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The rise and fall of Birchbox, the startup valued at nearly $500M has vanished
- diceduckmonk 4y ago> The company also raised another round of funding, this time $60 million > in 2021, the brand was acquired for $45 million I wonder what the founders' payout was.
- henriquez 4y ago[flagged]
- phendrenad2 4y ago[citation needed dude]
- yawnr 4y agoRegardless, she’s the CEO of Victoria Beckham Beauty now. Failing upwards is basically what HBS is for.
- swyx 4y agoand sam altman sold loopt for ~funding and change. people have successful second acts after failed first ones. you get valuable experience running a startup even if it doesnt have a good outcome. encourage you to not have such a cynical view of things.
- echelon 4y agoPlus we wouldn't have really known a priori that subscription box business models suck. Solving for the economic fitness functions of the world requires compute, capital, and labor investment. Mental models alone are shallow.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoNear 0% interest rates might be requisite too, or at least whatever you “solve” for at 0% will not necessarily be a solution at 5%.
- echelon 4y agoAbsolutely. It's probably the case with many businesses.
- swyx 4y agoi should also add that something like (i cant be bothered to research exact number but its there) 4 out of 5 MANGA CEOs are now MBAs lol and arguably they're all pretty good at their jobs. techies randomly shitting on business school is so last decade
- Nullabillity 4y ago"Business people tend to like giving business school people jobs" isn't exactly a new insight, and doesn't say anything about whether they're actually qualified for them.
- yawnr 4y agoNah. People who go to b school are just out of ideas in their mid 20s and have already run a marathon. (Joking, mostly)
- Nullabillity 4y agoAnd how he's gone from selling blockchain bullshit to selling AI bullshit? Yeah, not exactly someone to emulate either.
- dehrmann 4y agoI doubt they had liquidation preferences. Factoring in par value, maybe they got between $50 and $5000?
- eldritch_4ier 4y agoMost likely $0. Money raised is almost always preferred when it comes to an exit, so it gets paid back first
- _skel 4y agoThe whole subscription box industry consists of undifferentiated companies with zero moat. Look at any category: beauty products, men's grooming products, wine, watches, etc. and you'll see a bunch of companies that all look the same selling the same stuff. On top of that, the first thing people cut when they have money problems are luxury subscriptions they don't really need. I don't know why anyone would invest in any of these companies.
- amelius 4y ago> On top of that, the first thing people cut when they have money problems are luxury subscriptions they don't really need. Except their subscription to the gym.
- have_faith 4y agoThat’s not really a luxury subscription, and is often signed up for in 12 month contracts because it works out cheaper. I know many people who’s mental health would substantially decline if they couldn’t go to the gym.
- sokoloff 4y agoDon’t most luxury things serve a mental health function? I know people whose mental health would suffer if you took away their beach house or private jet. That doesn’t make those things not luxury items.
- klodolph 4y agoI think early subscription boxes also sent out the surplus merchandise that was good, but not successful in the market for whatever reason. That era is gone.
- dehrmann 4y agoPicking on the razor companies, you can get similar, name-brand blades with Amazon Subscribe and Save at a similar price. There's no business there. I'm using a coffee subscription right now, but it's specifically for small quantities of a variety of beans. There's a bit more of a curation element to it, and they do repackage the beans. It's not something Amazon would do, but it's low volume, and a competitive space.
- teakweazel 4y ago[dead]
- self_awareness 4y agoNice, the article about a vanishing company displays a 404 error
- nocsi 4y agoNext are those subscription meal plan companies like HelloFresh. There’s no way they can keep sustaining their model of handing out free boxes
- incone123 4y agoRising cost of goods (food) of course. But the logistics are harder too for fresh products. HelloFresh could only offer me 'whole of day' delivery slots, not even choice of AM or PM so I dropped that subscription before I ever saw a box.
- t3rabytes 4y agoWere there markets where they weren’t using UPS/FedEx for delivery? I’m in a semi-major metro and every time we’ve used HelloFresh it’s always been delivered by UPS at my standard delivery time (1-2pm).
- ID1452319 4y agoExactly. And almost everyone I knew who got discount boxes simply decided what recipes they liked and then bought the ingredients from the supermarket for half the price.
- zikduruqe 4y agoEspecially when they post their recipes on their website. https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes
- throwaway_5753 4y agohttps://archive.is/bnXgI https://archive.is/bnXgI
- jasebell 4y agoIf you had access to the suppliers then it was an easy concept to copy. Those with the marketing budget were then going to be the winners. That aside it was an interesting exercise of the combinatorial optimisation problem at scale.
- marban 4y agoRaise your hand if you were a Valleyschwag subscriber. Good times.
- k__ 4y agoI remember a box startup from my town. They would get free snacks from companies, sell them to customers as a subscription, and only had like 20 interns doing all the work.
- rsynnott 4y agoHuh, without thinking too much about it, I'd assumed that all of these services (except the HelloFresh-type ones; I know they're still around because they continue to saturate ~all podcasts) had gone under years ago.
- freediverx 4y agoThe fact that this company was founded by a couple of Harvard Business School grads, and that they and their investors didn’t immediately see this as a gimmicky and unsustainable business model, tells you everything you need to know about business schools and the world of venture capital. It’s mostly smoke and mirrors and quasi-Ponzi schemes.
- Closi 4y agoIn what way is that even close to a Ponzi scheme?
- throwawy-femt68 4y agoThis article is blog spam. Lots more available from Axios & others: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.axios.com%2Fpro%2Fhealth-tech-deals%2F2023%2F01%2F05%2Ffemtec-health-cuts-staff-ava-legal-recourse https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.axios.com%2Fpro%2F... https://beautymatter.com/articles/bankruptcy-may-be-in-birchboxs-future https://beautymatter.com/articles/bankruptcy-may-be-in-birch...