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Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

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Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#81

Post by thecleaner »

loganfrederick wrote: post #16

What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although…

A large part of this vision fund is basically Saudi oil money. These folks realize that oil doesn't have that much future if you think in terms of hundreds of years, so they are looking to diversify. Vision fund is not a tool to be on the cutting edge, its just a means to not be left behind. Hence they let VC market decide which horse is worth backing and then they swing their dollars around to see what happens.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#82

Post by parliament32 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #67
switch007 wrote: post #28

How would have JavaScript made them better off?

The point wasn't that javascript would be better, it was that the person couldn't answer why they chose an older tech stack instead of one of the newer ones.

There are a lot of reasons why choosing a mature tech stack is a better idea than the stack-du-jour. Better support, less bugs, and you know you won't be rewriting to the next stack when this one gets abandoned in a year.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#84

Post by sib »

Judgmentality wrote: post #22
jore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?

Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots),…

"Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful, and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry."

While that's true overall, I don't think those expectations are the same for the kind of very-late-stage, pour rocket fuel on the fire investments that the Vision Fund is making.

For seed-stage investing, definitely.

The problem for late-stage investors is that it's really hard to get the same "grand slam" economics on your winners that early-stage investors can, so it's harder to make up for a bunch of washouts.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#87

Post by kamyarg »

hogFeast wrote: post #17
lawrenceyan wrote: post #7

You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later. That’s a big achievement in my book. How many people can really say they’ve been able to do something like that? [Edit] I should probably add a caveat that Masayoshi Son isn’t the dumb one here. No, he’s actually quite the genius, managing to convince Saudia Arabia to basically…

Masa Son in 1999: loses $70bn in net worth in half year. Masa Son in 2019: hold my beer, watch dis.

TIL Masayoshi Son has the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#88

Post by draw_down »

drstewart wrote: post #69
velox_io wrote: post #57

Reading the title has affirmed to me that we are living in a bubble (and it doesn't look good). I just can't get it through my head how an investment of that size will EVER pay off. A major reason people buy dogs is because they want to get out and walk more. If they can't they outsource it to a teenager you or your friends know, there's no need for a middleman in most cases. (If it was baby-sitting I could understan…

People have been "sure" there's a bubble for a decade now. I mean take this HN article, posted Apr 19, 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744 How much are you investing on your suredness that there's a bubble? Because if you did it in 2012, you'd be down about 70% right now.

Either it's different this time or it's coming eventually. Those are your choices.

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#89

Post by wolco »

fantasticFerret wrote: post #18

I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with…

A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them?

Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the company is a startup. Offer them a github link with the code if you want to standout.

Why apply without knowing the stack?

Re: Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

#90

Post by viach »

loganfrederick wrote: post #16

What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although…

> disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research

It is hard to show "traction" and "exponential growth" with this kind of things.

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