41–50 of 188 posts
"[Google] stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don’t have innovation in their DNA any more. And it’s because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers."
[...]
"I just witnessed history in the making. (...) I have not seen a land rush this massive since the early days of the Web, and it just might be even bigger.
So what is Grab? Well, the simple and unsatisfying answer is: They’re the Uber of Southeast Asia."
Not unlike how Uber drivers did.
At first.
It's a delightful read. I am no fan of Google but people do realize that once a company becomes big innovation has huge costs involved, more people means lesser room for growth and hence the politics, as well as some arrogance of being a large company. That said I kind of disagree with this: Restaurants and food trucks are both about to be obliterated by Peach and Uber Eats. The biggest cost to a restaurant was their…
Right now, what we have are the first generation of delivery restaurants which is basically "restaurants, only it's delivery". We won't start seeing the real revolution until we start seeing formats built natively around the assumptions of delivery. The second generation of "delivery, only it happens to be restaurants" format is going to look radically different from what we have today. For example, right now, restau…
What you describe is a food assembly line optimised for efficiency, but I think if you look around you'll see that the kind of food that comes out of such assembly lines is generally considered second rate and unhealthy.
The idea of having one place preparing one type of ingredient is especially troubling. What happens when that enterprise grows successful enough that it just doesn't care about the quality of its product anymore? It's just a monopoly problem, at local level, waiting to happen. In any case, eating the same mashed potatoes all the time, even if they're the best damn mashed potatoes possible (which is impossible, really, because if you ask ten different people what kind of mashed potatoes they like, you'll get ten different answers) you'll get bored of them pretty damn quickly and long for something new.
You mention street food; that's the antithesis of what you propose. The whole point of street food is variation. I've never been to Singapore but I literally can't imagine street food prepared centrally. It would be ... bland.
- People don't trust apps more than they do banks. Traditional bank accounts are expensive (for bank & users) and its this has been the primary limiter of financial inclusion. Mobile wallets reduce branch costs. Mobile wallets like Grab, where the "bank" has a few hundred thousand employee / customers and millions of potential users to sell to have a great head start.
- People use grab-pay / go-pay instead of cash because you get a big discount on services when you do. They need to this, because cash-in to mobile wallets is such a pain. And no, they don't have much trust in apps. Subsidies can be reduced of course as they cement habit and provide more utility from the app (hence the rush for merchants & new use cases).
- Credit card fraud doesn't stop people from applying for credit cards. Central bank regulations on ownership criteria do. As does financial prudence (& religious reasons here).
- The NO TIPPING signs at Jakarta Airport are to let you know its a free service. Because tipping parking attendants is commonplace. Its not related to bribary.
- "Thieves are everywhere". Not gonna comment on that one. But I will on the "the evil taxi drivers in cahoots with the police" one. If this was commonplace there would obviously not be much demand for the legions of taxi's that operated before online apps came around. Once, I was ripped off by a guy offering a hotel in a train station in Rome. It doesn't mean hotels in Rome are inherently untrustworthy.
The latter part of the article is pretty accurate - Grab & Gojek are have made huge improvements in employment and financial inclusion. They have opened up the door to insanely cool new services and Id struggle to think of tech companies who have made such a huge impact into daily life here (Including FB & the like). Its also extremely likely that one of them will become the Alipay/Wechat of SEA and re-arrange the banking & e-comm landscapes too over the next few years.
Not sure I follow the logic. "[Google] stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don’t have innovation in their DNA any more. And it’s because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers." [...] "I just witnessed history in the making. (...) I have not seen a land rush this massive since the early days of the Web, and it just might be even bigger. So what is Grab? Well, the simple a…
How depressing. Our living planet is collapsing at a dizzying and increasing pace, and not only do our 'best and brightest' (if that's what they are) work largely on trivia designed to accelerate the collapsing trend, they advertise their superficiality with this crude purported messianic zeal. Froth and bubble atop the dank turbid waters.
Currently staying in indonesia for vacation, i can verify, a lot of green go-jek jackets, not so many grab ones. Personally i use go-jek. Got an sms just like whatsapp, and i was setup. Grab wants me to create an account, meh, so i stopped there. I like the live tracking, so i can see, where the driver is. Helped me a lot to get out and find the driver, as the navigation route is most likely wrong in all these small…
From what I understand Go-Jek is kicking Grab's ass in Indonesia. Go-Jek is presently only in Indonesia, and Grab is probably larger in SEA as a whole , but nothing prevents GoJek from expanding to other countries, so yes major war going on. May the best company win! I think Steve just wrote a great recruiting piece for Grab and Gojek ;-). Both are incredible companies, so all for the good. $Diety knows we need some…
How depressing. Our living planet is collapsing at a dizzying and increasing pace, and not only do our 'best and brightest' (if that's what they are) work largely on trivia designed to accelerate the collapsing trend, they advertise their superficiality with this crude purported messianic zeal. Froth and bubble atop the dank turbid waters.
Which project should he work on instead?
Sounds like this is OP's first startup.
The only way to stop labor practices that involve abusing workers, not paying a living wage or for healthcare, is to say (as a customer and voter) that you will not tolerate this type of business existing. In other words, if company X can only deliver your low price pizza and Diet Coke via abuse of its workers, then that business should not exist. It's a hard leap to make for many people, but a necessary one.
Fun story... Major supermarkets in my country announced they're phasing out caged chicken eggs. Vast majority of feedback I saw so far is people pissed off cheapest eggs will be gone. Looks like there's agreement this is conspiracy to rip off customers. So yeah.. I doubt people could gang up on unsustainable businesses as long as they personally pay less.
Ok, not a direct quote from mayo bottle but you get the gist of it.
Now the funny part, my better half has a hotel and restaurant. She has trouble working with good ingredients because people demand crap ones they are used to.