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I eat soylent, so I guess they aren't living in VC bucks
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Sep 8, 2015 09:20
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coma posted:What about Sarah Lacy and all the techjourno contrarians who say expanded VC funding rounds are basically a private version of what IPOs were to the dotcom boom and a more opaque bubble is still being inflated even without any of the unicorns going IPO? lacy isn't wrong, but she's not exactly right. there's not really a lot of structural risk if private money keeps pouring into startups. the people left holding the bag there are non-executive employees enticed into the job with a lot of stock options that are now diluted into junk (and worth nothing at all when the company gets parceled out to goog/fb/ms/hp/whoever) even assuming the worst happens and a bunch of unicorns get pets dot commed, the worst case is that a bunch of rich people lose a lot of money. it's not like grandma's retirement fund is going to go tits-up. hell, the bay area may even see a housing collapse so people could afford to live there again
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Sep 8, 2015 12:34
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coma posted:What about Sarah Lacy and all the techjourno contrarians who say expanded VC funding rounds are basically a private version of what IPOs were to the dotcom boom and a more opaque bubble is still being inflated even without any of the unicorns going IPO? Then at worst a bunch of rich people lose a lot of money (but not enough to do a Bailout over).
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Sep 8, 2015 12:37
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nerdz posted:What happens to uber if they ever stop using VC to prop up they quality of service. Or worse, what happens when uber becomes a monopoly? They've been doing lots of shady underhanded stuff to lyft and whoever is a local competition. Uber, even with creative accounting, lost $470 million last year...
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Sep 8, 2015 12:51
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Condiv posted:http://valleywag.gawker.com/real-startup-that-mails-you-quarters-for-laundry-isnt-s-1593540845 The best thing about soylent is the creator's disdain for the notion that training in medicine or nutrition might be relevant in replacing all nutrition intake with a Carnation Instant Breakfast knockoff.
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Sep 8, 2015 13:41
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Pope Guilty posted:The best thing about soylent is the creator's disdain for the notion that training in medicine or nutrition might be relevant in replacing all nutrition intake with a Carnation Instant Breakfast knockoff. I also don't understand how or why Soylent exists when there are tons of meal replacement shakes and mixes out there on the market already; the niche must just be a MRP named after a cult-classic sci-fi movie. Huzanko fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 13:45
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Noam Chomsky posted:I also don't understand how or why Soylent exists when there are tons of meal replacement shakes and mixes out there on the market already; the niche must just be a MRP named after a cult-classic sci-fi movie. targeted to people who weren't or didn't know they were a target market of meal replacement shakes until this guy got a fuckin Wired article about himself over it.
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Sep 8, 2015 14:12
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uncurable mlady posted:lacy isn't wrong, but she's not exactly right. there's not really a lot of structural risk if private money keeps pouring into startups. the people left holding the bag there are non-executive employees enticed into the job with a lot of stock options that are now diluted into junk (and worth nothing at all when the company gets parceled out to goog/fb/ms/hp/whoever) That's what I've heard too but weren't people saying that about the housing crash last time? I thought a lot of hopes of recovery were pinned on real estate
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Sep 8, 2015 14:54
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coma posted:That's what I've heard too but weren't people saying that about the housing crash last time? I thought a lot of hopes of recovery were pinned on real estate It'd be comparable if you had to be an accredited investor to purchase a house.
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Sep 8, 2015 14:58
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Pope Guilty posted:The best thing about soylent is the creator's disdain for the notion that training in medicine or nutrition might be relevant in replacing all nutrition intake with a Carnation Instant Breakfast knockoff. Ensure is for old people. Not Silicon Valley rockstar programmers. As for tech bubble this article does a good job laying out the fact patterns that are worrying people . Here's what continues to concern me: quote:The problem with being a unicorn, indeed, is that there aren’t many exit strategies. Either you can go public, which is inadvisable without a lot of revenue, or you can sell, which is difficult given the paucity of companies that can afford to make such an offer. So, for many, the choice becomes fairly simple. You continue to raise more and more money, or you die. At some point the venture capital folks will demand a return. Where will the return come from? Then again uber did just raise $3b in China so perhaps the answer is "somewhere else" and the US won't be the ones suffering when things go bad.
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Sep 8, 2015 15:57
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Shifty Pony posted:Ensure is for old people. Not Silicon Valley rockstar programmers. Finally this whole neocolonialist capitalist empire thing pays off! Suck it, mercantilism. 
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Sep 8, 2015 16:06
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computer parts posted:Nope. Yup.
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Sep 8, 2015 16:19
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Radbot posted:Yup. Yeah man, one day some unicorn startup is gonna rake in millions setting up fly by night contracts with McDonald's and Walmart via smartphone apps, it's gonna be great!
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Sep 8, 2015 16:33
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triple sulk posted:Yeah man, one day some unicorn startup is gonna rake in millions setting up fly by night contracts with McDonald's and Walmart via smartphone apps, it's gonna be great! I know, the very idea of companies making everybody 1099s to save money is crazy, crazy I tell you Radbot fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 16:47
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Radbot posted:I know, the very idea of companies making everybody 1099s to save money is crazy, crazy I tell you Fedex got beaten on misclassifying employees as 1099 not too long ago, why do you think Uber/Postmates/whatever is going to be able to avoid the same thing?
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Sep 8, 2015 17:42
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uninterrupted posted:Fedex got beaten on misclassifying employees as 1099 not too long ago, why do you think Uber/Postmates/whatever is going to be able to avoid the same thing? They're already getting shut down in courts left & right.
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Sep 8, 2015 17:54
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uncurable mlady posted:the people left holding the bag there are non-executive employees enticed into the job with a lot of stock options that are now diluted into junk (and worth nothing at all when the company gets parceled out to goog/fb/ms/hp/whoever) Shifty Pony posted:At some point the venture capital folks will demand a return. Where will the return come from? Then again uber did just raise $3b in China so perhaps the answer is "somewhere else" and the US won't be the ones suffering when things go bad.
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Sep 8, 2015 17:56
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Cicero posted:Even during good times most startups don't go anywhere so this isn't that different from the norm. normally they don't reach $1b valuations and remain at the "startup" stage
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Sep 8, 2015 20:05
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Radbot posted:I know, the very idea of companies making everybody 1099s to save money is crazy, crazy I tell you The only reason they don't do it already is because it's incredibly illegal. Uber's business model, at this point, is pouring a third of all that VC cash into the best team of lawyers money can buy to delay and slow down and appeal the court cases as much as possible, pouring another third of that VC cash into marketing blitzes and telling reporters and customers to lobby their politicians, and pouring the remaining third into hiring high-profile lobbyists by the dozen and directly lobbying lawmakers of every level all over the country. It's an all-or-nothing gamble - can they buy out enough on Congress to essentially disembowel modern labor law before their lawyers run out of room to delay the judges with? Even if they lose the gamble and are essentially shut down (investors will dump the "contractor economy" companies like a hot potato if a high enough court rejects it), by that time Kalanick will have gotten his hands on something he can sell to make himself a personal profit out of the company's ashes (for example, a self-driving car patent from all that research Uber is funding). That's the same reason Uber does things like continue to operate in cities that have banned it, by the way. Unlike their competitors with vastly lower amounts of free VC money coming in, they can afford to bleed money and operate at a loss in that area by paying all the fines while they lobby the city furiously, and if they manage to persuade the politicians to let them in, then they're already fully established in the local market on the day the law they helped write was passed, and they're already operating in a way that takes full advantage of that law - giving them a massive head-start on abusing those regulations and breaking into the market..
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Sep 8, 2015 22:55
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They're also furiously working on self-driving cars: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-poached-a-load-of-staff-from-carnegie-mellon-to-help-it-make-self-driving-cars-2015-5
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Sep 8, 2015 22:58
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Cicero posted:They're also furiously working on self-driving cars: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-poached-a-load-of-staff-from-carnegie-mellon-to-help-it-make-self-driving-cars-2015-5 This is 100% investor story time.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:10
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What?
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Sep 8, 2015 23:10
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Cicero posted:What? Horseshit that you tell investors who don't know better and want to be fooled into believing that you're going to get bought out by Yahoo for a billion dollars so they'll give you money.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:19
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yeah i really don't see how uber, a company which relies on exploiting the labor and capital of the desperate, is suddenly going to assume responsibility for a fleet of drone cars. like if uber had actual employees who drove around in cars owned by uber it would make more sense because then you're just swapping out part of your infrastructure. but uber likes to style itself as a tech firm and not a transportation company. they don't have garages, car-cleaners, refuelers - how is this fleet of cars going to be maintained, if you can't rely on your 1099 driver to assume all the responsibility for these things? so assuming they're not actually going to use the cars, they're just trying to develop the cars, and they're already behind the curve - both google and apple have prototypes, and they're actual companies that actually make money. the most logical assumption here is that uber's throwing some hail marys to keep VC interested boner confessor fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Sep 8, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 23:30
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Popular Thug Drink posted:so assuming they're not actually going to use the cars, they're just trying to develop the cars, and they're already behind the curve - both google and apple have prototypes, and they're actual companies that actually make money. the most logical assumption here is that uber's throwing some hail marys to keep VC interested Or it just a case of the founder directing company money towards something they think is cool (like Facebook buying Oculus Rift).
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Sep 8, 2015 23:41
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Shifty Pony posted:Or it just a case of the founder directing company money towards something they think is cool (like Facebook buying Oculus Rift). which is perfectly ok so long as you're spending revenue
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Sep 8, 2015 23:46
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Popular Thug Drink posted:yeah i really don't see how uber, a company which relies on exploiting the labor and capital of the desperate, is suddenly going to assume responsibility for a fleet of drone cars. like if uber had actual employees who drove around in cars owned by uber it would make more sense because then you're just swapping out part of your infrastructure. but uber likes to style itself as a tech firm and not a transportation company. they don't have garages, car-cleaners, refuelers - how is this fleet of cars going to be maintained, if you can't rely on your 1099 driver to assume all the responsibility for these things?
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Sep 8, 2015 23:50
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Cicero posted:They're also furiously working on self-driving cars: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-poached-a-load-of-staff-from-carnegie-mellon-to-help-it-make-self-driving-cars-2015-5 Yeah, it's right there in that post you were responding to? Main Paineframe posted:Even if they lose the gamble and are essentially shut down (investors will dump the "contractor economy" companies like a hot potato if a high enough court rejects it), by that time Kalanick will have gotten his hands on something he can sell to make himself a personal profit out of the company's ashes (for example, a self-driving car patent from all that research Uber is funding). ===== Popular Thug Drink posted:yeah i really don't see how uber, a company which relies on exploiting the labor and capital of the desperate, is suddenly going to assume responsibility for a fleet of drone cars. like if uber had actual employees who drove around in cars owned by uber it would make more sense because then you're just swapping out part of your infrastructure. but uber likes to style itself as a tech firm and not a transportation company. they don't have garages, car-cleaners, refuelers - how is this fleet of cars going to be maintained, if you can't rely on your 1099 driver to assume all the responsibility for these things? The Uber business model relies on people willingly driving their own cars for Uber in exchange for money. Unlike many other "app economy" companies, the key element there is not the drivers themselves, it's the fact that they're using their own cars. Uber's niche in self-driving cars is not in making its own cars or operating its own fleet - it's in having enough of a foot in the industry (and enough leverage with the self-driving car makers) that some significant part of the self-driving car market comes with a preinstalled Uber app that the car's owner can use to send the car off to drive for Uber for a period of time in exchange for a cut of the fares. The core Uber business model of "provide taxi service using other people's cars" works just as well with self-driving cars, and also neatly sidesteps that whole "being dependent on violating labor law" problem with the current business model by excluding drivers from the picture completely. Of course, that assumes Uber lasts long enough for self-driving cars to be a significant part of the car market, which is unlikely - there's no way it can hold off the judges that long. It's far more likely that the self-driving car is simply an escape plan - all they need is to get one critical breakthrough in self-driving cars and then patent it, and they have something valuable that they can dangle under the nose of Google and other self-driving car players to be worth buying out even after the courts shut down Uber's operations.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:53
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Cicero posted:A company starting out doing one thing and then expanding to do more vertical integration is hardly unheard of. sure, but usually you're more successful if you wait for stage 1 to actually turn a profit before you launch headlong into stage 2 i mean best case scenario they somehow develop a self driving car that's better and cheaper than google's already close to completed self driving car and sell it to, who? are they going to start building the things themselves, too? there's no telling how far this train will go so long as they're spending other people's money! Main Paineframe posted:The core Uber business model of "provide taxi service using other people's cars" works just as well with self-driving cars, and also neatly sidesteps that whole "being dependent on violating labor law" problem with the current business model by excluding drivers from the picture completely. the problem is that uber doesn't have any way of cleaning, repairing, or refuling these self-driving cars once you cut the driver out of the equation who does all those things for you (on their own dime). so uber doesn't just have to develop a self-driving car and get them manufactured, they also have to build or contract out repair facilities, fuel stations, car washes, etc. which isn't by any means a difficult problem to solve, but it does add more expense to uber's already creaky business model. just saying 'self driving car' isn't going to fix any problems, especially as once self driving cars are readily available on the market the entire taxi industry is going to take a hit now i'm imagining an uber drone pulling up to a gas station and waiting for the nearest person with an uber account to come gas the thing up in exchange for a free ride coupon and getting a little melancholy thinking of it sitting there, like a puppy in the rain boner confessor fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Sep 9, 2015 |
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Sep 8, 2015 23:54
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Main Paineframe was saying that normal people will buy the self-driving cars but have the option to turn on let uber use it when they aren't actively in need of it. So you will get home for the evening, turn on "uber mode" and the car will go off and do uber poo poo picking up drunks for a few hours while you sleep. Next day you wake up to find your car in your driveway, interior covered in vomit and the gas tank two miles from empty. A week later you get $15 in your bank account for the people your car drove around.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:24
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self-driving cars aren't going to be a thing for maybe 10 years in such a way that they'd be useful at all for uber and imo that's being generous uber is 1000% hosed (along with most unicorns) because the courts are actively hostile to their bullshit and they have no long-term business strategy. possible outcomes for uber - 1. investors start getting antsy as uber loses court cases and self-driving cars don't pan out like storytime said they would, demand cost controls. uber manages this for a time as they do now: deliberately loving drivers in creative ways to avoid paying out. over time this becomes less tenable and they have to start doing direct cuts to payouts. eventually even the most thick-headed "driver-partner" looks up 'depreciation' in the dictionary and loving bails. 2. investors start getting antsy, uber panics and IPO's. the stock crashes within a year and a half due to lack of institutional buy-in and bad press. board restructures company, licenses/sells off core tech assets, brand is burned. 3. the courts stop loving around and uber is required to treat "driver-partners" like "employees". uber failure cascades due to intense cuts in workforce -> lack of cars available -> unhappy customers. 4. ??? who knows, the future is a magical unwritten book
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Sep 9, 2015 00:40
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Popular Thug Drink posted:now i'm imagining an uber drone pulling up to a gas station and waiting for the nearest person with an uber account to come gas the thing up in exchange for a free ride coupon and getting a little melancholy thinking of it sitting there, like a puppy in the rain And it sits there taking up a valuable gas pump that could be used by actual human drivers, thus encouraging them to use uber since they can't fuel their cars up any more what with all gas stations now filled with drones waiting for a fill up. It's PERFECT. Either that or it only goes with a passenger and forces them to pay to fill it up and get reimbursed in company scrip. Even better.
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Sep 9, 2015 01:28
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uncurable mlady posted:self-driving cars aren't going to be a thing for maybe 10 years in such a way that they'd be useful at all for uber and imo that's being generous My predicted outcome for Uber is that they manage to make some vaguely important breakthrough in some aspect of technology useful for self-driving cars and patent it immediately, they refuse to license the patent to anyone, the courts rule against Uber, and Uber shuts down their business pretty quickly and convinces Google or someone to buy what remains of the company in order to get their patents and all their user data.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:20
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Which courts have "shut down" the Uber 1099-dependent business model? I know there was some non-binding decision in CA awhile back.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:30
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Shifty Pony posted:Main Paineframe was saying that normal people will buy the self-driving cars but have the option to turn on let uber use it when they aren't actively in need of it. this is going to be THE way to have sex when you're a teenager in 2030
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Sep 9, 2015 02:51
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uncurable mlady posted:self-driving cars aren't going to be a thing for maybe 10 years in such a way that they'd be useful at all for uber and imo that's being generous Longer, even. The control theory simply isn't there at the moment. Google's car is barely functional.
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Sep 9, 2015 03:26
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Of the three people I know who work/did work at google X, two of them said that a self driving car capable of operating in real life conditions is still decades away at least. They don't even have a clue how driving in snow is going to work. The third one never worked on the car.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:28
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ANIME AKBAR posted:Of the three people I know who work/did work at google X, two of them said that a self driving car capable of operating in real life conditions is still decades away at least. They don't even have a clue how driving in snow is going to work. The third one never worked on the car. Correct. I think this thread needs a reality check. Ordering quarters online [small price for convinience]: mind boggling. Self driving cars: around the corner. wikipedia posted:As of August 28, 2014 the latest prototype has not been tested in heavy rain or snow due to safety concerns.[39] Because the cars rely primarily on pre-programmed route data, they do not obey temporary traffic lights and, in some situations, revert to a slower "extra cautious" mode in complex unmapped intersections. The vehicle has difficulty identifying when objects, such as trash and light debris, are harmless, causing the vehicle to veer unnecessarily. Additionally, the lidar technology cannot spot some potholes or discern when humans, such as a police officer, are signaling the car to stop.[40] Google projects having these issues fixed by 2020. TLDR: self driving cars which don't have a human behind the wheel at all times are multiple decades away. This is literally a repeat of the flying car fantasy from the 50's or AI fantasies from the 70's. Automation will certainly creep into automobiles - my Subaru with eyesight manages the throttle and brake when in cruise control amazingly well, but still has to click off in bad weather and sure as hell can't detect a street light, interpret the waving of a traffic cop. If and when self driving cars do exist, it's going to be because infastructure is revamped to assist them in every way (integration with traffic signals etc). Also, Uber isn't going anywhere.
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Sep 9, 2015 05:25
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The first general purpose self-driving cars will undoubtedly still have regular controls so that humans can take over when necessary for conditions they can't handle like really bad weather or signs that they can't understand (e.g. parking rules). You don't need to hit 100% of all use cases for self-driving cars to be useful, having them drive like 90% of the time would still be a huge benefit.
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Sep 9, 2015 05:28
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Cicero posted:The first general purpose self-driving cars will undoubtedly still have regular controls so that humans can take over when necessary for conditions they can't handle like really bad weather or signs that they can't understand (e.g. parking rules). You don't need to hit 100% of all use cases for self-driving cars to be useful, having them drive like 90% of the time would still be a huge benefit. In terms of safety, perhaps (if they're more reliable than humans when they are operating). But the majority of the benefits and the largest impact comes from actually removing the driver from the car. The taxi cab/ups business model doesn't change until that happens.
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Sep 9, 2015 05:35
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