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The failure of Sprig

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Re: The failure of Sprig

#61

Post by hexenduction »

This whole account feels like this person isn't engaging with the actual problems at hand. I don't care if you grew 3x faster than udemy at one point, there is some other relevant factor. Uber is unsavory by their behavior, sure,, but calling uberEats unsavory just because they got in your space with a lot of money isn't really saying anything against them. Sprig had no risk of "becoming a Theranos", Theranos made wild healthcare claims they couldn't back up, this is just a business not doing so well with a competitor in their space. Mentioning dating life improving is irrelevant and a pretty weird detail to include...

And then "I failed and then went to travel the world." Did you fail, buddy? What a privileged and disengaged narrative.

Re: The failure of Sprig

#62

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Contrast something like Sprig with Tso Chinese Delivery in Austin:

1. Instead of getting millions in VC funding off the get go, they started small as essentially a family business.

2. Chinese delivery is already super familiar to most people, so they just took it a step further: just a kitchen, no sit-down restaurant, developed their tech to improve delivery efficiencies.

3. They kind of got "lucky", if you could call it that, with Covid, in that most traditional restaurants were killed but a takeout-only business thrived. They also got a ton of goodwill for giving away free meals during the shutdown in TX.

4. I saw news that they recently got VC funding to expand their business.

I.e. they started small, proved their model, then used capital to expand, instead of getting millions thrown at them with hope that they'd eventually improve on a "lose money on every sale but make it up in volume" business model.

Re: The failure of Sprig

#63

Post by folmar »

fasteddie wrote: post #2

I loved Sprig. I used to use them as my example of a favorite product when asked in interviewed. Problem: I am hungry right now and can't/don't want to cook. Solution: As the founder notes, once signed in, it was literally three taps to get food to my door really quick. Also the design was beautiful. Doordash, UberEats, et. al have certainly (glactically) widened the variety of food I could order, but I always find m…

How is it different than just settling on ordering from one restaurant nearby?

Re: The failure of Sprig

#64

Post by folmar »

dmitriid wrote: post #9

3 years of constantly losing money. Failed because of Uber which has significantly larger pockets and is constantly losing money. Why are all these called "a business"? These are all price dumping ventures relying on external coffers.

The whole bubble foam is called "gig economy", previously in business as "sharing economy".

Re: The failure of Sprig

#65

Post by throwaway21310 »

ziftface wrote: post #47
jeffbee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people of San Francisco are not "left" on local matters like planning and permitting. In fact they are absurdly conservative or reactionary. And they have plenty of reason to be: the people who own San Francisco property are riding a dynastic money machine. A surprising number of them can trace their family wealth back to literally Mexican land grants, or similar historical accidents. All of them enjoy a state ta…

It's unfortunate that people get a sense of moral superiority for having one political view or another. It reminds me of how certain religious people have a sense of moral superiority and it makes them incapable of introspection. Not to mention that labelling an entire city as "left leaning" is absurd.

People get a sense of moral superiority for having one political view or another _after choosing among alternative political views by comparing their relative morality_. What do you do? Treat it like being a sports fan? Flip a coin?

Labelling an entire city as "left-leaning" is a perfectly reasonable and quotidian practice. For instance, if over a period of time, City A generally voted for left-leaning politicians and passed left-leaning referenda, while City B generally voted for right-leaning politicians and passed right-leaning referenda, most people would think it was fair to characterize City A as "left-leaning" and City B as "right-leaning".

I'm guessing by the including of "entire" you are confused about the meaning of "leaning"? It means that on average, compared to some larger (e.g. national) mean, the population of a city has views that are to the left of that mean. It doesn't mean every single person has left views on every single issue.

It's a very widely shared perception that San Francisco was left-leaning for the latter half of the 20th century into the beginning of the current. Early San Francisco was dominated by a relatively conservative patrician elite but over time it earned its "Baghdad-By-The-Bay" (https://www.amazon.com/Baghdad-Bay-Herb-Caen/dp/0891740473) reputation from things like electing the first openly-gay man to political office in America (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk) to being the epicenter of the sociocultural phenomenon known as "The Summer of Love" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love).

Re: The failure of Sprig

#66

Post by stickfigure »

s1mon wrote: post #57

Sprig's food and delivery was pretty good at times, but the whole thing was so archetypical of venture backed insanity in SF and Silicon Valley. "We're going to throw a ton of money at X and disrupt it with our complete lack of industry knowledge and make a fraction back." It was essentially a decent restaurant with convenient delivery, and no eat-in option. There's no magical hockey-stick growth curve to be had in t…

I don't think that's a fair characterization. Sprig's business model was somewhat novel. It had limited menu items (like 5 choices), prepared in advance and deployed in a fully loaded truck. Nothing was made-to-order. The truck just drove around from business to business and dropped off three #4s, two #1s, etc. It only served peak meal times.

Honestly I'm not quite sure why the economics were unfavorable. It should have been cheaper and faster than any other kind of delivery food.

Re: The failure of Sprig

#67

Post by systemvoltage »

d_burfoot wrote: post #29
systemvoltage wrote: post #4

Why didn't they think "Oh geez, our idea isn't that revolutionary and anyone, including companies such as lyft or Uber with giant pockets can come in and swoop our lunch?" That should be the first day conversation. I am sure they had that, it would be stupid to not have, but the stupid part is about unsustainable growth whilst ignoring the competitive landscape with delusion. I know retrospectives are always easy to…

> I love companies like Boston Dynamics.... Any amount of money that Microsoft + Apple + Google all combined can throw billions and billions ... I hate to burst your bubble, but BD was OWNED by Google for years, until they sold it to SoftBank because they couldn't figure out how to make money on it.

Yes aware of that - and they were being pushed around. BD was not part of anything when it started for over 15 years.

Re: The failure of Sprig

#68

Post by Psyonic »

fasteddie wrote: post #2

I loved Sprig. I used to use them as my example of a favorite product when asked in interviewed. Problem: I am hungry right now and can't/don't want to cook. Solution: As the founder notes, once signed in, it was literally three taps to get food to my door really quick. Also the design was beautiful. Doordash, UberEats, et. al have certainly (glactically) widened the variety of food I could order, but I always find m…

I worked for a company that ordered Sprig everyday for lunch for a few months. It was pretty good at first, but at the time they only had something like 5-10 meals, and pretty much everyone grew tired of it within a couple months.

I realize that's a different use-case than occasionally wanting a relatively healthy meal, but wanted to add my experience.

Re: The failure of Sprig

#70

Post by pantalaimon »

stickfigure wrote: post #66
s1mon wrote: post #57

Sprig's food and delivery was pretty good at times, but the whole thing was so archetypical of venture backed insanity in SF and Silicon Valley. "We're going to throw a ton of money at X and disrupt it with our complete lack of industry knowledge and make a fraction back." It was essentially a decent restaurant with convenient delivery, and no eat-in option. There's no magical hockey-stick growth curve to be had in t…

I don't think that's a fair characterization. Sprig's business model was somewhat novel. It had limited menu items (like 5 choices), prepared in advance and deployed in a fully loaded truck. Nothing was made-to-order. The truck just drove around from business to business and dropped off three #4s, two #1s, etc. It only served peak meal times. Honestly I'm not quite sure why the economics were unfavorable. It should h…

That's not a new concept, that's just Meals on Wheels
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