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Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

ir.allbirds.com

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Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#71

Post by evan_ »

evanelias wrote: post #67
evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding? Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games. Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's…

The one that springs to mind is Tiny Speck launching an MMORPG, failing, and then polishing up the in-game chat tool and releasing it as Slack.

Oh, there was a certain pair of Ohio bike shop owners who pivoted to powered flight some time back.

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#72

Post by cyanydeez »

giwook wrote: post #57
stathibus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can somehow get your hands on a dozen NVL72 racks and duct tape them together in such a way to rent them out as a service, you can make your money back in less than 2 years at current demand pricing. $50M is more than enough to get this going.

I'm not sure how many companies would trust a failed shoe company to be responsible for their compute.

Expect grift in the grift economu.

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#73

Post by rogerkirkness »

evan_ wrote: post #71
evanelias wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding? Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games. Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's…

The one that springs to mind is Tiny Speck launching an MMORPG, failing, and then polishing up the in-game chat tool and releasing it as Slack. Oh, there was a certain pair of Ohio bike shop owners who pivoted to powered flight some time back.

Shopify is a pivot from selling snowboards online in Canada

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#74

Post by evanelias »

rogerkirkness wrote: post #73
evan_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that springs to mind is Tiny Speck launching an MMORPG, failing, and then polishing up the in-game chat tool and releasing it as Slack. Oh, there was a certain pair of Ohio bike shop owners who pivoted to powered flight some time back.

Shopify is a pivot from selling snowboards online in Canada

Yeah these are definitely some good examples of startups doing major abrupt pivots after a few years. But I was hoping to figure out if there were any successful examples of established, well-known brands doing it. (For comparison to the original topic, Allbirds was founded 11 years ago and is post-IPO.)

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#75

Post by JBlue42 »

evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

Nokia?

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#76

Post by Wojtkie »

evanelias wrote: post #67
evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding? Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games. Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's…

Yeah, doesn't this reek of the Dotcom era where non-digital companies would just slap (.com) at the end of their name for the stock boost?

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#77

Post by yencabulator »

evanelias wrote: post #67
evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding? Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games. Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's…

Nokia was a pulp mill, a rubber boot manufacturer, and a tire maker. But it's also old enough (1865!) to have changed with industrialization itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nokia

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#78

Post by kccqzy »

evanelias wrote: post #67
evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding? Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games. Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's…

Samsung started as a trading company for dried fish, noodles and groceries. Now it does many things as a conglomerate but it’s mostly known as an electronics company.

Toyota started as a company to produce looms. It’s now mostly known as an automotive company.

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#79

Post by derbOac »

evan_ wrote: post #44

This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company

Nintendo moving from playing cards (although they still make them) to computer gaming makes much more sense to me than this.

Re: Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

#80

Post by georgemcbay »

suzzer99 wrote: post #23

This reminds me of when a coworker left to go help develop Technicolor's (yes, that Technicolor) new social media platform.

> This reminds me of when a coworker left to go help develop Technicolor's (yes, that Technicolor) new social media platform.

Random semi-related memory unlocked:

I briefly worked at Technicolor along with most of the people who were at Chumby Industries when it imploded.

As part of the wind-down of Chumby a deal was struck for Technicolor to take on most of the employees to help build MediaNavi, a Netflix-competitor streaming service. We Chumby hires were mostly focused on working on client-side technology to build the streaming service into early "Smart TVs".

It was a complete disaster and I only lasted there about 3 months. Almost everyone I know that made the transition had left within 6-8 months.

I'm pretty sure this is a few years before Technicolor tried the social media thing.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/20/2963003/chumby-broken-up-...

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