Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, I did some research on SpoonRocket. First, I caught the article author deliberately misrepresenting the Series A: "it’s just raised $10 million in venture capital expressly so it can keep its prices low". The linked article said nothing of the sort. It said Series A, yes, but not that it was to subsidize pricing. Second, that Series A just happened on April 9 - this week. They haven't had time to ev…
Once they've built the app, almost every one of their costs aside from executive salaries (!) is a recurring per-unit cost -- paying the drivers, buying the food, the gas, etc. Still sounds more like 100k bank-loan material than 10M VC material to me. The only way that 10M makes sense is if they're running a per-unit loss. Doesn't cost 10M to build that app.
Re: The problem with profitless startups
#51They were a Y Combinator company. They're drinking the kool-aid, for sure. But seriously, this sounds much more like a VC play than a bank play to me. There are real cost/performance advantages to their model. This could scale to a billion dollar company. That's the sort of thing that attracts VC, which is much easier and more flexible than a bank loan - IF you're talking about real scale potential.