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Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

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Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#31

Post by eurasiantiger »

hef19898 wrote: post #29
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #26

Klarna and affirm are the next gen of bullshit companies. Like Uber and WeWork before it. Absolutely massive scams fed with easy money and dumping on the next fool.

Which is said for Klarna, because there seems to be an actual market for what they do. Using cheap VC money ruined a perfectly fine market opportunity, and a chance to build a sustainable business. Well, I think we will see a lot more of those in the next months.

Klarna is notorious for privacy violations. For a good while it was possible to pretty much doxx any of their users just by entering some of their details in any Klarna-enabled online store. If my memory serves, they may even have had a ”which of these similarly named persons are you” dropdown at some point…

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#32

Post by im3w1l »

missedthecue wrote: post #21
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #3

> But if completed, it would represent a huge discount on the company’s valuation when investors led by an arm of SoftBank Group Corp. Why is it that SoftBank somehow always manages to buy the top?

I've thought about this too and I think it's because their strategy is structurally flawed. Their focus is on new/newish tech companies, but they don't make $3 million investments. They want to make $3 billion investments. But when you're buying stakes that size in companies that aren't yet mature, you're almost necessarily going to be chronically overpaying. There just aren't many 4 year old companies that actually…

If you have that kind of money and you want to invest in newish tech, then you have to accept the fact that your investments will move the market and make that work in your favor. Retail can buy a share here and there but you cannot. So how to make it work in your favor? Ask yourself "who can make productive use of this much money? who needs this much money to even be viable?" And it will be really capital intensive moon-shot type stuff. Self driving cars for instance, but that might already be overcrowded now. AGI in general too, that's kind of a more uncertain bet. Europe needs a shitton of energy investment now, both for geopolitical reasons but also to charge all the electric cars they will start buying soon. Building those nukes or solar+batteries can easily absorb hundreds of billions of dollars. Then there is medicine and biotech but that might take a lot of savvy to capture the value you create by spending on r&d. But like nanobots and brain coprocessors and immortality and stuff that is something we will eventually build and it's not that out of reach. Might wanna figure out some intermediary profitable goals. In summary take a long hard look at what Musk is doing. Except maybe his twitter persona.

Edit: Might wanna take a look at Gosplan too. After all a sufficiently rich investor is indistinguishable from a plan economy planning committee.

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#33

Post by hef19898 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #31
hef19898 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is said for Klarna, because there seems to be an actual market for what they do. Using cheap VC money ruined a perfectly fine market opportunity, and a chance to build a sustainable business. Well, I think we will see a lot more of those in the next months.

Klarna is notorious for privacy violations. For a good while it was possible to pretty much doxx any of their users just by entering some of their details in any Klarna-enabled online store. If my memory serves, they may even have had a ”which of these similarly named persons are you” dropdown at some point…

Oh dear... Never really bought through them, just saw them all over the internet as a payment option...

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#34

Post by al_mandi »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #26

Klarna and affirm are the next gen of bullshit companies. Like Uber and WeWork before it. Absolutely massive scams fed with easy money and dumping on the next fool.

Uber provides a real service. Think about what you used to do before Uber and how difficult and annoying things were.

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#36

Post by colesantiago »

al_mandi wrote: post #34
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #26

Klarna and affirm are the next gen of bullshit companies. Like Uber and WeWork before it. Absolutely massive scams fed with easy money and dumping on the next fool.

Uber provides a real service. Think about what you used to do before Uber and how difficult and annoying things were.

I get around London in a regular taxi just fine?

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#37

Post by rapsey »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #26

Klarna and affirm are the next gen of bullshit companies. Like Uber and WeWork before it. Absolutely massive scams fed with easy money and dumping on the next fool.

Uber has no business being in this group. They provide real value to customers and drivers. Taxis have provided absolute shit service in many places and Uber absolutely came in with a superior product and business.

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#38

Post by ses1984 »

colesantiago wrote: post #36
al_mandi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber provides a real service. Think about what you used to do before Uber and how difficult and annoying things were.

I get around London in a regular taxi just fine?

If only taxis in the rest of the world were as good as London's, Uber probably wouldn't exist.

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#39

Post by bagacrap »

rapsey wrote: post #37
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #26

Klarna and affirm are the next gen of bullshit companies. Like Uber and WeWork before it. Absolutely massive scams fed with easy money and dumping on the next fool.

Uber has no business being in this group. They provide real value to customers and drivers. Taxis have provided absolute shit service in many places and Uber absolutely came in with a superior product and business.

at this point the average Uber driver is no better than the average taxi driver, and the last time I compared the price of an Uber ride to the price of a taxi the taxi was 10% cheaper.

Uber got where it did by losing vc money and by ignoring laws. That fits my personal definition of bullshit company.

Re: Klarna to raise fresh cash at slashed $6.5B valuation

#40

Post by nikanj »

bagacrap wrote: post #39
rapsey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has no business being in this group. They provide real value to customers and drivers. Taxis have provided absolute shit service in many places and Uber absolutely came in with a superior product and business.

at this point the average Uber driver is no better than the average taxi driver, and the last time I compared the price of an Uber ride to the price of a taxi the taxi was 10% cheaper. Uber got where it did by losing vc money and by ignoring laws. That fits my personal definition of bullshit company.

Your Uber driver will never mysteriously "forget to turn on the meter", have a "broken credit card machine", or any of the other scams taxi drivers pulled on me constantly.
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