The company was co-founded in 2014 by Marc Lore (who had previously sold Diapers.com to Amazon.com), along with Mike Hanrahan and Nate Faust.

[11][12] After Marc Lore sold Diapers.com to Amazon in November 2010, he speculated that users may be willing to accept longer wait times on obtaining online-purchased goods if they can save money on their purchases.

He said that existing Internet retailers were catering only to wealthier customers "who care more about convenience than value".

[13] Lore initially set out to create a site that would use a fee-based membership model like Costco and Sam's Club and combine this with the broad selection of a general e-commerce retailer, somewhat like Amazon Prime but emphasizing reduced product prices for members rather than fast free shipping.

He began to peddle the idea, and after lunch with a partner at Accel Ventures, Lore was promised $1 million in seed capital to start a new site.

It was initially announced that the site would charge users a $50 annual membership fee[15][16] after a 90-day free trial period, and that the membership fee would be the only source of profit for the company – so the merchandise would be sold at break-even prices by Jet.com.

"[13] It was also announced that the site was planned to primarily function as a marketplace for members to access offerings from third-party merchant partners rather than having Jet.com selling goods itself directly.

[20] In August 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart was in talks with Jet.com to acquire the company.

[27] One of the core features of Jet was the "realtime pricing algorithm", which, according to cofounder Marc Lore, aimed to gauge "the true marginal cost of getting that product to [customers]".

Jet ran into some backlash in August 2015 after displaying some links to other websites as if they were partnering sites, when in fact they were not.