Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Hannah. We talk a lot on this podcast about disruption,

but we don't talk as often about the flip side of that. In this episode, we wanted to dive into

some of the lessons around one interesting story that continues to defy the general negative

trend around physical retail, Dollar General, the American chain of dollar stores dating all the way

back to 1936, which is today a 14,000 store billion dollar success story.

In this conversation, A16Z general partner Jeff Jordan and I chat with Cal Turner Jr., former CEO of Dollar General, and the third generation in his family to run the business.

The story behind Dollar General goes back to a farmer in the Depression with a third grade reading level, all the way up through from facing Chapter 11 to IPO and now a Fortune 300 company. We talk about the lessons of leadership and management we can learn from the success story, including the core principle that sustained the business through generations, the inspiration that actually began the dollar day

everyday pricing philosophy, the key turning points where the company had to reinvent itself,

and what keeps Dollar General alive and thriving in the age of the big box store?

I used to be a CFO of the Disney stores in a prior life, so I'm pretty familiar with physical

retail. And when I became a venture

capitalist, I blogged a lot about how digital was going to have a huge negative impact on

physical retail. And largely that has come true. And then sometimes you come against a

contra example like you. I remember when we just called it retail. Your baby is thriving in an environment where very few

physical retailers are thriving. Dollar General has a market cap of about $28 billion, revenue over

$20 billion. I don't think it is the best known retail concept in the world, and that's just a

fascinating juxtaposition. That company has always

been under the radar screen. When we went public in December of 1968, Wall Street didn't know what to do

with Dollar General. We fit no category. You created a category.

My dad indeed did that when he opened the first Dollar General store in 1955. We lived in this

small town and the company and the town and retailing were all just intermingled. Retailing invaded our family life.

We had to pray for snow if daddy was overstocked on overshoes or when we had to pray sometimes for the snow to melt.

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