37:17] - The most extreme version of efficiency gain she’s seen deployed [00:41:27] - The role the size of assets plays at SoftBank [00:47:42] - Focusing on efficiency and smart allocation first before trying to scale  [00:50:33] - Companies as products that investors buy and defining what great looks like [00:53:16] - The danger of premature optimization around a set of KPIs  [00:55:46] - How important the specific founder is for their given e-commerce company [00:58:18] - Why e-commerce companies tend to start from a worse place than offline ones [00:59:45] - Ways that she’s changed from working alongside Masayoshi Son for a year [01:03:31] - Who comes most to mind as a great investor     [01:05:23] - The kindest thing that anyone has ever done for her