301–310 of 310 posts
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I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I think there is a more cynical take that Uber exemplifies. The VCs do everything they can to drive up the valuation, except make money. They then sell their shares to the public markets for an incredible profit and let them deal with the problem of actually making money. I fear venture capital (and Silicon Valley) is much more about value extraction than value creation t…
Facebook was already profitable pre-IPO and was forced to go public because of some security law involving the number of investors. But the number of tech startups that go public is small. Only one YC backed company has ever gone public - Dropbox. And it seems to be proving Steve Jobs right. It was never a product, it was a feature. It still doesn’t have a clear road to sustainable profitability. Even out of the few…
I think the real irony is that AirBnB is their biggest darling, and it's not a tech company. The history of that company is very interesting, going back to Paul Graham making a note of them being the first founders without a technical background to get into YC (the third cofounder who is technical was added to the roster later on, or at least given the title).
That said, I have high hopes for Stripe, Ginkgo Bioworks, Gusto, Docker, Gitlab, and some of their other companies (not that they'll necessarily go public, but that they'll become real companies - I'd argue this describes twitch).
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Facebook was already profitable pre-IPO and was forced to go public because of some security law involving the number of investors. But the number of tech startups that go public is small. Only one YC backed company has ever gone public - Dropbox. And it seems to be proving Steve Jobs right. It was never a product, it was a feature. It still doesn’t have a clear road to sustainable profitability. Even out of the few…
> But the number of tech startups that go public is small. Only one YC backed company has ever gone public - Dropbox. I think the real irony is that AirBnB is their biggest darling, and it's not a tech company. The history of that company is very interesting, going back to Paul Graham making a note of them being the first founders without a technical background to get into YC (the third cofounder who is technical was…
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> But the number of tech startups that go public is small. Only one YC backed company has ever gone public - Dropbox. I think the real irony is that AirBnB is their biggest darling, and it's not a tech company. The history of that company is very interesting, going back to Paul Graham making a note of them being the first founders without a technical background to get into YC (the third cofounder who is technical was…
How will Docker and Gitlab become self sustaining when other companies like ElasticCo, Mongo, etc couldn’t?
Maybe I'm being too optimistic with Gitlab. I know next to nothing about their business, other than hearing good things from people who have used it.
That said, I doubt I would've seriously considered investing in any of them except for Stripe until the previously listed companies had shown significant traction. I'm actually somewhat pessimistic about AirBnB's valuation 5-10 years from now compared to today.
But then, I thought for sure the iPhone was going to flop. So what do I know?
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How will Docker and Gitlab become self sustaining when other companies like ElasticCo, Mongo, etc couldn’t?
I think Docker is ubiquitous enough that there is a real market for it. It even plays well with Kubernetes. I don't know enough about their pricing model and churn to comment on their viability with much certainty. Maybe I'm being too optimistic with Gitlab. I know next to nothing about their business, other than hearing good things from people who have used it. That said, I doubt I would've seriously considered inve…
Docker is just as much in danger of being clobbered by the cloud providers as ElasticCo, Mongo and all of the other open source companies. AWS is making money off of us running Docker. Docker itself is not making any money from us.
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Your intuition is probably spot on. Dominos stock has been doing terribly and pizza delivery will likely cease to exist because it is a constant money loser.
This is...not correct at all. Dominoes stock has been on an absolute tear the past decade. I don't know what charts you're looking at...
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Marketing runs the world now, because we've reached a point where companies really, really have to convince people to spend their money on whatever useless product is being pushed. Ever notice there isn't marketing for potatoes, bread, rice, etc. ? People buy those things anyway. The latest smartphone? gotta convince everyone to buy it. At my last company engineering spent $10m installing fiber into some remote commu…
15 million? How can local ads for a fiber network be so expensive? Just pay a bunch of kids to hand out flyers. Fiber is usually something people want. If your numbers are correct it sounds like some kickback scam.
Gotta pay all those salaries somehow.
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You literally cannot profitably transport people at the prices they're offering. Uber is just one big bet that the price point of transportation will fall significantly with the advent of self driving and they'll be there to make the money off that margin.
Why would they care about self-driving if most of their drivers are making little more than the cost of operating their vehicle?
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Marketing is all they are. The driver aren't employees. The cars in the fleet aren't their assets. The insurance is handled by someone else and there is no licensing. Uber, itself, is just an app with a giant marketing department. The app itself isn't even that different than it was in 2011. 99% of the functionality that people actually use is exactly the same as it was when they started.
Doesn’t Uber also lease cars to drivers? I was surprised to see in the Bay Area that so many drivers had fairly new cars. I asked one about it and he said that Uber leased it out. Presumably a portion of the driver’s income goes directly towards the car.
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Marketing is all they are. The driver aren't employees. The cars in the fleet aren't their assets. The insurance is handled by someone else and there is no licensing. Uber, itself, is just an app with a giant marketing department. The app itself isn't even that different than it was in 2011. 99% of the functionality that people actually use is exactly the same as it was when they started.
The "just an app" critique is often repeated and makes no sense. The app is just the interface.