281–290 of 380 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only in the context of being a Britishism that Americans occasionally use.
> Only Nope. Never in my life heard of it being a britishism. Edit: A downvote for proving an absolute statement wrong? "Bloody" is used as a britishism. "Wee" is not, at least in many areas.
What are people's thoughts about a franchise model co-working space where the core company develops all of the technology, infrastructure, etc and then they are all independently owned and operated paying a franchise fee? I see a lot of people that want to start a co-working space and spin their wheels trying to figure out how to do it right. If there was a blueprint and turnkey solution to manage users, website pres…
They both seem like less risky and more traditional tech plays than WeWork's current business model.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…
"The valuation of the round was still being agreed between the two sides, with one person saying that it would be split with $1bn at the existing $20bn level and the remaining cash at the $42bn valuation from the previously announced fundraising."
So, $2bn at a $31bn valuation is what is being done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
a still evolving business that currently includes an elementary school and a coding academy. Education is like catnip to these people. It's like some kind of attractor industry. They're all convinced they have the magic formula.
To be fair, education in the US is very broken.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a big problem with funeral homes preying on people's grief for profit. They could absolutely use some disruption, however I doubt that disruption could ever be in the form of a profit-seeking startup.
You know, it occurs to me that we have client owned insurance companies and client owned credit unions. Why in the world we don't have community/mutual based funeral homes is beyond me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WeWork single handedly changed the way we work. Why? Coworking is not a new concept. There are plenty of local coworking spaces in every city that has WeWork. How are they better than their local competitors?
Not the OP, but I can shed some of my thoughts as I've been at WeWork, local co-working spaces, and leased our own office space. Most co-working spaces are cheaper, but they won't offer as many amenities as WeWork. 24-hour building access, conference rooms (for clients and internal meetings), phone booths, free coffee, a kitchen to utilize for lunch, highspeed internet (1,000Mbps if you use the ethernet jack) and rou…
The question is though is it worth 10x more than it's competitor on a per customer basis?
Since they are fundamentally selling the same thing, office space, and there are ton of new startups doing the same thing with a similar vibe to WeWork in NYC, their original market, it has shown that the model is easy enough to replicate and most tenants won't benefit from a WeWork satelite network of offices since they remain local, and the customers will primarly choose on price when the same benefits are offered.
So a 10x multiple increase over their closest competitor at scale would imply that they have a foreseeable future where they are doing 10x more revenue, which would be approaching $8-10B.
Also in a market that is heavily dependent upon the general health of the fiscal market that would imply 100% growth for each of the next 3 years and the global economy not hitting a recession which would certainly impact their revenue. That's before we even get into the fact they are losing over a $1B a year as well.
They are well capitalized so that is less of an issue, but people are basically implying that either WeWork owns the entire coworking office space market, or these other initiatives take off.
There is a possibility for that to work. After all half of Amazon's current market cap is actually AWS and that is far removed from their original ship books to customers business model when they first launched.
So it is possible that WeLive can become a large contributor over time, but I would prefer to see more numbers on that and how that is progressing and if it's really a working model, then the rehash of the coworking office space analysis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhere along the way I think we got it flipped around. No one was calling Sears a tech company in 1969 just because they bought an IBM 370 to computerize their accounting and inventory. By probably 1975, if you were Fortune 500 and still doing your books by hand you were probably just a dinosaur rather than your computerized competitors being so advanced. Uber, Tesla, okay, maybe there is an argument to be made fo…
That's because "tech" isn't a vertical but an operating model. As I've said before: https://twitter.com/mbesto/status/1017116663676919811 "IMHO the idea that companies are either "tech" or "not tech" has been peddled by VC's to convince buyers that all companies considered "tech" either have or will potentially have high gross margins regardless of current state and thus high valuations." "When working with my client…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the Nintendo strategy. Why anyone at Nintendo thought that the Wii U was a good name for a completely new console is beyond me.
There's some systematic issue with naming that has existed at Nintendo since the 90s. Thinking: Nintendo entertainment system and super Nintendo entertainment system. Not necessarily bad, but also kinda "meh." Probably the best 90s explanation for what a "console" is, before everyone already knows what a console is. I bring it up because here begins Nintendo's critical error: failing to understand the customer in Ame…
That was a console released following the video game industry crash of 1983 — a crash associated with total pessimism of games everywhere (at least in the US, but that was the most important console market)
It’s likely they were very deliberately trying avoid direct association with the game industry. Afaik, they’ve always intended their consoles be percieved as more toy-like, but the nes was a particilarly hard stance on that (even bundling it with a toy — R.O.B.)
>Nintendo's critical error: failing to understand the customer in America isn't children, it is their parents and grandparents, who have no fucking clue what the difference is between "the Nintendo" and "the super Nintendo."
You say this.. but outside of the wii u and n64, hasnt nintendo outsold its competition in every console generation so far? Although, I suppose it could also be said thats better attributed to the bigger shitshow of microsoft/sony/sega/atari, than nintendo’s own doing
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pee, to our American friends "Wee" also means "pee" in the US, as well as meaning "small".
Only in the context of being a Britishism that Americans occasionally use.
Those uses of "wee" (particularly the "urine" meaning) have been common in the US for far longer than I've been alive. Nobody thinks of them as "britishisms".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tech allows a company like Uber to allocate rides vastly more efficiently It's more accurate to say that venture capital allows Uber to subsidize rides more aggressively. I see no evidence that Uber is substantially more efficient (when you include the driver's costs) than traditional taxi companies. Edit: Uber has also managed to skirt a bunch of labor laws by claiming their employees are contractors. I guess that…
I think it's unquestionable that tech like Uber's can/does allocate cars and rides more efficiently. The taxi model relies on drivers circling looking for a fare and phone dispatch with, at best, a dispatcher seeing GPS cab location on a screen and trying to eyeball-match it to the caller's location. (or, at worst, caller-reported location, and radioing a bunch of cabs asking them "hey, where you at?") At its most ef…