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Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

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Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#11

Post by anon1m0us »

Craft.io says they have raised $900 Million. They want to IPO at a valuation just barely double that amount after 8 years of trying. That seems very desperate to me, especially considering the onslaught of competition, declining revenue growth.

There's no moat. It's easy to create hyperlocal competitors. There are many. This market is saturated.

I can't see how postmates can continue to grow wealth for investors. Neither can the public markets. They are barely better than index funds with way more risk.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#12

Post by rubyn00bie »

I wonder, why...

Could be it all these business wanting to IPO have been propped up by obscene amounts of investment capital... and are extremely vulnerable to competition and commoditization by others?

Or, that these "silicon valley" versions are actually no less expensive operate and thus cannot actually even come close to the level of scale they anticipated without enormous (and profit destroying) capital investments?

Or maybe it's their inability to deliver value to literally anyone but their most astute investors, fucking everyone dumb enough to not realize the ruse?

... or maybe, in this case...

It's that nothing about Postmates is exceptionally good, in fact, I find them to be exceptionally shitty. I stopped using them because they literally steal from you when they fuck up a meal thanks to those arbitrary "service fees" in addition to the fucking the delivery fee.

If I went to a restaurant to pick up my food, and it was wrong, I would not be forced to pay for incorrect food. They could fix it, or I could choose to wait and pay, or I could both refuse to pay and leave as I have no debt to them since they have rendered me nothing. Postmates absolutely removes this option from the table, and 100% refuses the liability for fucking up... while charging you for the pleasure.

I highly fucking doubt they don't charge a restaurant for fucking up, but they still got their cut!

"Yes, this is the business problem we're solving to MAKE MO-NAY-NAY... Oh? No... we didn't solve it, we don't think anyone can, my good beebs snorts cocaine so lets make money by going fucking the public, yay!"

So what you ask? That's literally the core fucking problem they're trying to solve, that's how one makes money by solving a problem for someone, but they're just throwing up their hands saying "people are difficult, customer service is 'hard,' no one can solve this; we have the market, give us money" expecting to receive money for it.

Folks, I paid you extra to deliver my food correctly, and you didn't, why the fuck am I still paying?

My assumption is that they're literally so in the red per-order, because their operating costs are enormous even with their pathetic money-grubbing behaviour, that filing right now would be near WeWork levels of bad.

When I would pay Postmates et. al, $9+ dollars to have something delivered, plus fees, plus a fucking tip, and I think back to the restaurant and driver- who are the ones that deserve that bonus and they don't get shit. The reason? Postmates costs are too god damn high for the value they add (which is close to none).

And, just for the record...

* Theiving customers * Thieving restaurants * Thieving drivers * Asshole customers * Asshole drivers * Asshole restaurant employees * Missing/delayed orders * Badly prepared orders * Timely updates * Living wages * Convenience

Are a sample the problems they're saying they solve the way they advertise their service, but how many of them did they actually solve? And this is the problem with the recent unicorns... Maybe one? Is that really something anyone wants to invest in?

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#13

Post by ProfessorLayton »

the_watcher wrote: post #8

Comparing direct listings to IPOs always seemed odd to me. An IPO is a fundraising event . A DPO does not raise any money for the actual business, but it gives liquidity to existing shareholders. The reason we're seeing them now is that there are companies who don't need an IPO to raise money, but have shareholders who have waited 10 years for liquidity.

While yes indeed some employees have waited many years for a liquidity event and want a payout for their hard work, the other shareholders are LPs with a venture capital target date on their funds.

This means that the company will either need to keep raising money to buy out earlier investors that need to hit their fund target dates (Rather than raise it all for themselves), or they'll need to go public at some point, even if they don't need the money per se. Keep in mind that investors get lot's of sway via their board seats.

If you're in the business of losing money, this game of hot potato becomes harder and harder to play over time.

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#14

Post by tempsy »

I think the most fascinating thing about Postmates is how they are behind is almost every market but for some reason have an abnormally high market share in Los Angeles.

Apparently they had early partnerships with celebrities like Kylie Jenner and it created a loyal following that stuck?

I guess I assumed in the age of the internet you wouldn't see something like a delivery app only "work" like that in one city, primarily due to local marketing efforts.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#15

Post by lallysingh »

anon1m0us wrote: post #11

Craft.io says they have raised $900 Million. They want to IPO at a valuation just barely double that amount after 8 years of trying. That seems very desperate to me, especially considering the onslaught of competition, declining revenue growth. There's no moat. It's easy to create hyperlocal competitors. There are many. This market is saturated. I can't see how postmates can continue to grow wealth for investors. Nei…

Looks like they're buying their bankers' bullshit.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#16

Post by dehrmann »

dopamean wrote: post #2

Might it have something to do with the fact that so many companies have waited so long to go public that there's basically no realistic upside left for retail investors?

There's limited upside because most of the growth is gone, but there's still value in the same way Unilever has value. The problem is they're priced for hypergrowth. That said, Uber's still experiencing some growth.

Ugh, old data, but https://s3.amazonaws.com/cbi-research-portal-uploads/2019/05...

A successful company will have a trajectory like a sigmoid function (see above). The problem is IPO investors want in when growth still looks exponential.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#17

Post by wbl »

AznHisoka wrote: post #10
dopamean wrote: post #2

Might it have something to do with the fact that so many companies have waited so long to go public that there's basically no realistic upside left for retail investors?

that is 1 huge difference between the IPOs of now and even 10 years ago. you could buy stock in companies like Google or Salesforce that were still nowhere close to their maturation stage. sure it was hard to find that 50x bagger but at least it was possible. Now I doubt those exist

Markets are efficient. You could also have bought Pets.com.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#18

Post by dvt »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #13
the_watcher wrote: post #8

Comparing direct listings to IPOs always seemed odd to me. An IPO is a fundraising event . A DPO does not raise any money for the actual business, but it gives liquidity to existing shareholders. The reason we're seeing them now is that there are companies who don't need an IPO to raise money, but have shareholders who have waited 10 years for liquidity.

While yes indeed some employees have waited many years for a liquidity event and want a payout for their hard work, the other shareholders are LPs with a venture capital target date on their funds. This means that the company will either need to keep raising money to buy out earlier investors that need to hit their fund target dates (Rather than raise it all for themselves), or they'll need to go public at some point…

> This means that the company will either need to keep raising money to buy out earlier investors ...

Isn't this the literal definition of a Ponzi scheme? Isn't using new money to pay old investors technically illegal?

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#19

Post by pbreit »

the_watcher wrote: post #8

Comparing direct listings to IPOs always seemed odd to me. An IPO is a fundraising event . A DPO does not raise any money for the actual business, but it gives liquidity to existing shareholders. The reason we're seeing them now is that there are companies who don't need an IPO to raise money, but have shareholders who have waited 10 years for liquidity.

DPOs do not preclude company from raising money. Slack did.

Re: Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley

#20

Post by phkahler »

Spooky23 wrote: post #6

Or turning against bullshit business models. The growth for taking egregious commissions on takeout and losing money while doing it is a finite market.

20 years ago we had the dotcom craze it was all bullshit business models. F'ed company and all that. Wall street never really cared about any of the tech, it was always about the money. In most cases anyway.

Some of the companies that have IPOed recently can only be destroyed by massive investment. Uber for example, should be sized like Craig's list connecting drivers and riders, not 20,000 employees with billions in valuation doing autonomous car bullshit.

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