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All In Interview - Ryan Cohen - Recap and Notes - June 23 2026

June 23 2026

  • Friedberg interviews
  • Trying to acquire Ebay
  • Started Chewy
    • First started a jewelry website
    • Then figured out gap in pet industry (neighborhood pet stores, PetCo/PetSmart, Amazon pet offerings weren’t working great till then)
    • Lot of competition (Pets.com in the background)
    • Sold in 2017 for $3.35B
    • You have to stay on top of everything 24/7 as a founder
    • Will > Skill
    • You have to attract fellow “psychopaths” who are passionate
    • Went public for $20B a few years later
  • Gamestop
    • Started investing post Chewy
    • Was asked to join the board by the CEO to help fend off other activist investor
    • Then covid post crash made him buy more than 5% and had to file D (active) or G (passive) - chose D
    • Then he and some associates joined the board, the stock went vertical, bunch of shorts got wiped out, got rid of all debt, raised $1.7B or so
    • Hired a CEO and more ecommerce people thinking it would be run like Chewy
    • Turned out to be wrong strategy
    • Had to learn about physical retail and became CEO
    • Tried many things - some worked
    • Collectibles became huge
    • Sports is becoming popular
    • Trade-in model working well
    • Had to identify the talent at the company who knew the business really well and had been there for a while
    • Numbers are really good at Gamestop now
  • Ebay acquisition offer
    • Amazon charges a lot of money to their sellers but sellers tolerate it because they can move a lot of inventory
    • Thinks he can make it into a good business
    • Sees some good synergies with Gamestop
    • Ebay needs to take better care of their sellers
    • 3 things he would do
      • Improve earnings by cutting costs (~$2B)
      • Live commerce
        • TAM is $400B (growing in the US, very popular in Asia) - Ebay should be category leader in the space
      • Extend Ebay into digital collectibles (they are already the leader in physical collectibles)
    • Board rejected offer with a letter
    • Board members and CEO refusing to meet with him
    • CEO has a $100M parachute deal
    • Ryan is being discredited because the media and commentators got it wrong about Gamestop being a meme stock and so now they won’t admit they were wrong about Gamestop (just like Covid) - they have to maintain their credibility

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