#36: SPACs and COVID Winners with Shift Technologies Co-CEO, George Arison

Happy new year! We kick 2021 off on the Razor's Edge by looking at a couple of the biggest trends from 2020 – COVID market distortions and SPACs. Our guest is George Arison, Co-CEO of Shift Technologies, an online used car seller. Used cars were a surprisingly hot market in 2020, in part spurring Shift to move up their calendar to go public by a year. They went public via a SPAC. So our conversation centers on the two topics; how wild was 2020 and how do you plan for the following year; and why go public with a SPAC and what was that like? Topics Covered 2:30 minute mark – Background on George and on Shift 7:30 – Where does the value add or competitive advantage come in? 12:00 – What the “value” part of the used car market looks like 14:15 – How Shift interacts with/competes with dealers 18:00 – What 2020 has looked like for Shift 29:00 – How the go-public plan shifted for Shift in 2020 33:00 – The SPAC fit and the questions raised 37:00 – What do SPAC negotiations look like? 40:00 – Surprises in the public market 43:30 – Planning for 2021 after the COVID rush 49:00 – What about the COVID hangover

Om Podcasten

The Razor’s Edge is an investing podcast that combines a prop trader’s viewpoint and deep-dive fundamental research to provide a unique take on the markets. The show is co-hosted by Akram’s Razor, a trader and investor with decades of experience and a track record of truly differentiated ideas and analysis, and by Daniel Shvartsman, an individual investor for the past decade who saw thousands of investing pitches and ideas and how they played out during his previous time at Seeking Alpha. The duo start with a theme or idea from Akram’s investing, then break it down to understand what goes into the idea, what could go wrong, and what else investors and traders need to know. They also interview industry leaders, executives, and other investors to get a wider perspective. The show has thousands of listeners around the world.