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Jessica Alba's Honest Co. Slashes Its Valuation
- alexasmyths 9y agoThe more interesting piece is how the name 'Jessica Alba' always before the title every time it is mentioned. Because what would they do without star power? Note: George Clooney's billion dollar sale of a brand new Tequila company. And we work hard on algorithms?
- no_wizard 9y agoEvery vertical has its outliers. Wonder if Clooney ever saw all those tech billionaires from the 90s and thought to himself “and I did general hospital for this!?!”
- wavefunction 9y agoIf you can bootstrap yourself into being George Clooney you too can sell water with additives to people for megabux. Or perhaps there's so much loose capital sitting around with no purpose that it's just driving up valuations of companies to ridiculous levels because then folks would just be dumping fake money into questionably valued ventures. "But you guys make toast, on-demand, in only one city." "Exactly, toast on-demand!"
- alexasmyths 9y ago"If you can bootstrap yourself into being George Clooney" Actors are the truest of commodities. Many can do it, and it's not hard. When Hollywood 'invests' in an actor, they create the actors Brand, which the actor - then owns. Once an actor becomes familiar with American/Global audiences, then their Brand is worth a lot. Surely, it requires some hustle on the part of the actor - but were it not Clooney, it could have been any one of thousands of others. He was more or less 'chosen'. Think of how many people's very intelligent work goes into creating big films - and that the surpluses mostly go to the person with the easiest job. And FYI - I understand there are such things as 'great actors' who are not commodities. Alba and Clooney are products created by Hollywood, who just happen to own the 'IP' to their own faces. At least with athletes ... at least there is a fair amount of credible competition for those who make it to the top.
- coryl 9y agoHow do you assess that actors are chosen and not rewarded for their skill like athletes?
- alexasmyths 9y agoGal Godot - a decent actress - was paid $200K for her role as 'Wonder Woman'. Huge film. But she was paid just like any other of the 'talent' on the crew. But in subsequent versions of 'Wonder Woman' - she will be paid millions. Has her 'acting ability' magically improved? No. But 'her face and personae' are now existentially linked to the character 'Wonder Woman'. Audiences want to see that. So she'll be paid millions. Are there actors 'better' than Gal Gadot who could play WW? Of course there are. Probably many. So why not pay them $200K instead of paying Gal 'millions'? Because it's not 'talent' that's the issue in the equation. The #1 deciding factor in the investment of films over $10M is not the script, not the director, not anything else - it's the actors that are involved. You need to have 'highly recognizable' actors on board (or the budget to do so) otherwise it's not investable - because audiences want to see familiar faces. Do you honestly think that 'George Clooney' is such an amazing actor, that there aren't 1000 other people 'as good as him' that could have played his roles well? Of course there are. There are tons of great actors out there. But they're not household names. So the question is: given that there are tons of actors better than Brad Pitt out there - how does Brad Pitt even get a single role? Because he's the 'living brand' of 'Brad Pitt'. The living brand of 'Brad Pitt' is what audiences want, which was created by putting the actor in previous roles. Most athletes are paid very commensurately relative to their actual skill, of course, it's easier to be objective in measuring that. What matters in film is 'the recognizability of the face/personae'.
- cscurmudgeon 9y ago> And we work hard on algorithms? There are mathematicians (and scientists) who work harder than most programmers and are poorer than most programmers.
- ProAm 9y agoIt's probably just a rounding error
- j7ake 9y ago150000 / year for fresh graduate versus 30000/year for fresh PhD student is not a rounding error.
- dagw 9y agoHow to you end up making only 30000/year with a PhD in a subject where graduates make 150k? Even post-doc positions tend to pay more than that. Everybody I know that has a STEM PhD and went into industry earns a lot more than I do.
- drchickensalad 9y agoPhD _student_
- varjag 9y ago150K isn't anywhere near the stated "most programmers".
- j7ake 9y agoSorry you're right I was thinking of salary of Stanford undergraduate first job in Bay Area versus stanford PhD student .
- lovich 9y agoAgreed, the amount of effort you put into something has never decided how much you got paid. Only the value you can convince others you bring changes your compensation and that is only loosely coupled to effort put in
- dwringer 9y agoI will be perfectly honest, I found this hilarious because I clicked the link without even thinking about it, closed it almost immediately, navigated away, came back, and didn't even remember having clicked on it until seeing it greyed out in the list of topics. Apparently (granted, this is just one data point) they can generate click-through without even requiring conscious involvement on anyone's part.
- jseliger 9y agoThat's interesting: Does Honest Co. make Honest Tea? Because last time I was looking at Honest Tea (or however it may be spelled), every variety had added sugar. Which is not good: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Sugar-Gary-Taubes/dp/0307701646 https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Sugar-Gary-Taubes/dp/030.... If their sweetened tea is any indication, they may be caught in the uncanny valley where normal people still drink soda and people who've gotten the news about sugar won't drink sweetened drinks. Leaving them with no one.
- bdibs 9y agoThey're unrelated businesses.
- erdle 9y agoAnd Coca-Cola owns the brand, distribution, and bottling.
- Axsuul 9y agoHonest Tea's name comes from how their ingredients are sourced. They never claimed for it to be good for you.
- pvdebbe 9y agoI thought it's just a pun for honesty
- Chris2048 9y agoI find Starbucks mainly tastes of sugar. Whether it's a plain latte or mocha-choca-pumpkin foo, the saccharine sweetness drowns out everything else.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoWhenever some person or company calls themselves "Honest", "Trustworthy", "Wholesome", etc I immediately start thinking that they are going to overcharge me for something. In this case, it seems my heuristic worked well.
- colordrops 9y agoI get the same thing when someone calls me "friend" the second I meet them.
- Chris2048 9y agoHave you heard the good news?
- Turing_Machine 9y agoI have a similar reaction to any website that calls itself "truth(whatever)", "fact(whatever)", or anything along those lines. So far, every time I've investigated it, my suspicion has been justified. Of course, the grandaddy of them all was Pravda.
- diminish 9y agoAnd the Don't be evil mantra. We've ended up with a search engine which returns ads in 85% of clickable screen asset and soon may start to mix paid and organic search and we're ready for it.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoSo, they have already raised $220 million, and now need an E round of around $75 million...why do they need the additional capital?