Jack Abraham

OpenStore: instant offers to buy your Shopify store, the Opendoor model for e-commerce

Shaan pitches OpenStore (Keith Rabois and Jack Abraham) as Opendoor for e-commerce: plug into a Shopify store's data and give the owner an instant buyout offer with no banker, deck, or process — rolling up Shopify stores the way Thrasio rolled up Amazon FBA businesses.

“OpenStore is the same thing for e-commerce. They're saying, you want to sell your e-commerce company? I'll buy your Shopify store right now. You don't have to go through the whole banker process, make a deck, do, do all this stuff. I'll just plug into your data and I'll just give you an offer right now. And so what they're trying to do is roll up Shopify stores.”

Steal thisApply the instant-liquidity model to any market of small sellers: plug into their data, skip the broker process, and make an instant cash offer to roll them up.

Keith Rabois's Open Store: 'Opendoor for buying businesses'

Shaan explains that Keith Rabois (Opendoor founder) and Jack Abraham are starting Open Store, which Shaan believes is Opendoor for businesses (likely online ones): tell them about your business, get an instant offer, and they buy it from you.

“his new company he's starting, uh, with, with Jake, Jack Abraham is, uh, called Open Store.. And so you have Opendoor and now you have Open Store. I know they haven't released a bunch of details, but I think I know what it is, which is it is Opendoor for buying businesses. So it's the same idea for buying. I think it's going to be specialized in online businesses, but maybe not. Where basically you just say, here's my business, and then they say, here's your offer, we'll buy it off you.”

Atomic's fix for studios: one project, do-or-die, 9 months to Series A

Shaan describes how Jack Abraham's Atomic engineered urgency into the studio model: one project at a time, a dedicated do-or-die team, 9 months to raise a Series A or you're out, the founder acts as initial CEO, and a B2B-only focus instead of fickle consumer.

“He's like, we're gonna only do one project at a time. That team is do or die on that project. He goes, they have 9 months to raise their Series A. If they can't raise their Series A in 9 months, they're out.”

Steal thisEngineer artificial urgency into a portfolio: dedicated team, single project, hard fundraising deadline, no soft landing.

Jack Abraham keeps 600 startup ideas in a single Evernote doc

Abraham has accumulated a running list of over 600 startup ideas in an Evernote document, built by writing down everything in the world that seems broken or improvable. Atomic uses it as the seed pool for new companies.

“And then I just got in the habit of writing those down.. And now that list has grown to over 600, and that's a seed that we use to start companies out of at Atomic.”

Jack Abraham keeps 600 startup ideas in a single Evernote doc

Abraham has accumulated a running list of over 600 startup ideas in an Evernote document, built by writing down everything in the world that seems broken or improvable. Atomic uses it as the seed pool for new companies.

“And then I just got in the habit of writing those down.. And now that list has grown to over 600, and that's a seed that we use to start companies out of at Atomic.”

Jack flew 6 people to Sydney to build eBay's homepage in 2 weeks

Rather than languish after eBay acquired Milo, Abraham convinced the CEO to let him build multiple products. On a Friday night he persuaded 6 people to cancel two weeks, fly to Sydney, and turn an Airbnb into a hacker house. They built what became eBay's feed and homepage, used by 130 million people nine months later.

“I convinced 6 people to cancel their next 2 weeks, fly with me to Sydney, Australia, rent an Airbnb, turn it into a hacker house. And we built the entire thing in 2 weeks. There's actually a story written about this online. And it ended up becoming the feed and the homepage of eBay, and 130 million people were using it 9 months later”

Pace the studio: 1 company year one, 2 year two, 3 year three

The trap with startup studios is trying all your ideas at once. Atomic deliberately paced itself, launching one company the first year, two the second, three the third, and so on, to preserve focus before scaling to 10-12 a year.

“the temptation is to try them all. And the thing that we did at Atomic is we only did one the first year, two the second, three the third, four the fourth. We really paced ourselves. And I think, you know, now we're at the point where we can do 10 or 12 a year.”

Steal thisCap how many bets you run in parallel and ramp slowly so focus and desperation survive.

B2B is your singles and doubles; consumer is your home runs

A General Catalyst managing partner told Abraham that in venture, B2B companies are typically your singles and doubles while consumer is your lightning-in-a-bottle home run, and you should construct your portfolio accordingly.

“the way you make your money in the venture business is B2B, those are your singles and doubles typically, and consumer can be your home runs. That can be your lightning in the bottle, and you should plan your portfolio accordingly.”

Atomic's staged checks: ~$250K, then ~$2M, then $3-8M

Atomic invests in stages: a first check around a quarter million ($100K-$400K) to do initial research, then usually around $2M ($1-4M), then a later check of $3-8M, sometimes alongside other VCs.

“The first check that we'll write to kind of get something going and do some initial research and homework is around a quarter million dollars, but it could range from $100,000 to $400,000. And then if that goes well, we can write a check that's usually $2 million, but again, it could be $1 to $4 million. And then from there, we can actually write a check that could be $3 to $8 million”

Power-law time: one hour can outweigh everything else you've ever done

Abraham relays a Peter Thiel insight via Marc Andreessen: all of Thiel's effort getting into Stanford, law school, and PayPal led to one hour with Mark Zuckerberg that was worth more than the cumulative sum of all his other hours. Time exists on a power law, so engineer your calendar to find and create those rare 'power hours.'

“All of this effort, all of this time, all of this energy, everything that I had done up until this point in my life got me one hour with Mark Zuckerberg. And that hour was worth more than the cumulative sum of all of those other hours that I had spent in my life. And that is a crazy, mind-blowing fact if you think about that, that there could be an hour that comes in your life that is worth more than the cumulative sum of everything else you've spent”

Steal thisAudit your calendar for the rare high-leverage hours and engineer more chances to land them.

Bezos calendar review: cross off anything that would change nothing if undone

Abraham adapted a Jeff Bezos practice: review last week's calendar block by block and ask, for each thing, 'if I hadn't done this, would anything have changed?' Cross those off, find a way to stop or delegate them, and circle the things that truly mattered.

“you ask the question, for all of these things that I did last week, what are the things where if I hadn't done this thing, nothing would have changed? And you cross it off the list. And if things keep getting crossed off that list, you probably shouldn't be doing them. You should probably find a way to get out of those kinds of meetings or replace yourself in those kinds of meetings or hire someone perhaps to, you know, take those kinds of meetings for you”

Steal thisEach week, cross off every calendar block whose absence would have changed nothing, then delegate or kill it.

Autonomous fishing vessels using self-driving-car tech

Abraham floats a 'crazy idea' Atomic researched: repurpose computer-vision and sensing tech built for self-driving cars into autonomous fishing vessels that fish 24/7 through bad weather, using sonar and underwater vision to find fish. Structural fishing-quota and industry-capture issues held it back.

“a crazy idea that I had that I, I had us look into was what if you created autonomous fishing vessels that went out into the ocean and just fished 24/7, even through inclement weather? And they had like crazy sonar and like computer vision underwater, and they could find the fish, and they just, you know, automatically did all of that. And, you know, we looked into it, and, you know, it's, it's still such interesting technology. I hope someone does build it”

Steal thisLook for industries where self-driving-car perception tech could be redeployed, like autonomous fishing fleets.

Pattern 1: democratize what only the rich have access to

Abraham's first idea pattern: take something rich people or rich companies have access to and make it cheaper, distributable, and accessible to everyone. Per Andreessen, human desire is infinite, so the wealthy fund the outer edge of desire; if something there takes hold, everyone may want it.

“One pattern is if you take things that rich people have access to or rich companies have access to, and you figure out how to democratize them. So you make them more accessible, distributable, cheaper, and accessible to everyone. That is a winning formula for creating a really good company.”

Steal thisFind a service only the wealthy can afford and figure out how to deliver it cheaply to everyone.

Pattern 2: take a forced multi-step chore and make it dramatically faster

Abraham's second pattern: find something people feel they have to do but that takes many steps or a lot of time, and dramatically simplify it. Examples: Kayak collapsed travel booking into one site; telemedicine collapsed doctor visits into 5 minutes.

“if you take something that people consistently do and they have to do and they feel like they have to do it, but it takes a lot of steps and/or time, and you dramatically simplify it and you make it a lot faster to accomplish the same thing that they feel like they have to do.”

Steal thisPick a mandatory, multi-step chore and collapse it into a single fast step.

14 open tabs to do one task equals a business opportunity

Abraham's concrete tell for opportunity: whenever you see someone with tons of browser tabs open doing arduous research to complete one task, that's a business waiting to be built. The fix is pulling it all into one place, the way Kayak did for travel.

“If you ever see that people are doing a lot of research, there are tons of tabs open, it's really arduous, that's an opportunity.”

Steal thisWatch for tasks that force people to juggle many tabs and build the single-pane-of-glass version.