Depop goes the Weasel

Good morning, and I hope this actually works. This is, uh, an emergency Ostrich Report meeting called The Pop Goes the Weasel. Hendrik, how's all in Cape Town, dude?

Um, Cape Town is hot to the point where, as you can see, I have a t-shirt on, I'm sweating like I run marathons daily, and we have a story that essentially breaks my mind. How are you, sir?

Well, the story is like Cape Town, it's hot. I am doing well. I am doing well down the southwest of Ireland today, if anyone is joining. And we're going to have a guest joining us all the way from the US of A, Mr. Ben Marks, who is a Magento PTSD survivor. He's going to be joining us now in 2 minutes. Bear with him, it's early in the morning. But the story we wanted to talk about today, just to set the frame here, It's that eBay have acquired Depop from Etsy in a $1.2 billion deal this week. Etsy tried to be that boutique that everyone thought was like buying trendy Gen Z streetwear. No one could really figure out what it was doing, and they have sold this at a loss to eBay, the original secondhand marketplace founded in 1995, the granddaddy of resale, if you will. And we're here today to talk about this whole purchase to see what it means. Hendrik, you've long been of the opinion, um, that these— this is one of those companies that shouldn't exist. But let's talk about the deal for just a sec before we bring Ben in to get a pretty unique perspective on things also. Uh, but Hendrik, what do you think of the deal at its— taking it on face value?

Taking it on first value, my first question was Itsy, are you in trouble and you're not telling us you're in trouble? Um, here's the thing, under Jamie Iannone, the current eBay CEO, eBay have leaned, leaned into their past of being essentially the, the, the weekend festival event that you go to and you walk through and you see what you buy.

Mm-hmm.

This boils down to, for me, is that Etsy couldn't make Depop work, and eBay— because we've spoken about on this very same show, The Ostrich Report— they have lots of cash at hand. So if you have the opportunity to spend cash to build a vertical in your business that's kind of a big deal, then why are you not going to do it?

You're just—

you're gonna do it.

Yeah, it's crazy. But, but let's, let's have a quick look. I'm going to bring Ben in in just one minute, but let's look at it from Etsy's point of view for just a second. They've been offloading and shedding this kind of house of brand strategy over the last number of years. I got rid of Elo7 in 2023, now Depop at a loss. Um, is this smart management? Like, are they cutting their cloth to measure and saying we should be getting back to core principles? And from an eBay perspective, um, are they getting into a core category of users that they've never been able to do before? And is this a defensive moat strategy versus someone like Vinted who's coming into the market who's going to eat their lunch And I kind of framed that eBay question up for our guest who's going to join us, Ben Marks. I'm going to bring Ben in to say hello to us. Ben, good morning. Are you caffeinated? Are your kids asleep? And are you going to whisper around the living room? Oh, nice.

Thanks. No, we have— my pleasure. Thanks for having me. We actually did at the last minute have to foster our kids' foster because they had to leave town for the weekend. So you might hear the random hound noise or something. But other than that, no, I'm ready to go.

We are a hound noise friendly show. If you didn't know, my kid's gonna come in now and say hello. Anyway, Ben, tell us, tell us a little bit about your background. For those people who don't know you, you are embedded in this world. And you reach out and said, we're gonna have this discussion, you wanted to be part of it.

Yeah, this was great. Again, I mean, thank you for having me. I got my start, taught myself development, became a PHP developer, Joined an agency. That agency was focused on Magento when it first came out in 2008. Built my way up, built my way into a position working for Magento. So that means I was actually in the room teaching, I think, uh, one of the classes when eBay acquired Magento in 2011 for about $200 million. Um, fast forward 2014, I'm part of eBay. 2015, we get spun out with eBay Enterprise. Which was like Sterling and GSI. And then we got kind of shunted off. And that was also about the same time PayPal was getting spun out. We got— we ended up under, um, Primera, uh, most successful exit, I believe, in history for Primera, 5x, um, just a few years later to Adobe. So I've, I've been— I was part of this eBay story, not from the very beginning, but I was very much inside on that strategy that they had, why they even acquired Magento in the first place. It's an interesting story, both, um, just in terms of having been an eBay user when I was in college, like buying old drum equipment, because it was amazing. Back in the early days, you could get really great deals, and the whole auction thing was really cool. But happy to provide some perspective here.

You've mentioned the word strategy, and I think just before we jump in, I want to preface this by saying I'm an eBay lover. I think Hendrik, you are an eBay lover, and Ben, you're certainly You're part of the fabric, right? There's something unique about having been involved in that brand that really just sucks you in, isn't there?

Yeah, it is. I mean, it's the, the auction, you know, the auction format. Again, it was kind of greenfield because at the time, because these channels hadn't existed before, people were like, um, literally, you know, they'd find something, maybe, uh, someone moves out or a relative passes, they go through the garage, they're like, oh, I have no idea what this funky looking thing is. And it's like I'll throw it on eBay for $10. It's electronic equipment. No, it's like a Telefunken U47. This is like a rare and precious microphone. And I was getting good deals on cymbals and other various percussionary accoutrement. But again, the auction, you know, that auction format was something that I'd never experienced, right? I'd never— I didn't grow up going to auction. And it gives you that— there's a little bit of urgency. There's the refreshing the screen, you know, as it goes down. And so this was like, I think most people of a certain age, this was my model of eBay. eBay is an auction site. But by the time I joined eBay in, you know, fully in 2014, and I'm having this discussion in San Jose among some folks, they're like, well, oh no, actually we're like, the majority of our transactions are Buy It Now. Like they had become a marketplace, but they had failed to really communicate that brand. And then their strategy at the time under John Donahoe was to build a thing called the Fabric. By the way, be very wary of any technology named Fabric. Um, it's just, it's just like, it's an ambitious pursuit of like an abstract, amorphous thing. Um, but their idea was that you could start as a seller on eBay, then they had eBay Storefronts, and so you could kind of make a little marketplace inside eBay, and then they figured with Magento, once you got big enough, you could go to, at the time, Magento Go, which was Magento's, um, oh, just completely—

it's pretty fluid the way you describe it. Fail.

Well, so, well, this, this was the narrative, right? So you went from there to, um, uh, to a Magento Go store, which was SaaS, and then you could go and do Magento if you wanted custom. You would have Magento on-prem, and then you would grow from there. Theoretically, you would get you would make that leap into, you know, GSI space, like massive, massive, you know, mid-market, hundreds of millions in GMV. In the end, and then, and the way, part of the way they were stitching it all together was through this thing called the Fabric and this thing called X.com, which incidentally Elon Musk once owned and kind of went along with the company for years. But X was a, it was essentially a hosted service bus, enterprise service bus. That had capabilities published. And stop me if this is starting to sound familiar. You had— there was sort of an addiction where you could say, hey, I'm attaching my company, my technology service company to the fabric. There's a diction for, or an endpoint for saying what I can do, and anyone else participating on this could say what they can do, and we can share messages with each other. It's very reminiscent actually of where we are today with with MCP and the ONNX, the Commerce Operations ONNX protocol. And I think TalentOne just dropped an extension to UCP for loyalty yesterday. I mean, so we're starting to see this thing at large, but at the time, and again, this was circa 2015, Fabric failed. I only ever knew one person who actually sent a message into the Fabric and got a meaningful response. It just, it was an idea, but they didn't, They didn't drive it home. And then in the end, they blew through about $1 billion on that project and it resulted in nothing. And part of the problem though, I mean, the motivation, eBay wanted to kill Amazon. Like that was their stated mission internally was we're gonna kill Amazon by having this total through line from I found a microphone in my garage to I'm now a near enterprise marketplace. Place.

There's this play called Philadelphia, Here I Come by an Irish playwright called— sorry, I've given you a name— but there's these two characters, there's Gar Public and Gar Private, and eBay privately was saying we want to kill Amazon, and in public they said we never want to be Amazon. And lo and behold, they have fulfilled their public statement. They will never be Amazon, they'll never be anything like it. You've painted a kind of an interesting tapestry though, listening back to that, Hendrik. The phrase that comes to mind is, when is a strategy not a strategy? You know, Ben has given us this potted, really quick history of all the things that eBay have tried and failed so spectacularly at. Um, where do you think Depop sits, or Depop sits in this overall tapestry of, of lack of strategy or lack of direction?

So that's a very, very good question, and the folks at San Jose are most probably the only people that can answer that, um, number one. Number two, one of the thoughts I had yesterday, Vinny, was that if you have a lot of capital to spend, you know, how, how much diligence are you doing on the assets to understand that you're actually buying an asset that has value. The thing that struck me yesterday, I actually went through the, the, the, the earnings— not the actual— the acquisition press release of when Etsy acquired Depop. And the thing that struck me was in 5 years 5 years, they only added 2 million more sellers on the platform globally. Yes. The interesting thing yesterday was I listened to the Etsy earnings call because I wanted to hear from the CEO and CFO how they are going to spin this. Because let's be honest, they took a $400 million loss on this. That's, that's a That's not a small amount of capital for a business that has $3 billion in debt that they are trying to essentially understand what the leverage of. So, so we have that. So the question for me is, and this is the question that I have for all of eBay's acquisitions, is— and, and Ben essentially communicated what I've always wondered— is it's great to do these press releases and to tell the world that We are so stoked and pumped and whatever the word— excited, adding whatever adjective they want— about buying an asset. But how do you integrate that asset into eBay's DNA? Yeah, and the question for me is, is that from where I'm sitting in South Africa, when I think of Depop, I do not think about a US business. The, the SEC yesterday said that, and I thought it was weird that she said it, but it was not in any of the press releases, is that Depop was the fastest growing, uh, secondary marketplace for clothing apparel in the US in the last 12 months. I've not heard or seen that anywhere until yesterday. For me, the question is, and this is where this, this goes, what is the end goal of this acquisition? How does this not become another failed— fail, I have to use the air quotes here because I don't want to be disrespectful because I do love me some eBay— how do they ensure that this doesn't go the route of some of the other acquisitions like Desai.com, that just— we book, we buy the IP, we add the IP into our business, and then it basically goes up in smoke. You know, they— the thing for me, Vinny, is, is that one of Depop's largest challenges, and if you look at the negative reviews, it's about logistics, it's about payment, it's about, um, making sure that these items that they sell are actually Authentic. Do I really want eBay to be seen as a logistics solution? The answer is a no, because that's not their core strength. Authentication, I, I, I think I can make the argument that they, they're kind of good at that because they've played in the luxury space for, for years, so they get that. But this just feels to me like a reach, and it's also again a situation of We have to do this because we didn't do this 5 years ago, a decade ago. Let me ask you a question, Vinny, before, before we, before we, before you make your statement. Uh-huh. Why did eBay not buy StockX yesterday? Why did they buy Depop?

Why? There, there's, there's a couple of reasons. We spoke about this yesterday. I think if you look at the shareholder profile on StockX, it makes more reason for eBay not to buy them than to buy them. I, I want to pose two points kind of along that line. You're asking about performance. eBay's GMV in the US is up 19% in Q4. Like, this is, this is after a long stagnation. So eBay are not performing poorly. What we're talking about here is, I, I think it a non-visible or a very visible lack of clear strategy. Um, ThredUp, someone else they could have gone and looked at, you know, way better in terms of profile. So when, when we think about Depop, it doesn't feel like eBay are going after a younger demographic. It's like they're trying to grab back old customers. And you compare it then to other investment strategies. Amazon's behemoth advertising platform is crazy. What is it, $35 billion I think in, in, in 2025, eBay said they were going to hit $2 billion in ad revenue in 2025. They missed by like, they got to $1.99 billion. So let's give them that. We, we give that, we'll tip the cap to them. Should they be doing more in that space? But what's not emerging here, Ben, is this strategy. And I like your, your introduction to the history of eBay was fabulous there because It's like they're repeating the steps of the mid-2000s again, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as far as I know, really, certainly John Donahoe hasn't been there. He went on to Nike and then off of Nike after doing what he does there.

Uh, Stanford now, he's the athletic director at Stanford. That makes— say that out loud, Bean Muck. That's where he is.

Just, I mean, just talk about failing up.

Um, so that's good.

That's probably, probably not going to get a Christmas card from this year. Um, again, you know, I mean, I don't, you know, the people, the people who made these decisions, you know, were long gone now. Is there something in the water there in their particular corner of San Jose that, that they, that do this? I mean, I am, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I mean, granted, I'm not much of a clothes horse. Um, But, you know, I do, I do look at— I do. I've had this shirt for like 10 years. It's my one good shirt, Vinny. So it is—

it—

the part of the problem is that, well, I guess the problem is twofold, right? They're not articulating a clear, believable strategy with this, right? And is it— are we— do we think we're going to bring in Gen Z demographic with Depop and then just somehow just expose them to this world that somehow they have missed, right? I don't think that's the case because the model, everything's so very different. And I don't know that this business can come in and transform such a legacy business that has a pretty, you know, a somewhat functional legacy model. You know, I do think it's an interesting transaction. I mean, the fact that Etsy, you know, took the took the impairment, like a billion-dollar impairment, like right after they acquired, like it gave them a little bit of operating headroom. You know, if you look at, if you want to adjust $2021 and $2026, it doesn't make this transaction look better. It makes it look worse for Etsy. But I think, you know, there's, there are, I actually, I think what we're, the real risk here is that With the coming changes to sort of not just consumer behavior, but also merchant behavior, it starts to blow apart what it is like Vinted and Depop and like what these companies do. Because I mean, just recently I was looking at a— just stumbled across a thread on Reddit and someone was saying like, well, hey, is this— I bought this dress because it looked really cool and this was from Vinted and it's awesome. But then I saw like they had a similar dress with a different model, but in the same bedroom or something and like, yeah, no, you're buying, these are AI images and they're coming from the drop shipper, right? So you're gonna, you're gonna, the authenticity, like sort of the, I've been talking about the primacy of authenticity and I think there will be a premium on authenticity in various contexts in this AI age. There already is for me.

Will the platforms reward it though, Ben? Will they recognize it and then reward it?

And they're gonna reward it. Well, right now every one of their, look at all of their incentives is GMV, is targets, is can we attract eyeballs for ad networks? And, um, and, you know, to that, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, in the end, maybe it doesn't matter if they are, you know, if they are, if they are increasing their financial numbers, if they are, um, able to tell a good story to Wall Street, then as far as they're concerned, that's winning. But on the, on the long term, without— absent, absent a clear strategy, um, every, every one of these legacy operators is just going to, um, mush together into just this, this like some kind of amalgam of just, just— it's gonna be a lump of Play-Doh, gray Play-Doh. All the colors have run together and no one's gonna really care. Like, none of these— basically every one of these things is going to be absolutely commoditized out of existence, right? And we'll see the next batch come up. That's my prediction.

There was this amazing, um, amazingly insightful tweet from David Marcus a couple of weeks ago talking about the PayPal strategy, right? And yeah, short-termism over long-termism. And I wonder, is this a symptom of that similar leadership trait? Let me just frame this slightly. That it— from eBay's perspective, they rarely do something that feels like it's very proactive. You know, a lot of the decisions are reactive and defensory in nature, and this feels like one of those. Does this move in some weird way put all the pressure back on Vinted, who've tried the US before and really got this wrong, Is this a cheap way of letting Vinted into the market, letting them fuck it up, for want of a better expression, and then letting them exit gracefully without eBay having to do too much? Are Vinted like really at risk now? And like I said, is that pressure going back on them with this reactive type strategy?

I—

well, I think in, in my career, you know, looking in e-commerce, when I've looked at Hendrik, just while Ben is, um, we lost you for a second, Ben.

Hendrik, you want to jump in on that?

Good. So I— so Ben's initial introduction, what you have just said, is for me symptomatic of San Jose. So let me just say this out loud so that there's no doubt. I've visited San Jose many times, meet many eBay people, and those folks we need to thank because they've played a very large role in what we see today as the marketplace e-commerce sector. So let me just get that off my chest. Okay, so David Marcus tweet and what Vinted potentially could be is why this acquisition went through. I have it on a really good, uh, I have it on very good, uh, authority that inside eBay at the moment, Vinted is the stalking horse that they fear for the next 12 months. While, while Ben was having third world internet issues, I quickly just opened a Gemini tab and I looked at how much money Vinted has raised over the last like 10 years. It's, it's, let's just say, give or take, it's like €1.5 billion. The question for me, right, or that this, that raises is how will you gain market share in the United States in the reselling of apparel sectors? And Vinny and Ben, I, I'm going to just say this to you once. The only way in which they win is that they have to essentially either have massive, massive, massive supplementary investment into seller and buyer costs, or they just say we are not taking any transaction fees from either or parties for the next 12 months because eBay has the capacity to essentially outspend them in advertising to acquire new consumers. The thing is, and Vinny, this is the conversation, the question that you, that raised in my mind when you asked the question is, can we definitively say that anyone has won the resale sector in the United States? I believe the answer is no, because you have different parts of the apparel sector essentially have a market leader, and I use air quotes again because nobody really wants to talk about this. So if I talk about luxury resale, the first company that for me comes to mind is The RealReal. That's, that's, that's who they are. That's what they do. The Vinted, Depop customer has no overlap in my mind with that company unless they get a selling price for an item that they can't get anywhere else. Yeah, the question for me, simple, is does this not just become a massive throwing of money against the wall to buy GMV, like being said? And at the end of the day, in 12 months' time, we come to the following conclusion: Vinted came into the US, they've grown a bit, but they're not the market leader, so they're gonna you know, walk about, walk back some of the investment. And Depop has grown a bit in the United States, but they have not become the de facto place for Gen Z, as we were told in the press release for eBay. And it's— and just, it sounds like I'm giving you like the thunderclouds and the worst picture But if I just look at what I've seen in the last 2 days, that's where my mind is at.

But, but so there's this other thing that springs to mind as you guys talk that through. The, the enthusiast that eBay has is not the Gen Z Vinted buyer. Like, you've summarized that really well, and we, we've seen this historically. The eBay enthusiast usually does well when economies are going bad and they want to defer to getting something cheaper, and, and they're willing to spend a lot of time there. The Vinted buyer it's somebody who wants to buy full price elsewhere and they're using Vinted to get their wallet back up. And, and that's been a very distinct part of the play that they've put in place. Um, what does it do with the other categories that eBay have built around? Ben, I just want to ask you about collectibles and vehicle parts, because collectibles to me feels like it's at risk from Fanatics. Um, on the fashion side as well, brands are now putting in their resale strategy. They're taking it seriously again.

So I mean, I'll answer actually, if you'll allow me, and you can totally call bullshit on me here. I'm going to answer this from a different perspective, right? So I'd say there are always, there's always, there are always clear winners in any of this, right? And it's anyone having take rate on payment volume, right? So all payment vendors, they don't really care where people transact. They just care that they transact. And the reason I make that very, you know, I mean, yeah. Really kind of milquetoast point is that I think right now, carving out sort of ideological marketplace or persona-based marketplace, you know, whether it's collectibles, whether it's, I like used vintage, I like, you know, I'm a value shopper and I want the best, but I want it over here. So you look at any of these things, I feel like it's so easy to easy to spin up a brand like this, to have people excited about a moment. And that moment is always framed by generational changes in economy, that the buyer is very fluid from— they're going to go from place to place to place. They're going to go. And again, everything is— it's all being commoditized, right? And I think we also have the situation where, back to the point about authenticity, but looking at just knowing that changes of many kind on the sell and the buy side are coming. Thanks to AI. I mean, I think if I were planning things today, I would actually, and I were my brand involved sort of authentic, like real people buying from real people who have a real story in this clothing, and this clothing itself has some kind of history, then being able to verify that, being, being the authority, sort of vetting the seller and the things that they're selling, there, there will be a premium on that for now. Um, so that is, I think that's, that's, that's the thing. Now what I think is going to be coming for collectibles is not, you know, this distraction necessarily from, from, from Depop at, at eBay. It's going to be, you know, from looking at, looking, looking at automotive, um, I am trying to find something either that is hard to find or I'm trying to find something that is essentially— I'm looking for, you know, exhaust gas regulator for my '96 Chevy, right? Can I— wherever I can find that, I don't need that to be a boutique item. Like, I don't need to know that, you know, some legendary NASCAR truck driver held this EGR in his hand. I just want— I'm trying to solve a problem. So again, my thing is everything kind of tends back towards the commoditization of everything. And the real story for me is not everyone creating agents and buying through agents tomorrow, because I don't think that's really going to be a big shift. Meaningful shift in the near term. I do think, um, I do think that AI in general and all the tooling and everything we're seeing, it tends to tear down, it tends to tear down the walls around the gardens, right? So I think that's, that's going to further enhance buyer fluidity from marketplace to marketplace, um, because they're going to find that they have access and understanding of things that they didn't before. And that means that they're gonna just kind of not be as loyal to one marketplace or not. The point I was gonna make earlier about like Demandware, Demandware was great, was a great competitor when it was Demandware and it came in Salesforce. And to be honest, I'm not even sure to this day that Demandware was ever fully integrated into Salesforce despite all of the commercial motivations and imperative and capabilities that they have. Point being, Depop is not gonna come in and transform a damn thing. About how eBay does the rest of its business. I mean, I just don't see that happening. It's just not— there's too much inertia, there's too much history, there's too much just stickiness in all of its legacy. And I think what we'll probably see in the next— I would not be surprised to see possibly, you know, take an impairment charge of a certain amount., in the next year or so. And that just sort of frees up overhead where they can just say, okay, well, hey, well, look, this, this— they can tell their shareholders year after year, look, look at its contributions to EBITDA, because they have just taken that charge.

And so getting to a couple of interesting points here, are we being overly harsh, Hendrik, when we look at eBay through this lens? And they're making systematic decisions that have held up pretty well over a 20-year period, and A couple of things that, that you've mentioned along the way, Ben. As we get into this world where AI becomes so prevalent, we talk a lot about trust being one of the currencies that we're going to need. eBay have that in spades about buyer data. Like, they've got this enormous repository that they could monetize should they want to, and providing this footprint around the online world for real people who've transacted for quite a long time. There's some— there's something in that. But are we being overly harsh on a brand that survives every other wave that's come before it to this point, Hendrik? And are eBay just doing eBay things?

So, so I will just add that for me it's really refreshing when you have somebody like Ben Marks joins us, and join to the point where he's essentially confirmed everything that we've spoken about on the Outbreak Report. So, Bing, thank you for, uh, as somebody that thinks that eBay needs to give significantly more praise for what it does, in our eBay episode a couple of months ago, you said something that has stuck with me for, I'd say, almost 6 months, and that is that eBay's strategy structure is all about doing the right thing for their business with regards to capital expenditure. It doesn't— that doesn't imply that it's about growth. It's not about, you know, becoming a market leader. It's about doing the right thing for their shareholders to essentially say that, you know, we are good, uh, corporate citizens. I don't think we are harsh. In actual fact, what I've heard from today's conversation, and I think this is the problem that eBay has, and I've said this privately to you, Vinny, and I'll say to Ben as well, I think the biggest challenge is we— the Wall Street have gotten to a place where they do not really care about eBay. It doesn't. So if they, if they have significant growth, significant rep revenue, EBITDA growth, all of that. Who cares? It's, it's not, it's not as sexy as all of the technology companies. And for us who have been in the sector for, for many years— and I'm not saying we are old, let me just say that out loud— we all believe that eBay will be, the way that I see it, remember, as the big what-if, because that they've had these sliding door moments. So no, Vinny, to answer your question, my long-winded way. No, we're not being harsh. We are just basing the answers to the questions you are asking based on what we have learned historically from Meg Whitman, John Donohoe, Devin Wenig, and now Jamie Iannone. It's the same playbook. We—

there was a CEO in there that you missed, actually. Did you ever work with Laurie Narrenton, Ben? Um, just after Meg Whitman, I think, and before John.

No, I think, I think we were out of there by then because that, that was, that was post— we were out like early 2015.

Yeah, yeah. An incredible leader, someone who doesn't get much credit for her tenure there. I thought she did an amazing job, understood the trading environment really well. Um, I, I'm gonna bring something up now because in the— in prior to the Depop conversation, I was looking at where's eBay going and playing around I'm trying to figure out what's the essence of the brand because my problem is it's not living its brand externally. So Ben, you're—

so I mean, I was actually going to say this anyway, you know, the, the— to the point, it's actually— we have a nice segue, I think, from the, you know, Wall Street doesn't expect anything. Like, eBay is safe, it's boring. Um, it is not— it is— it does not have that theoretical potential that so many, you know, newer businesses have and attract all sorts of investment. I mean, this— in this moment, yes, eBay is like just the least interesting thing in the room, but it's there. It's stayed. It's solid. It has— as you— the sliding doors characterization is perfect. It has persisted. I think it will continue to persist. And in fact, like, let's just pretend that AI stocks are about to blow up and the market is going to have this massive correction. The bubble deflates and what we're going to see, you know, we might actually see a retreat of people looking for— we'll see a lot of value shopping then. We'll see just an overall reduction in spend, but we'll see people seeking out safe harbors, and eBay would probably look a little bit more appealing again. So I think in that regard, you know, eBay, you know, eBay, yeah, it's, it's, it's that safe, boring thing that you know, that just is always there. Now I have thoughts about how they might, you know, just sort of become— their play really is to be an infrastructure-like operating system for commerce of any kind. Um, but that was, that was always the dream.

I want to challenge that slightly, and maybe this is kind of our parting call. We're kind of coming up on time. I want to let people get back to their days. Um, but in trying to figure out what excites the world and goes back to the core of eBay essence. It was that you described it, it's waiting on the auction to end, like being— knowing you're part of this, this kind of bidding war, and you don't know the person you're up against, but you secretly now hate this person. If you're on Twitter, you'll be giving them so much shit right now. At $3.7 billion, Whatnot could be an interesting future investment for eBay. Now I'm going to share my screen with you. I'm going to try to do this in live because It's something to be seen, right? So I was fooling around the other day and I stumbled on eBay Live in the UK. So these are live auctions that are going on right now, but I want to go in and just show you because the UI is actually really, really good. So now I've got this person who's on the other end who's live selling me this top. I can see in the screen in here where I can see— I can scan this, get on my phone, I can add a comment, I can see who's bidding, I can see other things that they're doing. And there's usually some sounds. He can get up and see how many people are looking. This one, I can go in and make a live bid. I can see there's someone winning. Oh, they've just won! And this is right back at the core of what it was to be an eBay buyer back in the day, live shopping.

And just like my wife is ecstatic when, you know, the things that she's held on to for 20-plus years all of a sudden are back in fashion. Like, you think about a sort of— this would be brand— this whole thing would be brand new to, you know, like, someone who's like 15 years old today. And so this is like, I've never seen anything like this. I immediately mapped this to like, this is like if I went to an auction house and I was hearing the auctioneer doing their auction speak, and it's engaging, it's exciting, and you are— there's just multiple dopamine drops the whole time you're doing this, right? The thrill of the gamble. This would be really cool. Do I think that this will be a transformation? Because it's also cultural. Like, we've seen live shopping be incredibly, just stupendously essential to some Asian markets, right? And everyone had hoped to transport some of that over here to say, well, let's just do that here. And boom, we'll have it. And it, you know, it hasn't really had the impact that a lot of people thought it would. So, but it is interesting. And also, it's always a reminder for someone like me, like if I were responsible for actually putting together like an executive brief on this, I would need to sit there and say, OK, what are my blind spots? And I maybe that's something that we need to collectively think about, because the people who are doing the financial reporting How well do they actually know that eBay even does this? Because that's really— that, you're right, that's a really cool feature.

Hendrik, before we wrap up, what do you think? Is Whatnot a future acquisition target for eBay? The internet's not poor in Cape Town, Hendrik. Just think so, that's all.

So yes, thank you. The answer to your question is no. It's, it's too expensive. It goes outside the, the scope. Which for me goes back to the question I asked you about them buying StockX. Um, I think Whatnot will— I think Whatnot, for me, I think Whatnot becomes a target that Fanatics potentially could acquire because of the, the complementary nature of them. But, um, we are all saying the same thing, and that is that nothing's gonna change. We will all continue to love the San Jose company that potentially has not being given the credit it deserves for its impact on commerce. But yeah, I, I have no hope as I sit here today on the 20th of February, 2026, um, that eBay will do the right thing and buy and acquire Whatnot.

So no, on that non-surprising bombshell, I'm gonna let you guys get back to your morning. Ben, you're probably going to climb back into the cot now, get 3 more hours sleep now.

No, I'm a morning guy. So you just got me started a little bit early. I'm happy to be up with— I would— with— I mean, my favorite Irish guy, my new favorite Cape Dunedin. I'm just happy as a clam.

Amazing. I'm going to finish up today. I've got a really interesting call with a good friend of mine, Brian House. I don't know if you guys know him from Elastic Path. We're going to have a beer over the internet as we record a podcast tonight.

So here's a fun story for you. I was at NRF and I was at the conversation with a young lady who just started working at Elastic Path. She's been there 4 months and she said, oh yeah, I just lost the deal to Magento. I said, you mean Adobe Commerce? She said, no, Magento. And I'd be, I'll be very curious to hear what you get out of that.

No one has said that for quite some time. I might open with that and see what Brian says.

Please let me know what he said.

Don't choke on your beer, Brian. Don't, please. That wouldn't be good for TV. Um, guys, just want to thank you both for your time, effort, and willingness to talk about this topic. We all love eBay. We will continue to do so, as Hendrik said. And to anyone listening Appreciate your comments. We're going to send out the recorded version of this as well. There were some problems on LinkedIn Live, but this is one we want in the account, and maybe we'll revisit this in 6 months' time, Ben, get you back on and keep this conversation going. Okay, thanks, guys.

Cheerio. Bye-bye.