marinman

stand tall, union strong

If you talk to people at Microsoft, Satya has also turned around a lot of the internal culture from the Ballmer days. This included getting rid of some of those division heads you mentioned for both Windows, Sales and more.

Most importantly, he said and acted as if Windows wasn't the core of the company. A challenging but right decision.

It's still a 40-year-old company, so it still has some historic issues. But yes, I do feel like Satya has done a great job.

If you squint, you can see the Minecraft fit: along with the Xbox side, it's quasi "coding" or "developing" for kids. Basically, you hook the kids who are interested in developing super, duper early.

I thought this was a pretty fair article that rightly addressed some of the major structural issues with remote work as it currently is set up. I've worked remotely for ~5 years and absolutely love it but think there need to be much larger corporate culture changes needed, along with technologies, to make it a sustainable trend for 30%+ of a modern workforce.

I do also wonder if there might be some wrong lessons taken from this time. This isn't just "working from home" it's "working from home during a global health crisis." Schools are closed, people we know are dying, lockdowns, there's fear and uncertainty to a degree I hadn't before seen in my adult life ... so yeah, it's going to have an impact on our workflows.

Like any change, it's always going to be hardest for large orgs who have to change vs those who have it built-in from the beginning.

I think there's definitely value in disconnecting and "living in the moment" but let's not pretend smartphones haven't improved many aspects of travel. Google Maps alone has saved me so much time and effort. Translator apps have helped me communicate outside the tourist traps. Even things like Uber have made traveling a much more pleasant experience.

So yes, I think I can do a better job of being mindful about not using my phone to say, browse twitter.

This is trying to be too clever by a half with the semantics. When people say they're going to Uber somewhere, they're not saying they're going to use a post-paid software to connect with individuals offering rides. The fact they've skirted the labor laws to technically not be the employers is neither here nor there.

I agree with some of the other replies: nowadays, AirBnB rarely has a price advantage once you factor in the extra fees. It still wins in terms of uniqueness, for large groups, if you have kids, want to cook, etc.

Totally agree. Besides, if we're talking semantics, shouldn't it be "people, not humans."

Yes, these users are human beings but outside of academic settings, who ever calls someone a "human?"

"Presumably all of those costs would disappear once someone wins the market or a "truce" is called."

I'm not sure any single company ever truly wins this market because, as others have mentioned, the barriers to entry are pretty low. Raise VC money to subsidize the most lucrative rides/markets and Lyft & Uber will never be able to stop their spending (either through advertising or through acquiring new entrants).

The ride-share market may wind up like the airlines: heavy utilization but not amazing businesses.

"Highly valued companies typically grow quickly or generate big profits -- and great ones do both. In the fourth quarter of 2005, Amazon.com Inc. had about the same revenue as Uber’s today -- just under $3 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Yet, Amazon earned $199 million in profit and was worth about a fourth of Uber’s $76 billion valuation."

I think this graph neatly summarizes the concern at this point. There are few signs that the business can live up to its existing hefty valuation, not-to-mention the even-loftier IPO expectations.

Amazon was also famously unprofitable as a public company for a long, long time. But they still had revenue growth rates worth investing in and potentially more defensible businesses.

I do wonder if the ride-sharing business will wind up like the airlines business: valuable, booming but very, very tough to consistently make large profits.

As a capable yet ambition-less high schooler, community college saved my family tens of thousands of dollars. I do sometimes wonder if I missed something with the dorm experience but from an ROI perspective, it was stellar for me. One anecdote doesn’t mean it’s applicable for all but I’d recommend it for many circumstances

According to one analysis, Google has over 90% of the global search market. What's crazy is that its market share includes virtually 0 in China, where it backed out/was forced out.

http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share

that social science tells us that diversity is probably a net loss:

The author of that study doesn't come to that conclusion: https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/robert-putnam-say...

I'm in the same boat for the first part. I'll be thumbing through my feed and see some quasi-interesting video but no matter how great it is, when I see that "about to start ad" text, I just scroll on. Like on YouTube, I could watch a pre-roll if I really, really want to watch it.

Didn't always agree with his policies or politics but sad to see this. Condolences to his families.

As for London Breed, I've met her a few times at community gatherings. She seems like she has a good head on her shoulders. We'll see, SF has lots of problems.

While I'm bullish that self-driving will happen in our lifetimes, I think there are a lot of challenges that many are underestimating. This includes the actual technology—this is one of the most important and challenging technological breakthroughs of all time. It's going to take time and be very, very expensive to produce at scale (ie all-electric self-driving cars at $100K a piece).

Even putting that aside, I have questions about the business side of things. Demand for transportation has been pretty consistent with big lumps during the morning and evening commutes.

One of the beauties of Uber's existing business model is that it can theoretically spin up and down drivers as needed with Surge pricing. With a fleet of cars, it's not guaranteed that supply will perfectly match demand most of the time.

The counter to that, which I sort of buy, is that it will kind of be like broadband Internet. We don't even know what demand and opportunities self-driving cars will create. My hesitancy with fully embracing this is that broadband was an acceleration of something new whereas self-driving is a leap to an existing quantity of transportation. It will still change lots of things but it will take longer for things like where you choose to live to change.

Finally, my main hesitancy is the human aspect. For self-driving to make the impact that many want/believe, there's going to have to be a hard line in the regulatory sand where human-controlled cars are outlawed or limited. I don't see that happening in the United States for a long, long time.

But importantly, the government went after Microsoft for anti-trust and actually won even if they didn't break them up. It's impossible to really know the counter-factual of what would have happened if it wasn't sued for anti-trust. But, you can safely say it wouldn't have thrown a lifeline to Apple with the investment and it may have been much more aggressive in these emerging spaces. I still think it was still not fundamentally "ready" for the Internet and mobile but I do think that lawsuit made it much, much friendlier to newcomers.

Question: is a 1% chance at becoming a unicorn higher or lower than before? I mean, the vast majority of startups fail. 1% actually seems high to me

Really interesting article but he really zoomed past the "I got a free mattress" part

Tell that to the President

This is a great hard analysis of evaluating opportunities but I am struck that there's not even a crack at evaluating the human interaction element of personal fit. Working for shitty people sucks, even if it leads to a boatload of money. You wind up spending more time with people you work with than your family, so try to price that accordingly.

From a pure strategy perspective, it's also quite brilliant. Without a real app store of its own, they don't have the directional data that the App Store or Google Play have.

It's also incredibly shady.

It's been great to read this thread. I never understood the value. As someone who can cook and grocery shop decently, it's not cheaper and only marginally better than what I normally whip up. And there's no question about convenience when it's compared to delivery (although, I live in SF, so my delivery options are more than most).

It does become zero sum when you consider they're all vying for similar ad dollars. For years, Twitter didn't mind being compared to Facebook because it meant higher valuations for potential growth and ad revenue. But playing that game meant it actually had to deliver on the growth and ad performance. Snapchat is interesting in that it appears to be going after more traditional brand/TV dollars, which is still evading the performant-oriented ad dollars on Facebook.

And both Twitter and Snapchat knew the game they were playing by raising so much venture capital at such high valuations. They could have stayed private longer, raised less at lower valuations and laser-focused on product and making nominal returns. But they chose to go the other route and that means they have to deliver on outsized profits eventually.