Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
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Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
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Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#2Wow, so they've raised close to $1bn so far! Wonder how many of these delivery services like Doordash, Postmates, Grubhub, Caviar, Uber eats etc will survive the next economic downturn.
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#3Terrifying, considering this one will be one of the first companies to go the minute this roaring economy goes sour.
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#4Gotta make easy money while you can
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#5From an outsiders perspective this looks like a bad investment. But I'm an outsider, so I know I don't have all the information. I would love to get an insiders perspective on why this is a good investment.
My two main concerns:
1) Amazon and Whole Foods: Are they not a concern?
2) Economic downturn: Will people still order groceries at a premium?
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#6Wow, so they've raised close to $1bn so far! Wonder how many of these delivery services like Doordash, Postmates, Grubhub, Caviar, Uber eats etc will survive the next economic downturn.
That may not matter, necessarily. If 3 of these fail but one becomes a £10bn company, that's ok. Some investors win, others lose, it averages out to normal returns.
VC is supposed to be risky.
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#7From an outsiders perspective this looks like a bad investment. But I'm an outsider, so I know I don't have all the information. I would love to get an insiders perspective on why this is a good investment. My two main concerns: 1) Amazon and Whole Foods: Are they not a concern? 2) Economic downturn: Will people still order groceries at a premium?
>>1) Amazon and Whole Foods: Are they not a concern?
I think they are a concern, not necessarily to Instacart but to all of the grocery chains that need to compete with Amazon/WF. Since Instacart already has the tech/infra/domain knowledge to build this service out, Instacart's value goes shooting up.
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#8Gotta make easy money while you can
We ban accounts that won't post civilly and substantively, so please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#9Terrifying, considering this one will be one of the first companies to go the minute this roaring economy goes sour.
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Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation
#10Another valueless "disruption" being injected play money to destabilise the semblance of healthy capitalism we had on a macro level.
Venture capital enables subsidies to speculative companies in hope of a small probability of profit, which destroys perfectly good small companies [0] , and acts as a libertarian version of socialism [1]. This exposes the fabric of a normal economy to small stressors, a couple of which may hit it big and destroy entire industries. This has its brutal repercussions [2] which are not only economical, but also social, as the sum of jobs destroyed is bigger than the new ones created, at least in low innovation sectors, and which makes extremist movements grow out of the general frustration with the state of things (isn't Trump the result of "disruption" in politics too?).
However, in my opinion Universal Basic Income will fix all the major problems acting effectively as a universal VC - and paradoxically a healthy one as not guided by buzzwords or credentialism, which should be the only way any subsidy work, as it frees everyone from black swan risks which are fruit of unexpected outcomes of technological advances (and a good thing per se), and enables them to work on bettering the world in an amazing way (my speculation). Until the AI comes along... Well, that's for another story.
[0] https://m.signalvnoise.com/venture-capital-is-going-to-murde...
[1] https://medium.com/@willszal/venture-capital-as-socialism-47...
[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-...
Edit: build an argument