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Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

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Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#21

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

> Amazon and Google

A couple of weeks ago, your list would have included Facebook. The future is a lot less deterministic than you think.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#22

I'm in the weird position where, we are family planning, but (to our knowledge) unsuccessful, but started getting a series of emails from Amazon congratulating us and offering up suggestions like vitamins, baby registry and, of course, housecleaning services w/ discounts available. (The first email was, to put it lightly, premature. Now we got one that says "week one", and it could be right, or not. We don't know yet…

This would be an interesting case for a GDPR request.

mere curiosity is enough for such a request it needs "legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you"

see 22[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may not be there yet, but there's certainly going to be a day where online advertisers know a woman is pregnant before she does based on the changes in her behavior. I'm not sure if that counts as a dystopia or not. Is there a good word for "Weirdtopia"?

Helpful? I mean honestly, the whole point of computing is to do things we as humans can't do with data to make our lives easier. Now that it's actually doing those things, people think it's creepy and scary. If a computing system knows you are pregnant before you do then maybe it can help you take steps (like taking pre-natal vitamins, abstaining from heavy drinking/smoking, starting a savings account etc...) weeks b…

If they just sent you a notification that you’re maybe pregnant I would agree. Instead it starts with advertising.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#24

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

New ideas thrive best without constraints. Large companies may have more resources but they must have institutional constraints to manage a large workforce.

Startups will always have a leg up on new ideas because of their flexibility. There’s no bullshit holding back a small team from executing. That’s a big reason why startups are so effective at pulling the rug out from underneath larger companies who seem to be invincible.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#25
post #4

> A weekly cleaning of a 1,500-square-foot home runs about $156. It doesn’t say what’s included but off hand that seems 2-4x expensive for a weekly house cleaning of that size. That (relatively) high pricing may be specific to Seattle though as they’ve got a high ($15/hr) min wage laws there that would apply. Combined with non-contractor employees, FICA, and benefits, they’re easily looking at $20+/hr in labor costs.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#27
Does anyone remember HomeJoy? See [1] and [2] below.

Amazon isn't necessarily using this business model so that it may differentiate itself from hands-off matching services. In this case, regulation and legal battles that have destroyed entrepreneurial enterprises like HomeJoy are guiding Amazon. Improved customer experience is a side effect.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what-reall...

[2] https://www.recode.net/2015/7/17/11614814/cleaning-services-...

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#28

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

> the best engineers

You're living in a bubble. Lots of companies have better engineers on an average.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#29
post #4

> A weekly cleaning of a 1,500-square-foot home runs about $156. It doesn’t say what’s included but off hand that seems 2-4x expensive for a weekly house cleaning of that size. That (relatively) high pricing may be specific to Seattle though as they’ve got a high ($15/hr) min wage laws there that would apply. Combined with non-contractor employees, FICA, and benefits, they’re easily looking at $20+/hr in labor costs.

I have housecleaning every few weeks. It's about $100 and takes 2-3 hours for about the same square footage.

Re: Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry

#30

Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything. You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free.…

New ideas thrive best without constraints. Large companies may have more resources but they must have institutional constraints to manage a large workforce. Startups will always have a leg up on new ideas because of their flexibility. There’s no bullshit holding back a small team from executing. That’s a big reason why startups are so effective at pulling the rug out from underneath larger companies who seem to be in…

Consider what startups are/have actually been building... collectively.

There are a lot of individual startups, but most of the money driving them comes from the market cap of "tech giants" directly or indirectly. First, VCs invest based on the probability of a startup becoming a tech giant. Second, most exits are buy-outs by existing giants using their market cap as currency. Ultimately, either new giants are created or existing giants are made bigger. That's where all the startup money comes from, and that's where it ends up in success scenarios. Startups are a part of that, not the antidote to it.

What are these tech giants, and why are they worth so much?

As Thiel put it, monopoly. MS learned this game early. They understood, platforms and moats, network effects and ringfenced markets. Google is a search monopoly. Amazon has its fiefs. Uber raised all that money because it looked like they could become a monopoly. Now "their" market looks a little more competition-friendly. There are actual market dynamics pressuring prices down to marginal costs... Hey! how are we supposed to justify $100bn market cap with competition?!!

Unicorns are a dime a dozen (well $1bn, technically). Unless the market crashes, we'll probably have 3-5 dragons(TM) within 3-5 years worth >$1 trillion each. They will all be relatively unexposed to market forces.

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