The failure of Sprig
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The failure of Sprig
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Re: The failure of Sprig
#2I loved Sprig. I used to use them as my example of a favorite product when asked in interviewed. Problem: I am hungry right now and can't/don't want to cook. Solution: As the founder notes, once signed in, it was literally three taps to get food to my door really quick. Also the design was beautiful.
Doordash, UberEats, et. al have certainly (glactically) widened the variety of food I could order, but I always find myself suffering from choice anxiety when I open those up. Sprig gave me a protein and veggie I could order without thinking too hard.
I get why the food delivery model doesn't work well in the US for anyone, and I did notice Sprig's decline in food quality, but I am still sad the company is gone.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#3> Govt. SF health + planning made our lives hell. They didn't like our innovations. We had to bribe officials ("lobbying").
San Francisco's population leans quite left, but they seem to really hate change over there. I've never lived in a place so hellbent on ensuring that nothing changes. In fact--the entire bay seems to hate change, and the peninsula may arguably be worse.
There's that old saying: "you couldn't get elected as dogcatcher," that makes fun of the sheer number of elected positions in the US. It feels so true at the local level, with a bunch of domain specific politicians trying to exert their tiny slice of power. San Francisco seemed quite bad while I lived there, but they're hardly alone.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#4Why didn't they think "Oh geez, our idea isn't that revolutionary and anyone, including companies such as lyft or Uber with giant pockets can come in and swoop our lunch?" That should be the first day conversation. I am sure they had that, it would be stupid to not have, but the stupid part is about unsustainable growth whilst ignoring the competitive landscape with delusion.
I know retrospectives are always easy to do and criticize, but these types of ultra-fast reckless growth companies do not pause for a second and think about their risks. They're smoking that drug of % growth and VC funds pouring in. I live in SV and this type of thinking is everywhere. Flail without foundation. Why not think about building something that no one can just easily come in and render you completely useless? That means that the business idea wasn't strong enough and it was mostly scaffolding - there was no foundation. IP was thin ice. This is pretty common with these delivery businesses.
Build something that no one can easily replicate or compete with you. Build it so good that even if a competitor emerges, they have a lot of catch up to do. Build it slow, methodically and strategically. Unfortunately, growth hacking and bullshit pitches to the investors take precedence in SV from what I've seen. Not all companies are like that, but a lot of these hot bottle rocket companies die because of many aspects that were not thought out. Risk taking is great, reckless risk taking is not. A solid business is like a diesel engine than a hot bottle rocket. It is unstoppable once it picks up.
I love companies like Boston Dynamics. Took forever to grow. They spun off from the MIT Leg Laboratory in the 90's, built real IP, not some VC backed presentation with fancy graphics. Zero expenditures on marketing, all in on R&D and engineering until now. They're unstoppable and they haven't even started yet. I know a delivery business is very different from BD, just trying to make a general point about building IP. Any amount of money that Microsoft + Apple + Google all combined can throw billions and billions on this but they won't be able to compete with BD immediately. It takes time and throwing money at it doesn't help at all. That's the best hedge you can have!
Re: The failure of Sprig
#5> Govt. SF health + planning made our lives hell. They didn't like our innovations. We had to bribe officials ("lobbying"). San Francisco's population leans quite left, but they seem to really hate change over there. I've never lived in a place so hellbent on ensuring that nothing changes. In fact--the entire bay seems to hate change, and the peninsula may arguably be worse. There's that old saying: "you couldn't get…
> There's that old saying: "you couldn't get elected as dogcatcher,"
To be pedantic, this phrase actually refers to the quality of the person rather than the number of positions. The meaning is essentially "you're so unpopular you couldn't get elected to the most trivial/inconsequential position imaginable"
More on your point I frequently observe that administration expands until it becomes the purpose of the organisation. You start out with something serving users (eg Education, or Government) which as it grows in size requires more coordination. However past a certain point the administrators require help themselves, starting the inevitable growth outside of user pressure. Eventually you reach a tipping point where there are more people working on improving administration than those working on improving user experience.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#6Why didn't they think "Oh geez, our idea isn't that revolutionary and anyone, including companies such as lyft or Uber with giant pockets can come in and swoop our lunch?" That should be the first day conversation. I am sure they had that, it would be stupid to not have, but the stupid part is about unsustainable growth whilst ignoring the competitive landscape with delusion. I know retrospectives are always easy to…
Because if everyone thought that, then no one would do anything. Basically every single company Apple, Google, FB, Tesla could have thought that and just concluded that they should not even try. And that's far, far worse for society than some food business not working out.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#7Why didn't they think "Oh geez, our idea isn't that revolutionary and anyone, including companies such as lyft or Uber with giant pockets can come in and swoop our lunch?" That should be the first day conversation. I am sure they had that, it would be stupid to not have, but the stupid part is about unsustainable growth whilst ignoring the competitive landscape with delusion. I know retrospectives are always easy to…
I don't think you can really pay much attention to potential competitors. It's common to have competitors but rare to have good ones. And so, yeah, a lot of companies have deep pockets, but also that works against them in a particular way. The line of business that's making most of the money is also getting most of the good talent and leadership.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#8slightly off topic: what is the motivation to use twitter for writing very long posts? splitting your message up into so many tweets seems so distracting. what's the big idea of splitting it up?
Re: The failure of Sprig
#93 years of constantly losing money.
Failed because of Uber which has significantly larger pockets and is constantly losing money.
Why are all these called "a business"? These are all price dumping ventures relying on external coffers.
Re: The failure of Sprig
#10> Govt. SF health + planning made our lives hell. They didn't like our innovations. We had to bribe officials ("lobbying"). San Francisco's population leans quite left, but they seem to really hate change over there. I've never lived in a place so hellbent on ensuring that nothing changes. In fact--the entire bay seems to hate change, and the peninsula may arguably be worse. There's that old saying: "you couldn't get…
> 2) Gross Margins (GM). As we grew, our burn rate grew too. We were losing money on every meal. If only we could get to critical mass.
> We had epic revenue growth w/ burn rate growth. Soon we were burning $1.5-2M/mo!
> We were always “1-2 months away” from managing the burn.
I dont understand, how in good faith, he can bring up SF-regulations as issue #1. When issue #2 is the crux of all their issues. They lost money on every sale! Food industry is notorious for thin margins, and then had negative margins and growth. SF regulations dont matter compared to that.