7 ms·
This IPO has been a complete disaster: The initially lowered the price range, and then did the IPO at the low end of $10. Stock opened for trading at exactly th
by this_user 9y ago
This IPO has been a complete disaster: The initially lowered the price range, and then did the IPO at the low end of $10. Stock opened for trading at exactly that level, instead of higher, and has lost around 40% since then.
Normally this IPO would not have been that big of a deal. But since the tech IPO pipeline is largely frozen at the moment, APRN was widely seen as a canary in the coalmine for the sector. The fact that it was this poorly received, only underlines the fact that there is currently sector rotation out of tech going on.
- whipoodle 9y agoYeah, makes sense. Any ideas what the next place to dump institutional money is? Energy? Transportation?
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoCryptocurrencies.
- ceejayoz 9y agoDump being the correct operative word, for sure.
- hari_seldon_ 9y agoMade me chuckle -- agreed.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoCommodities.
- lenley 9y agoTransportation / Logistics (energy is shifting away from carbon-based, populations are shifting to cities -- especially in developing countries). Food. Moving from traditional livestock to other more efficient sources of protein (plant and insect).
- jliptzin 9y agoWhat makes blue apron a tech IPO?
- criddell 9y agoI'm not certain, but I'd guess it's two things: 1. You interact with them almost entirely through the web. 2. Significant logistics around recipe design, ingredient acquisition, and delivery. If neither of those qualifies them as a tech IPO, then what makes Uber a tech company?
- manigandham 9y ago> then what makes Uber a tech company Nothing. They are a transportation/logistics provider.
- hari_seldon_ 9y ago^ this. I think the bigger question becomes "why does it matter if something is a tech company?" Is it because that is what makes it easier to raise money today? If that's the case, then I wish more investors and analysts would go back to first principles and understand why slapping a "tech" label on a company does not necessarily mean it will scale well or succeed in the long run.
- barkingcat 9y agoUber's primary competitor are taxicabs - they are a transportation company.
- criddell 9y agoThere's a Quora question[1] about this that has a different take than you: > Uber is a tech company because that's what we do. We create a service that powers a marketplace through technology, and we provide apps that let people participate to this marketplace. Specifically, that marketplace lets individual users or businesses buy transportation services from partners. > We are not a transportation company because we don't transport goods or people - our partners do. We just facilitate that. And we are not a cab company for the same reasons, and on top of this, we don't own a fleet of vehicles. 1: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Uber-considered-a-technology-company-and-a-lot-of-people-place-it-among-tech-giants-like-Google-Facebook-etc https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Uber-considered-a-technology-co...
- manigandham 9y agoThis isn't a tech* company. It's a prepared food/grocery delivery business with too much VC and some fancy design. *there's actually no such thing as a tech company at all
- Spivak 9y agoI think it's more accurate to say that every company is a tech company in some capacity.
- manigandham 9y agoHow is that more accurate? Every company uses technology, at which point saying anything like "tech company" is a useless modifier compared to just "company".
- potatolicious 9y agoI think "every company is (nowadays) a tech company" is a relatively fair assessment, even if somewhat exaggerated. Increasingly, successful companies require ownership of proprietary technology, rather than purchase of commodity technology from third parties, and in that way more and more companies - even those in "traditional" fields - have invested in in-house tech R&D. More importantly, software engineering has become a critical part of companies' success, even if the company doesn't ship software to end users (see: UPS, FedEx, Visa, MasterCard). It certainly seems like the old definitions of "tech company" is increasingly archaic - is Amazon a tech company? Or are they just a retailer that uses technology? Is Grubhub a tech company, or just a delivery service with a frontend? > "Every company uses technology, at which point saying anything like "tech company" is a useless modifier compared to just "company"." I think that's exactly the point. Software has become so critical to almost every field (and more importantly: in-house developed software) that many companies have become tech companies, and those that haven't are either getting on the bandwagon shortly, or will perish soon after. There may come a point where "company" vs. "tech company" loses its distinction, but for now it seems like "companies" are becoming "tech companies" rather quickly.
- 9y ago
- odonnellryan 9y agoI have Blue Apron and largely they're really good. It's surprising to see they aren't doing well, apparently?
- this_user 9y agoWell, a company can provide a good service but be a terrible business. See TWTR or SNAP as examples. Uber would be another. They're mostly burning cash without a clear path to profitability. Given their recent scandals, an IPO seems to be extremely far away.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago"Non-profits generating consumer excess attempting to shift the financial burden to public markets"
- kec 9y agoThey don't have a great moat (all recipes are available for free online for instance) and the meal kit market has gotten very, very crowded since they invented it 5 years ago.
- hari_seldon_ 9y agoAgreed. I also saw a talk by a PM from Blue Apron a while back, and it seems that another problem is that people subscribe with the hopes of cooking more but then discover that having the meal kit still involves enough time and friction to limit them from doing it. I think that many people love the idea of cooking more often but still wish it were more convenient. To Blue Apron's credit, they have made it fairly streamlined!
- ScottBurson 9y agoIt takes me about half the time to make a Gobble meal as a Blue Apron meal. Blue Apron is streamlined relative to doing it completely from scratch, but it's still more work than I have time for.