Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by dchuk » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

acwan93 wrote: post #267

vecinu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards But the annual fee is $250, how is it worth it? At best if you use the $100 airline credit, which is now hard to "hack", and max out $10/mo on Grubhub, you're still paying $30 for the privilege...

Aside from what the peer comments say here, the point multipliers end up offsetting the costs of the annual fee. You’re right that the airline credit is harder to redeem now, but in my case I was luckily able to redeem it all by February. Also, Chase Sapphire Reserve has the $60/year credit to DoorDash. Seems like we’re just redeeming a bunch of VC money.

Wow, I had no idea Chase added that perk, and I just started using DashPash this month! I switched from my Amex to the Chase card just now, you just saved me a bunch of money, thank you!

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

#272

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

vecinu wrote: post #141

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Earn 4X Points at U.S. supermarkets on up to $25,000 per calendar year in purchases. > Earn 4X Points on restaurants including takeout and delivery > Book a room through American Express Travel that's part of the Hotel Collection, stay two consecutive nights and get a $100 hotel credit to spend on qualifying dining, spa, and resort activities.

I wasn't able to utilize these benefits efficiently since the The Blue Cash Everyday® Card has 3X points @ Supermarkets has no annual fee and I have another card for restaurants. I suppose if you max out all the categories it's not a bad card if it's all you have.

I agree you have to be able to take full advantage of the benefits for you to recoup the annual fee.

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

#273

Post by deleuze » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

tbdenney wrote: post #227

chejazi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe ghost kitchens will fix the unit economics.

Kinda surprised this isn't higher up, I also assumed the path to a more sustainable model is to have a set of ghost kitchens making food of different types exclusively serving Deliveroo/Glovo/UberEats customers.

Most of the food I've gotten from ghost kitchens has been pretty okay, but it's still way too expensive, especially if you're a good tipper.

I'm a well paid software engineer, so I can afford to pay like $20 surcharge on laziness, but it doesn't really make sense.

The ghost kitchen burger isn't thaaaat much better than fast food and 2-3x the price. The ghost kitchen burrito is actually worse than the local Mexican street food, just will be delivered to me door.

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

#274

Post by puranjay » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #263

puranjay wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that to happen, we have to first: - Create robots capable of handling pickup and delivery automatically - a very hard technical problem that were far from solving - Manufacture these robots at scale - Purchase and deploy these robots at scale The timeline for all of these things together is years, even decades into the future. Even if you get the tech down, creating factories that can churn out hundreds of thousa…

drones, maybe

Regulatory and security nightmare. Having thousands of drones zipping around a city at the same time is going to open up the doors for some bad actors. It will take one lunatic with a homemade bomb and everything will be grounded.

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

#275

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #235

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Postmates raised $903M since 2012: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/postmates Not a 10x exit.

Arguably not even a profitable one considering how 903M invested almost anywhere else since 2012 would have done with far less risk.

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by duxup » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

badestrand wrote: post #258

duxup wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are food delivery services cash cows? I hadn't gotten that impression.

They can be, of course. I worked in a food delivery company of the Just Eat group ~5 years ago, for 1.5 years. They take a comission of ~12% of the order price just by providing the platform to place orders. The technology is simple, then you have a sales team to acquire restaurants as partners and a customer service team to support when orders get lost or to update the menus. Yes, there can be cut-throat competition…

I feel like that is a pretty big stretch.

Basically there is a "cash cow" if someone can monopolize the market, not have competition, and if people are willing to pay more.

What isn't a cash cow under those circumstances?

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

#277

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

zippy5 wrote: post #269

lotsofpulp wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's due to my childhood, but even as someone who could easily afford a $25+ meal, it would hurt me emotionally to pay that much for delivery. Very few restaurants even offer a meal worth $25 in the first place (compared to what I can make at home), even in SF/NYC/London, and on top of that you don't know how long the driver is going to take, what kind of measures they are taking to keep it warm, and/or if they…

I'm guessing you don't know how much your time is worth. Suppose you wanted a nice meal for a friend you spontaneously invited over. You’ll go to the grocery store, cook, clean. Not only have you spent say two or more hours for a meal. If you paid yourself minimum wage, you wouldn't break even no matter how cheap the ingredients. Frugality is a useful mentality, but it’s important to account for the economic value of…

We always have lots of food in the house as we cook on an ongoing basis, someone or even a few people coming over won’t make us go to the grocery store.

And my family prefers home cooked food not because of frugality, but because it’s much healthier and tastier. We can usually make a convoluted meal with at most 3 man hours (split amongst 2 or 3 people), including cleanup. But it will taste thousands of time better, and I will be able to trust the ingredients and quality more.

I’ve actually calculated that we spend more on ingredients and labor than going out to eat, but no normal takeout restaurant offers what we can make at home (it’s not affordable for most people to buy that quality food when you account for overhead and profit margins).

Although I do understand the convenience of ordering out if you live in a cramped apartment in downtown SF/NYC/other big city. But once you have the facility to cook, the marginal cost is tiny.

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

#278

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

floatingatoll wrote: post #93

BurningFrog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as your customers learn that wasting support time pays off, the game is surely over!

It turns out that human beings are often inclined not to lie for selfish gain, and there is often a certain degree of social pressure not to lie for selfish gain.

Sure, it's a minority that would run a scam like this, but the normal experience is that if you leave an available exploit, it will be used.

Though the people who claim that doesn't happen enough to be significant for other pizza delivery systems seem to know more than I do.

There is no social pressure when you're alone on the phone with some faceless customer service employee.

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

#279

Post by floatingatoll » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #278

floatingatoll wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that human beings are often inclined not to lie for selfish gain, and there is often a certain degree of social pressure not to lie for selfish gain.

Sure, it's a minority that would run a scam like this, but the normal experience is that if you leave an available exploit, it will be used. Though the people who claim that doesn't happen enough to be significant for other pizza delivery systems seem to know more than I do. There is no social pressure when you're alone on the phone with some faceless customer service employee.

To restate: “It will be used by a minority” — yes, we agree on this.

I absolutely feel social pressure when I’m alone on the phone with some faceless customer service employee. If you do not, that’s your choice, but it’s not universal.

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

#280

Post by 98codes » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #114

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)?

I've worked as pizza delivery. The tipping and per-delivery payments to drivers is why it works. Roughly speaking, a delivery driver in my area nearly a decade ago earned roughly $20/hr after gas and car expenses, half in hourly wages @ state minimum and the other half in tips + $1/delivery payment. They also took about 3 deliveries an hour when fully utilized, which wasn't for 100% of their shift. The wait time got…

The difference between delivery people that work for the restaurant and those that don't are VAST. The first is invested (for a number of reasons) in getting the food to you quickly and in good condition. The latter group simply doesn't, and the restaurant gets blamed for it.