Anyone have insight into Nuro? I was thinking of applying but now need to second guess joining any SoftBank co.
I work at Nuro, what do you want to know?
Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
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Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#102These on demand - fulfilled by gig contracting platforms can _only_ provide value if there has been a big technological change that undermines expertise in a job. Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. There hasn't been a revolutionary technology in dog walking, just people who need cash but dont know pets. There hasnt been a revolutionary technology in groc…
Uber works because of the rider-driver matching, not the routing. Everyone has google maps.
Gig workers can replace tax drivers because of google maps...
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#103These on demand - fulfilled by gig contracting platforms can _only_ provide value if there has been a big technological change that undermines expertise in a job. Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. There hasn't been a revolutionary technology in dog walking, just people who need cash but dont know pets. There hasnt been a revolutionary technology in groc…
uber has their own mapping. and no, it or google maps is decidedly not better than local knowledge.
> is decidedly not better than local knowledge.
any proof? I will say it falls down w/ construction zones and road changes.
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#104I used to work at Wag a for a few months, leaving shortly after the new CEO was brought on and they received the SoftBank investment. The fact that things got worse since then is not surprising. Management was already pretty disorganized, they were bad at managing funds (the salary discrepancies were very real), and putting it mildly it was just an unpleasant place to be. There was a staggering amount of turnover, especially with tech roles, in the short time I was there - one minute someone would get called into a meeting and that was the last I saw of them. I cant imagine the technical debt they've been accruing from having a carousel of developers.
I know they wanted to position themselves as the one stop shop for dog everything (not just walks but sitting/boarding, training, food delivery, etc) which is what I think helped them raise the funds, but I think they've taken too long to resolve the issues around their bread and butter of dog walking. The fact that the Viners and Meltzer are all since left as well is pretty telling.
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point isn't that those choices are older and therefore worse, it's that there are now more choices. They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started.
Why would you ask that and expect an answer? Was the person who orginally wrote the application in the room? Did you think to ask why they were using windows instead of macs? Or why leather seats? What were you hoping to get out of your question? Did you want to show the interviewer how hype you were? Were you hoping that you could educate them why using a javascript would be better? This was at an interview correct…
I'm not the person that asked Wag this question, but I do think it was a valid one. I'll try and explain why.
Even if they weren't the person that made the choice, them knowing the reasoning behind the choice tells you a lot about the team. I usually expect new members of teams to ask questions about why the application was written the way it was. This shows a general curiosity among team members and it shows that the team can transfer knowledge to each other.
Knowing why they made decisions I might not agree with helps me decide how the team makes decisions in general. Is there one manager that decides things without input? Does the whole team give input and decide democratically? Are they saddled with technical debt from the co-founders last failed startup that's 10 years older?
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is php old? Is c++, c#, Java etc considered old and should not be chosen too?
The point isn't that those choices are older and therefore worse, it's that there are now more choices. They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started.
> They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started.
Why, exactly? PHP, node, Ruby, Java, .NET, and Python are all capable tools with mature webapp frameworks. In terms of capabilities, the differences between them only matter for a small and rare set of projects.
They could have decided on one of these platforms by rolling a die and it would have little direct impact on their success or potential.
Presumably, the actual criteria was likely familiarity and fluency for their tech founder or early developers. This familiarity and fluency matters 1000x more to success than the differences between these frameworks.
Given that all the tools are mature and capable, having a team work with tools they know is a lot more valuable than handing them tools that they'll be learning how to use as they go.
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right - there are incredible cancer immunotherapy and other biotech startups that are on the cusp of HUGE things. Softbank is clearly at a point where it has more capital than sense.
I'm pretty sure $50Bn could get us Fusion. Instead it got us slightly better taxis. We've only invested $1Bn in fusion (according to this article: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/fission-fusion-capital-flow... ). Physicists have been saying "we're close" for like 70 years. It took the Manhattan project the equivalent of $23Bn. If we had the same type of investment, we could have clean and (almost) free energy foreve…
> We've only invested $1Bn in fusion (according to this article)
This is patently untrue. ITER, the source cited in that article [0], gives a cost so far of $15 billion and rising just for one facility.
What the article actually says is that $1 billion has been invested by venture capital firms in fusion since 2002. Most of the investment, like in the Manhattan Project, comes instead from government sources.
[0] http://www.iter.org/faq#Do_we_really_know_how_much_ITER_will...
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right - there are incredible cancer immunotherapy and other biotech startups that are on the cusp of HUGE things. Softbank is clearly at a point where it has more capital than sense.
I'm pretty sure $50Bn could get us Fusion. Instead it got us slightly better taxis. We've only invested $1Bn in fusion (according to this article: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/fission-fusion-capital-flow... ). Physicists have been saying "we're close" for like 70 years. It took the Manhattan project the equivalent of $23Bn. If we had the same type of investment, we could have clean and (almost) free energy foreve…
"When the technology matures, according to Mowry, the wholesale price for fusion fuel is expected to be around $50-60 per megawatt-hour"
I think it's telling that the most optimistic scenario they can come up with is "someday it might be competitive with fossil fuels if you consider the cost of fuel only".
The thing is, if fission is uncompetitive in the long run because of capital costs, can you, with a straight face, claim that fusion will be better, even in 50 years?
Edit: Of course, making fossil fuel more expensive would change the calculus. But my point is, since that is a prerequisite to addressing climate change anyway, we shouldn't be talking about fusion as a particular alternative.
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point isn't that those choices are older and therefore worse, it's that there are now more choices. They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started.
> They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started. Why, exactly? PHP, node, Ruby, Java, .NET, and Python are all capable tools with mature webapp frameworks. In terms of capabilities, the differences between them only matter for a small and rare set of projects. They could have decided on one of these platforms by rolling a die and it would have little…
Why? Because I wouldn't want to join a team that makes decisions for no reason.
> Presumably, the actual criteria was likely familiarity and fluency for their tech founder or early developers.
That would be a completely valid answer to the question. The fact that they didn't answer the question at all is the problem here, not that they chose PHP.
Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that, but there are biotechs that can get funded on an order of magnitude of tens or hundreds of millions. If the Vision Fund with $100 billion can't make biotech investments work, who could? That's kind of my point; if Vision Fund at scale can't make risky investments work, who could? The only alternatives are the existing profit-machines like Google (Google X) or governments. I am also not the only one with t…
You are missing the point. Do you know anything about this industry? Biotech is not anything like your "traditional" tech companies, they operate in a completely different dynamic. It is not risky in the same way. It can take many years to realize that your proof of concept is a failure, and there's no "pivoting" like in the tech bro world. Are you prepared to realize that after 10 years and many millions of dollars…
"This is why phony genomics software platforms are all the rage today."
Examples?