Back in 2016 I wrote ‘The Death of Retail is The Birth Of Retail‘.

At the time, every talking head was talking about the death of retail and the mall.

My thinking was rather simple in the post:

No matter what Amazon does, they will never kill all of retail. In fact, they are only helping with a the speed of reimagining.

Now the retail index is back at all-time highs and Andy Dunn’s Bonobos (whose thinking and ‘digitally native vertical brands‘ strategy I leaned on heavily in that post and since) has been acquired by Walmart.

One of our funds seed investments that I discussed in that 2016 post – Narvar – today announced a $30 million raise today from Accel and Salesforce Ventures. It is an amazing company and product and I am thrilled for Amit (the founder) and the team.

In the public markets, Shopify and Square have exploded the last few years because they enabled this explosion in ‘digitally native vertical brands’.

This trend is not cheap to own in 2018, but should continue.

I continue to fish where the fish are.

Retail and the mall are still in the early days of being reimagined.