The internet has made it possible for venture-funded, $100MM-in-revenue retailers to pop up virtually overnight. Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker warned about this new phenomena this summer. Let’s look at Mary’s report: traditional retail had a wretched 2016, and they’re about to have a far worse 2017. Why? Their businesses have become bloated, leaving them as easy for tech to undermine as the entertainment industry was in 2001. Here’s the trend, as beautifully analyzed by the prophetic Ms. Meeker: In the forthcoming chart, Ms. Meeker explains that it is now possible for an upstart company to quickly develop a quality product (say, a mattress, a la Casper), delete as many legacy costs as you can (like retail space, distribution inefficients, etc), hyper-target your advertisements using the Facebook ad exchange, and build a $100MM brand in a year or five. 56