Why tech billionaire Marc Lore is all in on 'fast-fine' food delivery
Over plates of gourmet fish tacos and pastrami in NYC, billionaire tech investor Marc Lore is smelling his next major opportunity.
That is to create "fast-fine" food delivery that rivals mass-market platforms such as Uber Eats (UBER) and DoorDash (DASH).
"I just think that the food market is ripe for massive disruption," Lore told Yahoo Finance (video above). "It's been a really long time since you had any real technological innovation in food."
Lore is the driving force behind the food delivery startup Wonder, which is where Yahoo Finance spent some time with the serial entrepreneur this week at a new Upper West Side location.
The basic premise for Wonder is to democratize good food. Lore plans to do that by licensing the menus of popular chefs such as Bobby Flay and Michael Symon, making their iconic dishes inside fixed locations, and delivering them right to your doorstep.
After founding Wonder, Lore took the CEO reins in late 2022 and instantly shifted the startup from delivering gourmet food in trucks to opening up physical locations. Lore thinks he could have thousands of these marketplace-like kitchens across the country.
So far, Wonder has raised about $850 million of capital, and Lore told Yahoo Finance he is eyeing a "couple hundred more" in funding this coming summer and fall.
"I'm more fired up, more motivated, more driven, putting more time into this now than I did startups in my past," Lore added. "And it's because I feel it. I just feel that I know this is it. I know that we have a massive opportunity to change people's lives and change how they eat, and to really elevate this at-home dining experience that everybody wants."
To say Lore, 51, is a serial entrepreneur whose motor is always running would be putting it mildly.
Lore founded Quidsi in 2005, a business made famous by its domain name, Diapers.com. Amazon bought Quidsi in 2010 for about $545 million, and Lore worked at Amazon until 2013. He then founded delivery outfit Jet.com.
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, acquired Lore’s Jet.com in 2016 for $3.3 billion in cash. Although some on Wall Street viewed the purchase price as lofty at the time, there is no denying the impact Lore and Jet.com have had on Walmart since the deal closed in September 2016.
Walmart shut down Jet.com in March 2020, and Lore left his post as Walmart's U.S. e-commerce chief in early 2021.
Since then, he not only founded Wonder but has been looking to start a utopian society dubbed Telosa. He is also now part owner of the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves along with with former MLB star Alex Rodriguez.
"It's fun building something," Lore said on his serial entrepreneurship. "You don't get many opportunities in life to have that big impact on society and in the world."
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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