Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 639 posts

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#501

Post by slt2021 »

eru wrote: post #493
slt2021 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable. Human augmented+automation will always be more superior/flexible/valuable and large corporations with a lot of capital will never be able to be as flexible and nimble for all customers and all their use cases, as a small player like myself can be

I want to agree with you, but: > it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable. That's sort-of a tautology. What used to be a high value job can become a lower value job with some automation, and then be automated completely later. Up to about a hundred years ago, many reasonably well-off people in the US and Europe used to have domestic servants. Those jobs coul…

When stakes are high you are not going to ask a robot. When you have serious health condition or legal problem - you will find youself the best doctor/lawyer and seek their counsel.

Google search or chatgpt wont gonna cut it.

Same with tech - if you create a startup with big ambitions - copilot and chatgpt wont gonna cut it for your product.

and I see no mechanism for union to provide any value to tech workers. Hell, there is no even a category of tech workers: thousands of different specializations. I would never wanna be in a union with grandpas coding in COBOL for example

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#503

Post by Dylan16807 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #383
pxx wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company can certainly be saved in a period of months. FedEx supposedly had less than a week of jet fuel opex remaining when the founder decided to try to win the missing money by gambling. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/fedex-s...

Oh, let's not pat Fred Smith on the back for his grit and determination here. FedEx was already shafting their pilots for months before this. Bounced paychecks, pilots paying for jet fuel on personal credit cards, and more. If I was a pilot there, I'd have said "Fuck you, Fred", even though he won. How sociopathic do you have to be to gamble company money (sorry, isn't that a felony?) while bouncing paychecks? And ye…

> FedEx was already shafting their pilots for months before this. Bounced paychecks, pilots paying for jet fuel on personal credit cards, and more.

This is bad.

> How sociopathic do you have to be to gamble company money (sorry, isn't that a felony?) while bouncing paychecks?

It sounds like he was about to bounce a lot more paychecks. Going all or nothing instead isn't something I would call sociopathic. What makes you call it that?

Normally "gambling company money" implies embezzlement, which is not what happened here.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#504

Post by s1artibartfast »

jessriedel wrote: post #497
s1artibartfast wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cant prosecute a dead entity for theft.

Courts can pierce the corporate veil for failure to pay employees.

Source?

normally piercing the corporate veil requires serious executive misconduct.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#505

Post by acyou »

legitster wrote: post #131

What would a buyer have even been purchasing in this scenario? A bunch of talented employees? Cool, they are all on the market anyway. A bunch of tiny commodity contracts? Why? A pile of code? Is it particularly hard to recreate? Valuations are having a big wake-up call across the industry. While a company can be more than the sum of its parts, VC-backed tech companies have really struggled in industries where unit-e…

Another example industry where you can see this well is manufacturing with Protolabs, Xometry sucking wind for the last several years. Surprising, you would have thought that large amounts of capital and economies of scale would beat out competition (they were planning on grinding incumbents into the dirt by now). Are we seeing a case where innovation is not restricted to automation and software?

Incumbents are also leveraging decades (or centuries) of investment in land, people, technologies to win in some cases.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#506

Post by acyou »

djmips wrote: post #250
JohnMakin wrote: post #238

Reading a lot of comments it's clear to me some of the people commenting have never been through a startup in its final phases. At least in my case, it was well obvious to everyone 1+ year before it happened because repeated attempts at funding kept failing, parties got smaller/disappeared, pay freezes, layoffs, snacks in the fridge started getting slimmer and slimmer pickings. The worst part though is when you're in…

> I did not appreciate in my scenario that the founder REJECTED a buy offer for what would have been a life changing amount of money for me, because he thought it was too low. Same scenario for me - so I left - and then shortly after they did sell. Argh.

How do you know for sure the first buy offer was real?

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#507

Post by thereisnospork »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #504
jessriedel wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts can pierce the corporate veil for failure to pay employees.

Source? normally piercing the corporate veil requires serious executive misconduct.

IANAL, but my understanding is in agreement with the GP - failing to pay wages is de facto 'serious executive misconduct'.

a probably relevant article: https://www.severino-law.com/blog/oqz4dx2ivdnzt7aqqrvbk9et11...

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#508

Post by noobermin »

HWR_14 wrote: post #496
revel wrote: post #412

There are some really profound misunderstandings of how bankruptcy and credit work in this thread. Creditors are ranked by seniority and get paid out in order by seniority. Equity is below every creditor and has been completely wiped out. Companies are not allowed to take cash or sell the furniture to pay out employees. That money is legally owed to creditors and attempting to stiff them is theft. I'm sorry to those…

While in general what you are saying is true, employees owed wages are the highest seniority of creditor. As long as you were selling furniture for reasonable prices to make payroll, you should be fine.

Is the complaint that they are not paying remaining wages or that they are not paying severance?

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#509

Post by fargle »

Larrikin wrote: post #308
busterarm wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he already put up and risked his personal money to even start this venture and it failed and you're saying he should continue to lose money on a failed investment even though these people will receive unemployment insurance that his business already paid tax into to fund? Startups are risky and even though you work at one, I don't think they're for you. There's plenty of other union labor jobs with pensions out th…

Why is it a requirement to have "skin in the game"? What does that even mean? The risk to an employee at a company that got $250 million should only be accepting options that could be worthless in lieu of a portion of salary. There absolutely does not need to be any risk of losing healthcare, lacking severance, or any other loss of benefits. Founders want you to believe this but it doesn't have to be true.

what that "skin in the game" means is that you are participating and take on some of the risk.

"why it is a requirement" has nothing to do with the law, the whims of "the founders", etc.

why it is a requirement is an economic truth - if there are enough players that believe that a gamble on working for an early stage startup is worth taking on some substantial, but perhaps not ruinous, risk, then that sets the bar.

> Founders want you to believe this but it doesn't have to be true.

Whether that is true, or "has to be true" depends only on the market. It certainly seems that it was true very true and probably still is. But neither you, the law, nor the founders have any control over whether it is worth it at the moment in your situation.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#510

Post by friendzis »

noobermin wrote: post #508
HWR_14 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in general what you are saying is true, employees owed wages are the highest seniority of creditor. As long as you were selling furniture for reasonable prices to make payroll, you should be fine.

Is the complaint that they are not paying remaining wages or that they are not paying severance?

Severance IS wage
Post reply on HN