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Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

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Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#181

Post by oblio »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #39
tyre wrote: post #24

Food delivery is a terrible business. M&A won’t make it better. I worked at LivingSocial in 2012/2013. We used to joke that “we lose money on every transaction but make it up in scale.” Takeout and Delivery was one of the last bets the company made. Basically food delivery. The customer service load is huge, the services aren’t really differentiated, and you have to both pay the driver enough for it to be worth it an…

Until we have robots to do the labor I agree.

I like how "robots" are the solution. Robots might be 1-10 or even 100 years away from being used.

It's like relying on a miracle. It's not a valid business plan.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#182

Post by cycomanic »

tyre wrote: post #24

Food delivery is a terrible business. M&A won’t make it better. I worked at LivingSocial in 2012/2013. We used to joke that “we lose money on every transaction but make it up in scale.” Takeout and Delivery was one of the last bets the company made. Basically food delivery. The customer service load is huge, the services aren’t really differentiated, and you have to both pay the driver enough for it to be worth it an…

I've said this in another thread, the business of all these "startups" seems not to be of making a sustainable business, but instead it's more of a pyramid scheme where one set of investors are trying to make money of the next round of investors (up to and after IPO). If we view it like that it makes sense, the merger/acquisition will increase stock prices because it seems like there is a holistic strategy. At some point the whole house of cards is going to fall down, but by that times all the early investors will have left and made a big buck.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#183

Post by jellevdv »

wittekm wrote: post #155
jameslk wrote: post #139

I am awaiting a Steve Jobs-like re-entry of Travis Kalanick back into Uber when Uber purchases CloudKitchens to complete its kitchen-to-door vertical integration. It's all very hypothetical, but I give it a 1% chance of happening.

Uber is doing fine without that garbage human.

What did he do that made you describe him as a garbage human?

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#184

Post by user5994461 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #67
tyre wrote: post #24

Food delivery is a terrible business. M&A won’t make it better. I worked at LivingSocial in 2012/2013. We used to joke that “we lose money on every transaction but make it up in scale.” Takeout and Delivery was one of the last bets the company made. Basically food delivery. The customer service load is huge, the services aren’t really differentiated, and you have to both pay the driver enough for it to be worth it an…

Imo Netflix is much worst in that regard. At least in this case, you can hope to won a capital attrition war and become the really big player. But for Netflix, it's literally a never ending spring in a hamster wheel. You have users that can almost instantly leave your platform if you don't have interesting content, so you need to perpetually use whatever money subscriptions generate to produce even more content, even…

I think you've got it backward. Uber is precisely like NetFlix and they don't have the Disney franchise (restaurants).

I started ordering on Uber Eats when they got the restaurant few blocks away that is good. Then they got another restaurant across the city, that's the only one to do some specialty food I love.

I only order from a couple places. All my friends only order from a couple places. Discussing what to order at parties goes like: this or this or that (each person's favorite or good enough restaurant).

Last month Uber added £5 delivery fee. Quit Uber and started the Deliveroo app. Everybody's got multiple apps on their phones. Couldn't care less about the app as long as it delivers the food.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#185

Post by dannyr »

saalweachter wrote: post #119
bhl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a questions that’s going to pop up is, why does delivery work for a company like Dominos’s (vertical integration) but not Postmates (horizontal)?

Well, for one thing, "integration". Domino's is built to deliver pizzas. They have streamlined the process of an order being placed, prepped, and handed off to delivery to try to make each step of the process as efficient as possible. Do "horizontal" delivery companies have similar integration and benefit from similar efficiency? In an ideal delivery situation, you want two things to be true: first, delivery people s…

You could say that Chinese restaurants in NYC are also built to deliver. These restaurants have had their own delivery fleet for decades.

For a non-chain business, probably the key is being in a dense city where majority of your customers are within a few mile radius.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#186

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

cycomanic wrote: post #182
tyre wrote: post #24

Food delivery is a terrible business. M&A won’t make it better. I worked at LivingSocial in 2012/2013. We used to joke that “we lose money on every transaction but make it up in scale.” Takeout and Delivery was one of the last bets the company made. Basically food delivery. The customer service load is huge, the services aren’t really differentiated, and you have to both pay the driver enough for it to be worth it an…

I've said this in another thread, the business of all these "startups" seems not to be of making a sustainable business, but instead it's more of a pyramid scheme where one set of investors are trying to make money of the next round of investors (up to and after IPO). If we view it like that it makes sense, the merger/acquisition will increase stock prices because it seems like there is a holistic strategy. At some p…

It's a wealth transfer scheme.

Wealth is transferred from ordinary folk via the IPO-retirement-fund axis to the plethora of agents involved in the whole scheme, from the employees bashing out code and UX, right through to everyone involved the M&A and IPO and the whole tax / tax agent / government tax agency cadre.

It's not trickledown.

It's deluge-up economics.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#187

Post by nielsole »

wittekm wrote: post #155
jameslk wrote: post #139

I am awaiting a Steve Jobs-like re-entry of Travis Kalanick back into Uber when Uber purchases CloudKitchens to complete its kitchen-to-door vertical integration. It's all very hypothetical, but I give it a 1% chance of happening.

Uber is doing fine without that garbage human.

Downvoted you. Someone may be despicable, but that is no reason to dehumanize them.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#188

Post by twic »

sequoia wrote: post #60
Swizec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would not be surprised 30y from now most homes won't have kitchen anymore. You'll have an access where a drone can come in an deliver whatever you ordered. I suspect you vastly underestimate how cheap and time effective cooking at home can be. My girlfriend and I just mealprepped 8 meals for $30. Took 15min of active work. The whole week we both get a healthy balanced meal that takes 2min to prepare. No delivery co…

My interest is piqued. What 8 meals did you make in 15 minutes? Did you purchase already cooked food?

Not OP either, but i make heavy use of my rice cooker. Turns out that puy lentils cook interchangeably with white rice. So, either rice or lentils or a combination, plus water, half a stock cube, olive oil, herbs and spices, maybe some chorizo, maybe some kale or other vegetable, sometimes half a tin of ratatouille, or anything else you fancy which will cook in 15 minutes of simmering. Add, stir, push button, wait, eat.

I could make this in bulk and freeze it, but there's no point, because it's so quick to make.

Meals made this way aren't the most exciting thing, but they're as tasty as you can be bothered to make them, are reasonably healthy, and extremely easy.

Spaghetti carbonara is also very quick to make.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#189

Post by heisbsissi »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #135
viburnum wrote: post #79

Clearly private industry has run out of profitable investments. Better to shift spending to public investments (science, education, err, the current public health emergency) than to waste more money on delivery boondoggles.

Unfortunately the recent trend of tearing down public statues probably doesn’t instill confidence that these kinds of corporate investments will be properly protected.

Yeah and when the rabble ended slavery I sold all my stocks because I knew the stupid libs didn't respect private property.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#190

Post by user5994461 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #106
MattGaiser wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the delivery companies take 20-30% of the gross food order. So while they aren’t technically vertically integrated, they have the pricing of vertical integration (assuming typical restaurant margins).

> assuming typical restaurant margins I think Domino's margins blow typical restaurant margins out of the water. I don't have hard numbers, but worked a variety of delivery jobs from 2010-2014. Domino's was the only place with the attitude that their food was worth pennies to produce. Most places didn't offer discounts to their employees, not even for food that was mistakenly made and had to be trashed. Domino's was…

A cheap pizza from Aldi is £1. A regular pizza with some toppings and maybe meat is £2-3 in most supermarkets. Could be £4 in higher end supermarkets.

You see where this is going. Pizzas are worth nothing, supermarkets are making money on these (it's not allowed to sell an item at a loss in Europe). Domino produces for £1-2 and sell for £10-20.

The accepted number in the restaurant industry is that food cost must be less than 30% of the listed price. Pizzas are pushing this to an extreme by selling for double digits while they're so cheap.

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