2pasc

It depends if you plan on working in big Companies or small to medium size Companies/startups.

Large public Companies (assuming we are talking about a case against a public Company) may be reluctant to have you because HR might freak out. HR is all about damage control and compliance. But startups to medium sized Companies can be talked into it, and if you work is valued and appreciated, you should be fine. As a founder or executive of several Companies from 1 to 80 people here in California, I would not take this against you.

As a side note, I would also advise you to do some SEO on yourself as was said by porter. It's unfortunate, but worth it.

What made competing with Coinbase so hard? the fact that Coinbase was so well funded?

I did a blog post about that: http://2pasc.com/2012/05/18/the-power-law-of-startup-employe...

Overall - it depends when you get in, and its valuation potential at exit. Companies with 10B-100B+ exits can create hundreds to thousands of millionaires. Companies that exit at 200-500M, much less, obviously!

You should contact GrubMarket and apply to work for them - they are YC + funded + in the same space as PearMarket. cs@grubmarket.com

First of all - nobody has been serious about monetizing messaging yet in the US apart from Tango. Kik, Snapchat and FB Messenger have barely started doing anything.

Second of all, I think that there is some kind of hope from Fred Wilson (who is an investor in Kik) that one of the Asian player buys Kik so that he has a big exit there. I doubt he other thoughts than that: WeChat has spent millions of $ trying to get users in the US without much traction to show for it...

How can a partner know you are not going to compete with him/her? I mean a lot of the recent services you guys launched (Essentials, Alchohol, Flowers) show some kind of vertical integration. What if one of your partner grows like crazy - will you compete with them the way Amazon does with its 3rd party sellers?

Great news otherwise. This will give Uber a run for their money.

This is human nature. You have these guys in NYC, in DC, in LA, in Connecticut - everywhere where there is money. Even among investors at second or third tier firms, you have folks with a lot of money but nothing to show for it. This is a sad face of capitalism, and something you have to come to terms with. But this is not Silicon Valley - this is a byproduct of Silicon Valley.

What you are talking about is a new phenomenon. Silicon Valley in 2008 was different - rents were lower, and $120K with 2 kids and one income was OK. There has been a dramatic increase in rent/real estate prices in the last 6 years that has completely schewed the system and the culture. Silicon Valley has thrived in years when rents were OK, people were not greedy and yet great Companies were built.

I remember going out of Stanford in 2003 - at the time a job at Oracle for a CS MS grad was awesome - and yet, people went on to create Facebook, LinkedIn, and all these Companies, and rent were OK, salaries were good, and you had this mindset of "I am going to give this a shot" everywhere that is at the heart of Silicon Valley.

Extreme greed as you describe is a new thing. It may have been there in 99-01 but I can tell you none of that was there in 01-04 and it was much less profound in 06-09.

The reality is that all things work in cycles. People who genuinely love tech will stay, others will go back to Wall Street or Consulting.

1/ They mention drivers making $1000/week. 2/ Smarter drivers are driving very gas efficient cars with much lower gas costs 3/ Wages are way better if you drive during peak hours. I did and it is pretty neat how much you can make.

Quite honestly - do you believe that making more than $50,000 per year for a HS grad is a bad thing? I am not saying that they should not make more, but for most non college educated individuals - $50,000 is above US average income. Uber may have shady tactics, and might be deceiving drivers - that's true. But the reality is that the opportunities they are giving drivers are not insignificant. Unfortunately - these drivers are paying with their wages the price of a market equilibrium that has not been found yet in terms of finding the right pricing model to match supply and demand. This is the problem that has existed in all major Internet marketplaces where you deal with people's businesses - with eBay, Uber, Amazon, oDesk, etc....

I actually disagree. It seems crazy - yes. But, in Europe you have many families that have a maid that does a little bit of everything. These maids are super expensive here - only the top 1% have them. So you have an alfred + the different sub-services, and you are good to go. The sum of all of that is less than a European maid, and you don't have to deal with the details. It sounds too much, but for a family with two working parents, it is a luxury that I am sure is hard to do without, once you have tried it.

There is a big difference between - delivering food you have in your trunk in under 10 minutes, and what Postmates or Caviar does. It seems UberFresh is closer to a Sprig/Spoonrocket model than a Postmates model.

That is for sure. But it is also assuming that stores know how to generate demand for their restaurant. The way they have out-executed Postmates is really crazy.

It's incredible how fast Uber executes: they launched in the same month: 1/moving in Atlanta 2/convenience store in DC 3/lunch in LA 4/ride-sharing in SF

The one thing I am not sure is how they could branch out of pure "people logistics" (and into commerce). When I am hungry, would I open the Uber app, toggle 10 things and see the menu or just open Sprig/Spoonrocket? People always mention Amazon, but Amazon is search driven so I can find anything, that's ok. As for Uber, it's a totally new mental model they have to create. I guess for them, it is about the "Now". That being said, they have millions of users and CC on file, so it would be easy for them to create other apps for these different experiences.

Could you contact me? (plg at name of my company in my hn profile)

thx

Theoretically, you are right. But SMBs have heard of Foursquare and this is invaluable for them as this is how they are going to make money in the end. As for consumers - you are right for the single digit millions who check in from time to time, but for others? Foursquare is an app that was not for them, but they know it was about local and they did not mind it. The hard part is going to convince them that this new app is more interesting and better than Yelp, Sosh or others.

that's true and they are impressive - and I know that because one of my previous Companies got a term sheet from them and they made their decision super fast.

Sure. But YC was started in 2005 or something. this was a very different market. Sequoia benefitted from he YC deal flow early on from founders who might have not even considered them at that time. Sequoia missed FB and twitter and the social media thing.

Of course, now everybody has the same access, so there is no advantage whatsoever.

Ask them about it: https://www.facebook.com/LollyWollyDoodle

It's worth noting that Sequoia invested in YC early on, which gave them a preferential portfolio access I assume.

The beauty of the model is not that YC has a portfolio worth $1B of gain - but that they spent less than $15M to get there: A staggering 67x. Why?

Because they are good at picking Companies for sure - but most importantly because the % they own for the money they put is very high ("founder level" almost)... and is all a consequence of their brand and processes and its power on entrepreneurs, investors + the network effect of their community. Amazing jobs guys!

Actually, you forgot one step: 4. GSX vans pick up the goods and deliver to GSX warehouse 5. GSX van #2 pick up at warehouse and delivers to consumers. GSX vans have to do 5 deliveries per hour minimum (which is no too hard to do in a city like SF once you have enough volume).

The warehouse piece is probably why they cannot do fresh produce.

Out of curiosity - what kind of more "local" stores would you like if GSX is coming from chains anyway? (I live in the Bay Area, so you can give precise names, and I might know them). Thanks!

It's funny that you would switch to Instacart if they (=google) charged you, when Instacart is already 20-30% more expensive of Google Shopping Express on most items already (this is how they make money).

Initially their growth was only word of mouth (and leveraging networks of Companies using them to order food for lunch).

It's silly unless you know the numbers involved (revenues, growth, etc..). As far as I know nobody knows these numbers today (I know the ones from 6 months ago and they were better than most startups hope to ever get to).

I don't know anything about this deal, but as far as I know Caviar has been growing leaps and bound, with many new cities launched recently very successfully in terms of order volume, etc...

Caviar's growth potential is really strong, (and they are not burning a lot of cash at all - they were operating profitably in SF for almost a year): Grubhub is stuck at the low end of the market, and there is a real opportunity to be a true partner at the high end (which they are doing).

Disclaimer: I am a small investor in Caviar and shared an office with them for 4 months

Can you send me info as well plg at sixdoors

Maybe, but the fact that food is cheaper as a % of income today does not mean we have less poverty overall. It just means we have a different kind. First of all, lodging is still a very important budget item, and not one that is bound to decrease for high employment areas, as city regulations make it hard to increase housing supply at the necessary rate. Second, new needs have appeared that have replaced food among the necessary spending. Mobile phone plans and Internet are one of them.

We are the ones who work a lot and make a good living with that. The problem is at the other end of the spectrum with people that are barely making ends meetm and need to work as much as possible to earn enough to feed their family and survive.

I am not saying we should not try again. I think that the arguments used by Larry Page reminded me of what French socialists were saying in the late 90s, and the effectiveness of these measures has been zero.

But Denmark, like many Northern European countries is an economy with high tax rates and high redistribution, which can compensate for the lack of growth of labor wages. The US is not a market like that at all.