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

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

#131

Post by twblalock » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #8

What's Postmates moat? Having never used it, I don't necessarily see the 2.6b$ value in a smaller delivery app that is only really used in some areas of the US. Though I'm sure there is something I'm missing and 2.6b$ is probably less expensive than the cost of pricing Postmates out of the market especially considering it's an all stocks deal. It's just that delivery seems to be easily scalable and easy to just dump…

They don't have a moat. They are one of many similar players in the same space, which are interchangeable both to their workers and their customers, and they can only compete on price.

Drivers often work for several of these companies at the same time, and customers will use whichever one is cheapest at the time they feel like placing an order.

At the moment, with so many similar companies in the space, I don't see how any of them could become profitable, especially while being engaged in a race to the bottom on prices (because price is all that customers actually care about; the experience of a guy in a car bringing stuff to your door is pretty much the same with all of these companies).

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

#132

Post by nordsieck » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #51

nordsieck wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Postmates raised $903M since 2012 ... Not a 10x exit. I suspect that many of the investors are just happy to record a profitable exit.

I wonder how many of those investors are also in to uber.

> I wonder how many of those investors are also in to uber.

All of them are now: it's an "all-stock deal". I guess it remains to see how many of them will sell.

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

#133

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #131

mardifoufs wrote: post #8

What's Postmates moat? Having never used it, I don't necessarily see the 2.6b$ value in a smaller delivery app that is only really used in some areas of the US. Though I'm sure there is something I'm missing and 2.6b$ is probably less expensive than the cost of pricing Postmates out of the market especially considering it's an all stocks deal. It's just that delivery seems to be easily scalable and easy to just dump…

They don't have a moat. They are one of many similar players in the same space, which are interchangeable both to their workers and their customers, and they can only compete on price. Drivers often work for several of these companies at the same time, and customers will use whichever one is cheapest at the time they feel like placing an order. At the moment, with so many similar companies in the space, I don't see h…

> because price is all that customers actually care about

Customers actually care about service, too, but the two-sided-market-drivers-aa-contractors models doesn’t really leave the parts of service that would matter in the hands of the delivery matchmaker, so it's true that all they have is price, not because it's all customers care about but because it's all the firm has any kind of control over, by design.

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

#134

Post by Thorrez » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

geitir wrote: post #94

ByteJockey wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that domino's makes a profit on food delivery rather than breaking even on it. But domino's also makes the food, so if they break even on the deliver, that's fine, they made money on the food. Scaling the delivery part of the business also scales the food part. If you aren't making the food, you have to make money on the delivery alone because scaling your delivery service scales someone else's food b…

I imagine the end goal is the same as with Uber's main business. Automation

The end goal of what? Uber Eats or Domino's?

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

#135

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

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.

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

#136

Post by vecinu » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

Arubis wrote: post #91

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...

Amex has customer service at least an order of magnitude better than any Visa/MC licensee I’ve dealt with; that’s really what you’re paying for. If something goes wrong with a purchase, they’ll tend to make it right without asking many questions/filling any forms. Lost cards can be next-day’s without charge. They have actual physical offices in non-US nations that can advance you local currency and provide you a new…

That's interesting, I have many credit cars from Visa/MC/Discover and never had an issue with fraud purchases or lost cards.

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

#137

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #133

twblalock wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have a moat. They are one of many similar players in the same space, which are interchangeable both to their workers and their customers, and they can only compete on price. Drivers often work for several of these companies at the same time, and customers will use whichever one is cheapest at the time they feel like placing an order. At the moment, with so many similar companies in the space, I don't see h…

> because price is all that customers actually care about Customers actually care about service, too, but the two-sided-market-drivers-aa-contractors models doesn’t really leave the parts of service that would matter in the hands of the delivery matchmaker, so it's true that all they have is price, not because it's all customers care about but because it's all the firm has any kind of control over, by design.

They could let customers pay a N% (say 10%) premium for a ...better-rated delivery courier? I'd be curious to see how that'd A/B test. Probably would fail, but nonetheless prove a point if there's any 'service' component that is possible to compete on.

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

#138

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

tuckerconnelly wrote: post #117

gigit_phd wrote: post #23

The only difference between Postmates and Uber Eats is that Postmates customers overwhelmingly tip the delivery driver. The Postmates app and systems is horrifically engineered. Uber Eats is an exceptionally better system.

Postmates has the cleanest API IMO. If you want to see an engineering horror check out DoorDash. Half GraphQL, half REST, random 500s, no SSR.

Lack of SSR != An engineering horror. Crawlers can handle these pages effortlessly these days. So long as the client-side performance is good, SSR isn't very important.

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

#139

Post by jameslk » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

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.

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

#140

Post by ybot » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

cglong wrote: post #28

mardifoufs wrote: post #8

What's Postmates moat? Having never used it, I don't necessarily see the 2.6b$ value in a smaller delivery app that is only really used in some areas of the US. Though I'm sure there is something I'm missing and 2.6b$ is probably less expensive than the cost of pricing Postmates out of the market especially considering it's an all stocks deal. It's just that delivery seems to be easily scalable and easy to just dump…

Of all the services I've tried in this space, only Postmates lets you request items from businesses they aren't partnered with. This was a huge win once when I needed groceries delivered quickly.

They all do this now, to one degree or another. [1] [2]

The economics are even worse (because they don't get a cut from the restaurant), so these types of orders are either very high fee for the consumer, a loss leader, or both.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/doordash-pizza-arbitrage-shows-the-fubar...

[2] https://www.eater.com/2019/10/30/20940107/grubhub-to-add-res...