181–190 of 255 posts
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I have an easier time seeing the fall of the US before I see the fall of Amazon.
Amazon would have to be eaten by a three-prong (or more) attack, but I could see it fall quite quickly. AWS is probably the biggest moat they have, but not often what people think of by "Amazon".
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> I mean if we really look at some of the business models for these companies, they're clearly unsustainable. Uber is a prime example of a company that seems destined to fail. Lyft and Uber are both very near profitability and things are looking pretty good for them over the next couple years. Why do you believe they are destined to fail? Established markets have been profitable for a while.
>> Lyft and Uber are both very near profitability As they have been for over a decade. Just not actually GAAP profitable, except maybe a one off sale to DiDi. >> Established markets have been profitable for a while. So what market is Uber not established in? Are they pouring their oceans of profit from New York, Los Angeles and London into building a business in La Paz? I am sure they are trying to grow in places but…
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Amazon would have to be eaten by a three-prong (or more) attack, but I could see it fall quite quickly. AWS is probably the biggest moat they have, but not often what people think of by "Amazon".
Amazon has really good diversification, and they aren’t going away anytime. Look at IBM, they still exist after decades of being essential irrelevant.
If Amazon retreats to being AWS-only, I'll consider them to have "failed", even if AWS continues to be a success.
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They mean "actual" dry cleaners that clean in the shop - almost all those you find are fronts for some massive cleaning warehouse somewhere else (check to see if they have any machines on-site).
Even if that's the case, how does that make it a dry cleaning "desert"? I only care if I can get my clothes cleaned quickly and I've never had any problem with that.
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Very good points MegaButts. Crypto is VC funded too. Hence the crazy market caps because most of the VC owned supply is locked up.
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> I think the important question to ask here is if people continue to want to pay & hail taxis from their phone? If the answer to that is yes then Uber will be fine so long as they're one of the apps that people continue to use to hail taxis [and they figure out how to get their unit economics to work] If they don’t get their unit economics figured out, not only will they not be Google/FB/etc., they will be nothing a…
uber's unit economics will easily work out if they stop expanding (which is where the expenses are). Their backend services have a "fixed cost", if you assume they've designed it to be scalable, such that the marginal cost of a new user doesn't add more cost to hosting and compute. Then fire most engineers, and keep some skeleton crew maintaining the services. The other cost is obviously the payment to drivers. I bel…
How much will their market share fall when they do this though? And will uber be able to survive the corresponding reduction in revenue?
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Okay, that's my bad. But if you assume an effective tax rate of 15% (combined federal + state + SS + Medicare), which sounds about right for an Uber driver making 40k/year, 0.58 * 15% * 75k mi/year is an $6525 tax reduction. A quick look at an income tax calculator says someone in California making 40k pays about 6k in tax, so your credit per mile is 6k / 75k = 8 cents/mile. Depending on your costs that could put you…
I made some comments below, the devil is in the details. It is not theoretical, I tried to Uber to challenge my notions about this. Circa 2021: The main point I would like to make is that in my market at the time, the mileage was getting paid was .76 a mile, as I look back in the app. At the time additionally was getting .11 per a minute fare. The main issue is that the mileage rate is for time that passengers are in…
It might seem like that, but +$2/ride still puts Uber in the black here. A ride is minimum $8-9 so they're making at least $5 on that ride.
Also, I think your example is not too great because low fare/short rides disproportionately screw you because Uber takes a flat $3 per ride as a "marketplace fee" in addition to their 25% cut. If that ride was 5 miles instead of 2.5, you'd make a lot more than double 2.86.
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Which is why nobody likes down rounds, as it's indicative of where everything is going (and so the music stops).
Yep. But when your startup is burning through cash and you're not going to make next month's payroll, you're pretty much force to accept whatever terms you're offered. (Assuming you're offered any. )
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Yeah I was super confused by this. VCs generally don’t have all the money ready to invest. They may have raised a $300 mil fund but they don’t get that money until they call it in. If the LP says “no deals for 6 months” that’s how it is.
No, that's not how it is. If the LP doesn't pay their capital call they go into default and the returns on all the money they've invested so far can be taken away. The only LPs who default on the capital call are individual investors who are flat out broke. They will of course default on their capital call before their mortgage.
A lot of people became "VC"s during the bull run. They brought nothing to the table like YC did. Instead some previously reputable VCs like a16z became crypto grifters. So it's good the market clears a bunch of them so that the YCs and next generation of VCs who actually bring something new to the table come to the forefront.
What happened with a16z is truly amazing.