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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

#31

Post by petra »

pdq wrote: post #27
loganfrederick wrote: post #16

What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although…

The problem when you have so much money to invest is that your customers need to actually invest it. It's much harder to invest $1-$5M at a time when you can just go back to the WeWork pool and drop $2B. It's like painting a wall mural using fine tipped brushes, rather than wide paint rollers or a paint gun. You get the job done so much faster, but your quality will suffer tremendously.

What about scaling a VC organization ? With hundreds of managers, A lot of institutional knowledge, helpful infrastructure for said company, and deep ties between companies ?

Come to think of it, it has many similarities to Google X. But that's extremely hard to build.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#32

Post by sschueller »

fantasticFerret wrote: post #18

I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with…

Are they at least using a php framework like symfony or is it all spagetti?

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#33

Post by KoftaBob »

loganfrederick wrote: post #16

What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although…

It sounds like moonshots were the original goal for them, then they realized how much slower and capital intensive atom based innovation is, compared to "bits" based innovation. They wanted to invest in the next SpaceX, then were tempted by the much faster "growing" entities like WeWork.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#35

Post by threeseed »

Judgmentality wrote: post #22
jore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?

Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots),…

Being pretty negative on those companies.

1) Uber strategically is looking pretty good. They are the market leader in most countries and their Uber Eats business is turning out to be quite lucrative.

2) Self driving cars is a long term project so of course Cruise isn't going to have anything released just yet.

3) Boston Dynamics just launched their latest robot and has already seen pretty good adoption amongst enterprise customers. There is a huge need just in the resources industry for technologies to assist with compliance. Let along going more mass-market like construction sites.

4) Light have pivoted to being an autonomous car sensor company. And as we know there is significant potential demand in this space.

5) Nuro actually has more potential than most of the self driving car companies around by aggressively focusing on a single use case i.e. consumer goods delivery.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#36

Post by jacquesm »

petra wrote: post #31
pdq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem when you have so much money to invest is that your customers need to actually invest it. It's much harder to invest $1-$5M at a time when you can just go back to the WeWork pool and drop $2B. It's like painting a wall mural using fine tipped brushes, rather than wide paint rollers or a paint gun. You get the job done so much faster, but your quality will suffer tremendously.

What about scaling a VC organization ? With hundreds of managers, A lot of institutional knowledge, helpful infrastructure for said company, and deep ties between companies ? Come to think of it, it has many similarities to Google X. But that's extremely hard to build.

You're describing Ycombinator.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#37

Post by threeseed »

huac wrote: post #24
jore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?

uber (see stock), cruise (tbf, everyone overvalued the AV space), slack (see stock), zume pizza (come on), brandless ( https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/report-softbank-backed-bra... ), compass ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backed-real-estate-bro... ) ... Which investments are doing well? Maybe Paytm?

Zume Pizza isn't just about making pizzas.

It's about being able to build autonomous restaurants. Combine that with autonomous deliveries and you have the potential for food to be delivered to people without any people involved.

Given we have an ageing population which may involve lots of people unable to leave the house this could be a trillion dollar market.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#38

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
petra wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about scaling a VC organization ? With hundreds of managers, A lot of institutional knowledge, helpful infrastructure for said company, and deep ties between companies ? Come to think of it, it has many similarities to Google X. But that's extremely hard to build.

You're describing Ycombinator.

[deleted]

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#39

Post by hogFeast »

jpollock wrote: post #19

If you're Saudi Arabia with a silly amount of money in cash, are you looking for 10-100x return out of this, or are you simply looking for a place to park liquid funds that won't lose as much as leaving it in German government bonds.

No. Without overcomplicating things, Saudi are the dumbest money out there. They have no idea at all. Even the ones that have worked at IBanks, have no real understanding of basic finance (and likely only got the job so the bank could try to bribe members of their family). To get an investment, you just need to bribe the right people...that is how they invest (I used to know two very junior royal family members, they were unquestionably two of the stupidest people I have ever met...they failed school, ended up a prestigious uni, paid people to do their work, and then ended up in banking...somehow).

I wouldn't try to analyse it. A smart Japanese guy took them for a ride, he took a cut, and then handed it to some software developers in Silicon Valley who saved some and then spent the rest. That is it. No value created. No investments. Just redistribution away from stupid people.

Btw, this happened in the 1970s too. When the oil price spiked, the Saudis didn't know what to do with their cash so they just deposited it in US banks. The US banks didn't know what to do either so they started lending to South America. They knew what to do: politicians either stole it or handed it out as bribes to their supporters. The result was Citibank and a few other banks going insolvent in the early 80s, and a massive debt crisis in LatAm from 1980-1993(ish).

...the Saudis also gave a bit to Britain, who had their own debt crisis (also because of cash handouts to political supporters) and devalued a good chunk of their money away.

They will lose money always.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#40

Post by fantasticFerret »

sschueller wrote: post #32
fantasticFerret wrote: post #18

I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with…

Are they at least using a php framework like symfony or is it all spagetti?

The interviewer never told me. I never asked.
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